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Posts Tagged ‘Colorado’

Second Day of the Hayman Fire in Colorado 2002

Talking with a friend of mine this morning, I learned her father lives outside of Boulder, near where the Fourmile Fire burns. Luckily, so far, he’s fine. But looking at the images and videos on The Daily Camera, it instantly brought me back to memories of the Hayman Fire. It was big, angry, and grew quickly. And again, there were people who were told to be out in 15 minutes.

What do you take? The P’s.

• People
• Pets
• Papers (the important ones)
• Prescriptions
• Photos

Someone said they ‘packed a box of memories.’ We all want to hang onto the stories that have weaved themselves into the fabric of who we are now. Stories become precious.

Evacuating in 2002 was hard and incredibly stressful. What do you take after the Ps? Look around you now at literally anything you have. The lamp next on the table – you know it’s story – who it came from or what store you found it in. If purchased, why you chose that one over others. The spoon you use while cooking. The place you put your change and miscellaneous items.The dress still in the very back of your closet that you felt beautiful in, but that now would never even begin to fit. Our things store our memories. They become memory jogs.

By recording the stories of all these things, I find I can let them go if I had to (or just need to make room in our tiny house). That wasn’t the case in 2002, before I found digital scrapbooking. I wanted to hang onto so many things then.

In looking through the layouts I’ve done, most are the stories about moments. One project I want to take on at some point this winter (assuming life will slow a tiny bit) is to tell the story of the things. Get good photos of the things. Their stories matter. They tell who we were, what shaped us into who we are now. They are connections to people and times past. By scrapping these stories and tucking them safely away in a 3-ring binder makes it easier to let the actual item go if needed. And letting go allows room for more stories to come in.

So while my heart aches for those who lost their homes in this current fire, it also again reminds me that things are really just things. Things burned in the fire (or broken or damaged during evacuation) consumes the thing and leaves the essential, most important part: The Story.

It’s been awhile since I shared a page from my nature journal. I’m still struggling to find the size that will work for me, but I’m going ahead with the journal that’s the same size as my other journal. However, I think I’m coming around to agree with Susan Zwinger who taught the class I took with the Yellowstone Association – larger is better.

I did this sketch in pencil while waiting for Mike who had a meeting in Fairplay – I rode along to just get out of the house for a bit. The drive through South Park is so pretty anyway. During the wait, I took the time to get to know Curly Cup Gumweed a bit better. Later, I went over the pencil lines with pen for the most part, though the rest of the text wasn’t finished when I took the photo.

I adore taking panoramic shots – you know, where you merge them in photoshop into one long (or tall) image. If you haven’t tried them – give it a shot – once you figure it out, you’ll start to see possibilities all over the place. The one above of Chromatic Pool came from five vertical shots merged together. The one below of Morning Glory Pool is of three (or maybe four) vertical images. Taking vertical images gives you more space so you end up with more to look at than a thin strip (though 15-20 verticals can get pretty skinny).

To do these well, I really should use the tripod, and I’ve had to toss some because I didn’t have it with me. Normally, though, just planting my feet solidly, and twisting at the waist, they usually come out. You need to put it in full manual mode to get the same exposure across the whole scene – if you’re not sure about what the settings should be, use whatever mode you’re used to and get a general reading. Use that f-stop and shutter speed in manual mode. And when you’re done – remember to set it back to whatever mode you normally shoot with (guess how I know that…).

But, if you forget to ‘go manual’ you may still salvage your work. Here’s one example that I finally found the PSD file for – I needed to look up again what I did exactly in case it can be a solution for you.

These ten vertical photos merged together well – except that I had it on Aperture mode, and that changed the exposure settings slightly for each photo where some were a tad lighter or darker, making the stitching rather obvious. But this was the only set I took of this view from the top of Pikes Peak, looking out on Colorado Springs on a bitterly cold and windy January day. So, to salvage this set, I chose the manual option to merge them in CS3 (in CS5 it’s Tools -> Photoshop -> photomerge -> Collage – uncheck blend seamlessly). Then on one layer I added the layer styles of Stroke (inside and enough pixels to create a border) and a slight Drop Shadow. Copying the layer styles, I pasted it to the other layers.

And it works! That bit of white is enough of a break for the eye so you don’t notice the slight differences in light, and the only comment I seem to get on these is, “Cool!”

Calliope Hummingbird and Pink Fuschia

Happy Friday!  The mornings and evenings are full of the zing of the Broadtail Hummingbirds that seems to increase with each passing day. We have a couple of feeders out – one you can see on the webcam -  last night we caught the woodpeckers also drinking from it. If all works well this weekend, I’ll locate my fuschia plant to hang by the front door on the north side of the house to act as yet another feeder. It still will need to come in each night for a bit longer as our true safe date for being frost free for the summer is around June 10.

The Story Behind the Click: I captured this photo in August of 2005, when I was really just starting to take my photography a bit more seriously. It was one of the first that let me see that I could capture what I saw in my mind’s eye. Each summer I work to add to my collection of hummingbird photos, but this one remains near and dear to my heart simply because it helped to lead me forward to where I am now.

To capture this scene, I start my day by setting up the tripod and camera and get out a stool. Composing the image as I hope to take it, I set the focus and turn it to manual mode to keep it there – and then with the remote trigger in my hand, I sit calmly and wait. Hummer after hummer comes, but often not to the spot I have composed, so I just enjoy the warm morning sun and the sounds of the forest waking. Deer may move through, the large gray cat that adopts us each summer to keep our mouse and chipmunk population down strolls down the driveway, the wind ruffles the aspen leaves to make them quietly applaud the morning, and I relax into it all. I usually give it a half hour to 45 minutes before going in to get other things done, forcing myself to pull out of that near meditation state.

Even if I don’t release the shutter once, it’s worth every moment.  Taking the time to pause and connect with the nature surrounding you is always worth it.  Yes, I live in a gorgeous area where you don’t have to work hard at finding nature, but it surrounds you even if you live in the city.  And just like here, you still need to deliberately pause to soak it in.  Take a few moments today to find the nature around you – and give yourself the gift of a few minutes to really connect. Let it refresh you.

If you don’t have time outside to do that – take a few minutes to watch Phoebe’s baby hummingbirds in Southern California.  They’re growing like weeds right now!  Delightful company while working at the computer.

Artists often work to make a difference. True Art speaks to your soul. True Art ‘haunts’ you – drifting through your mind again and again over time.  In 2007, I headed over to the Snow Sculpture Championship in Breckenridge. They hold it each year, but lately it doesn’t draw me as much. Too many ‘statements’ that shout at me instead of whispering their way to my heart. However, the winner in 2007 still haunts me – They Call Him Old Man Winter.

It’s snowing today – we woke to 7″ of heavy, spring snow and more on the way. These late snows always bring to mind the True Art from Team Oregon – Thank you, Team Oregon, for your Gift.  Here’s the description from the booklet:

They Call Him Old Man Winter

His face is worn. He leans relaxing on his fist, weary with the heaviness of life.  Yet, there is a subtle smile and softness in his eyes that speak of insight.  There is a knowing that nothing lasts forever.  All is transitory, and like this sculpture, come into being for but a brief time and then are gone.

We invite you to share in this wisdom and cast your troubles on Old Man Winter.  As the spring sun arrives and he melts gently away, he will carry your worries with him, making room for something new in your life and in the world.

Cast a few troubles while he’s here to carry them away with him.

Happy Friday!

It feels good to do this – just adding to my ongoing digital nature journal.  We’re supposed to get more snow this afternoon continuing on through the night.  Hope to wake to another foot or so of snow – LOVE getting this good moisture.   I imagine the Cassin’s Finches will show up with the snow as usual.  The main photo on this layout is one I may try my hand at sketching – trying to get those darn feathers looking right and this shot shows them well.

I used Suzanne Walker’s Eviscerated Fears and added in the borders myself (straight and scalloped – going for a stamped/hand painted effect).  Fonts are Packard Antique and Warnock Pro.

I can’t quite put my finger on what triggered this layout, but as I find my scrapbooking feet again, I find memories welling up, asking to have their story told.  The cabin’s story has persistently pestered me for awhile now, so despite the depth and breadth of this topic somewhat overwhelming me, I’ll dig in and just make a start here.

We had a cabin in northern Colorado during those formative years of my youth.  Each weekend we’d pack our things, load up the car and drive the hour and fifteen minutes from our house in town to the home of my heart.  When I couldn’t get to sleep I used to work to travel in my mind along every curve, every turn we took to get there, or on a walk taken often. It helped. At the cabin, I could stop long enough to find myself and let the mountains repeatedly impress themselves on my soul until they became a deep part of who I am.    It’s where I could see that really connecting with nature meant that you just knew how to care for the land – no regulations or laws needed because you just did the right thing because it was the right thing to do – because you simply lived a life integrated into nature.   It’s where I learned to get lost in the details of flowers and learn their names.    It’s where I learned that small spaces helped families stay close much more than large spaces.  It’s where I learned to shoot the moon. It became my spiritual geography.  My wish as a girl then was to grow up and marry a man who needed the mountains as much as I did – and that we’d live in them all year round.   God granted those wishes amazingly well – even now my husband and I live in a house that was another family’s cabin – full of their warm memories.

We had a stereo that my parents had when they were first married and my sister and I were toddlers.  It found a home up there at the cabin.  They had it as full of albums as it could hold – their favorites.  As a teen that drove me nuts, but there were a few albums we could all agree on – two were:

• The Soundtrack of Paint Your Wagon
• C.W. McCall – Wolf Creek Pass

The songs from those two albums unleash a flood of memories.  But one of them, Aurora Borealis wrote itself on my heart.  The last line, though, sums up why I scrap.  All these memories, they do go forever.  I recall them endlessly, but only in my own mind.  Memories have a way, though, to pester you until you find a way to tell them.  They want to be told outside of you.  We don’t have kids, but even having kids doesn’t guarantee that your story will be told.  Only you can really tell it. What I see my scrapbooking developing into is part scrapbooking, part memoir, part poetry, part art.  All of that requires time and patience to knead it all together into what it’s supposed to be.

We all have those stories to tell – it’s important to tell them.  Telling them lets you distill them into the strength you can keep and the rest you can let evaporate out into the nothingness.  Telling your story gives validity to your memories – even if you don’t share them with another soul.  And then you don’t have to worry so much about remembering them once you let them out onto the paper, into the computer, onto a scrapbook page or memoir book.  There is no wrong way to tell your story.  Yes, your memories may clash with those of other family members – you decide if you just let them clash or to change words and phrases if their memories fill in a few blank spots for you.  Sometimes it takes a family to fully remember a place in time.

I’ll share some of my work on telling my story of our family’s cabin, but for now – enjoy the song that still brings tears to my eyes simply because it etched itself so deeply into my soul:

We do live in a beautiful spot. I love having my coffee in the morning and looking out on the Sangre de Christo mountains and watch the birds and other wildlife in the area. One of the gifts we received this Christmas was a web cam – we’ve wanted to share our view with others. Now it’s up there on the top bar – the link to The View From Here. We may eventually get this as a streaming video, but for now, just reload your page for an updated view.

Unfortunately this camera doesn’t zoom, and you miss the atmosphere acting as a magnifying glass on the mountains in the distance. However, I often take photos of them and am working to add them in as fine art prints listed below the image. Right now I just have this one added in (this one is sized at 30×10 – pricing to come), but keep checking back for more.

Time to bid 2009 a fond farewell and turn around to greet 2010. Already I find myself feeling refreshed and renewed by that fresh start created by the pause following the flurry of Christmas.

Lots of changes for me – most of them small shifts.  Yesterday I created the above layout for the last page in the 2009 notebook.  It jogged some thoughts I had while reading a book received for Christmas.  That page got me thinking – how DO I classify myself?  Photographer?  Scrapbooker? Artist practicing sketches?  Writer?

I’m drawn to non-fiction books (especially memoirs or really good biographies).  I received Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera for Christmas and have been savoring it.  I’ve always loved his work – he was a master at documenting everyday life – but seeing the ‘how he did it’ and more glimpses into his thoughts resonates deeply with me at this point in my life.

Seems Norman Rockwell doubted using photography in his work – thinking it didn’t fit the definition of artist.  Yet the photography gave him details he could never sketch and capture.  So – he came to terms with it and expanded the pigeon hole he put himself in.

This past year, when trying to pigeon hole what all I do, I began to look for threads that link things together.  Most of us have a thread that seems to keep showing up in our lives.  After bouncing this off of a few folks, I realized my thread is Documenting Life.

When I was seven, I wanted to record what words I knew how to read without sounding them out – that list was quickly abandoned when I realized I started it too late – I knew many words and couldn’t pinpoint when they became ‘automatic.’  When I was in my tweens, I wanted to take photos of familiar ‘scenes’ on our route to the cabin that we took each weekend.  I used to fall asleep running these scenes through my mind.  In eighth grade, I wrote two and three hundred page long letters to a friend who moved overseas – those recorded most every moment of the day.  I loved writing those.  I now write in my journal usually daily – often a couple times a day.

So, even though at times I feel scattered in my work, I take comfort in knowing my pigeon hole is woven with a loosely knit, stretchy and comfortable thread of Documenting Life – through words, photos, scrapbook creations, sketches, and any other way that works.

I’m curious to know if you have a common thread that runs through your life.  I’ve asked a few people this, and the answers always astound and fascinate me. Sure, there are the negative threads in all of our lives – but what defines your strength?  Where you find inspiration and direction?  What pulls you up and keeps you moving forward?

I’m excited about 2010 – though I can’t quite put my finger on why.  I guess we’ll all just have to stay tuned.

Credits for artwork used in the photo layout:
Elizabeth Weaver’s Z’s Birthday Kit
Elizabeth Weaver’s Z’s Birthday Add On Pack

Photo #091231J9815 © SnowMoon, LLC