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West Texas, a sense of place
I am happy to announce that my photograph “Why Travel the Stars” has been accepted into “West Texas, a sense of place,” a show sponsored by the Texas Photographic Society and Odessa College. The show will have 36 images, from 24 photographers.
The show will open on November 4 at the Options Gallery at Odessa College, which is (this part is complicated) in Odessa, Texas. Stop by, if you’re in the area.
“Why Travel the Stars”
Marathon, Texas
photographed 11.12.2011
I can’t add a thing
Words – I just don’t have any.*
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 10.6.2013
* I know, right? No one saw this coming.
Somewhere, apparently, there are watermelons
Somewhere, off to the right, it looks as though yellow meat watermelons are for sale.
I’m going to be honest: after I saw this sign, I made two u-turns to get back to this corner. I drove up one street and down another one and never did see any watermelons. I saw concrete pipe sections, and a grain elevator, and some metal stuff, but no watermelon. Which is sort of a shame: yellow watermelon’s my favorite.
Now that I think about it, maybe I assumed too much. That sign doesn’t actually say the melons are for sale. It just announces their presence somewhere, just letting us know that over there, to the right, someone’s got a melon or two in the refrigerator. Good to know.
But I’m glad I don’t have to post a sign announcing the contents of my refrigerator. Because it would have to say “Scary-looking leftovers”.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 10.6.2013
The bypass did
The highway used to go through town. But now there’s a bypass and all the traffic heading south toward Lamesa or San Angelo or north to Lubbock just goes right by, at 75 miles per hour. At the very north end of town, and almost literally in the shadow of the first bypass overpass, an abandoned restaurant has spent the past couple of decades trying to fade away.
It hasn’t. Yet. But I feel like it will eventually be successful in that endeavor.
Tahoka, Texas
photographed 10.6.2013
Driving through
I was bored the other Sunday afternoon, sort of not feeling the photography to the extent that I like (and need, honestly, to keep up with a daily blog). So I did what any reasonable in-a-funk photographer would do. I drove down to Tahoka; I had high hopes. After all, Tahoka is the home of the famed prairie aster known as the Tahoka daisy. And I took this photograph there. And, it’s part of my family’s inside joke – when my Uncle Dan was leaving Lubbock to head south to his ranch, about a five hour drive away, he’d phone up and let us know that he was leaving and, he always said, he’d “drive through to Tahoka” the first day of the trip. (Tahoka’s thirty minutes from here.) I can’t even think about going there without remembering Uncle Dan.
So, anyway, I drove through to Tahoka. It was one of the first cool days of fall, and the sky was perfectly blue. And you know what a perfectly blue sky becomes when the photograph is black and white….
Tahoka, Texas
photographed 10.6.2013
