Wapiti Update

IMG_6206 IMG_6242[Saint Wapiti Rings and Necklace :: sterling silver and 14 karat gold :: Patron Saint of the high country.  May the mountain always rise up to meet you.]

Hey honey bunnies.  I’m trying my best to manifest a shop update for you tomorrow, despite a handful of small but pesky natural disasters that happened in home and life here over the past two days!  I am aiming for an update time of noon, mountain time, and will let you know if that changes at all between now and then.

Also, entering the shop today will be the STAY CONNECTED POSTCARD PACK — some of you have had the patience of holy people and have been asking for a while for a new little pack of images.  Here they are.  It’s a fairly limited run with four cards in each pack, as well as one extra card (which has been my tradition for years now) of my choosing as a little surprise for you.

A little about the image selection for this pack of postcards:

Oh, it’s always so hard to choose.

The photos featured in this postcard pack aren’t anything different than the photos I usually take except they were shot with the intention of showing effortless connection to the elements.  These are self-portraits, usually partial body crops, but always, the elements are present:  earth, fire, wind and water.  Or off shoots of the elements are present, for example, objects that are carried on the wind, stone turned to dust, flowers that eat the sun…etc.  What causes these self-portraits to be specifically elemental in nature, for me as the photographer, is that when I decided to take these photographs, I felt seamlessly interwoven with the mountain, land, wind, sun, lake or river I found myself beside or on or in.  I felt connected enough, to Creation, that the hum of my own molecules was in tune with the singing of the stones, the chanting of the waters, the alleluias of the sunbeams and the arias of the wind.  I was one with it all.  Connected.  I made a tangible memory of the moment with my camera.  I try to do this all the time, but there are moments when I feel it more deeply — these photographs were taken in those moments.

I realized something about myself last summer, I even shared it with a friend or two by letter once I realized the significance of the act,  I need those moments wherein I lay myself down on the ground beneath the trees or drape my skinny bones over the river cobble and dip my finger tips in the whitewater…I need to press as much of my surface area up against the dirt of the world, feel the sky press down on me, the sun warm me through and the river lick at my hands.   It undoes what needs undoing in me, it rebuilds what needs rebuilding in me, I think I hear the Spirit of God moving over me as it moved over the dark waters in the very beginning.  I can feel the good and bad in me separate like oil and water, and then I think I feel the bad being stripped away leaving me shining and new and ready to begin again.  It is an act that is redemptive by nature, for me.

I never set out to lay around in the dirt under trees or alongside a river in an intentional way, it’s always felt like an intuitive act — I do it when I feel moved to do it.  This is generally my approach to life and work — I do things as I am led to do them.  I make things as I am led to make them.  I rarely try to control the process, it makes for a lot of mess and some seriously scattered work at times but by now, I know enough about who I am to simply go with it.  A lot of beauty eventually stems out of the chaos and those are some of the greatest moments of my creative life.  When I take the time to lay on my back, walk to the very top, collect the tiny things and really feel it all I don’t do it because I think it’s going to take a good photograph that might get me some attention, but because it’s a way for me to be consumed by an environment, to close my mind off to needless chatter and purely focus on my senses, to ask what changes I need to make in my heart in order to belong even more to the holy places, to listen and to hear, to be taken in by it all, made one with it all, cell by cell, matched in newness and decay with the world, one more piece of creation under the mighty wing of God, joyfully singing His praise, lifting my voice to blend in infinite harmony with a beautiful world.  The stars sing soprano; they pour the high notes forth like raw silver.

I’ve written about it before.  And I’ll write about it again.

This is the place these images stem from, I just wanted you to know.  Now if you see me in such a photograph, you know it is no dramatic contrivance made immortal by my camera lens and shutter, but a genuine, private moment — remembered by my camera and shared in trust.

And so, I stay connected.

I stay connected.

IMG_6263

Storm Chaser

IMG_5321
IMG_5244 IMG_5261IMG_5319IMG_5332 IMG_5329IMG_5334 IMG_5339 IMG_5345IMG_5364IMG_5370M and I had just finished a dinner of tacos, salad and a pair of crazy delicious cocktails and were walking around Taos in the night when it began to storm.  I stopped where I was, whipped out my camera and began to try catch the eerie light of the clouds flickering with lightning.  Between shots I heard myself oohing and aching and finally I said to M, “Let’s chase it!

We hopped in the car, drove towards the storm and wound up somewhere outside of Taos.  I set up my tripod and camera and got to work figuring out my focal point, shutter speed, aperture…  The wind came up.  It began to rain.  And still we stayed out there trying to set up a photograph.

I usually try not to post images that are too similar, I try to be a good editor that way, but I decided to put up a smattering of similar shots in this post so you can see how crazy different the light was depending on where my shutter was able to catch a lightning strike — the luminance is so different in each image here, as well as the colors!  That incredible violet hue in some of these shots is not something I pulled out during editing processes!  Unreal, right?

I love these photos and this was probably my favorite photographic pursuit on this entire trip.  At some point, the rain turned to hail and I had to fold everything up quick and run for the car.  We sat there in the dark, listening to the ice pummel the rag top of the convertible, wondering if we would survive or be tornado-ed off to another dimension.  It was great; an evening that won’t be forgotten.

With that said, my New Mexico posts are officially finished!  Thanks for coming along for the ride!

X

 

 

Good Ol’ Boys

IMG_8952 IMG_8955 IMG_8924IMG_8935

Rounding Up The Strays

IMG_5215

IMG_3579elk good IMG_3587elk good IMG_3618elk good IMG_3656elk goodIMG_3694 IMG_5583 IMG_5745

IMG_6130 IMG_5753 IMG_6155 IMG_6452 IMG_6474 IMG_5651

IMG_6306IMG_6000 IMG_5670 IMG_5733 IMG_5898

IMG_6491Hello, friends, and happy Monday to you!  I combed through the archives this morning to round up a handful of strays — images that never made it to the blog, that is!  We had a lovely dumping of snow here yesterday and I’m headed out with the dogs to skijor for most of the day.  It’s my main priority today and it’s about time.  I have a serious case of cabin fever even though I’ve been out on the mountain every single night for the past 31 days!  Let me tell you first hand, March came in like a lion and went out like a lion.  I’ve loved all the roaring!

I’ll be downshifting in the studio over the next few days as I have run my metal supply down to the nubs.  I plan to place an enormous re-supply order this week (that they will probably have to deliver by armored truck…it’s going to be so darn big…) and take a few days off to run about the forests and rivers like a little scoundrel.  I hope you are all well!  This week is looking bright.  Get after it!

X

IMG_4458

Did I tell you Robert deployed for early season work in the southeast a couple of weeks ago?  I probably failed to mention that, and a thousand other things.  When he is away, I tend to fall head over heels into work.  I had an explicit text from him last night that simply stated, “You are a crazy hard worker.  Please take a day off.  That’s an order.”  Days off work don’t really exist for me.  A more accurate phrase would be “taking a day out of the studio” — which is what I am up to today.

It’s frightfully springy-stormy this morning with clumsy splatterings of rains and high winds whipping at the house and wind chimes — the perfect kind of day to hike up a mountain and find a little shelter from the elements in a nest of lichen, fir and stone.  I am packing my bag with tea, water, camera, sketchbook and a sundry of snacks to sustain me while I’m gladly wandering.  It’s going to be such a beautiful afternoon and evening out there.  I can feel it in my bones.

Which reminds me, did you all see the full moon rising the other day?  I was out running on the mountain with the dogs in the early evening when I saw it push up over the snowy peaks of the Pebble Range into a pure blue sky and weigh anchor in the sagebrush — perfectly round and golden.  I felt that moonrise in my bones, too.  Oh, did I feel it.

Have a delightful monday, you little wildlings.  I will too!
IMG_4455

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2014/03/17/7820/