]]>The upside down LBB (Little Brown Bird) is a Carolina Wren and they love to nest for winter in the rafters of our garage and greenhouse.
Today it was this. I took a break to look at the grist mill built by students at the Haywood Community College Campus.
Will do sir.
I love working with all kinds of pets! But I'm going to say I get way more dogs than hamsters or geckos. Here's a shot from a family photo shoot I did right before Christmas with some folks I've been working with for years! Ms. Jean and her pretty fur baby Bailey were just so cooperative about giving me their best side. But even when the fur babies aren't exactly on command we can still have a lot of fun and make beautiful photos!
But really, test shots are just an excuse to focus on the real stars of our show, our Doxy-Beagle Pupstars, Dorothy and Kilroy. We brought them home a year ago and they are the center act every day from breakfast until the squirrels go to bed; it's always something with these two. They'll be getting a lot of face time here in the coming year as they are our key motivation to get out and explore. They would like me to know, right now, that they are ready to get those leashes on and get moving! There's a whole day out there just waiting to be sniffed!
The glass head is a wedding present from 1998, it was gifted by my nephews, who were young at the time and thought it was cool. About 10 years ago I thought it would be cool to use it as a filter for the real world. It makes the loveliest squiggly effects in the middle if you get the angle right. It turned into an on-and-off photo series called Head Games where I figure out what should "Go In My Head".
With irregular reflective surface shapes, and also being translucent, meaning anything you don't want to show you better hide before you click the button, the head has led to some interesting challenges through the years. Since I just knocked these things together on the sunny Light Lab table tonight this is new and experimental; straight out of camera, natural light, with only an edit for sizing. This one feels like a success compared to many of my earlier attempts in the series. I liked the framing within the original piece, as well as the "translation" that happens to the shapes and colors in the "head space". The piece behind it is a "Feigned Glass" oval I made a few years ago hung in an antique frame is called Carousel Centerpiece.
This morning I woke up and deactivated my social media accounts. Places that I have actively participated in for almost two decades have lately felt less connected to family and friends and more like voyeurism from both sides of the "mirror" that is electronic communications now. It seemed like the right time to take a step back from many things I have been feeding in the name of legacy that don't seem to fit anymore and instead tend to practices that bring me joy. I still need to create and share, even if I'm the only one who looks. So here we go, a return to my original 365 photo journal; welcome back Asheville CLicKs!
When we were new to Asheville I maintained a photo-a-day blog for 3 years and learned so much about my neighbors and community just from looking around to find something new. Since the storm, I feel that I once again have new eyes for Asheville as it puts itself back together and finds its way forward into the 21st century. There will be many new lessons to be learned in the next 10 years about climate resilience, infrastructure rebuilding, and navigating a new local economy that will have to be more diverse than just a tourist center.
But there's plenty of time for that in the upcoming year. Let's begin with something lovely and hopeful.
A pair of orchids that I found thrown in the trash at the end of last year's holiday season. Their blooms had been spent and no one was interested in giving them the chance to recuperate and make new flowers. Rescuing orphaned and abandoned plants is a weird hobby of mine. I brought them home and let them rest and then restarted them this fall. The patience paid off with gorgeous new orchid flowers just in time to remember the anniversary of their tossing and to welcome in a new year.
