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road ends
I have a book called Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours*. It was published in 1821, and written by Patrick Syme, who’s described as a flower-painter, which sounds like a pretty good job. If you like flowers. And can paint. And don’t need, you know, money or anything.
It snowed the other day so I went out to get some photos. The thing I noticed mostly was how much orange will stand out in a mostly-monochromatic field of colors; almost all of the photos have a spot of orange in them.
And this is where the book and the photos intersect: just for fun, I’m going to match the various oranges that I photographed with descriptions from the book.
This one seems to be most similar to Colour 77 – Buff Orange. The book says buff orange is sienna yellow, with a little Dutch Orange, and adds that is it similar to the “Streak from the Eye of the King Fisher.”
the snow day series
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 1.24.2026
*The full title is Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, with additions, arranged so as to render it highly useful to the ARTS AND SCIENCES, particularly Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Morbid Anatomy, annexed to which are examples selected from well-known objects in the ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, AND MINERAL KINGDOMS. Title just rolls right off your tongue. Eventually.
snow/angel
I’ve photographed this roadside memorial before, but not with heavy snow falling on the crosses which commemorate the deaths of two people. I’m not used to snow or to photographing it (after all, I do live in Texas) but the symbolism of it – of life and death, of purification, of transformation – has not escaped my attention. And it did not escape my camera.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 1.24.2023
the day the angel got cold feet
This statue, at the cemetery, is one of my frequent subjects. You may remember it from an intentional camera movement experiment a half-year ago. Or maybe you recall the time I photographed her sky-facing face?
Anyway, that day it snowed, I went back to see her again and this time her icy toes caught my eye.
City of Lubbock Cemetery
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 1.24.2023
ice + snow
Maybe you remember yesterday’s post, where I mentioned shooting some concept photos to illustrate the theme “cold” because it wasn’t actually cold here during the time I needed to shoot the images for the assignment.
One of the themes I attempted was shooting images of ice machines. And I have to say that getting an ice machine photo that included snowflakes was a lot stronger way to illustrate the theme than the crap I’d been working on. FYI.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 1.24.2023
light giving way to darkness
So what happened was that I signed up for an online photography class with a theme of “cold.” Most of the participants, I figured, would be from New England and have actual cold to photograph. I decided the challenge of shooting images on the theme of cold in a mild Texas winter was something I was up for. I spend the two week time that we had to make our images shooting concepts of cold, rather than actual cold. Honestly, while the images themselves were OK, as concepts to illustrate the theme, they were…what’s the term I’m looking for here?…weak. They were weak. They were weak in the extreme.
And then, the very day that we were supposed to turn in our three images for a critique, I woke to actual cold, actual still-falling snow. And I re-shot the assignment.
This is an abandoned cotton gin. I mean, at this time of year, they are all abandoned because the ginning season is over, but this one seems to be permanently abandoned.
Lubbock County, Texas
photographed 1.24.2023
One Day | One Image 