Easter Sunday

My sister hosted Easter dinner this year. The kids were too busy zooming around in the mud to have their photos taken. Plastic eggs with change and candy are way more important. Way.

Nate took a 20 second breather (pictured above), and his cousin Mya showed me her spoils (she had the most eggs until she started winging them back into the grass). She doesn't dig on sweet tarts, you see. She has a good arm, though. I think Mya was in it for the cash and chocolate.


Very proud of her eggy gains.


Hunting eggs is very serious business.

First Model

I began to photograph Danielle when she was about 8 years old, and I was in Introduction to Photography at NKU. She, her friends, and my other nieces became my primary models for the next couple of years.

Regrettably, I stopped photographing her for most of her teen years. I missed a lot of changes in my break from photography, but with the new camera, I'm really looking forward to a revitalization of my passion for images.

Danielle is 18 this year, and has begun a collection of tattoos.

I hope to work in portraits again, to go back to the form of photography I loved so much as an undergrad.

I plan to continue the work I started as an undergrad with bodies, and I'm looking at doing a series on the way our bodies change over time, and the way scars mark us.

Pinholes

Momo & Paco : Pinhole Mode
Originally uploaded by nicciwashere

Shot with a Lumix LX5 in pinhole mode.

Momo likes to twitch his nose and spin away from the camera, and Paco likes to get bossy and grin. Their personalities are so different most of the time—Momo's the snuggler, and Paco's the shy one who only bosses when you don't let him into the room with you. Or when he wants food. This is his "put that away and take me inside and feed me, woman" face.

The Lumix pinhole mode seems to shoot flat images in open shade. I'll have to try it in other lighting conditions. This image has some level work done in iPhoto. (Deepened shadows and mid range for higher contrast. I brought the whites up a hair.) The wide format is going to take some getting used to. I'm still in Holga square mode in my head...

but it's good to have a camera again.

Lumix

Spike is doing well a few weeks after his surgery (what we've come to call the "mister sister" event). He's perked up, getting into trouble, knocking things over, and teasing the dogs. Business as usual. His fur's even started growing back in.

Shot with the new Lumix on auto settings in a yellow room with tungsten bulbs. It could use a color balance when I get the software loaded onto the new computer. Or I could just suck it up and read the manual to learn all the menu functions and do that in camera.

I'm loving this little point and shoot so far. Spike's got his eye on it too. He likes things with dangly straps.

T

devotion.jpg
Originally uploaded by nicciwashere
In 2005, I met a lot of good people. One of the most giving I know has been in critical care for a couple of weeks. She's been stable for about a week, and has a few hard surgeries ahead of her. Her body is changing every day from the trauma of surgery and recovery in tiny little steps. She is surrounded by loved ones, and people who can't be there think of her and her partner. I'm thinking of them now. I decided to post a photo of them (my favorite in the series) so that you can think of them too.

Thinking about her has made me consider bodies and how we live in them. How they change with us and we with them. How people I know have survived treatments, scars, trauma, love, decades, and how they're marked.

I think this is a subject worthy of picking up again. I'd like to continue this series. I hope to photograph T again, and for that to happen, she has to recover, which is just a pretty great thing in itself. In hoping to photograph her again, I get to hope for her full recovery, without always bringing up her current situation. I want to focus on the positive, no photo puns intended. I hope you will too. Positive energy welcome, be that in the form if lit candles, prayer, smiles, or ass pinches. (Not mine, please.)

One Way Do Not Enter

oneway
Originally uploaded by nicciwashere

It's a beautiful day in Mt. Adams (all over the city, really), because the sun's out, the sky's blue, and all of the flowering trees are in bloom. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, so the little tornadoes of white flower petals swirling across the blacktop might not mesmerize anyone else, but I found them just as interesting as the artwork inside the museum.

21C artworks are on display at the moment. The contemporary works are reportedly on loan to the museum until the new facility (hotel, restaurant?) opens here. There's one in Louisville (http://www.21chotel.com/hotel/default.aspx). What's cooler than a hotel with loads of contemporary art? A hotel with a giant water slide, sure. But contemporary art comes in at a close second.

Our assignment for today was to visit the museum (thanks for the docent tour!) and ponder the art, then write an ekphrastic poem. (That is a poem after a work of art, the experience of viewing a work of art, etc.) No poems yet, but I did take some photos inside and out.

I was most amused by the ONE WAY DO NOT ENTER sign in front of the art museum. (So much so that I feel a poem coming on...)

Helpful tips for museum visitors: No monopods OR tripods in the galleries. Woops. I guess someone must have whacked a piece of art at some point... aaand you're not supposed to snap images of work outside of the permanent collection. >.> Also, no fondling or licking the art.

If you go, be sure to check out fat Batman, the creepy breathing piece, the small gallery behind the FAME neon sign (blinding, ouch), and read the art info next to the giant encaustic (wax painting) of Obama's head. It's from a series of works made from Wall Street Journal thumbnail images, but done huge. That's the piece I really wanted to touch, but a docent was watching me, sooo. I behaved.

Mostly.

Did anyone else think the assemblage of re-purposed bottle bits (3rd floor) looked a lot like a drape from a Klimt painting?

Related links:
Cincinnati Art Museum: the museum's website & visitor information.
More on Ekphrastic foo: to Wikipedia, son!
21C Louisville: a hotel/art gallery in KY.

sun stain

sun stain
Originally uploaded by nicciwashere

the roomie's Nikon Coolpix L3 isn't the greatest little camera in the world, but it gets the job done every now and then. =) the light was so beautiful yesterday, i pulled it out to take a few snaps...

and then i learned to do diptychs in Adobe's Lightroom (thanks to Jay: http://www.jaywatson.com/blog/tag/diptych/).

it took about 90 photos to get a couple snaps of the puppies that are more or less in focus. they're not big on sitting still. those snaps will pop up later.

<3

Reflection in Pink House

Reflection in Pink House
Originally uploaded by nicciwashere

found this pic from Savannah while cleaning off an old point-and-shoot digital camera. the house across the way was pink. yes, that is a house. someone painted it that color by choice. lovely view of a wall, don't you think?

our neighbor liked to walk around naked a lot, so working in my studio midday could be extra entertaining (our windows faced each other from there). nobody was willing to spring for blinds. rent, in Sav, is outrageous. we don't need no stinkin' blinds.

mixed media hands

mixed media creative hand - wear your heart
Originally uploaded by nicciwashere

a hand made from cardstock, layers of tape, gesso, acrylic paint, watercolors (transparent), prismacolor pencils, & india ink (dip pen).
life size hand.

from a series of 10.