Don't Leave Home Without It-The Camera That Is

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Every time I am tempted to leave my camera at home, I think about the many times when I have regretted that decision. One never knows what the light will be, what the world will offer, what moments will unfold.

Still, when we head down to Cub Lake for a walk, I often think, “Gee, the camera is heavy. I don’t need it. I have more photos to process than I will ever finish. I should spend more time walking and less time photographing.” You know the dialogue.

Lately, I can almost never leave the camera behind. I suppose that I one day I may have to forego the camera, just to demonstrate to myself that I am still in charge.

Dry Creek

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Saturday afternoon, The Husband and I drove to the neighboring town of Arvin to look at outbuildings. No. I most certainly did not say outhouses. Goodness! Where is your mind?

What has us thinking about outbuildings? Well, that recent dip in the economy and the big slide in the housing market just as we were relocating put a kink in our budget and we had to let go of a few dreams. One of the casualties was that charming barn we had in mind. While it would have looked great, more importantly, it would have provided shelter for the horses, hay storage, and a tack room. As things turned out, the horses had to settle for the mare motel, while The Husband is making do with the tarps and cinder blocks for hay storage along with a corner of the garage as his tack room. For a slight improvement, we have our sights on some outbuildings made by a California company called Dry Creek Mini-Barns.

Arvin is “just down the road a piece” and I love the drive down through the base of the Sierra Nevada’s and ranching country to the farm country and oil wells in the San Joaquin valley. Traveling through the foothills entails a never-ending display of delightful colors and flowing, sensuous shapes. The greens of spring are an unearthly electric green and the oak trees, for a short time, are a pale and remarkable lavender. But for much of the year, the hill sides are golden. By summer, the grass is starved for water and baked to a rich gold by the California sun. I never tire of the spectacle. My one sadness is that, on the road through the mountains, there are few places for pulling off the highway to enjoy the countryside, and there are precious few side roads for exploring. Mostly, these are scenes that one must hold in the mind; or, in my case, shoot like a mad woman from a moving vehicle. Occasionally, my crazy experiments yield something that pleases me and brings back the feelings of awe and peace that I draw from the landscape.

Why Not an E-book Experiment

Open publication - Free publishing - More test

I am experimenting with e-books and I thought I would see what I can do with just Blogger and Issuu. The current sample is a mess, frankly. I rushed through this today with some photos I have posted here earlier, and I didn't bother to change some things from my SoFoBoMo project. There are typos, in abundance; the page footers are incorrect; and, you many find any number of gremlins that I haven't even noticed yet. But, it's the beginning of something that has been on my mind for a while. We'll see where this leads.