Blog Archives
it’s in the details
An architectural detail on the Administration building at Texas Tech. Although I’ve been on campus a lot of times (except for those two semesters when I was enrolled but sort of…wasn’t there…all that much) I never noticed these details.
Maybe the message here is GO TO CLASS WHEN YOU’RE A FRESHMAN. (I feel obligated to add that, since my granddaughter will shortly be a college freshman.)
But really, I think I turned out OK anyway, and I feel like up to maybe three* of my friends who agree that skipping classes that awful year didn’t really hold me back that much in life.
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 5.9.2025
*Maybe four. But probably three is a more solid estimate.
circle + square x three
If I have to claim a photographic goal for the year, I guess it would be to be less literal.
Or to stop trying to focus.
Or maybe those are the same goal, just differently stated?
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 5.9.2025
home, reduced
This old farmhouse had been reduced. Not in the real estate way of a price reduction for a quick sale, but more in the “push all a’ that house up in a pile and Herschel or one a’ them’s gonna come by an’ burn it. Once that dad-blame wind stops.”
Posey, Texas
photographed 5.11.2025
Old Silver
A lot of things came together here.
Part One
My collection of mismatched silverware was inspired by the Tom Robbins novel Skinny Legs and All, where one of the characters is a silver spoon. My friend Carlos and I found an exceptionally beautiful – though tarnished – silver soup spoon at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store in Austin, and my description of our finding and later polishing it ended up in a poem that my friend Laurie Wagner Buyer wrote*. At the time (1998-ish), Laurie was encouraging me to find my voice as a poet. I was trying to ignore her, but when I read how she’d spun a simple story about tarnish, a spoon, and silver polish into a beautiful poem, I decided to give it a go.
Part Two
Two Christmases ago, my patient spouse gave me a LensBaby Sweet 50 lens. I tried it a few times, but wasn’t happy with the results. Too much of the shots were out of focus. Or out of focus in a way I didn’t like. Or something.
Part Three
My photography has evolved a little over the past two years.
Part Four
I’m still off work, rehabbing that new knee I got last month. It’s been more of a struggle than I’d anticipated, both mentally and physically. On Tuesday, my physical therapist told me to go home and get out my camera and do ME.
Part Five
So I did what he said. I saw the LensBaby in the drawer and decided to see what I could do. And I saw that collection of mismatched silverware, inspired by the book, which inspired a poem.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 1.12.2017
*That poem, also titled “Old Silver,” is in her book Red Colt Canyon. And for those of you keeping score at home, she’s the same poet (now known as Laurie Jameson) whose daily haiku comments inspired me to start my blog The Poetry Photography. I can’t imagine where I’d be without her influence.
One Day | One Image 