A Drawing In

Summer Fades

I love summer most as it is fading away.  There is a pause like the hush of an audience before a stage curtain lifts waiting for the magic to appear on stage.  I was blessed a full evening this past weekend surrounded by peaceful countryside, allowing me the opportunity to watch the sun slowly set on the final days of the season.  In contrast, the previous day had been a sauna of summer heat and humidity as you come to expect when you live near the Chesapeake Bay. 

This day, somehow, had a sudden crispness to the air with breezes finding their strength. The sunlight had a palette not quite golden, but certainly warmer in hue. The billowing clouds helped to create the atmosphere.  We drove well around Baltimore City to avoid the giant blow-out festival in the Inner Harbor celebrating the 200th anniversary of the British attempt to blast their way around Fort McHenry. Instead we opted for winding roads and retro 1980s tunes, as we drove northward and away from the urbs and suburbs to tranquil farmland.  The stated purpose of our mission was to attend a fundraiser dinner for the Creative Alliance, but I had only the urge to be surrounded by Summer's full bounty on my mind. 

And there is no time like the present, because the seasons are changing. . .

I think of this moment between Summer and Autumn as a time of Drawing In.

It is a lull in the seasons to pause and cherish all of the energetic growth and ecstatic wildness of the warmest months of the year.  Even though I am not a farmer as my hosts are, the harvest that I see spread before me is all of the activities and accomplishments of my creative endeavors. You do not have to work on the land in order to appreciate the importance of harvest time.

My host expressed a similar thought when he sat at his dining table. For him, the idea behind hosting a party immediately before the Fall of the year is a conscious choice. He knows that he has a lot of work in store for the harvests and preparations for winter, but this is his time to kick
back and reward himself for all of the labor of the year.  The food served at the table came from his land and his wife's amazing feast.

Here then are some of my impressions of the landscape that I saw during this enchanted evening.

In the farm yard.

Baby Turkeys!

Big, bad turkey!

Honey, the Herder

The Trickster Goats

In the nearby woodlands. 

There are mists rising even as the daylight begins to fade.  The Jewelweed has grown so tall and bushy. It's orange blooms stand out like flags in the twilight.

Jewelweed Glowing in Twilight

Challenge: Remember what it was like to be a photographer

20 years. Two decades. Half a life ago.

That's how long it has been since I thought of myself as a photographer. I had just graduated from Art School then, and had decided I needed the intellectual challenge of an academic discipline to counterbalance the associate's degree from a technical college. So I left my "first profession" photography behind and moved to Indiana and art history.

Fast forward a generation. > > > > > 

Most people I know carry a camera with them everywhere, a smart phone that does as much or more than those fictional Tricorders that Doctor McCoy and Spock used to carry around while exploring the universe. Some people use their mobile phones to play games. Some just tweet to their peeps. My dearest Mr. S uses his phone to learn Chinese characters with a sophisticated flash card language learning software. Me, I can't stop taking pictures. 

Through an artistically-minded yoga instructor friend I found Instagram.  Instagram is an amazing community of artists and an app that lets you do extraordinary things with simple and mundane photos. For me it's like candy. 

My phone is a camera that would have been sci-fi to the Midwestern art chic I was in the 1990s. What I wouldn't have given for the opportunity to have an ultra-lightweight device that takes and stores high-res photos and could instantly share them with friends or publish them to the whole planet. Now that's the power I hold in my little hand.

Some of the fine artists who I follow on Instagram participate in a challenge begun by a photographer in Australia. Fat Mum Slim issues a challenge of one idea per day. Your goal is to find that image in your day and snap it. Upload it and hashtag it #FMSphotoaday and you are in.

Today is September the First and I'm going to give this a try.  Fat Mum Slim has posted her September prompts inspired by members of the #FMSphotoaday community.  Those who want to follow my progress may want to check my runningwave Instagram feed, since I won't be blogging here at Pull of the Tides. 

To kick off my photography challenge, however, I will share with you a journey to a quiet, cultured small town in the Blue Ridge. Staunton, Virginia is a picturesque town of that Main Street gentle Victoriana mode. Chock full of elegant buildings, upscale cafes, and antiquey-boutiquey shops, it is a Twenty-first century city of a bygone-era.  It's also home to a repertoire theatre (and I mean theatre and not theater) company that is nationally-acclaimed with some good reason: actors of the American Shakespeare Center will knock your socks off.

Here's a photo essay recap of my recent foray. Enjoy!

I  won't bog down Pull of the Tides with daily photo posts.  I do promise, although, to post my photo-a-day results at the beginning of October. 

Until then, I will keep sharing my mixed media explorations here where the Tide comes in.  I have several art journaling pieces and tags on my studio table in progress at the moment that you'll be seeing soon.

I *love* comments, so if you are stopping by, please drop me a line, or even just a few characters. Thanks so much for reading. Cheers, ~runningwave~ @ Pull of the Tides management.

A Post from Big Sky Country

When you bring a camera out to Wyoming and Montana, it is very difficult to be a bad photographer. Still, I am grateful for my commercial photography background when I head out on a trip as spectacular as this one was. In full disclosure, my husband is the photographer of a couple of these images and even without a degree in photography he did an awesome job too!

I have been hanging on to these images for a while, trying to sort out which ones to share with you here at Pull of the Tides.

I settled on a group of images that showcase the spectacular, sweeping landscapes in the Greater Yellowstone region, as well as a sample of the striking moments when my husband and I came face-to-face with a few of the wild creatures who call this Big Sky paradise home.

You are on board "Red Devil" here, called so because his ears remind the cowboys of devil's horns.
In reality, even a total horse novice had no difficulty with riding him -- although it *was* hard to
prevent him from munching on wild grasses and flowers. Red Devil loves lupines.

I keep hearing Howard Shore's soundtrack to The Two Towers here.
Especially the part when they get to the scenes in Rohan.
It's really like this in Montana.

Sunrise at Antelope Flats.

Cascade Canyon.

Red Devil would have loved this glade. More lupines!

Ground squirrel, digging up a cache?

Fledgling woodpecker waiting for breakfast.
It's Mamma came right after this.

River otter pup swimming around Trout Lake.
We saw his mother and sibling all together.

Mr. Bison is not to be trifled with.

Our naturalist guide took us to an amazing place. We spent hours just watching the landscape, and then this lovely young lady came to visit us. She was curious, and not as flighty as I would have imagined a pronghorn being.

Hungry black bear looking for lunch.

Does Montana have rainbows every night, or were we just fortunate?

My watercolor sketch of Mount Moran.

And here's Mount Moran, as it actually looked right before sunset.