Pick a Pic

As I mentioned, back on Monday I was interviewed for an upcoming article in The Great Smokies Review, an on-line journal.  They also wanted a picture of me to accompany the article.

Now, given my choice, I'd probably as soon go to the dentist as to have my picture taken. Even when I was young and reasonably attractive, I still dreaded the photographer. 

But I'm always having to produce a photo of myself when I go to a conference or a book festival or for various publicity related reasons -- there was even a picture of me inside the back cover of my last book -- a picture I paid a professional photographer what seemed like an awful lot of money for -- and didn't actually like very much. 

Plus that picture is five or six years old. Time has marched on.

So when Elizabeth Lutyens who edits the journal said that her partner would be there to take some pictures of me -- and that he is a professional photographer who used to work for LIFE,  well, I knew this was an offer I couldn't refuse.

Michael Mauney spent well over an hour trying to get a decent picture of me. He was so nice and so patient that the whole thing was actually kinda fun.

At one point Michael asked me how I'd like to look in the pictures.

"Like Sophia Loren -- forty years ago," I told him.

"So would she," he snorted.

Michael's a terrific photographer but not a magician. The pictures look like Vicki, all 67 years of me.  I'm pleased with them. 

One of these four I like best just as a composition; another I think makes me look the best.

And I'd be interested in your opinions.

A Moment in Time . . .

Yesterday morning, as I was perusing  the New York Times online (a free service for which I am endlessly grateful,) I saw an announcement for A Moment in Time  accompanied by one of those wonderful shots of  a blue and cloud-covered Earth from space.  It said:

 

Attention: everyone with a camera, amateur or pro. Please join us on Sunday, May 2, at 15:00 (U.T.C./G.M.T.), as thousands of photographers simultaneously record “A Moment in Time.” The idea is to create an international mosaic, an astonishingly varied gallery of images that are cemented together by the common element of time.

How could I resist? I just had to wait till eleven -- not my favorite time of day for taking pictures, especially on a day as sunny as yesterday was.

I scoped out a few possibilities around the house -- sundial, clothes on line (Move underwear out of shot,) door in bedroom, garden gate.  And at a few minutes before eleven I dashed out to the sundial to begin.

Between 10:58 and 11:02 I took about a dozen pictures -- there was also a dandelion seed head, a poplar tree, an iris, and our little falling down cabin across the way. These last three I've posted here were my favorites (the background on the sundial was too blah to suit me.)

Which would you have chosen? I vacillated between the three but finally picked my favorite and posted it to the NYT.

I'll be looking forward to seeing the whole project when it's done!

Transmogrifications

A slow exposure and a shaky hand have turned my amateurish painting into something kind of unearthly and far better than anything I could have done if I'd been trying. I see it and think 'book cover!'
 

It began with the deer skull one of Ethan's dogs found on the mountain.  I used it as a subject for a painting which, of course, didn't turn out nearly as well as I'd hoped. Amateurish, as I said.

But I love what the camera's done with it!

It's the same principle that make me fonder and fonder of old foggy mirrors as I age -- happy to be seeing through a glass darkly.

Dawn Like Thunder

The sky was dramatic this morning. It was actually even more dramatic when I first sat up and looked out the window. But by the time I'd grabbed my camera and run upstairs in my nightgown for a better shot, it had already lost some of its glory.

The dark gray haze to the left is the fog rising from the river. And not ten minutes later, by the time I'd pulled on some clothes and was on the front porch on my way to fill a bird feeder, that fog was rolling up our holler. It envelops the house, makes the temperature drop a bit, but then, as the sun rises, burns off, leaving us today with a Carolina blue sky.

I don't know which I've taken more pictures of -- our dogs and cats or the eastern view. Both are always changing -- always delightful.

The digital camera is maybe my favorite piece of technology after the computer. I got my little camera five or six years ago -- and, oh! the sheer joy of taking huge numbers of pictures without having to pay to have them developed! The camera is incredibly easy to use (I have an Instamatic/point-and shoot mentality) and so small that it rides around in my pocket much of the time.

Viewing the photos on the computer is great too -- blow 'em up to check all those little details; use the free program for simple fixes like cropping or straightening. I admit I kinda lust after Photoshop which I got to play with it a few times. I had great fun making pictures of flower petals all twisty or altering shots of William the dog with a fish-eye lens effect, but it's an expensive piece of software for someone's who's just fooling around. (It was this brief experience with photo alteration that gave me the idea for some of the so-called Art that Elizabeth and Phillip see on the Studio Stroll in Art's Blood.)

Unfortunately, this is my least favorite time of year for pictures. In the absence of snow, the landscape is mostly gray and brown and muddy. I'm reduced to shooting the potted primroses on the dining table. But come spring my trusty digital camera and I will be ready!