Happy New Year!

To get you thinking about fresh starts, and warmer weather. =) I wish everyone a wonderful New Year.

Regardez-moi

I thought we needed a break from winter photos. Here's a shot from a *long* time ago. As in, I was in high school when I took this. I haven't really done on any work on the image, if I did I would probably correct the slightly yellow color cast, make it a bit cooler. Anyway--kind of fun to look back on things.

Crystalline

Glaze

New photos! I've had them stewing in my camera for a week or so, and finally got around to uploading them onto the computer. I've gone through quite a few of them, so I'll start posting them. Some will go here and some will go to my DA account.

Between Yule and Christmas we had a freezing rain during the night, glazing everything with a layer of ice. By the time I finally made it outside, the ice was starting to fracture, melt, and fall off the branches, which made it fun for me. Lots of cold drips on the top of my head.

This photo doesn't have the best of focus--looks almost like I took it with my lensbaby, which I didn't. I think the lens got a little "frogged" up when I wiped a drop from it. Anyway, I just liked the range of colors in this photo. Whoever said winter was just white couldn't be more wrong. ;)

Contenders

Just submitted my photos for the Lensbaby "contest." You can view them and all the other entries--hundreds of photos!--here. Voting doesn't take place until Jan. 1-7, so I'll keep you updated. Cross your fingers for me!

Now to go let the muse out of the box... I've been developing a sci-fi/fantasy in my mind for the last few months and the main character is getting rather loud lately. I'm not going to start working on his story--I like to only work on one novel at a time--but I might allow him some leg room with an exercise. Otherwise it's back to my other novel. I'm determined to have it completed by spring--maybe even edited by then. We'll see. I guess being unemployed does have a perk: time to write! (And ride, for that matter.)

Fugitive Paths

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday week--not too much stressing, and so forth. I had a good one myself. =)

This'll be a bit of a hodge-podge post. Another wintry trail photo for you, in case you're still enjoying the mood of wintry festivities (like me). I did a bit of temperature adjustment with it, to make it a little more warm. I really miss walking in those woods with my college friends (the property and its lodge are owned by my now-old university, so I don't expect I'll really ever see them again).

Anyway. This week I'll be submitting two photos to Lensbaby. If chosen, they could get published in a Lensbaby book, which would be very exciting. I'll be submitting Atone and Give, Take. If there's a public vote, I'll be sure to let my beloved readers know. ;)

Lastly, I thought it would be nice to bring a highlight to some authors I enjoy. They are artists, after all, and as I like to feature my favorite artists, I decided they should be included. (Being a writer myself, this only seems fair.)

To do this, I'm not really going to give a review or synopsis, maybe just a comment or two. Mostly I'll just quote a passage. In writing, like how I view the world, I am drawn to the tiniest details, the images that glitter through the page, the moments and lines so perfect they can be tasted, touched, cupped in the hand like water--beheld for a second, but never captured. In reading, I am undone by these things, put back together again only by that final period. Like a dreamer turning over. When I edit, I try to push for these things, try to peel back the layers of ink so the language can breathe, leaving a wake of marks covering every line and margin. Perpetually desirous. Perpetually optimistic.

This first passage is taken from Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces, a novel I never would have picked up had it not been for one of my best friends at college. She'd been reading it herself, left it on the window sill while she left me alone for a moment. I read only the first paragraph, and I was captured. Not just hooked or intrigued--really, it's not generally the kind of story I go for--but Michaels' language was perfect, vivid. When I finally got my own copy, I read it with a pencil in hand and underlined the lines I loved most, the images I wanted to rub from the page and claim for my own. Looking through it now, 75% of the book must be underlined. It is haunting, mesmerizing, lyrical, and groping. Never have I read anything with such a sense of the dead.

I ran and fell, ran and fell. Then the river: so cold it felt sharp.
The river was the same blackness that was inside me; only the thin membrane of my skin kept me floating.
From the other bank, I watched darkness turn to purple-orange light above the town; the colour of flesh transforming to spirit. They flew up. The dead passed above me, weird haloes and arcs smothering the stars. The trees bent under their weight. I'd never been alone in the night forest, the wild bare branches were frozen snakes. The ground tilted and I didn't hold on. I strained to join them, to rise with them, to peel from the ground like paper ungluing at its edges. I know why we bury our dead and mark the place with stone, with the heaviest, most permanent thing we can think of: because the dead are everywhere but the ground. I stayed where I was. Clammy with cold, stuck to the ground. I begged: If I can't rise, then let me sink, sink into the forest floor like a seal into wax. -Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

One more, just because it took me nearly an hour to select a passage. XP

I fill my pockets and my hands with stones and walk into the river until only my mouth and nose, pink lilies, skim the air. Muck dissolves from my skin and hair, and it's satisfying to see floating like foam on the surface the fat scum of lice from my clothes. I stand on the bottom, my boots sucked down by the mud, the current flowing around me, a cloak in a liquid wind. I don’t stay under long. Not only because of the cold, but because with my ears under the surface, I can’t hear. This is more frightening to me than darkness, and when I can’t stand the silence any longer, I slip out of my wet skin, into sound. -Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

Spaces

Like the space between words, I contemplate the cracks of sky.

Happy Yule!

Wishing everyone a happy, blessed Yule!

Not much is going on here...Did some "last minute" shopping, went to the stable and spent time with the moose--er, horse, came back to find the tree strung with lights! Let the light shine. =)

I was going to share my favorite Norwegian folk tale, but I can't find my book...I shall search sometime this week, perhaps, and get back to you. ;)

Check in the box

A very dull post for you.

I managed (finally) to add a working contact form box to Soulstrings. So, if anyone needs/desires, they can now contact me privately via the form. A permanent link to the contact form is now at the top of my side panel for easy reach. =)

I also backup-ed this blog for the first time! For those fellow bloggers who don't (yet) backup your blog, you should! You never know when something will happen and suddenly every post is gone. I used Blogger Backup, a free downloadable program that backups posts and comments to your local hard drive. In the event of a wipeout, there's even a button to restore all posts and comments.

In other news, I promise to get something more interesting posted in celebration of Yule/Xmas/insert-holiday-of-choice-here. I was going to tonight, but now I'm awfully tired. I want to do a little writing yet, of course. ;)

Courting

Another poem for you! And the story of its creation...

I hear music through scenes in my mind. That is, when I listen to a song, I see a narration in my mind--images or characters or movements and colors, all expressing every musical phrase and note. This little quirk came especially handy in Music History classes, when my prof would ask us to write down our impressions of the pieces we were required to listen to every night. She never really cared what we said, so long as we put the listening experience into words. Some people described the music, the players, the instrumentation style. Some people tried to frame it in the historical context of the previous lecture. Not I. I wrote down little stories, adding in references to specific moments in the pieces. Once I wrote about a little girl with a red umbrella, dancing in the rain in her white ballet slippers. The narration of the piece followed her as she explored a world of rain, a world departing from her own. I can't remember the specific piece that inspired it any more, but I believe it was one of Haydn's. At the end there was a rather dramatic tonal shift, which became not only the end of the downpour, but also of reality stripping the little moment of magical splendor the girl had enjoyed.

My point is, that is how this poem came to be. Not from my music history notes, per say, but its images came to me through song. (Unfortunately, my original file containing the piece's information was corrupted two years ago. Luckily I'd written the poem by hand and still had it--on three post-it notes, no less.)

Courting

Sun-caught espresso
The color of your hair
As you ran through the grasses,
Tall as your chin, golden and seeded
Low whistles when the wind pushes them back
Bending the stalks but never breaking
Just as you always bend my thoughts,
Curling them around your thumb
Like a stray wisp of your silk-threaded dress.
We've spent hours here
Before this pond,
All the while dipping our toes into the cool,
The ebbs of shadows and flickering sky reflection
Upon your face, a dance of light
And I wondered what brush the artist would use
To capture the curl of your bang
Or the feathered gleam of your smile.
You leave me always crawling,
A star with no north to
Guide me,
And so we swim in the wilds,
Leave our clothes on the grassy bank
And pull leeches from our feet as the air pimples
Our skin.
We've come a long way from home
But I know afternoons never fade--
In some heart of time I know there is no present
Because there is no constant tock
From which we drag ourselves.
Even peering into the wrinkles of our faces I
Will see you as I see you now
And not the hollow of your eyes
Staring back at me without thought
Fingers straining for the hand that never came to
Hold them and bring you back to air.
Yes, sun-caught espresso
The color of your hair
As you ran through the grasses,
And I wondered so long
Trying to capture the flicker of your soul,
And now here is all that is left,
The seeded gold grasses and prairie and oak,
The weathered wood rowboat tied to shore
Of a pond whose leech-gray waters have been so still,
And when I look into them no ebbing of light do I see--
Like a stray wisp of your silk-threaded dress,
My will also breaks
And the silent waters ripple once again.

When stars fall

Yay, more blizzardy photos! ;) Just outside the back door we have a triangular trestle, and a gigantic monster of a thorny plant growing around it. The creature is far from contained, but it never fails that a few birds make nests in it before we get around to pruning it. The snow got so heavy on the thorny branches that, not only did it resemble something you'd see in a forest (think curtain of doom), but it had toppled over the very sturdy tressel.


Somehow the snow was kinder to our little apple tree. I think the lensbaby emphasizes my point a little. ;)

Also from the Monster Plant. It's a bit out of focus, but I was more attracted to the effect of the branches anyway. Alien grapple-hooked appendages, anyone? XD

Wonderland

Yesterday we got over 17 inches of snow. We'd already gotten a fairly good amount by the time I went to bed the night before, and I practically had to tear myself away from the window. Huge flakes falling, covering everything. We even had some thundersnow, which was pretty awesome. (One strike sounded like it was right on top of us.) Waking up was almost surreal--everything was white. Solid, blanketed, laden down, white. Branches touched the ground, bushes looked like twiggy cupcakes, and you couldn't see the difference between lawn and street.

Everyone in the neighborhood was home, and by 9am, stood outside with shovels and snow-blowers while the handful of smaller children chased each other around in the street. We got suited up and headed out ourselves, brushed snow off bushes and freed branches, watched the younger guys up the street try to shuffle cars in their driveway so one could get his mini-bed truck out. He barely made his way around the corner, fishtailing more than driving straight. I got my camera out and set about "exploring," then helped shovel.

Just after everyone had gotten things cleared out, the plows came down the street for the first time. They say dentists are the most hated among all professions. But I'm not sure they ever considered the plow driver. The poor guys work all hours making the streets drivable, keeping entire cities from shutting down completely, and yet every shoveler curses them for the foot-high wall of icy, compacted snow they deposit along every driveway, for blocking in cars left unwisely on the street.

All the magic of a snowday melts away the moment the street is cleared. Even with driveways and sidewalks uncovered, there is still a feeling of being cut-off, isolated like an island, hidden and detached from the ordinary, everyday world. For a few minutes before the plow, we can pretend that the world before us is new. Undiscovered. Transformed into something just beyond reality.

Stablelight

My first real foray into texturing photos. I've done photoshop work with layers and such many, many times before, but I never really ventured into the "texture photography" or "digital art" realm of things before. I've thought about it. Sometimes I really like textured photographs, but I am very picky about it.

As such, I would really enjoy feedback on this one. Initial reactions are totally fine, even (and especially) if you don't like it or aspects of it. Should I try more like this?

For comparison's sake, here's the original (untouched photo, which I almost deleted because lighting is bad, etc):


To go from point A to point B, I introduced and messed with five textures, playing with transparency levels a lot and then going in and manually tweaking areas between layers. It was fun, and actually a lot quicker than I had anticipated. It probably only took two hours, not including the search for free, usable textures.

Hazy, without you

I had to make up for icky-quality photos. XD

Silly boys

Some not-very-good pictures for you--but they're of foals being cute, so I figured the subject matter would make up for the bad quality (they were taken when my camera was not listening to me because it was confused about aperture).

The little guy with the wide white blaze here is Caspian, and he's quite the character despite his standing as the lowest rung of the herd. (If we had a million dollars for horses, we probably would have bought him when he was two days old, haha.)

The grayish filly is Isis (her nickname, actually--I don't know how to spell her full name), and she was the little girl who lost her mom not to long ago. It was hard on her--having her and her mom's stall all to herself, but she got through it. For a while she was turned out in the outdoor arena with one of the younger "ponies" for company, but now that the other three foals are weaned she can go out in the paddock with them. This went over *very* well with her. She now spends her days chasing the two colts around, particularly Caspian, who she chases and bites on the butt. It's very cute.

I'm ashamed to say that I forgot the other colt's name. It's on the tip of my tongue but I can't quite recall it. He's been quite the rockstar--as soon as I was out there with my camera he was fighting with Isis for Prime Spot (aka in my face). As Toler's masseur says, "this is myspace, not facebook." (Go ahead, say it out loud; you know it's going to be your favorite personal-bubble comeback.) XD

On the other hand, I guess the boys like facebook better.

No cure for medicine

A random title, I know. Just seemed like a "trippy" photo, so it might suit it? This is a shot taken with the "zone plate" optic installed in my lensbaby. I've hardly used it yet (successfully), mostly because it requires slow shutter speed which means I need to use my tripod. Considering I don't know what sort of shots I want to use it for yet, that means I've been pretty limited with my experimenting thus far. The other problem with it is that I have to make sure I have my backup battery with me--having the shutter open for a long time depletes the battery *very* rapidly. The last time I had everything set up, I was also using the "pinhole" option (same optic as zone plate, but with an aperture setting changed), which requires *SLOW* shutter--i.e. like 30-45 seconds if the light is fairly bright. So, between the two I got six photos taken before the battery I had in my camera died (I had already been using it the past week, so it wasn't fully charged any longer). So, I called it quits for the day.

Long story shorter: the zone plate optic acts a little like a pinhole. That is, it uses a very small aperture, which means depth of field is very big (close to infinity focus). Because of this, and the long shutter time, photos have a softness to them. They're in focus but shifted (unless the subject is moving at all, in which case it/they will be blurred), hazy. With the zone plate, it amplifies that haziness and bleeds light and color, creating a very atmospheric and moody image.

Put it simply: if pinhole photography were contemporary classical (think film) music, zone plate photography would be a Pure Moods CD. Okay, kind of a dodgy analogy, but I think you get the picture? ;)

I am really interested in the possibilities this will open up and I already have a few things in mind. I just have to get the setting right and figure out how best to do them. =)

I'll be at home

The first real snow of the year! Technically it did snow a week or so ago, but it was really wet mush flakes, so I didn't count it. It didn't collect on the ground at all, after all. But tonight, we got our first ground-covering snow. At least an inch of it!


So, me being me, I naturally grabbed my camera and rushed outside. Used my new lensbaby, of course. Though, I had a bit of trouble because the snow was falling onto my camera and leaving little wet "kisses" on the lens and screen, so focusing was nearly impossible. Plus I think I got a little steam on the camera at one point. But anyway. I like the mood of the shots. =)


I left the first and last with a little blue saturation, mainly to bring out the little blur of light more in the first image (a back porch light, actually), and the streaks of snow coming down were more pronounced with a bit of blue for the last one. For the middle, I desaturated mostly everything except for a bit of green, magenta, and a touch of yellow. (Essentially a modified version of the "aged photo" setting I like so much.

Now if only I could convince the Nissen (Norwegian house "gnomes") to do the shoveling tomorrow morning...

IntenseDebate Comments

Hey all,

Thanks to Magaly, over at Pagan Culture, I have switched over to IntenseDebate for my comments template. This means that now comments on my blog can be threaded. I can reply to people directly, and, if they want, they can choose to be alerted when I (or others) reply to their comment(s). This does mean, however, that you'll need to put in an email address and name (and your website, if you so choose) the first time you use it.

I'm hoping that this will encourage more comments and maybe even continue into threaded conversations.

If anyone needs help using IntenseDebate, let me know. If you need help using IntenseDebate for the first time, the easiest way to let me know would be to comment on a post older than this one (Give, Take, for instance) and CHECK BACK for my assistance. (Manually checking back yourself for my reply is the key, here.)

Thanks everyone for sticking with me! <3

Give, Take

This is officially my new favorite photo of mine. =) Taken with my new Lensbaby lens, of course. To take it, Toler had to put up with me moving around on his back with a camera (bareback, mind you). It was also a very educational experience: I learned that even though Toler is an unbelievably rational horse, I am *paranoid* about having my precious camera on my person while riding him. Haha, oh well. Toler probably prefers it that way anyway. ;)

No Ordinary Love

Toler and I had another good day today, though a little unexpectedly. I went out with the thought of long-lining him--that is, using long lines attached to the bit run through rings on a surcingle to school from the ground. The idea is that you use the lines much in the same manner as the reins when riding, without actually riding. (For my non-horsie blog readers, Equine Ink has a pretty good post about it, including photo and video.)

I haven't done long-lining with Toler in *years*--though, to be honest, I'm not sure we ever did it more than once. Judging by Toler's reaction to it all, I'd say definitely not. I attached the lines to the bit through the surcingle, took up my spot just off of his inside flank to start the circle, and Toler started spinning, effectively wrapping the lines around himself because I couldn't run around him fast enough (or get him to stop, for that matter, mostly because I was laughing too hard). When he finally stopped--he couldn't move, after all--he looked at me with these big, pouting puppy-dog eyes.

I thought, well, that's okay, we'll just start on the rail and maybe it'll be easier for him to figure out. So, I let the lines drag as I led him over to the arena wall, positioned him next to it, and tried again. This time, he started to spin, hit the wall, then started wriggling every muscle in his body, truly perplexed.

It took us at least ten minutes of fussing and constant reassurance (on my part) until he got it figured out that I would just walk behind him and use the reins to steer. At that point, I had already decided to take it really easy and just ground-drive around the arena. Not even one lap around, and Toler had it all figured out--and I could tell the exact second revelation came to him. There was this big sigh, then he stretched out his neck into the contact, and responded perfectly to the slightest of cues and voice commands. It was a lot of fun. We trotted some, did some halt exercises, then worked on turning and figure-eights. I might even go so far as to say that my little moose would make a great combined driving horse. *wonders if they make those carts big enough*