You don't have to walk for miles

This post is for Travis.

It's harder to do it alone.

You do not have to be good

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles in the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

-M. Oliver

Feather and Cap

My Dad's workshop. That tumbler in background is what my Dad calls "three fingers...," as in, how warm do I want my belly to get while I craft a series of custom feather sets for the hat I bought my brother for his birthday. 

I did feather sets for "every day," "traditional" and "an occasion." The "occasion" set (left) had a longer turkey feather tied in that was died purple. Using real feathers helped appearance and movement. When they are lifted by the wind, real materials just look more pimp.

I used feathers from an outdoor sports place for fly tying. Quail, duck, turkey, pheasant, goose and so on. Awesome shopping experience. Once they get taken out of their perfectly fanned pattern, they're tough to get back into a natural form....but worth it.

Fun fun fun til Daddy takes the polish vodka away....I have left overs if anyone wants to try this.

Old Faithful

While I was home this Christmas, I set up my mother's bible near the bay window in the living room to photograph it. She explains that I tore this page while she was nursing me. Genesis. Sigh. If she was only reading Revelations.

The pages are separating from it's disintegrating spine despite layers of scotch tape carefully creased with perfectly painted fingernails. 

They want to know exactly what God means. I have questions about this but they don't come out of my mouth softly like I want them to.

During a phone interview last week at work, I spoke with a Rotary Cadre member we are profiling for a project in Panama. He said after our shoot, he's staying on a few days to take some pictures. He explains that he speaks the language and knows the people in town so it's easier for him to get access...go into homes and get to know people. Even if he's not connecting or sharing meaning, he can at least get what he needs. This is how I feel photographing these pages.

I was surprised to see how may of these books were marked. How can the onion skin pages hold up under such stress? The tiny writing and highlighting and underlining and white out with the more-right idea on top. The coffee stains and some pages completely missing or torn out by a nursing child. The pages could be yellowed by time or Virginia Slim menthol light 100's or both. How to know history exactly? I try to read her writing. I look very close and squint. I wonder what she is thinking so seriously about. Maybe if the word "and" really means "with" in this particular case and how that changes everything.

One of my new years resolutions is for more questions to come out of my mouth. Easy girl. Softer now.

Boom Boom Boom = Merry Christmas!

We did gift exchange on Christmas Eve this year leaving Christmas day free for target shooting. We collected empty bottles, filled them with water and drove out to Jacob's auto shop out in Oshtemo township.

My younger brother John Daniel.

A 30-30 Marlin, the classic cowboy. A handsome rifle. This is my favorite of the lot. Easy to shoot and reload. I think the chamber took 10 bullets...a pretty good run if you feel like taking it.

I like this rifle because it's accurate. Dan advises to aim low.

Nails it.

Dan atomizes a Tide bottle full of water. The bottle was empty when we filled it with water, but we could smell the detergent from 30 yards back when he shot it.

The 410. Also a Marlin, I think. This rifle is nice. It's not the .30-30, but It doesn't knock me around like a 12 gauge would. The .22 even hurts. But, the 410's shells' spray quickly so it wasn't a good fit for me target shooting unless someone was throwing 12 water balloons in the air.

 "Every day, in some way, I think of you."

My hands are cold and, if I remember correctly, the break lever is sticking a bit here. 

I would have liked to have the 80-200 mm lens out here. Would've been nice to have some continuous shutter shots of different water bottles exploding to see how different ammunition effects the targets.

My brother loads a clip for a Tech 9 my Dad bought back in the mid-nineties when the senate passed a bill to make these illegal to own. The bill has since expired and they are completely legal, but not that fun to shoot. Most importantly, there is no way to tell where the bullets are going. It's hella expensive. You can go through a clip (I think this one held 35 9mm slugs) in less than 20 seconds. In fact, I'm a little ashamed to have shot this firearm after realizing there is only one reason someone has this thing other that to show off and that's to spray a moving target no matter how fast it's moving as long as it's pointed in it's general direction. I think you can take the pin out of this firearm to make it fully automatic, or you can bump fire which we did not try for fear of loosing a belt loop or a thumb. Better to do with a piece of wood or board as a brace.

 

Hope you got a chance to blow off some steam like we did! 

Come out Come out, Wherever You Are

Somewhere between Seelye Lake and Flathead Lake, Montana.

I ran into an old friend the other night at The Burlington. We flew through the small talk and got straight to best practices for tracking someone who doesn't want to be found. Since he's from Montana and his dad is a bailbondsman there, I thought he might have some advice. He told a couple stories about tagging along with his Dad and gave me some ideas. Thanks Buddy. I'm on to something.

Wolfgang and Gertrude

I love my place. Its a steal. It would have to be to put up with my stanky pit, grouchity ole prickle pen of a landlord, Wolfgang Buhler. The day I moved in, he took down my wind chimes and just said "noise pollution." He also called me 'thunderfoot' in a behind-my-back-in-front-of my-face kind of way claiming I sounded like a "herd of cattle," going up and down the steps. You name it, I did it, and he complained about it. I left the gate open and dropped "unmentionables" on the stairs coming up from doing laundry in the basement. I left my back porch lights on all night and put a lot of trash out the day after garbage day. One day, I locked myself out of the house and he let me sit up there for 15 minutes like he wasn't gonna help me because I was so stupid for doing that. He had just replaced my back window because I locked myself out and threw a brick through my back door.
But.... eventually we shoveled sidewalks together, dug each others cars out of the snow, split girl scout cookie orders and reminded each other about street cleaning and snow plowing. Wolfgang even offered to move my car when I traveled because sometimes you get a ticket when your car stays in one place too long. If there's one thing Wolfgang hated more than me, it was the Man. When I rolled my bike out this spring, he replaced both my tubes and filled them with air. This summer, I brought him heirloom transplants from my Dad's garden. In return, he showed me a perfectly restored 35 mm Leica that his brother used in WWII as a journalist. I was so impressed. Then, he asked if I wanted a beer. I am voting this my best beer of the year.

Just The Way You Are

I got commissioned to shoot the last of my Polaroid film, a project inspired by my good friend Tony. Although most of original ingredients in the Polaroid emulsion can no longer be found, the impossible project is underway, hoping to keep instant in our lives minus digital. There are already some adorable products on the market like the Fuji Instax = so fun. The Polaroids posted here are peel-aparts shot on a 2 1/4 format camera. True to magic, they don't have to beg for acceptance no matter how they turn out including chemical streaks, light leaks, faulty peels, thumbprints, dust, and temperature variations. At first, I didn't like that the exposure on the 2 1/4 format left a black strip along the side. I once bought a couple of dark slides on ebay hoping to have a friend custom cut an aperture out of the slide and force the negative to expose in an even all around square. But, once the slide was cut, it was too flimsy to insert into the back of the camera. We tossed them. My ambitious attempt to control the outcome failed and I was back having to accept things as they are. Ultimately a good exercise for too-fast-for-love never-satisfied me. Instead, I shoot where the light spills in through a large window for 10 feet before fading to black, making the otherwise black strip invisible.

Will Post Soon

Car blew up on the highway, wallet stolen, home improvement and a job that won't quit. I miss you. Will post soon.