“Memory is the thing you forget with.”

– Alexander Chase

… at least that’s what they tell me. Well, I have to say that this month has been completely outta control so the blog has been wishful thinking at best.

I made the mistake of cleaning my windows on one of the early sunny days… everything was fine until I stuck my head out of the skylight and got a good look at my south roof. After a minor panic attack, we started the process of getting bids to replace the roof. This one has been on since 1981 so, yes, it was time but I thought we might be able to wait until this summer. Not so much. Now we have to wait for the lovely spring weather to clear so the guy we hired can come do the work.
Of course, in anything like house repair, one project always leads to another. ;0)
Last Saturday Opera Boy smiled as he handed me an electric drill and a flat bar… I spent the next few hours prying the first part of the old front porch off of my house. Apparently, we have decided to replace it. And then comes the paint. Sigh.

Meanwhile, March 13th was the 10 year mark for my Mom’s death. I had planned to run a beautiful little photo essay about her but the further I got into the process of scanning old photos, I realized I have a lot to say. Dad’s 20 year mark comes in May so I am thinking I might wait until I can do them both some justice.

This one is from their wedding in July, 1950… Grace H. Benson married Allan B. Bosworth… he was just out of the Navy and she was still in. They look happy to me and so very young.

To be continued…

The street was quiet… no one rushing off to work this Christmas morning. The sun playing in the bedroom curtains gave me a chance to relax and reflect a little… it has been a year to give us all pause.
Normally, I am a pie eyed optimist and I’d like to say all of my friends are happy and well but the economy and general distress have been rough on everyone. None of us will miss 2009. The uncertainty needs to subside. The smiling has to come back.

I don’t mind learning to rein in the spending habits of the last years… I had a good run for a bit. On the other hand, it is very uncomfortable to have dipped below the happy medium. It will turn around… I am sure of it. Meanwhile, we have to get up every day and go about the business of making a life.
Got to give it your best shot.

I am thankful for a roof over my head and a good man to share it.
I am thankful for family, friends and nice strangers.
I am thankful for fractious cats.
I am always thankful for time to think.

Last Spring I wrote a little about how fast time goes for me… nothing has changed in that but I am still surprised. November has come and is already at the exit… an audible whoosh in it’s wake. I took 4 hours this week to rake the leaves and trim the lavenders, to put up the hoses and pull in the houseplants that live outside in the nice weather. Yes, it was stolen time but not from work… I took it out of my gym time. Burned some calories and got some fresh air in the mix.

Work has been it’s own angry red planet this year… the season was short but kind of packed so all of the work has been crammed into a short space… not particularly graceful but it looks good when I get through it. ;0)
I have a few more jobs to finish in the next two weeks and then there is a stretch of about four months that will be dedicated to album design and production.

Our household expanded by one cat this year. Joey Tallboy chose our house at the beginning of August. Frankie has had a rough time trying to adjust but he gets a lot of points for trying. It occurs to me that I have not properly introduced the Tuna Kings to the blog yet. For now, a couple of faces to go with the names… Frankie is the silver boy and Joey is the guy in the tux. Both have attitude to spare.

Opera Boy has just about finished his back to school stint… now if only the job market will be kind to him… for now, we have domestic projects to keep him off of the streets.
He gets points for patience and perseverance in all things.

Still waiting for the other shoe to drop regarding the empty lot behind my house… as I understand it, someone is about to build a fat assed house on a space that has been open for my 29 years here. There are already trees missing and a taped outline that seems very large… no digging yet but I know it will come soon enough. We are going to plant more birches and try to recover some of the shade and privacy lost… if I can restore some of the bird space, I will.
I have found myself looking out my bathroom window to try to lock the green space in my mind. I hope the new house isn’t yellow or pink!
This shot was taken through the screen… my apologies for the extra texture in the sky. I expect to post occasional updates as this progresses.
Frankie brought in a most beautiful garter snake this summer… I got some up close time as I released him back into the wooded corner of the lot. I have to hope that some of that habitat will continue.

In the long run it has been a year for holding our breath, for waiting to see, for keeping the faith… I can live with that for now.

Flying by…

Opera Boy and I have a 4 year history as of this weekend… hard to imagine it’s been that long. Maybe that is a good thing in the long run. Keeps it fresh somehow and I am pleased.

Whee!

Opera Boy and I took a much needed day off today. Even with the gloomy skies, we drove west to the coast… no agenda but we packed our kites. Seaside was full of old Detroit Iron and seriously silly California Plastic. We hadn’t planned on taking that in but it was on the way to Gearhart so we strolled a bit with all of the other tourists, point and shoot in hand.

Four years ago, our first date was a kite thing on a very gusty September day. I didn’t know him outside of the gym at that point but I was intrigued that a grown man would go to the beach and fly a kite to calm down. Hmm.

I bought a stunt kite on a day when I had forgotten my regular kite…. it took a few sessions to get a feel for it. Now we trade it back and forth and I sense a chance to escape the real world for a bit with my hands in the straps. It makes me laugh out loud.
The stunt kite is one of the two handed/two string types….you don’t just put in the air……you move it all around. The zen comes from giving it up to it’s own wants instead of a tight control……arcs and swoops and dives, oh my!
A little like a good relationship?

I don’t understand how it happens every year. April gets by me even though I make a conscious effort going in to be present for this magic month.

Of course, I have the same problem with October. I am certain it’s a disciplinary thing… it means I need to schedule it, I guess.

The attention needed to keep the laundry done and the groceries stocked rivals the business stuff…. and somehow in all of that, the wild beauty outside my door just pushes up out of the ragged winter without me.

Sure, I have had two chances in 26 days to go play in the dirt… lawnmowers and weed pulling …. some serious pruning, a little slug bait… what I am too keenly aware of is that May will gallop headlong into November and I will be startled once again to find my narrow year almost gone.

I have a feeling it’s going to be a short year except for the wide days that come when you aren’t looking…. I hope I am ready to sit in a shady spot with a book at least once or twice.

Well, I’m not sure if this a a loose ends thing or just separation anxiety but I had to do it.

Yesterday was the full launch of my new website. It meant saying goodbye to my very old but much loved site… an unnerving process. It’s a little like that really soft, corduroy shirt I can’t seem to give up… it’s hanging in the back of my closet, elbows pretty thin and it certainly doesn’t fit me anymore but it’s that corduroy shirt.

The new site works well and looks pretty snazzy. Most importantly, I have the skeleton key so if I need to add or change images, I can do so and that is a real luxury. I wrote to my original designer to tell her about the switch and I could read the smiles in her reply… we had a good run. The old site was 7 years old which is like dog years in the tech world… you can look at the images and see a huge shift in quality alone. The old images were mostly film, of course, and scanned from prints which means all sorts of losses compared to today’s shoot and upload directness.

The new site will be a little sparse for a bit…I have just a few wedding galleries on there for now.  I had hoped to come out of the gate in full stride but it will take some time to do it right and that makes a difference to me. The plan is to add more weddings and rework my portrait and personal archives with new galleries for those as well. The end result should tell you that I am capable of a range of good work. 

Today, I pulled all of the old site jpgs out of their dusty folder and put them up into 3 small web galleries in case you want to see them. There is one for weddings, one for portraits and one for my personal work….the stuff I do for me. The shot above was an infrared day in Seattle with some good friends.I really miss infrared film but it’s nice to revisit it from a good scan like this one.

I hope you can see past the low resolution issue in the old site and just enjoy the content. As soon as I can get my taxes done and my other clients caught up, there will be new galleries to explore. And maybe my lawn will get mowed.

Opera Boy used to annoy the hell out of me at the gym. Of course, he wasn’t Opera Boy yet…. we just called him Ron. His ability to trap you on the treadmill was legendary… talk you right through your allotted time. Over the course of a few years, I got kind of used to him. His topics were fairly varied and he talked to everyone so I didn’t mind so much after a while.

One of his favorite topics was, and still is cars. He made some points early on because little foreign cars, old sexy sports cars were his thing. Now, you may need to know that my only car since 1979 has been a 1973 MGB-GT and you may need to know that my dad and I used to run rallies and autocross when I was in high school. Dad and his father used to race his ’46 MG-TC and Grandpa had a big yellow Jag when he lived in Japan.  Ron has a 1973 Alfa Romeo Spyder and a 1976 TR-7/8…. garaged and in project mode. So, naturally, Ron and I had some common ground there.

The other thing he liked to talk about was photography. What a coincidence… I do, too.

Since we became a couple in late 2005, many of our weekend outings have involved cameras and cars.This beautiful 1941 Packard was one of about 7 period cars at the Oregon Ballet Gala in the Spring of 2007….not a sports car per se  but very voluptuous in a Mae West sort of way.

We have made a habit of the All British Field Meets at PIR, Portland Swap Meet, and  one fabulous trip to the Concours d’Elegance at Pebble Beach.

When my time frees up a little there will be a gallery on my new web site dedicated to those sleek, sexy machines.

I’ll tell you more about Opera Boy later.

…there lived a little girl with an old camera. Her parents had cameras, too. Her sister had a big box of paints. Off of the worn blue kitchen there was a tiny bathroom. Her father converted it into a tiny darkroom and there was magic learned.

She named the darkroom Oz.

The years pass quickly…she finds herself in the next century still working in a darkroom named Oz only this one has a big blue monitor instead of an enlarger. It seems to be chock full of images and every one can take her back in time to the day the button was pushed… a slice of life kept for later.

My camera life has been just that — a chance to bring home parts of my experiences. I can share them with others, sometimes I can make people smile. This approach seems to work well for weddings and portrait work and certainly for my personal work.  I have been a free lance professional for 22 years but photography has been my craft and my joy for about 43 years.

In this blog, I hope to share what I do and give you a good sense of who I am.

The Morning Call was a revered cafe in the French Quarter of New Orleans…I was lucky to spend some time there before they uprooted it to the suburbs. The city lost something in that move.