Love and loss in the hurricane season….

My mother was a 26 year breast cancer fighter.  I am so fortunate to have been able to care for her up to her last week of life, and I was by her side the entire time until she passed.  When mom passed, to settle the estate, I had to go home, to Texas, to put my childhood home on the market.  When you’ve suffered such a huge loss, the last thing you expect it another loss, and I got a double whammy.  Not only was selling our family home truly a devastating thing, to have gone through the likes of Hurricane Ike, and see the wreckage and tragedy dealt to my home community, friends, old haunts, and favorite places was just overwhelming.

I’ve been home in Washington about three weeks now, and have been wrestling with images I shot after the storm.  The photos in this show, all but about four, have deep value to me.  They may be homes of my friends, restaurants and places where we spent loads of time playing shuffleboard, eating crawfish, drinking beer, places we loved to fish, hang out, images of friends doing their job to help others – they each have a special place in my heart.  Assembling the images was not easy, but it was healing.  Just as critical for me, was the accompanying music selection.  Each song, I feel, is representative of the mood, the emotion, and/or the situation, without being too poppish, or familiar.

The show can be viewed here, with the ability to go full screen, or watch at the bottom for a tiny version.  The one at the link, well, the file is just too large to post. :OP

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewshow.html?fl=3049888&alb=143065

If you choose the link, once you’re on the photodex site, right click and you’ll find an option to view full screen.  The first 26 seconds have no music, but they are questions, comments, and headlines I heard/saw during that time.  You’ll have to go full screen to read them.

I’ve omitted, from the show in the link above, the first 26 seconds because that portion cannot be read in such a small area as allowed for video within my blog.

Thanks for watching, and please leave comments.

nina

done

An Outing on the Peninsula

We live in a beautiful country, and there is no state that doesn’t posess beautiful vistas, some are an acquired taste, some are an instant favorite, and I live in one of those instant favorites.  I have to admit, I live in one of THE most beautiful places in North America.

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of driving an hour and a half north, with some friends, to photograph Crescent Lake and Sol Duc falls.  Aside from the pleasure of great company, the shooting was wonderful.  The damp and grey here can really get to you, so it’s important to get out as much as possible, regardless of the weather.

We were blessed with cool temps (well, cool temps here are a given), clear skies (off and on), fog, and beautiful foliage and locations.  For me, one who is more comfortable photographing people, animals and events, the outing was yet another challenge – nature.

My trip to Texas taught me a lot about shooting landscapes.  Your brain has to process in a completely different manner, you have to think about light differently, and factor your exposure calculations across multiple values.  I now understand more, the reason many folks lean towards HDR photography… :O)  (I’ll save my .02 on HDR for another entry…)

The smell of wood smoke hung heavy in the trees, while the cool temps made a polartec fleece jacket the best thing since your childhood teddy.

Looking out from the house now, I see the Olys have had a kiss of snow since last weekend, a sure sign that winter is moving  in, planting herself until July of 09, when we’ll all scurry back up to see the alpine flowers in bloom.  I’ll be dragging the other half up there in winter to snowshoe (Ok, really it’s just a HUGE excuse to take the jeep up in the mountains in snow and play with the 4wd a bit… ).

I’ve left a little show of what the fall has yielded for us here.  Hope you enjoy.

nina

done