As usual, I was a late-comer…still trying to juggle a dozen things at one time on a Saturday morning. I FINALLY get there and get ready to shoot my first shot and realize I don’t have a CF card in the camera…they’re all at home sitting on top of my laptop. Thank GAWD I set my camera to NOT shoot withOUT a CF card. Otherwise, I might have spent all day in the rain and ended up with NOTHING at all to show for it.

Because of all my running around during the earliest part of the rodeo, I missed some of the best events and without a doubt, the best weather for shooting action shots with my slow lens. I’ve got a good range, good quality lens that zooms from 70-300mm, BUT, it’s a sloooow 4-5.6 aperture range…just 5.6 at 300mm. I haven’t gotten famous enough yet to justify an expenditure of $4,000+ for a FAST 300mm lens. I might have better luck holding out for that lottery win I’ve got coming my way.

Soooo, all that said, once the sky turned quite dark and drab and the rain started coming down, my film speed of 800, shutter speed of 500 (which was as high as I could go because I have a SLOOOOW lens) and f5.6 aperture just wasn’t cutting it for good stop-action shots. I can set my film speed anywhere from 100-3200 but the catch to that is noise from HELL, even with the noise reduction function turned on. I did somehow manage to get 1 or 2 reasonably acceptable action shots in the rain (though not quite sure how that happened). Truth is, it’s hard to tell if my slow lens was to blame, or whether SOME of the crappy shots might have been due the fact that I still get so excited about getting a shot at times, that I jerk the camera when I shoot…I’d rather just blame the lens.

Tomorrow is another day. Weather reports promise rain will be gone by the time the rodeo starts tomorrow. At least it won’t be DUSTY like it was today before the rain. (That’s right, I just CAN’T BE PLEASED!) The action shots I got BEFORE the rain looked like they were shot in a fog because of the dust. (As you might have noticed, the bad shot is NEVER my fault.)

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NOW we KNOW what Santa does in the off season…

Rising costs have affected us all. Apparently, even the North Pole is not exempt from the financial hardships of modern times. It was once speculated that Santa spent the off season basking in the warm Caribbean sun, but who can afford leisure and recreation in such perilous times as these?

I met this jolly old gentleman at a roadside produce stand tucked away on a winding mountain road on our way to Caesar’s Head State Park back in the fall. He kindly posed for several shots of himself and his goods – various and assorted homemade ciders, pickled goods and homegrown canned goods. The prices were a bit steep but who wouldn’t figure a donation to the Santa Claus enterprise to be a worthy cause? And if THIS ain’t Santa Claus, then Virginia…there really AIN’T no Santa Claus!

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I have a thing for old antique trucks. I discovered this particular treasure in the spring of 2009 on a trip from South Carolina to Indiana with a good friend. We had stopped at a Quick Mart in North Carolina for a fill-up, a bathroom stop and some travel snacks and I spotted this truck parked in an abandoned parking lot across the road. Because of it’s positioning and proximity to the highway, I had difficulty getting every angle I would have liked, but I shot as many as I could.

After returning home and browsing through my shots from the trip, I wanted to do something nice with one of the several I got of Karen’s favorite overlook on Skyline Drive in her hometown of Seymore, Indiana. Only a couple were even acceptably good, but the best of those were still in the ‘snapshot’ category…nothing really noteworthy.

Contemplating ways I might improve upon the mediocre scenic shots and somehow make at least ONE of them ‘special,’ I started playing around with positioning some cuts of the NC truck (a FABULOUS subject trapped in the horrible background of an abandoned parking lot) and came up with the perfect picture. This turned out to be one of those pics that you can almost see yourself in…smell the grass, feel the summer breeze in your hair, hear the birds, FEEL the history in the presence of the old truck and the past it bears witness to.

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Sometimes, things just don’t work the way they’re supposed to.

I shot this scene in the garden of an acquaintance. It seemed worthy of recording, since you don’t come across too many scarecrows with a beer in hand. But then, if all you had to do day in and day out was stand in a field in all manner of weather and scare away birds, I guess an altered state of consciousness COULD be somewhat useful.

I confess to having added the crow. Bob told me that the scarecrow was mostly for looks, as he had, on numerous occasion seen crows and other assorted fowl perch upon this novelty. Even though I was not fortunate enough to witness said hilarity, I am NOT without my own means to create my OWN Kodak moment.

I had a great image of one of the MANY crows that live near my own small farm, but the setting was quite uninteresting. I had this interesting shot of Bob’s garden scarecrow…quite unique in itself, but it too, still lacking SOMEthing. Hmmmm…

In the original shot of the scarecrow, I had failed to use an effective depth of field that would make the focal point (the scarecrow) stand out, so the busy background was distracting. I used a number of layer techniques, filters and effects to try to bring a more effective focal point back to the scarecrow and her pet. Here’s the final result. Won’t likely win any contests, but I thought it rather cute in depicting one of the many ironies of life.

Disclaimer: By the time you get to the end of this post, you may be wondering what on earth a rural roadside fire hydrant has to do with the subject of this post. Absolutely NOTHING. I just could not for the life of me think of anything creative or clever to post on the subject of a rural roadside fire hydrant, or why I find it to be such an appealing subject for a picture. I just do, okay?

Now, with THAT question out of the way…does anyone remember that old song by ZZ Top (does anyone even remember that BAND?!) called something like “You Got Me Under Pressure!”?

So I’ve got a website up and actually functioning now…putting into practice (while still learning) tactics I’ve learned about networking and SEO stuff and marketing and all that gibberish. The uncomfortable thing about all this is that as my audience grows…if I don’t come up with something palatable to DELIVER, if I don’t pay attention to spelling and grammar, and all those other irritatingly significant details…I could very well LOSE them. So now, I’m under pressure.

Pressure is a peculiar thing. It seldom FEELS good to the one it’s being applied to. But then, if intimidating demands are never made, would we ever grow, improve, learn, stretch ourselves and sometimes even discover that we can go BEYOND what we thought we could do?

Everyone has their strong points and their weak points. Me? I have a tendency to start many things but follow through with few. I blame it on attention deficit disorder seasoned with a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder. I have many interests in many things and so tend to be shamefully easily distracted. When intensely focused on one thing, I lean toward neglecting other needful things. Perhaps DISORDERS is a wrong way to look at such personal ‘issues’…I propose that it may be better to view such things as CHALLENGES, designed specifically for our uniquely individual personalities to bring out the best in us, when we dare to face them and with diligence, learn to not only master our weaknesses but learn to USE them, much as the body builder uses resistance to reshape his body.

Seven years ago, I joined a blogging community called Mindsay. It was here that I discovered a surprisingly unexpected ability to share the mundane events of my everyday life in words and pictures in such a way as to bring immense entertainment to others…to share joy and contentment and stir fond memories. I gained a following of some most incredible people. Sadly, the pressures and demands of everyday life began to overwhelm me and I spent less and less time nurturing my gift. For those who cared enough to miss my absence, forgive me. I now recognize this as my niche, a gift and an endeavor for which I was meant to pursue. I want to reactivate it, nurture it, develop it, and even more importantly, share it with whoever may be hungry for it.

Sojo is back. My gift is no longer a play thing or experiment, it’s a commitment. It’s what I’m meant to do. BUT…it’s got me under pressure.

(Click on the preview above to pull up a full view of the picture.)

I got this shot while on one of my photo expeditions (affectionately called ‘photo hunts’) with my friend, Karen Osborne. We had just left a tour of the Poinsette Bridge and took a wrong turn, but a wrong turn with some fantastic country views. We eventually reluctantly turned back for fear we might end up in the middle of NOwhere without sufficient gas to find SOMEwhere, but not before stopping on the side of the road to get some shots of this country farmstead on the side of the road. It was a great shot without much editing, but I was in a playful mood. I started making adjustments, applying filters…quite honestly I lost track of what I was doing…I was just sort of going with the flow. Ended up with the great picture with loads of atmosphere, and even a bit of an infrared effect. Another one of my famous ‘accidental’ strokes of genius.

I’ve looked for this farm in the same vicinity on several subsequent trips to the bridge but have yet to find it. Maybe it was all in our imagination…

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My granddaughter, Keyana, brings one of my horses, Odessa, in from the pasture for the evening. At the time, my pasture was fenced off from the barnyard. We had a much lusher stand of grass then than now and my skinny mini mare, Odessa, was allowed more time on the grass than my fat appy mare, Sugar…we had to lead both back to the barn and barnyard each evening.

In reality, the background scene in the actual shot was our big ugly gas tank beside the house, a peek at Kendall’s lanky legs on the other side of Dessa and a nice view of a ginormous pile of lumber and brush that remained at the center of the pasture after the property had been cleared for the pasture. I eliminated these distracting details and added the more nostalgic scenery of the corner of Cudd Drive, across from where my friend Wilma Howell lives. Voila, a down-home scene from just another lazy day in the country.

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I was attending a rodeo at the C-C ranch in my community. The C-C is a working cattle ranch run by a working cowboy, Jack Cudd, who lives here with his beloved Wilma…a remarkable lady whom I most honored to call my friend. Wilma’s yard is an ever-changing picture of down-home rural landscaping.

After taking some action shots at the rodeo, I was walking back to the Cudd yard to get some still life shots of Wilma’s landscaping. This old antique saddle was on the railing of a fence Wilma had erected on the corner. It’s not there anymore…not sure whatever happened to it. Exposure to the weather probably eventually reduced it to mere rubble. But thanks to my passion for old, forgotten things, it is now immortalized as an Artwerk by Donna.

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Soooo, here we are, a fully functioning website complete with a contact form and search feature, both of which actually WORK…er, wErk (I KNOW they work, I’ve already contacted and searched myself). It’s colorful and pretty and flashy and all that good stuff. Now, I have my own place of the worldwide web. Now I’m important. Now I’m SOMEbody. I feel a little like Steve Martin’s character in the movie, The Jerk, the first time he saw his name in a phone book…

(Click on the preview above to pull up a full view of the picture.)