space 314

this certainly has been a year of changes.

2010-03-19T06:25:00.000-07:00

been lost in travels and work. this blog is going to go bye bye soon which is why i haven't posted on it since ohhhh, november. it will cease to be, and there will be a new one in its place, under a new name, with lots of new pics and projects. it's all been a work in progress. i have been making thousands of images but not posting and printign has been on hold so i could do all the other things in my life. that however, is about to change. more soon...

um, sorry.

2009-11-11T18:50:00.000-08:00

more to come. so busy. corneas are presently a bit seared from work. more soon. a couple of the st louis and tiger sanctuary in the mean time. i have so many pics from that i don't even know where to start! and no time-. boo. but i start with two anyway. by the way, that is pauly up there, and fyi, he doesn't live in a cage, he just walks up sometimes to to get fed. and when he wants to get fed, he likes to play. and his form of play involves a sound that made me stop breathing and crouch behind a 10 year old. i love love cats of every shape and size, but it doesn't mean i am not terrified of a 700 pound cat who happens to like citrus perfumed redhead flavored lunch.

colder days on the way.....

2009-10-13T07:20:00.000-07:00

of course a week flies by and i don't quite know where it went. it's been pretty soggy weather here in atlanta, which actually cheers me up a bit. apparently there is quite a bit more on the way. i guess the cold wet stuff it reminds me of the edinburgh days that i occasionally miss since i moved to sunnier and warmer climates. i do say occasionally miss. i would never want to be back there in january or february, brrrrrrr. horizontal freezing rain at a bus stop (when the bus is already late), no thank you.

i wanted to post some of the goofy pics from my st. louis excursion with chris (and the tiger sanctuary, whoop whoop) but for now here is a little memory of a cold weather day gone by. more on those sexy siberians later.....

another town that time forgot

2009-10-04T09:35:00.000-07:00

while driving home from south carolina with chris and amber we happened upon this little nearly-ghost town just off highway 72. it was so alluring in its decrepitness that we turned around and stopped off for a look and a few snaps. nothing was open, not a huge surprise considering it was after all a small town in the deep south on a sunday, but more eerie was that, peering through the dirty storefront windows, it seemed as if the shops had not opened their doors for several years. there was a grocery that had some more recent looking branding visible, but the spice section looked like it had last been refreshed around the time i was born. there were no signs of life near the main street besides ourselves and the creepy pick up truck leering down at the end of the road. i think maybe we saw a few kids walk past in the distance, but that was about it.

kind of beautiful and sad, but not atypical. every state in the south has towns just like this - with little main streets that once upon a time were something, but now they are half-closed, half-dead, or completely deserted. something about a ghost town makes me very nostalgic and a a bit sad- considering that to be ghostly implies that there was once life. i wanted to post these polaroids, but thought it rude not to credit the name of the town, which i never caught while we were there (like who was i going to ask?). i noticed the other day the partial reflection of a store front sign (what appeared to say pettigrew hardware) - googled it with the state name and - eureka!- calhoun falls, south carolina. it used to be a mill town, until the mill closed down. the red dot grocery store has been run by the same family for over 100 years. maybe that was when they last refreshed the spice rack.

i have no idea what this shop sells when it is open,
but the dolls certainly gave me the heebie jeebies.

needing more hours and days in the week.

2009-10-01T06:57:00.000-07:00

i apologize for my absence of a couple months, it has been almost nonstop work and travel since may and the summer tends to see any personal time/work fade away, this summer more than ever. not that i don't appreciate having the work, i just don't find time for much else, and when i do i am whisked out of town by my dear overworked companion. not that i don't appreciate that either.

christopher and i finally purchased a shiny new scanner and got to scanning polaroids again (my old epson 4990 scanner suffers from terminal internal dust, like someone needs to crack the sucker open and put a shop vac on it- which i may eventually resort to).

so my new goal is just to post a photo or two a day (or a week even!) until i have more free time to actually consider what i am posting. seeing as today if the first day of my favorite month of the year, i thought this would be a good start. here here to shorter days and colder nights!

memorial day mexico

2009-06-18T18:57:00.001-07:00

serendipity

2009-06-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

just this past weekend i had a very interesting (and fun) trip to south carolina with chris and amber. it was a weirdly serendipitous experience along the way back- needless to say there will be there will some polaroids to follow. i have been so caught up in other work that i haven't added anything to this blogymagjig for ages (and i apologize a million times over), but that will soon change. here is a starter to what we happened upon our our mini adventure...

so many images, never enough time.

2009-04-03T12:15:00.000-07:00

So keeping up with work and personal projects is really hard, geez Louise- I do not know how people juggle all the things in their life because I stink at it. I just started to rifle through some of the hundreds of photos I took on the Vienna & Prague visit in late November- almost 6 months ago! The funny thing is I look back at all these hundreds of images and think I did not take nearly enough photos- my camera battery died a few days before the end of the trip which was a bummer, but we sure had a great adventure. I figure I will hold on to the Christmas market stuff until it gets festive time again. Gluhwein! Spaetzle! Naschmarkt! Christkindlmarkt! Seems like yesterday. More to come soon. For now -is a photo of the Jewish cemetary in Prague- more to come very soon, once I can wade through them all.

slushy snow in the south

2009-03-06T05:58:00.001-08:00

had a hard time taking any photos in the snow as the whole time it was coming down like crazy and it was the slushy variety, but as everyone says beggars can't be choosers. everytime i got out of the car for more than a few minutes i noticed cameras getting wet and i got a bit paranoid. chris and i discovered the decatur cemetary (lovely especially snow-covered) and took a couple pics there before we escaped, freezing and damp to the comfort of our warm, if drafty, loft. by nightfall a lot of the lovely white stuff had sadly gone away, but anyway here are a few of my efforts.

so sorry

2009-02-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

i am feeling like quite the slacker as i have not posted to the site in almost a month, but in my defense i am experiencing issues getting photoshop to recognize my scanner - i just upgraded to cs4 this month and all hell broke loose. i will be trying to correct the problem this weekend when i am through editing like a maniac. in the mean time i will try and get up a coupe other things. i am such a procrastinator though, i offer no promises.

some friday night sushi, some wine, some brand new chocolate polaroid film and a recently unearthed mamiya rb67

2009-01-27T04:24:00.000-08:00

and this is what happens to good intentions...

it starts innocently enough with a few tests.

amber took this next one of yours truly
as more wine gets poured things get progressively sillier.

i think they have a hard gangsa stare thing going on, don't you? maybe its the subtle head tilt.

i think there might have been some hair pulling after this next one.

and then, the realization that all that treasured chocolate film is used and nothing serious to show for it. oh well, it made for a fun night at least. snapping and drinking - a dangerous and costly mixture. i learned my lesson - again- ouch.

so i haven't posted a blog in 2 weeks but i am going to attempt to make up for it this week with a couple extras, so come back and visit soon and maybe i will have dug through some of the prague and vienna pics i have neglected the last two months! thanks again****

back to the farm

2009-01-11T17:27:00.000-08:00

So I just spent a couple days on the farm, otherwise known as my parents' home in the remote hills of Tennessee. To be fair, there is no real farm except for the vegetable patch and the many animals my mother feeds and loves whether or not they are technically hers. My mother came down with a very scary case of pneumonia that had her in the hospital for a long week and I am so so very glad she is home now. If you ever have a cough that feels or sounds rickety get your butt to the doctor right away! I took Maude with me and managed to take a couple Polaroids with my old SX-70 - I just wish the film was cheaper and more available. Please make Polaroid film again someone. It really can't be replicated.

The moon creeping up on another day's end at the farm, I do love the way this place makes me feel.

the last of the the great cat proof christmases

2009-01-06T18:47:00.000-08:00

Well this Christmas, Chris and I promised each other (possibly whilst watching the Silver Spoons Christmas special of 1983, ouch) that next year we would get a real tree - i.e, the trees that grow out of the ground rather than the the sparkly aluminum variety with the vintage plastic ornaments I have been putting up for the last several years. Not that I never had a real tree- I did, and I also had pretty old glass ornaments and ummm... cats. The tree would almost always go horizontal and my pretty old ornaments would go smash into tiny bits and one day I decided to think cat proof, ie- a silver tree and some plastic or fabric ornaments from wherever I could find them. It was a plan that worked out well- the cats might knock off the ornaments but they generally survived and if they didn't I could take the dismembered parts and generally piece them back together. I love those old plastic bobbles- they remind me of my childhood crush on Christmas in all its sparkly cute and Rankin-Bass tacky enchanted glory. They remind me of watching the cheesiest Christmas commercials in my pajamas and of my grandad, Pap. I don't know if my silver tree or my old ornaments will make it up next year- if so they will be relegated to the upstairs or some other corner. The cats have outgrown destroying every sparkly object and it really is time to move on - I can no longer get my fix from buying balsam candles to give me the hint of the smell of a real tree. However, in honor of my cheesy fake tree and those brave plastic soldiers,I made a mini album.

many santas peeking out of things like toadstools (that totally makes sense). these little mini scenes in a half globe are some of my favorites.

some slightly sinister elves

a cute non-sinister fuzzy red deer

the atomic star (i wish it lit up)

new year, new blog

2009-01-06T09:13:00.000-08:00

So I decided start the new year off with a brand new blog, since my last one was so neglected by all the other work in my life that it was in such a puny state. One of my unwritten new year' resolutions (as writing them down in a list will pretty much assure their failure) has to do with taking more time for personal projects rather than losing months and years working. While the work I do for others is my main bread-and-butter (and I appreciate it immensely), I have put a lot of my own projects and musings on the back burner for so long that I would guess they are now probably burnt. So it is a new year and a new blog time to hold our noses and close our eyes and jump in the deep end and (gulp) hope for the best.

Happy new year every one and best wishes on your own well-intentioned resolutions!