In high school, I had a deep desire to take the photography classes that would allow me to learn about the mysterious dark room and all the voodoo magic that I presumed went into developing film. However, it was years later on a summer break from college when I finally enrolled in a photography class at Wenatchee Valley Community College. By then, I had traveled to Spain and the Caribbean on my own in addition to growing up in riveting, photogenic places. I knew that camera-worthy moments were ... View Post
New Year's Resolution Inspiration: Tackling the Photos (Part 2 – ThisLife.com)
If you read my last post (In Defense Of The Blurry Ones), you know that I was recently sucked deep into the belly of a massive photography project and lived to tell the tale. In 2003 during maternity leave with my first child, I organized a lifetime of photography into albums. Perhaps you know the process: stacks upon stacks of photos and hours of sorting. I'm surprised my marriage (and my firstborn) survived, but at the end of the process I had several decades of our lives neatly organized into ... View Post
New Year's Resolution: Tackling the Photos (Part 1 – Inspiration)
I'm a little bit passionate about photographs and memories. In 1997 - while living and studying in Dijon, France - I completed a seminal project which involved replicating photos from the 1850s from around the city of Chalon-sur-Saône in the Burgundy region. Chalon is regarded as the birthplace of photography and the home of Nicéphore Niépce, known as the father of modern day photography. While my photos were nothing to write home about, my French was passable and the project gained high enough ... View Post
In Defense Of The Blurry Ones
At a recent holiday gathering, my eleven year old temporarily owned an array of miscellaneous items during a white elephant exchange. Before it was swiped away by a family member, she examined her spoils and found an unused disposable camera. In an effort to identify the strange item, she read the packaging and still appeared completely perplexed. Several children of the 70s and 80s tried to explain to my little millennial that there was a time when people used cameras with film in them, and ... View Post
At The Beach
We were heading to the beach, and it felt like going to see an old friend. There is a goodness to revisiting a place you've been before, because the familiarity adds a layer of calm and knowing anticipation. We knew the landscape as it unfolded, and we saw it in a way that felt reassuring. "Oh yes!" we chorused enthusiastically. "There is that town, or that object, or that look the sky has about it when you cross from Alabama into Florida and it feels like a place that you know." A familiar ... View Post
The National Geographic Magazine c. 1929
I mentioned before in this post about bookshelf stalking that I have a trove of my Grandmother Lay's National Geographic magazines alongside our 1950s Encyclopedia Brittanica collection. As much as I work to follow my muse Bea Johnson's "zero waste" philosophy of holding onto fewer things, I also have a penchant for interesting vintage mementos. Forty eight of the National Geographics date from 1930 to 1978, but it is this 49th that is my favorite. Published November 1929, it ... View Post
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