Photographic Memory

Earlier this year the Webster Groves Public Library invited me to have a solo photography show in their art gallery during the month of December. I have participated in a half dozen shows over the past couple of years, but have never done one on my own. The thing is, with a solo show your work has to carry the load of the entire exhibit. Your piece is not one of many, but rather many pieces of you. But I felt like my work from Australia and New Zealand could stand on its own, so I agreed to exhibit.

As I had come home from my trip with slightly over 3,500 photos, it was rather daunting to narrow it down to the best. Normal shows at the library contain 20-25 pieces, but I chose to show the 34 pictures that I felt best represented the two countries I had visited. Next I had to determine what size to make the prints. They needed to be large enough to show the details, but not so large that it would limit how many photos I could hang. Originally I wanted all of them to be the same size, mounted only behind an 11"x14" glass frame with no mat or wood to detract from the pictures. However, nine of the photos would not fit in that format without cutting off pertinent items such as a kangaroo's tail, for example. So in the end, I had those nine printed 10"x20" and mounted on gatorboard. It wasn't exactly what I had envisioned, but it worked. After I received all the prints back from the lab, I applied wire to the back of each per the library's hanging system requirement.

Jim was a godsend in helping me with my final photo selections, and providing input on the best way to display the pictures. He spent several hours with me on December 2nd hanging the show, and came up with an inventive method to level the photos when the hanging system at the library kept tilting all the images downward. I went back to the library on the 3rd to clean off any fingerprints and apply the photo labels to the wall. The show was ready to go!

Wednesday I got my hair cut, and my long time stylist, Charles, offered to have me come back on Friday so that he could style my hair for the reception at no charge. I took him up on his offer, and he would not even accept a tip from me.

The opening reception was held Friday night from 6-8. Jim and I got to the library at 5:30 to set up the tables. A surprise was awaiting, as the librarians said flowers had been delivered for me. Jim had handed me fresh flowers when he got home from work, so I knew they hadn't come from him. As it turned out, our Minnesota friends Kathy and Paul, who had joined us in New Zealand, sent a floral arrangement for the opening. How nice is that?

On one of the tables we put the wine, water, 7-Up, lemonade, ice and glasses. A second was for the cheese and sausage tray, along with a vegetable tray, crackers, grapes and a candy dish. The third was reserved for the amazing chocolate chip and cranberry white chip cookies that I had ordered from a friend. They were a huge hit, as I knew they would be!

reception tables

Through the course of the evening around 35 people came through the exhibit, including stylist Charles and three of his friends. A few were folks that I didn't know but who had read about it on the library's Facebook page or in the calendar section of the Webster-Kirkwood Times. Several neighbors, many friends and a few of my Women in Focus photography group stopped by. I was touched by how many of my pickleball ladies came as well. I was not able to take many pictures, so thanks go out to my friend Caren Libby for those below.

reception photos

Everyone complimented me on the quality of the photos as well as the way I had chosen to display them. And I even sold one that night! In the end, I'm glad I faced my insecurities and put my work out there. Sometimes you just have to get out of your own head.

A Not So Happy New Year

For many in the St. Louis area, 2015 went out on a wet note. A very wet note, as more than eight inches of rain fell over a three day period. Nearby rivers overflowed their banks, and three interstates along with numerous highways were closed because they were covered by water. Homes and businesses were flooded, and people struggled to make their way to work without the benefit of their usual roadways. My neighborhood was not directly impacted by the flooding, although several people did lose huge trees due to the ground being saturated. (As we lost two historic trees of our own earlier in the year, I am very grateful that our remaining trees are still in place.)

On New Year's Day, Jim and I drove around the area looking at the flood damage. Somehow when you watch the news coverage on television, it doesn't seem to be real. Seeing the water up close certainly puts things in perspective.

Along Highway 109 in Eureka

Michael rowed his boat ashore

Stable in Glencoe

New water hazards at Aberdeen Golf Club

I-44 and Hwy. 141

I-44 and Hwy. 141

Reflection in the flood waters




            

   

Sugarfire Smoke House

We ended our tour by having a late lunch at Sugarfire Smoke House, which is located right by the flooded intersection of Interstate 44 and Highway 141. While the interstate had reopened by this time, 141 remained closed. We had never eaten here before, but they seemed to be doing a brisk business from the gawkers who had, like us, come out to survey the damage. I love that the restaurant had a sandwich special called the Sandbag. When life hands you lemons...

Best of all, I salute them for offering the special at no charge to anyone who was displaced by the flood. We will be back, Sugarfire - due to your excellent food as well as your community generosity.

Sandbag special

Laboring Day

Women in Focus show

We had a very busy Labor Day weekend, beginning with the opening of the new Women in Focus photography exhibit on Friday night. I have three photos in the latest show, which is being held at Tavern of Fine Arts in St. Louis. Jim and I arrived around 5:15, needing to get there early as we had another commitment that night. There was already a nice crowd in place, so we grabbed a drink and walked around admiring the photos. Neither of us had been to the Tavern before, and it seems like a fun place to have dinner and then enjoy live music. We definitely want to go back when we have time to do that. The show will be up until the end of November, so perhaps we can make it before then.

Alpha Sigma Phi brothers

From the Tavern we headed back west to Kirkwood to the home of one of Jim's fraternity brothers. Several of the guys and their wives were in town for the holiday weekend, so they invited us to join them for a barbecue on Friday night. I was contributing a dessert, so I had to think of something I could make that would be okay in the trunk of my car for a couple of hours in 90 plus degree heat. I settled on making lemon bars, adding the dusting of powder sugar to the top once we got to our destination. There ended up being six of the fraternity brothers there (three of whom are brothers by blood as well, along with their younger sister who was also a Little Sister in the fraternity just like me and one of the other wives.) The fourteen of us enjoyed reminiscing about our time at Iowa State and some of the shenanigans that went on while we were there. It always amazes me that you can go 30 plus years without seeing classmates, whether college or high school, and still pick right back up where you left off. We had a great time!

On Saturday Jim's mom & dad along with his sister and her husband arrived from Iowa for the weekend to celebrate the occasion of his mom's 85th birthday (a few weeks early, but this is the only weekend that worked for everyone.) My other sister-in-law was also due to arrive from Kansas City, but unfortunately she became ill and was unable to make the drive. After church on Sunday, my sister and her husband and my niece came by to join us for dinner and cake. They all have known Jim's mom for over 30 years, so it was fun to have them celebrate with us. My mother-in-law's favorite cake is angel food, so I found a recipe where you add chopped maraschino cherries to the cake mix prior to baking. I just wanted to make the cake a little special. It rose nicely and looked beautiful when I took it out of the oven and flipped it over to cool while we were at church. When we returned home, it had flattened to half of its size! I have never had an angel food cake do that, so I don't know if the added cherries caused it or what. But of all the times for that to happen...The good news is that the cake was still tasty, and we all had a good laugh about it.

birthday cake

lighting the candles

After the house emptied on Monday morning, I cleaned up the kitchen from breakfast and then did the linens from five beds and all the towels. Labor Day brought much laboring for me. The Wolterman B & B turns over again on Thursday when my cousin and her husband arrive from Cincinnati for a wedding. They have never been here before, so I am eager to show them the house. After I get it all back in order...

Walking in the Past

Saturday my friend Linda and I drove down to Ste. Genevieve to see some artwork that was on special display, and to look at the old buildings. While it was a little cool and windy, at least the sun was out to make the day more inviting. We decided to go on a tour of three of the buildings in addition to going through the museum where the art was displayed. Our tour guide could have been better (she admitted that it had been a long time since she had conducted a tour), but seeing the old buildings on the inside made up for it.

We had lunch at the Cafe Genevieve. It is located in an old hotel, and while the decor was cool the food and service were just so-so. Following lunch we headed off to the Catholic Church, which was amazing! The outside of the church is not all that remarkable, so when you walk inside you are not expecting to be blown away. I'd love to attend mass there some Sunday.

Our last stop was the cemetery in town, which is proclaimed to be the oldest cemetery in Missouri. I guess since St. Genevieve is the oldest town in Missouri, that makes sense. I was disappointed that I did not see any headstones older than 1812. Since the town was founded in 1735, I expected to see some older stones. Perhaps the early settlers were buried elsewhere? The town relocated in the late 1700s due to flooding. All in all, it was a fun day and great to be with someone who likes to take as many pictures as I do.

New Year's Eve

We do not do anything for New Year's Eve typically. We're just not that interested in putting our lives on the line due to drunk drivers. So we made a nice steak dinner (awesome to be able to grill out on December 31st!) and I am having a nice glass of wine as I sit at my computer. Today has been pretty introspective as I have spent the last two days scanning documents and photos of my ancestors and current family members. I had asked for a Flip-Pal Scanner as a present since I had seen one in action at the Federation of Genealogical Societies annual conference in Springfield earlier this year. It is amazingly light-weight, runs on batteries and scans 4" x 6" pictures like a champ. For larger documents or photos, you simply remove the cover, flip it over and scan the item in pieces. As long as you have properly overlapped the scans, the stitching software provided puts it all back together with no seams. Amazing!

Anyway, as you can gather I received one for Christmas so I have been putting it through its paces. It does a wonderful job, and I have been uploading the scans to my ancestry.com family tree. I have been thinking a lot about the people in the photos. What was their day like? How in the world did they manage to raise 8 (or 10 or 12) children? How did they feel when their children moved away to another state? All the strangers in the box and the stories that will remain untold. While our lives today may not seem all that important, down the road our descendants may be very interested in how we spent our time. What stories will you preserve in 2012?

It's All Relative

This weekend we are heading to Cincinnati with my sister and brother-in-law for a Crusham family reunion. This is my mom's side of the family, and only one brother and two sisters remain of the nine children grandma and grandpa had. Each time I go to a reunion it seems that there is one less person in the group pictures. And I always wonder what will happen to the reunions when the last three siblings pass on. It doesn't seem like our generation is all that interested in large family gatherings. My sister and I make the trek from St. Louis every time a reunion is held, but cousins who live there in town can't be bothered to stop in even for a brief period.

Speaking of pictures, one of the many boxes I inherited when my dad died contains old family photos. I am in the process of scanning them so that I can share them with my siblings and other interested relatives. I first divided the photos up by family and created a bag for each of my three siblings. They mostly contain photos of their own families that they shared with mom and dad throughout the years. That was the easy part. The stack of photos I knew we all might be interested in I decided to make digital rather than making prints the others might not even care to have around. Scanning is a slow and tedious process, particularly since I feel the need to clean most of the photos up with a photo editing program.

I am not quite sure what to do with the scanned pictures when I am done. There will be too many to email to my siblings, plus I want the photos somewhere that my cousins can access them if they want. My Picassa account, where I post photos from the Missouri Botanical Garden and other public venues, has nearly 200 photos in it. Once you hit 200 photos, you have to pay an annual fee. I have a Shutterfly account where I import photos that I want to reprint or put into photo books, but I'm not sure if others can access the account or if they have to join Shutterfly just to look at my photos. I also don't know if any of my photos could then be downloaded by my relatives. It sounds like I have some research to do, which will take more time. But as I said, it's all relative.

A Girl and Her Dog

This past week was Jim's annual motorcycle trip with the guys. So Kirby and I have been hanging out taking care of the house. Kirby is definitely Jim's dog, and goes into moping mode whenever he is gone. He sits on the couch in the conservatory gazing mournfully at the garage as if he could conjure up Jim's presence just by wishing it so. It is pathetic. For the first few nights he didn't even sleep with me. I guess he thought Jim might sneak in while he was upstairs. Finally he decided our bed was a better place to be than the couch. Jim gets home today, so I know the pooch will be ecstatic and will quickly get over his funk.

My sister came and stayed two nights with us, and that was fun. We went out to eat, shopped and enjoyed the Missouri Botanical Garden on a particularly beautiful June day. We also went through a box of photographs that I had taken out of mom and dad's photo albums after dad died. I have been sorting them into bags for each of my siblings, but there are some I know that we all might want to have copies of. Kathy helped with the sorting. Now I have a bunch of scanning to do. Bleh. But I also have a batch of photos to take over to Cincinnati for the family reunion, so that will be fun.

Katie is now in Barcelona for a few days. She called yesterday to let me know that she and Megan had arrived safely. In a few short days I will be picking her up at the airport. Can't wait to see all of her pictures and videos, and hear all about her adventures!

Picture This

I am halfway through a photography class that I am taking at the Missouri Botanical Garden. It is on Tuesday mornings for 3 hours, and lasts for 6 weeks. The instructor is a professional photography with many published photos to his credit. This is a beginning photography course, and I have taken a couple of those in the past. For some reason I just don't get the aperture, focal length, f-stop, ISO terminology stuff. Whenever it is discussed, my eyes glaze over. Math - bleh! So I was hoping this class would help me understand my D-SLR better. And I want to take the next class on photographing nature, and it is for intermediate students. I didn't want to be "that person" in the next class...the one who asks all the inane questions.

My camera is a Nikon D-40, and it takes amazing pictures. I love it, and the lens I purchased for it. So why am I taking the class, you might ask? Because I shoot everything on automatic exposure. And most of the time, that is perfectly acceptable. But you do get the rare time when the lens can't focus on what you are really wanting to take a picture of due to junk in the foreground. I experienced that just the other day when I was trying to photograph a bird's nest through a tree. When I took my camera setting off of automatic {gasp!}, I could manually focus on the bird in its nest. So I can understand the beauty of knowing how to shoot on manual, but by the time I think about changing the exposure and working with the lens, sometimes the photographic moment is lost. The instructor assures us that it will become second nature to us. We shall see...

At the very least I am learning a lot about photo composition, so that will be invaluable whether I shoot on automatic or manual. And every Tuesday I get to go to the Garden and take photographs. It's a win-win!

The One That Got Away

One of the books I had autographed while at Book Expo in New York in May was entitled, "Confessions of a Compact Camera Shooter" with the tagline "Get Professional Quality Photos with Your Compact Camera". I joked with the author, Rick Sammon, that perhaps he could finally teach me what the camera classes had not. He replied that this is the book for me. We'll just see about that, mister!

A few weeks ago I was waiting for one of the cars to be serviced and I took along the Shooter book to read. Rick is a professional photographer who believes that anyone can take great pictures with a compact camera. By which he does NOT mean a point and shoot camera. Your camera must have some settings on it for this book to be of much benefit. Anyway, I had just read the section on how you should never go anywhere without your compact camera. After all, it will fit in your pocket, purse or briefcase, so there is never an excuse to be camera-free.

This came back to haunt me as I was walking the dog that very same day. I came upon the truck of a landscape contractor. He had the usual pickup truck, so nothing special there. What caught my eye was the trailer on the back of the truck. It was the typical mesh-like metal trailer, but on the back of the trailer was an assortment of items - dolls, action figures, small stuffed animals... Apparently whatever he finds in the yard as he mows gets attached to the back of the trailer. It was a moment...and I even knew what I would title my photo. "Yard Waste."

But where was my camera? Back at the house, of course. Had Rick Sammons taught me nothing? Apparently not, because Monday as I walked the dog along came same landscape contractor buzzing down our street. Was there a camera in my pocket? Nope. And just to further mock me, I had the dog out earlier than usual today since it is so hot, and the landscaper passed me again. I'm beginning to feel like Richard Dreyfuss in "American Grafitti" as he keeps getting a glimpse of Suzanne Somers in the '56 Thunderbird but can't seem to hook up with her. "Ain't That a Shame?"

Picture Perfect?

My dad had a lot of photographs from his time in the Army Air Corps. They are now all scanned into my computer - quite the time consuming task. Because they were taken and processed 65 or more years ago, without benefit of a photo lab, they are not in the best condition. So I fired up Photoshop and began the laborious process of photo restoration. Some of them need the services of a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon to give them a face lift, but I am doing the best I can with my modest knowledge of the software. As I study the photos, I wonder about the barely men with their smiles mugging for the camera. What was it like to be separated from their families, literally dropped into a world filled with poisonous snakes, blistering heat or never-ending monsoons, with malaria running rampant? Unlike today's soldiers, they had very little ability to communicate with loved ones back home. My dad and I talked quite a bit about his years of service. Unlike a lot of men of his generation, he didn't seem to mind talking about his experiences. Unfortunately, I did not take the opportunity to label the back of all the the photos stored haphazardly in an old cigar box all these years. So some of the places and subjects in the pictures will remain a secret. But I do know which ones are of him, and after all that's who the book I am writing is about.

Another First and Last

Today was the first day of Katie's last year of high school. I took her picture in the back yard, as I have every first day of school since kindergarten. This is the first year that she will drive herself to school as she is participating in the co-op program through the marketing department and will have the last period free each day to go to work. After 18 years of driving kids to and from school, I now will have extra time each morning and afternoon to work on my stuff. Another era ended... As I was making peach butter today I had the radio on. The theme song from my high school graduation came on; "We May Never Pass This Way Again." How appropriate, I thought.