more note card images (chapter 2)

post #263
        I have looked forward all week to sharing some more of my note cards with their titles. Since I don't print these, I can change the color of the paper I tape them to, and I can make a lot of different cards as newer images come along to try to take a place in the selection. I carry most of the titles in my head, but sometimes I do draw a blank and have to start from the beginning or ask for help from someone who may have bought the card earlier.
       The first two cards come from a weeklong workshop I did years ago with Alison Shaw on Martha's Vineyard, with financial help from the Kentucky Arts Council. It had a lot of early mornings and late evening shoots. Both of the following images were made during a visit to a farmers' market, in mid day, but the booths were under a tarp so there was no harsh sunlight to contend with. The first card has an extremely straightforward title!

farmers' market

dyed in the [home grown] wool

        Now back to Kentucky. Years ago I caught a neighbor doing a first plowing of his tobacco, using a horse, a hand plow, and a hillside.  The sun was bright but my slide film -- Velvia - which I was using at the time, kept the colors true.

first plowing

      Tobacco is fascinating even if one is against smoking.... I was honored to be asked to take photos of these mules at work since the mules were about to retire. This is now digital film at work.

tobacco rows

shadows in the bright dawn

spring falls

      The waterfall photo appears at the beginning of George Ella Lyon's Counting on the Woods.  It was on the first roll of slide film I took with my new camera and new tripod for the book. It amazes me to this day.
       The next photo was all luck. I just happened to be in the area at that time of year, and I drove in the park out of pure curiosity. Near the top of the small mountain is this opening on the side of the road.... This historic view sells well consistently . 

Cumberland Pass

 

backwoods cemetery

September tobacco, ready to cut

     The next field photo is of the same field, a few years later, and I had help with the title from George Ella Lyon.  It is one of my best known images:

earthbound book

        How about this cow image, in the field, again at another time, with a title that is just plain fun. This photo is harder to get than it might at first appear.  A cow in a field. Well, all I can say is try it sometime!

black and white in color

       To end for today, here are two bird cards, both due to the pure luck of being in that place (on Grayson Lake) at the right time, in a quiet boat, exploring. I like to show birds in their natural place, as part of nature's design. I don't have any proper bird photography equipment, but sometimes things just work out.

blue heron on Grayson Lake

an anhinga

       I know, a single anhinga is not normally seen in eastern Kentucky, so it may be a cormorant. However, I was in a boat and it was on top of a high cliff, and I love the photo.  If anyone feels strongly that it is one or the other, please do leave me a comment. Signing in as anonymous usually works just fine.  Thank you so much.

posts from the past, color, and politics

post #214
       I have said that this month I would do a kind of review of this blog, now that I am starting a fifth year of weekly posts.  I began this blog thinking I would do just a few photos every week, with some commentary, focusing on Appalachia and photography.  However, I have found that by now I usually incorporate a dozen or more photos, and I have covered quite a few topics.  
       For the first year (October 2010 - October 2011), here are the posts that garned the most attention:

• the most viewed was "Tobacco as art, part 1," followed by "Tobacco as art, part 2,"  in September 2011.  I think they must come up when someone researches tobacco.   I explain in them -- and again now -- that I am totally appalled at the terrible health damage tobacco does, yet it has long been an honorable way of earning a living where I live.  Need I add that it is also very compelling as art.
• I mostly do Appalachian moments, but I also have reasons to travel.  For example, in July 2011 I went to visit my British stepmother. The resulting two posts from England were the second most viewed posts of my first year: here is the first one and the second one.  Not everyone has the chance to travel, so it's a pleasure for me to  provide a mini-look at other countries and other places in the USA.
• On 4/28/11 I did an extra, mid-week post which generated a lot of interest, about an effort and exhibit encouraging photos that are re-imaging Appalachia.
• Then there are the two posts showing some neighbors making sorghum molasses.  How cool is that!  Here are both links:  here and here. 

     
      Currently, this is what shows up here this past week.  I have often photographed this field, but this time I was struck by the fact it looks to me as if the colors from the trees have spilled over to the field and washed down the hillside.  I made photos from several vantage points, and I am sharing three of them today.

SO, now, one last extra that might not be of interest to everyone, but it is something I care about:

          For the true democracy obsessed readers of this blog, I am including my humble effort to speak out during this election season -- a letter to the editor.  It will be appearing in two local newspapers this Tuesday, a week before our national midterm elections.  Kentucky has a US Senate contest.  As usual, a lot rests on elections, and I continue to believe we all need to vote.  Also, I have many readers/viewers in other countries besides my own, and I thought this particular effort of a concerned citizen might be of interest.  

 To the editor:

         I’m a Kentucky voter Senator Mitch McConnell claims to speak for, but he doesn’t listen to a word I have to say.  Instead he acts like his mind is made up and he just wants us – all of us in Kentucky – to be happy if he can replace Harry Reid [US Senate Majority Leader.]  Harry Reid may or may not need replacing, but the real issue is why hasn’t there been some actual legislation, say, to help coal miners who face an increasing rise in black lung disease?  (Folks, this is 2014.  Why aren’t we moving forward on this situation instead of backwards?) 

        In fact, why is the loss of coal jobs being blamed on Obama since it started over 30 years ago?  And Mitch has been in the US Senate all that time!

       When we’ve needed action on these and many other important issues, we only got gridlock.  Then, if you remember, there was the incredibly wasteful and inexcusable shutting down of the US government. For weeks. I hold the Republicans responsible for that.  In ignoring or forgetting about such facts by the next election, we put our nation’s health in jeopardy.

        As a woman and a citizen who always votes, I am proud that this year Alison Grimes is running such a strong campaign for the US Senate seat.  She is working hard, speaking powerfully, and raising lots of money.  Yes, she is young (35), but that is the idea – it‘s called new blood, new energy!  There’s no question about her passion for Kentucky and her future capacity for leadership.  Alison  has earned my vote.

        Democracy is the gift we live with, but it requires an informed and participating citizenry.  This means thinking for ourselves – and voting.  Please join me in ignoring all the big money efforts to make us act on our fears instead of on our hopes.     Ann

Today -- only T!

post #90

   For some reason I have too many Ts to include any additional letters today.  Plus we are supposed to have thunderstorms this afternoon, which means I might have to be disconnected from the internet.  A reality of country living.  Anyway, here goes:


T   t     --      tufted titmouse        toad        tobacco          tools         tracks         tractor                trucks          trees          turtle            trillium          turkeys 

tufted titmouse family, last week!

Fowlers toad

tobacco plants (being plowed by a team of mules!)

tools in the tool shed

a deer track

tracks in the snow

 

a tractor and two trucks, putting up hay rounds

a beech tree trunk

an eastern box turtle

 

baby box turtle

trillium

a turkey who came to visit us

turkeys  (a rafter of turkeys or a gang of turkeys)

    Thanks for taking the time to share this effort with me.  It is fun, for me, to look at my photos and our place from this different perspective.  When the tufted titmouse fledgling showed up outside the kitchen window last week, I knew that doing the T page was going to be a TREAT!




 

back to tobacco, this time in Vietnam

post #56
       Before I got sidetracked two weeks ago by sorghum making, I had intended to finish up my tobacco series on this blog by showing photos I took during that 2004 trip to Vietnam.  I wrote about those two weeks, in post #25, and included several images.  But now I want to share the day our bus passed through a village in Vietnam which had tobacco drying in each front yard and under each porch overhang.  I made my only photo request of the trip (which was not designed for either photographers or for tobacco farmers) by asking if the bus could, please, please, stop there on our way back from the day's historic site.  Actually my request sounded more like begging.  I explained that I just couldn't face my community at home if I didn't take any photos of the totally amazing sight of seeing tobacco growing alongside rice!  
      We did stop later, I (and others) did get off the bus, and our guide was able to explain to the family why I wanted to take the photos.  Of course the explaining part was, to me, a gift.  I am always more comfortable being able to express appreciation  and to do the small talk thing.

        Facts: the time of year, October, the location, the middle of the country, where there are several growing seasons.  Of note: many Vietnamese homes and stores are open in the front, and there is a lot of visiting back and forth.  I still wonder how they take to the American way of closed-off living.
     The next photo shows what really got my attention -- rice, tobacco (more than one crop a year, I presume), and corn growing side by side!

     
     Two last photos, non-tobacco but Vietnam, are again with the help of being with someone who could translate my interest for me.  I usually send a photo to whomever I take one of, but on this trip it was hard to do that every time. I do apologize for the imperfections of these slides (which I have scanned and made digital) but I didn't always have much time to work or much choice about the light.  Otherwise, it was a wonderful trip.  I am so grateful to have been able to go there.

two sisters -- one of my favorite moments from the trip

tobacco as art, part 2

post #53
     Well, let's get smokin', 'tis the season to cut tobacco and "house" it in a barn!  I am sharing some additional photos today of this crop which was formerly grown by many small farmers where I live in northeastern Kentucky and is now grown only by a few.  I will try to put this week's set in more or less chronological order.  

truck bed with flats holding plants now big enough to be put in the ground (see last week's post for a photo of tobacco being planted)

newly planted tobacco in Donnie's field, a photo whose title is "earthbound book"

This tobacco is overdue to be "topped" and de-suckered....sticky, hot, hard work, with bees for company

I don't usually see tobacco blooms this far along, and, not having to work it, I thought it lovely.
 

The yellowing means the tobacco is getting ready to be cut and housed, usually in late August or September.

The earthbound book field, in September, with some of the rows cut, the plants left a day or two in the field to dry out a bit before all that lifting to come

Trailers bring the cut and speared tobacco plants to the barn.  The tobacco sticks (see some unused ones lower right) are used as spears, thanks to the cutting cone that gets moved from stick to stick.  Five to six plants each are on a stick, which is later placed on the trailer to be taken to the tobacco barn for hanging.

unloading the trailer and hanging the sticks holding the plants

hanging to cure  (barn built in 1960?)
 The plants hang like possums for a couple of months, depending on the weather, and then the leaves are stripped off the stalks. 

a favorite photo of mine, see my post #7 -- Sandy, Junie and Dorsie stripping their last ever crop of tobacco, two years ago

Donnie spreading the stripped stalks back onto the fields, before winter snows, with his daughters keeping him good company

    My explanations here are very basic.  I hope my neighbors don't laugh at me.  But the amount of labor required is hard to understand without some explanations of the yearlong process. I will appreciate hearing about any confusions, errors or needed clarifications, which I will then use to make this a better post!  
     As always, thanks for your interest in this blog  -- I hope you found some art among the stalks and the seasons.  Too bad the end product of all the work is not as fascinating. 

tobacco as art, part 1

post #52

Welcome to the coming of fall -- which means our black walnuts have begun to fall onto the deck!  There is random clunking heard day or night; all will have fallen by the first frost.

        Fall, however, is just one of many seasons for TOBACCO, the crop I have photographed over the years because it is so much of this place and so interesting. I am lucky to be allergic to smoke, so I have never smoked. In fact, I disparage smoking.  But for many years we had a tobacco base.  That means we were allotted and allowed to grow so many pounds of tobacco per year.  We didn't grow it ourselves -- we leased it to our neighbor --and we never earned very much, but for a long time having a base that was used yearly made a farm such as ours more valuable if we ever wanted to sell.  Turns out we've stayed here so long that by now the way tobacco is grown, if at all, has completely changed.  

planting tobacco plants that have been grown in a covered bed (the seeds are minuscule.)  Notice a plant being  placed into a kind of chute while the tractor moves slowly down each row.  Several parts of the process are going on at one time.  In earlier times, they were all done by hand!

    Changing economic times, however, are another story, for some other time.  For now, I mostly want to share some of the many photos of tobacco that I have taken over the years, in different fields, with different neighbors, and during different seasons.  Today images are mostly from the months of May, June and early July.

first plowing, in 1997, ammonium nitrate on the field, rare view of 
how things were done "in the olden days"

 

way back in the woods, an unexpected field of early tobacco

Two years ago I was invited to take photos of this team of mules since it would be their last time doing this annual job.  The spring had been so wet that the tobacco was farther along than usual for this first plowing.  The mules are 21 years old.

side view

back view

"teen-aged"  tobacco plants

reality moment in the tobacco field --  what it is all about...

        Speaking of reality, a mention here of the national upheaval this weekend while the world observes the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  I am clearly sorry for so much loss of lives.  I am also sorry for the way this tragedy seems to make it even harder for too many people to think with nuance.  Instead there is a rush to an either/or, good/bad, right/wrong way of thinking.  That's when sound bites have way more power than they deserve, as we give up our right to figure things out for ourselves.  Democracy's challenge and strength is to be inclusive, which requires we use our brains and facts to be informed and therefore to keep it strong.   

       

     Next week I will share some more tobacco photos --for now, two more, taken last week, with my new little waterproof camera which I am trying to learn to use correctly.  The first shows a field (and a bit of a barn) waiting for the rain to stop before getting cut, and the other a recently cut field with some of the cut tobacco visible hanging in the barn.  
     Tobacco is still happening here, but each year there is less and less grown.

Elliott County

Morgan County (still learning about my new camera settings...)  Here the plants have been cut, and stacked in the barn.  The section of the side of the barn is open, as well as the barn doors, to give more air for the drying of the plants.  Too much rain can produce mold on the plants.  Tobacco requires day by day tending.

     I feel this is a good example of holding two truths at once....I hate smoking and all that it does to people I love, but it has provided an on-going honest and honored living to many families I know.  For small farmers, it requires hard work every month of the year.    However, I can't resist a final clarification: I took many of these photos BECAUSE they show something unusual or interesting or disappearing, but NOT because I believe in the big profits corporations have been making off of the addictions caused by the cigarettes they produce.  Stay well everyone, and thanks again for reading to the end!