Domesticated Partners

To benefit the Friends of Fayette County Animal Shelter, I am managing a call for entries for Domesticated Partners, an exhibit to celebrate the pets in our lives.

Friends of Fayette County Animal Shelter is a nonprofit set up to take donations to help with the County shelter.  There are many volunteers from this group and the Fayette Humane Society spending many hours with the shelter animals. 

To submit work for this exhibit, click HERE.  Your entry fee is a donation to the nonprofit.

As many know, I have two dogs from shelters.  One came from Henry County and the other is from Fayette County.  My Sadie had been in the shelter for over 30 days.  

Sadie (Henry County)

Iris (Fayette County)

When we moved to Georgia from California, we brought along our rescue cat.  She was found in a box with her siblings in a parking lot in Garden Grove, CA.  We adopted her at a PetSmart event.

Pearl (AKA Kitty)

Everyone loves to take pictures of their pets.  The submissions for this event do not have to feature only rescue animals.  We would love to see your photos of your dear pets and share some in an exhibit to help everyone remember how dear our animals are and what an addition to the family they can be.

The call is open to everyone, kids too!  Click the link above, make your donation, and send photos in for this wonderful exhibition.

Eclipse Jet

The morning of the eclipse we watched large clouds form and flow by our hotel in Cayce, South Carolina and hoped our view would remain clear.  Just about the start time -- the skies became almost cloudless.  Other guests at the hotel were setting up in the grassy areas around the parking lot and so was I. License plates in the parking lot were from South Carolina to Maryland to Mississippi.  The winner of the distance award was a lady from Vancouver.

Most of my photos were fairly typical to all of those seen.  Starting at the beginning and going through totality, I shot over 100 images.  One of these was very different.

I was taking photos every few minutes -- at this instant -- a jet shot out of the shadow and across the Sun.  The photo was taken at 2:12pm, about thirty minutes before totality. As soon as I shot this, I turned to show the camera screen review to my husband and son.  On the way back to Georgia, I posted a cell shot of the back of the camera to Instagram.  Later Monday evening I loaded images from the day to my computer and put this one and a couple others on my Facebook page.  

One of my Facebook friends is a reporter with 11Alive.  She spotted it and asked if she could share it to the station's Facebook page.  I said sure.  Many of my other Facebook friends shared it.  I received a message from a reporter with a news station (WLTX) in Columbia, SC asking if he could share it.  

Sure.

The next morning 11Alive wanted to do a Facebook Live interview about the photo.  There were a few comments questioning the authenticity of it.  So I did. 

It has been fun to have a lot of feedback on my photo.  Some of the feedback has been a little.....well......you see what you think. 

The following comments are from both news stations' Facebook pages. 

"Come on 11Alive, you know this is photoshopped."

" That's fake because the plane couldn't have been flying in front of the eclipse sideway (sic)"

"Fake news. Planes can't fly high enough to get in the eclipse like that."

"It's fake no planes were allowed to fly during the eclipse."

"fake fake fake"

"Whay (sic) kind of plane has a big square on its back. Fake, I think."

"It fake cuz it can't get that close it would burn up."

"fake picture"

"Fake flying sideways, think again."

"Yes this is an old photo, not taken yesterday. This was F, Yahoo, TV News a long time ago."

"I saw this same picture on an eclipse photo search 2 weeks ago. It's actually saved in my phone." 

I can (sort of) see how someone thinks the plane is sideways.  But remember the time of day, we are in daylight savings time (so subtract one hour).  At 1:12pm the Sun is pretty high in the sky.  I shot this looking up (through a solar filter) at the belly of the plane flying overhead.  

The square on the back....um, engines.....

There were way more positive comments.  That was nice!  

It does bother me -- just a little -- that someone would accuse me of passing off an old photo as my own or photoshopping it.  I know that happens, but I don't do that.  It's insulting to have that said about one of my images.

Here is a link to the Facebook Live interview if you are interested.

Morning Walk at Lamar Arts Gallery

My friend, Dale Niles, and I have a joint exhibition opening this Friday in Barnesville, Georgia at Lamar Arts Gallery.  Not sure if the HBO crew is still filming there....but when I dropped off the photos the town was covered in signs saying, 'Welcome to Wind Gap'.

The following is my statement for my images....

I didn’t need a Stanford study to tell me that walking boosts creativity. Morning walks part the clouds of my mind. Ideas come easily. Alone is best, no conversation to maintain and steer my thoughts to any specific target. A recent photo series came from morning walks with friends.

“We’re going for a run! The Diva Half Marathon is coming to Peachtree City. Who’s in?” popped up on my Facebook feed.

I was in. I was always in. I love a challenge.

The publisher of a local magazine, a friend, gathered other friends to begin training for the event. Early morning walks around a lake and along wooded cart paths became a habit. To track our progress, a few of us brought along our phones. Since I just completed an exhibit of iPhone only images it was a natural next step to shoot an image from the walk. What began as simple documentation of scenes along the path grew as I completed two half marathons within five months and compiled a large collection of images for a new exhibit.

During this training period our local lake dam revealed structural issues when the lake water level was lowered to allow repairs and to give waterfront homeowners the opportunity to complete any dock work on their personal properties. Typical local government red tape and finger pointing left the lake low and dry around the edges for months. A sub-series presented from the usual Morning Walk images; Where The Water Used To Be. Drawn to the power of nature reclaiming what it once owned, I walked the dry places looking for what was there. I became fascinated watching a field of tall grass grow. Flowers sprouted from seeds washed by earlier rains to the lake. Deer run through the grass flipping their tails. It was hard to leave this and not be in a good mood. It was also hard to not shoot images.

Dogwood on Home Shopping Network

A long time ago parents told their children, "Those berries are only fit for the dogs, leave them alone," marking the producer of the berries as a 'dog tree'.

The branches make fine daggers.  It was called a dagwood tree, later morphing into dogwood.

The leaves were used to make a decoction to wash dogs afflicted with mange.

Dogwood, April 24, 2015

We may never know the true story of how this tree (cornus florida), came to be named American Dogwood.

The Dogwood was introduced to American gardens in 1731.  Thomas Jefferson included it on his list of trees planted at Monticello in 1771.  Jefferson so loved the tree, he shared seeds with friends in France.  The state of Virginia so loved Jefferson and the Dogwood, in 1918 it was named the state tree and state flower.

In spring, the woods are scattered with white, the bracts of the dogwood.  The actual bloom is at the center...the small yellow cluster of flowers. After blooming the juicy green leaves take over the show. This photo was taken at a private garden on Lake Martin in Alabama.  My friends and I stopped to have lunch on a walkway under its canopy.  The almost noonday sun filtered through the leaves offering us an arcadian view and standing out from all its surroundings.

In February I answered a call sent out to artists working with VIDA.  (I have a shop, click HERE.) The call asked American artists to share one piece of work that speaks of the artist's vision for the future.  I immediately thought of this image.  To be outdoors, to protect greenspaces, and to encourage children to get outside are all important. This photo was selected from over one thousand artwork submissions to be part of a special collection offered by VIDA on Home Shopping Network. 

The collection will air on HSN July 6, 9-10pm.  DVR it if you cannot watch.  The stories and inspirations of the artists will be shared with the work.

Item #550-335

Solar Eclipse

There is an eclipse coming to the United States August 21, 2017.  Are you going?  Will you take pictures?

I like to take pictures of clouds as I sit on my deck. Sometimes the Sun sneaks into the frame.

I am prepping for the eclipse.  The next three photos were taken with my DSLR using a solar filter. The first one was evaluative metering mode, and the others were spot meter on the Sun.

To find out more about the eclipse -- especially the important path of totality -- check out this website...TheGreatAmericanEclipse and check out this link for more info from Canon.  

Keep your fingers crossed for clear skies!

The Homemade Postcard Club

Some reading this will know Andrea from all the years she has volunteered with SlowExposures. Andrea sequences the photos and hangs the main exhibit. 

Andrea in Strickland's

Those who know her, know that she is a little quirky -- no TV, no computer, no answering machine, and certainly no cell phone. Andrea collects -- just about anything. Andrea creates art installations in her home -- cross dressing Ken dolls, naked Barbies in bedpans, and a very interesting walk through her "Jurassic Park" in her yard.  No, she hasn't seen the movie or read the book. I wonder how this bit of pop culture found its way to Andrea.

Not long ago she asked me to send her a homemade postcard. Yes, she is building another collection. 

The postcards can be made of anything thick enough -- like a cereal box or thin cardboard -- and sized between 3.5x5 and 4.25x6.  Postcards can be larger, but those would require a regular first-class letter stamp and not a postcard stamp.  So far I've sent Andrea postcards made from 12-pack drink boxes, Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix box, and for Christmas I sent her a card made from a Little Debbie Christmas Cake box. Before anything goes into my recycle bin, I check it out to see if it would make a postcard. I cut the postcard out and put the remainder into recycling.

On a recent visit to Andrea's to view the bedpan exhibit, I saw some of her postcards on display. 

She loves to get them.  How about sending one (or more) to her?  Include your address on the back and she might even send one back to you!  Her address is:  Andrea Noel, 114 Head St., Zebulon, GA 30295. Let's stuff Andrea's mailbox!

Hello 2017

Into the Woods

Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, 'It will be happier.'

Alfred Lord Tennyson