Wave of Modulation_old

surfacing, still

click any image for larger version

I wonder how some of these buds and berries and seeds look now that fall has come. I took the above pictures of plants and things last May while we were on vacation in California with my SIL's (E's) Digital Rebel. There were two afternoons of walking, bending, lying on sidewalks, my contorted sweaty experimental (mostly) non-sexual bliss. I tell you. Heavenly.

When I dream of what I'd really like to do with my time these days, almost always I dream of taking pictures, outside.

Lately, I've also felt the strong urge to take more pictures of people. I haven't been craving silence and downtime and complete solitude as fiercely and desperately as I have for so long (not that I got it when I did).

This week, M and I got a new "media PC" which is kick ass and fast. Instead of rebuilding and updating my out of date and beloved mp3 collection, I've been going through archives of pictures and uploading larger versions to Flickr, and organizing photosets. I decided I needed at least one set of portraits of people; big, little, and every flavor in between. So I started a set called Portraits, but I still have a bunch more portraits to add to it. I realized that some of my favorite shots aren't even very good technically-speaking, but I don't care.

Sometimes, I think about being a portrait photographer. But I'm not sure I want to be as disciplined as I'd need to be. Trying to get all the settings just "perfect", or *gasp* having to worry about getting the exact or optimal light conditions, might kill that joy I get from photographing people. You know, that feeling of being with someone and capturing that tiny bit of their energy, the way light seems to come from inside them.

Sony CyberShot DSC-W7

My nephew, O. I wonder how different he'll be next time I see him. I wish I didn't miss out on being there with him and his older brother, T.

T's hands.

T's heart-wrenchingly beautiful face.

- - - -

I'm sloooowly beginning to feel less overwhelmed. Since March I have felt stretched to the absolute limit. Only these past couple of months of questioning my relationship with M, my health, my life in general, returning to the basic BASICS has made me feel a little more like me again. Maybe parts of me, those parts of me that absorbed like cool water into dry old rock, maybe they are coming back up to the surface. Or maybe there's a crack, a fissure of light.

Canon Powershot s70

My J-girl, solemn and wrapped in white after a bubble bath at our girls sleepover on Valentine's Day.

And here's J-girl's sister, L, a year ago on Labor Day at Boston Common.

Canon Powershot s70

Tomorrow is her 4th birthday party. She's changed so much in a year, it's hard to fathom. I can hardly wait to see her.

But, even with all that little people cuteness up there... this is my new favorite picture:

Canon Pro 1

california light

Traveling to California recently on vacation, with M, was a good thing for me. The state no longer holds many shadows from my past. Or, at least the shadows that are there don't frighten me anymore.

About a year ago, I had my friend S. read the passage below, taken from my notes for the memoir project I've been working on. She wrote that she liked "...how it goes from light to dark to light again... that is human truth, how beauty and tenderness and meanness and ugliness are all mixed together in this life."

And that is true, that's how life is. I've spent so much of mine in transit. I sometimes feel as if I'm on one of those long car rides that never ends, past the staccato verticals of trees and hills that cast a rhythm of light and warmth across my eyes, then shadow, then light again, and then shadow...

yens and yins and yangs

Exchange Place, Boston (w/my extinct Canon)

For Annejelynn, who noticed this pic I posted on flickr a while back.

It was hot and humid over the weekend in Beantown. Hot and sticky, especially on the third floor, even with the sea breeze. It was hard to sleep. Didn't help that our new neighbors across the street threw a 72 hour fiesta in honor of their daughter's college graduation. I am proud of her too, but I don't need the 8 motorcycles revving in her honor under my bedroom window. That made Ray wet his pants. If only he wore pants.

Last night we slept with no clothes on and no sheets or blankets because the heat was so suffocating. Trying to keep from turning on fans and wover-consuming electricity. We froze our nipples off as temperatures plunged below 54 degrees fahrenheit.

Tonight I was talking to Amanda B on the phone while taking a long bubble bath. I needed it because I was wiped out after a full day of meetings and working with my crew. I'm not sure I can supervise four people (their every move and decision) and still get my own work done, and still have a brain left at the end of the day.

Coming back from vacation to a stressful job: not so wonderful. Talking to Amanda while in bubble bath: the cat's pajamas. I mean the cat's bubble bath. No, I mean the cat's scratching post. Ok, the couch. No? Damn, I can't do the girl justice. I need M and my friends and family and my cats and exercise and interesting things to hear and see out in the world - to balance me out. I yen for those things after being couped up for too many years in a building at a computer. I need those yins and yangs.

I would like to conference Amanda in Mississippi and Carol in Atlanta sometime. Raucous. Maybe the new cell phone does that. I'll have to check when I get my energy back. It DOES crack me up when M calls me and it plays music and yelps "Hello Moto!"

climb lattice, I mean climatis. Dare I say the person this flower belongs to calls it chlamydia? As a joke.

(These two were taken with the Canon Digital Rebel DSLR)

I think this looks like a Dr. Seuss Berry Tree. What would you call this tree?

dangerous & addictive & dangerously addictive

My cool & wonderful sister-in-law, E, let me borrow her DSLR for a couple of afternoon walks when M & I were in California. Hers is a Canon Digital Rebel.

Time has never passed more pleasantly or more quickly for me. I was in heaven. A painfully good heaven. It was probably a very bad idea to let me near that camera because now I am scheming ways to get a DSLR of my own.

I'm officially infatuated, no, I'm addicted. There aint no rehab to bust DSLR Desire. I guess I am going to have to quit my corporate job and become a photographer. Shucks.

Here's a slight taste of my newfound ambrosia.

click me

and me