sjfphotography: *fine art images *natural light portraits *greeting cards


Sunday, November 30, 2014

ring-necked pheasant
 
Although not wonderful, this is a miracle shot.  I was at the farm, watching the guys stripping cotton.  As I drove slowly along the section road with the window down, I heard this cock crowing.  A quick glimpse to the left, hit the brakes hard, grabbed the camera and got off two frames before he took off into the brush.  He better work on his camouflage skills -- pheasant hunting season in Lubbock County begins December 6!


Saturday, November 29, 2014

garage art
 
On the nice fall afternoon while on my walk, I noticed this sunflower shadow against the garage wall
 
In the Neighborhood
Lubbock, Texas

Friday, November 28, 2014

 barn abandoned
 

In these parts, abandoned buildings outnumber those that are occupied.  This forlorn barn has more character then its homestead house.  The barn ages and oxides with a patina; the house is just falling down.  Even when it was built decades ago, new materials were not used.  Faint ghost lettering is still visible of the tin's original commercial use.  I am not alone in my fondness for old buildings-- joining other photographers who try to capture the past in what the Huffington Post calls a ubiquitous trend of "ruin porn."

The old barn stands
Abandoned, rustic,
Rusting, slowly yielding
To the wind and rain.
Once home to cows or sheep,
Chickens, pigs, horses
Rafters resounded with
Moos, baas, oinks, and whineys.
Now home to crows, mice, rats
Wayfare wildlife, feral cats.
The wind howls through
Open doors, broken windows.
Every year robs
More siding
From tottering walls.
The artist pauses to capture
The testament to the past
With camera's click
Or painter's brush
Before the old grey barn finally tumbles
In splinters, done in by storm
Or wrecking crew
Unwilling to tolerate
Its drunken swaying in the wind.
Old and tired,
The ancient barn
Sighs adieu.
 
Barn Abandoned by Erin Yorke
 
County Road 5100 and Farm to Market Road 1264
Lubbock County, Texas

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving


Wednesday, November 26, 2014

circles
 

Sometimes, out in the country, you know what you are seeing but you just don't understand why.  And not only was there one old truck atop the concrete pipe, there were three!

Wide place in the road
Lamb County, Texas

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

art is in the eye of the beholder
 
One felt watched while admiring the Christmas decorations in downtown Dallas.   In case you thought this was merely a 30-foot sculpture of an eyeball, you must read the description:  “Eye” by Chicago-based artist Tony Tasset acts as a symbol of knowledge and power juxtaposed against the pop-culture notion of larger-than-life commercial advertising." Called by one newspaper "an ocular oddity" the sculpture is part of the Joule Hotel's collection of contemporary art.  You may eyeball the the orb -- through the fence!
 
Main Street
Dallas, Texas
11.21.2014

Monday, November 24, 2014


cowboy complex
 

Do cowboys get a complex if they don't live up to the John Wayne stereotype?  Oops, wrong use of the word!  This Cowboy Complex is the new, improved version of the Indoor Roping Arena.  Nearby is the Cowboy CafĂ© and what used to be a private club.  In any case, the current use of the Cowboy Complex should be beneficial for complexes afflicting saints or sinners.




Cowboy Complex
Seymour, Texas
11.21.2014

Sunday, November 23, 2014

ornamental cabbage
 
Today these ornamental cabbages went into pots in the front.  They replaced the poor pansies which did not survive after the recent cold weather and snow.  Hopefully these touted "cool  season" winter annuals will make it until December.
 
My Yard
Lubbock, Texas

Saturday, November 22, 2014

silver falls
 
Once a flowing waterfall, Silver Falls is normally dry unless a strong thunderstorm happens to pass. After today's showers, there was a trickle. In the 1870s Colonel Randal McKenzie camped near the falls during his pursuit of Quanah Parker. Since the 1800s travelers have stopped at this once-scenic place.  In 1935 the National Youth Association, part of President Roosevelt’s Work Project Administration, built roadside park stone facilities, which were updated in 2004.  My dad speaks of picnics here in the 1950s.  Silver Falls was a hike destination when I was at Girl Scout camp at nearby Rio Blanco.  Today I availed myself of the facilities and took a look at the "falls."
 
According to the Geological Survey of Texas - Dumble, E.T. (ed). 1892. Third Annual Report of the Geological Survey of Texas, 1891 - this is what White River at Silver Falls looked like in 1891.
 
 
Silver Falls
Crosby County, Texas

Friday, November 21, 2014

Jackie
 
Today, on the eve of the 51st anniversary of the assassination of JFK, we visited the School Book Depository's Sixth Floor Museum. Prior to the museum we had taken the JFK trolley tour which pointed out Oswald's rooming house, the site where Officer Tippitt was slain, the Texas theater where Oswald was captured and other historic places.  On exhibit at the museum are 9x6' portraits of JFK and Jackie. Done by Alex Guofeng Cao, each pixel within the portrait is a much smaller picture. In the case of Jackie, there are 50,000 tiny portraits of her husband.

Although I've often driven the motorcade route and passed by the School Book Depository on trips to Dallas, I'd never visited the museum.  It was moving, especially recalling that period of history that I lived.  And then as we were leaving, the reincarnation of Jackie crossed the street in front of us.
 
 
 
Dallas, Texas
 

Thursday, November 20, 2014

soda fountain
 
Road Trip:  Today, after decades of driving by, I stopped at the City Drug on the square in Jacksboro.  I was lured by the sign and wanted to sit at the fountain and have an ice cream soda.  I was lured in by the sign!  City Drug bills itself as "a drug store with all the modern amenities but with old-fashioned, friendly service and a great soda fountain."  The drug store installed the soda fountain about 1911.  Any charm in the building built in 1900 has long since been modernized away. The pharmacy is still open and touts being the 7th oldest  pharmacy in Texas -- owned by the Hammond family since 1960 with a fourth generation in charge.  My ice cream soda was delicious except that it lost something being served in a styrofoam cup with a plastic spoon rather than a fluted, footed glass with a silver spoon!
 
City Drug
Jacksboro, Texas

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

fall reflection in black and white
 
Guadalupe River
New Braunfels, Texas
11.24.2013


Tuesday, November 18, 2014

ivied columns
 
The classic beauty of this once-elegant 1940s residence has faded.  Its grace is marred by boarded windows, broken transom, weeds and no trespassing signs.  It also has the misfortune of being on 13th Street, which is the wrong side of Broadway for regentrification.  The decline was not sudden; I think I went to a Sigma Chi trash party there (or maybe it was next door) back in the day.
 
1810 13th Street
Lubbock, Texas

Monday, November 17, 2014

sand dune
 
This snow and 20-degree weather makes me nostalgic for the beach -- even those rainy, overcast days in autumn.  Actually my favorite times at the beach are spring and fall -- leave the hot days for the summer crowd.
 
Seaside, Oregon
10.18,2015

Sunday, November 16, 2014

brr!
 
Nothing exciting about tonight's post.  With snow flurries and 20 degrees outside, I took this image of the neighborhood from the garage with my phone and hurried back to the couch and my glass of wine.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

dead end
 
The placement of the "dead end" sign is somewhat misleading because Seaside is not a dead end town.  Except that Lewis and Clark met their dead-end here.  The Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail is 3,700-mile route to the Pacific Ocean, commemorating the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804 to 1806. At the end of the street, where the beach begins, is a statue of Lewis and Clark marking the western end of their journey.
 


Seaside, Oregon
10.19.2014


Friday, November 14, 2014

icicles
 
After several days of sub-freezing weather, it finally warmed up to the 40s; however, it was still too cold to stand outside trying to catch the drips as the icicles on the birdbath thawed!
 
My Backyard at 40 degrees
Lubbock, Texas

Thursday, November 13, 2014



Who would have thought we'd need a fire in the fireplace in the middle of November with highs in the 20s and a smattering of snowflakes this morning?  This fireplace was burning brightly in mid-October at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood.  The lodge, which is on National Register of Historic Places, was constructed between 1936 and 1938 as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project during the Great Depression using large timbers and local stone. It has been the site of several movies, the most notable being "The Shining.:

Timberline Lodge
Mt. Hood, Oregon
10.17.2014

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

boarding house
 
This structure was the subject of a story by my dad.  It seems that in the 1940s it was a boarding house.  One of its lodgers was my great-uncle Charlie, who lived there while keeping books at my grandfather's gin in New Deal.  What attracted me was the asymmetry of the windows -- different sizes, a little patchwork, a dryer vent and a window air conditioner.  I don't know anything else about  the building, except it's been there a long time.  A history of Abernathy notes that the town was established in 1909 through an investment company owned by Dr. M. C. Overton and Monroe Abernathy.  It seems that nearby Bartonsite already had several buildings (perhaps even the Barton House currently at the Ranching Heritage Museum) and Abernathy had none except the small frame building for the investment firm. The founding fathers contracted with J.J. Barton to move some of the buildings to Abernathy. In the late summer of 1909 the seven mile move began. Buildings were placed on rollers pulled by steam-driven tractors at about three or four miles per hour. Buildings moved included a lumberyard, blacksmith shop, three or four residences and a two-story yellow hotel. I wonder if this building were that hotel -- there's not many two-storied buildings in town. Hmm.....
 
9th and Avenue E
Abernathy, Texas
11.9.2014

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

the girl who went to war
 
The Silent Wings Museum has an exhibit that replicates a World War II barracks.  Makes you wonder how many GIs had similar photos of sweethearts in their kits. Hopefully the veterans ended up with the girl back home.
 

 


Monday, November 10, 2014

poignancy
 
The "lost items" -- a baby shoe, teddy bear, glasses, a suitcase, a broken violin -- strewn along a cobblestone walk leading the Oregon Holocaust Memorial evoke a sense of sadness. Built in 2004, the back wall of the memorial is engraved with the names of people who died in the camps, followed by the names of their surviving relatives in Oregon. The memorial features a stone bench beside an area simulating a town square. During the Holocaust, many Jewish families were gathered in town squares before being loaded onto trains and taken to concentration camps. The cobblestone walkway with inlaid granite bars, simulating railroad tracks, leads to a wall of history panels. At the end of the wall is the soil vault panel with interred soil and ash from six killing-center camps of the Holocaust - Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
 
I have visited Holocaust Memorials in various states but this one brought chills like those experienced when I visited Dachau.
 
Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future. -- Elie Wiesel

Oregon Holocaust Memorial
Portland, Oregon
10.16.2014
Elie Wiesel

Sunday, November 9, 2014

trout fishing
 
If you were a fisherman you couldn't ask for more than a well-stocked lake in a beautiful setting.  That's Mt. Hood reflected on the rain-dappled surface.
 
Trillium Lake, Oregon
10.17.2014

Saturday, November 8, 2014

TT = tequila time
 
Equally as popular as Ginger's jewelry on the Studio Tour is Don's cantina in the back yard.  One is invited to sample a variety of tequilas -- and 10 a.m. is not too early to start!  The jalapeno-infused agave tequila was quite spicy!
 
Local Color Artists Studio Tour
Lubbock, Texas
 


Friday, November 7, 2014

free tutus
 
I'll admit that my art education is not too extensive but the pieces and installations on the Art Trail often leave me bewildered. Avant-garde?  Abstract? Weird?  I found more "art" on this wall with the sign and merchandise posted by Ballet Lubbock.  Their dancers posed as models during "Dance and Draw. " And no, I did not take a free tutu although many art aficionados were wearing them, sometimes as head gear!
 
First Friday Art Trail
Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts
Lubbock, Texas

Thursday, November 6, 2014

nasturtium
 
 
The jewel tones of nasturtium brighten dreary days in Oregon. They are a cool season plant which is way we don't see them often our hot and dry part of Texas.
 
Camp 18, Oregon
10-15-2014

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

door series #4
courtyard door
 
A spring snow storm in March dusted Santa Fe and increased the Southwestern charm
 
Santa Fe, New Mexico
3.11.2012

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

door series #3
ollas azul
 
Old Town
Tucson, Arizona
2.27.2014

Monday, November 3, 2014

door series #2
casa azul
 
By definition, a series is "a number of things of a related nature coming one after another."  So by posting a second image of a door from Old Town Tucson, I've created a series!

El Presidio
Tucson, Arizona
2.27.2014

Sunday, November 2, 2014

puerta azul
 
As a photographic subject, doors catch my eye.  I have a folder full of images from many different places that "some day" I going to do something with.  Evidently I am not alone in this interest.  There is a blog Legion of Door Whores for "those who appreciate doors."  It has thousands of images posted from all over the world.  This door is in the El Presido, the first neighborhood in Tucson, which is also on the National Register of Historical Places.
 
Tucson, Arizona
2.27.2014

Saturday, November 1, 2014

remember to reset your sundial
 
Daylight savings time ends tonight and we're back on "regular" time -- perhaps not to be confused with solar time as measured by sundials.
 
International Rose Test Garden
Portland, Oregon
10.16.2014