6.27.2008

Salamander & Jollie Ollie




I was at Circus World Museum today with the boys, and while walking from a kids circus in one building to a clown show in another, it started to rain. We ducked into an old Ringling Brothers storage house that I'd never been in before, and good Lord, it was an entire building full of circus dioramas.

A) Dioramas are one of my secret little joys in life, and

B) I've been to Circus World a dozen times before; how had I missed this??

I could have spent hours in there, but the boys were less transfixed than I was. The snake charming woman in this image was probably and inch and a half tall, to give you some scale.

Here's another, from a scene where a 19th century circus train has a run-in with some Indians, I think. Or they were commandeered to be part of the show. There wasn't a whole lot of explanation, but if you ask me, dioramas speak plenty well for themselves.





Last one, and I'll leave you alone:


6.21.2008

Put me in, coach


We had company all last week so I haven't updated in a while. Eli had his first t-ball game ever. He's 6-1/2, but on a team with 7- and 8 year-olds, many of whom have been in t-ball since they were 4. But he will not be moved. After having tried every sport the Parks & Rec Department has to offer, he said to me the other day, "You know what, mom? I think baseball is going to be my sport."

Here he is going up to bat for the first time. He scored three runs that game, and only got out once. Many of the members of the opposing team were not particularly adept at "throwing" or "catching," but why quibble over the details.

6.14.2008

Runaway Bunny


Eli took over story time yesterday afternoon before Jack's nap. "You can pick any book you want. I'll be able to read it, no problem," he said.

Jackie picked one of his all-time favorites, the one he literally chewed half of the back cover off of when he was a baby, because he loved it so.

I snuck this picture while Eli was reading the best line from the book, the one that chokes me up a little every time:

"If you become a bird and fly away from me," said his mother, "I will be a tree that you come home to."

6.13.2008

Floods suck.


All is well at our house in Baraboo; thanks to everyone who emailed with concern. Unlike Grand Forks, there's actually some change in topography in our part of the country, so though our house is dry, it looks like this just two blocks away. And I reiterate: Floods suck. That much has not changed in the past 11 years. I saw this poor fellow come out of his house in waders:


I wanted to say something encouraging. I went through it, too. This will pass. The water will recede and you will scour your home and dry your photos and pile on the curb your mud-soaked and most intimate belongings and cry, a little, in private, but this will pass. I promise. But I realized if someone had said something like that to me the moment after I tore the caution tape from my front door and peered inside, I would probably have slapped her. Or wanted to. North Dakotans aren't generally too into slapping.

Writing that just now I realized I'll probably include it in my newspaper column next week. I better stop before I give all my best stuff away for free.

6.11.2008

Drum + Bugle Boys


The Madison Scouts Drum & Bugle Corps, a group of multi-talented and largely shirtless young men, is camped out in town preparing for their nationwide tour. Can we say mellophone? (I  think.)

6.08.2008

Bliss


The peonies in my yard are so gorgeous and fragrant this year that I feel I don't fully deserve them in my life. We're in the middle of an awful storm -- we spent the entire afternoon yesterday in the basement during five consecutive tornado warnings -- and today it's raining like nobody's business. Peonies are hardy but sensitive creatures, their giant blooms already nearly too heavy for the plant supporting them, so I worried they might not make it through the storm. I ran out in the rain and clipped six or eight more blossoms, putting them in little vases around the house. I played with the "curves" of this image in PhotoShop until the background didn't show. She deserves nothing less.

6.06.2008

Please... do come in.

Rotund animals are, for me, one of life's simple pleasures. This fine specimen makes his home at the local zoo. The prairie dog display is a small open pit where the little guys alternately scurry in and out of their holes and sit on their giant round bottoms. It's like a little Coloseum, where we zoo visitors are the spectators -- only in a nice way, a way that validates and encourages their adorable existence.

Another one, for your viewing pleasure:


Here two prairie dogs were having a dialogue. They were either saying, "Okay, we'll just sit here as if nothing is new with the world, and then when they least expect it we'll let out these urgent high pitch chattery screeches that will scare the bejesus out of them because they thought prairie dogs were one of those animals without vocal cords, like zebras," OR the one in the back is saying to the one in the front, "You should stand in front of me for the picture because you're the skinny one and I don't want my butt to show."

6.05.2008

I think it was John Michael Montgomery


This is cheating a little because I actually took it on the job. I shot this at a wedding last weekend, and since then I've been tackling the exhausting task of sorting and editing the hundreds and hundreds of photos from that day, all while getting ready for four photo shoots this weekend. So I'm tuckered out.

But I've been really happy with the work I've been producing "professionally" lately, and my clients have been even happier. Which feels great, especially when I'm documenting something as momentous as a wedding. Erik and I had a low-key wedding (all right, "shotgun" is a better descriptor) and never hired anyone to do anything. But if we had planned it, I would have spent a boatload on a good photographer and had, like, daisies and a Dairy Queen cake. It's that important.

It's late and I'm rambling. But I have to include a little love note to my new f2.8 lens, which has produced amazing low-light photos at the last two weddings I shot. Worth every cent.

6.03.2008

Hot pink hula


I was impressed with both this girl's mad hula skills and her hot pink hoop. I recently discovered I rock at hula hooping... on the Wii Fit. In actual life, this girl would hula me into oblivion.

6.01.2008

Mysteries of the Universe: 1


During a family walk in town this weekend, Erik calmly noted, "Hey look, buns."

And there they were, next to a tree trunk on the burm: Buns. It was an assortment of the hamburger and hotdog varities, some still in tact, some split apart.

Who placed them there? Why were they rejected? Were they going to be retrieved later? If so, by whom?

So many questions, so few answers. Okay, no answers. Thus begins my "Mysteries of the Universe" series, which will document questionables and curiosities as they arise, when I have my camera on my person.

Feel free to post theories about the buns. They haunt me still.