Autumn in Provence

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I like the soft and dreamy and romantic. Sometimes I make believe it, but always, I look for it in everyday life. A French afternoon dappled in light, a glowing wine glass. Smudgy and dreamy, never completely clear or harsh. The world is harsh enough, don’t you just want to live in a dream? I know I do…

When I set foot in Provence early last autumn I started myself on a new journey. Self discovery and reawakening my vision. I just wanted to experience something entirely new. I wanted to fulfill a dream to live in France. I wanted to find new challenges, new inspiration, a new way to see life. I’ve seen it through the eyes of the girl who grew up in Texas, then I saw it through the adult eyes of the woman who worked in New York. Much like the landscape outside my window, I let each chapter change me as the seasons change the vines and I hope, with spring’s new awakening, something even greater blooms.

Here are a collection of photographs from autumn in Provence~

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A Hudson Valley Weekend

 

As we begin to close in on the last weekends of summer I jumped at the invitation for a weekend upstate shared among friends. The cool mountain air, quiet afternoons for reading and home cooked meals filled my soul and recharged my batteries. We stayed in this amazingly redesigned Catskills home where nature was the framed art and dancing light our whimsical entertainment. Now the only problem I have is how to stop day dreaming of this peaceful place at the end of the road between tucked between a mountain and a creek…

A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley.

 This summer I have been reading photographer Sally Mann’s memoir Hold Still. There are some books I read on my kindle and then some I have to physically buy so that I can mark them up, make notes in the margins and revisit or even research what I find among the pages. One of my favorite underlined parts so far: 

“Because I am still that girl when it comes to developing film. There is nothing better than the thrill of holding a great negative, wet with fixer, up to the light. And, here’s the important thing: it doesn’t even have to be a great negative. You get the same thrill with any negative; with art, as someone once said, most of what you have to do is show up. The hardest part is setting the camera on the tripod, or making the decision to bring the camera out of the car, or just raising the camera to your face, believing, by those actions, that whatever you find before you, whatever you find there, is going to be good. And, when you get whatever you get, even if it’s a fluky product of that slipping-glimpser vision that de Kooning celebrated, you have made something. Maybe you’ve made something mediocre- there’s plenty of that in any artist’s cabinets- but something mediocre is better than nothing, and often the near-misses, as I call them, are the beckoning hands that bring you to perfection just around the blind corner.” 

A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. Continue reading “A Hudson Valley Weekend”

Snapshots of Summer

Snapshots of a photographer's life. Summer in Amagansett, NY

I always have a camera with me, it’s part of fulfilling that need inside to capture the moment: the moment in time, the moment in my life, the way we were that makes me a photographer. I collect photographs in a way of possessing all that is beautiful in the world. If the picture is made, I then have it for always and the stress of the passing moment dissipates, and it is forever with me.

After our Paris trip I took a load of film to the lab collected over the past few months. I love the rediscovery of these moments I photographed, random snapshots of time I had to have live on forever. Oh yes, I remember the feeling of my hair blowing in the wind on the long car rides to Montauk or the way the sun was glowing through the trees in a burst of golden particles on the way to Sag Harbor or how beautifully the boat’s sail danced on a pivot as the rain headed our way. I look at the photographs, like a diary of my life, a fluttering of heartbeats forever trapped in a moment in time.

Snapshots of a photographer's life. Summer in Amagansett, NY Snapshots of a photographer's life. Summer in Amagansett, NY Snapshots of a photographer's life. Summer in Amagansett, NY Snapshots of a photographer's life. Summer in Amagansett, NY

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Home on the Range~

Tucked away in the south of Texas is Cibolo Creek Ranch where the days are long, hospitality is grand, cowboys are king and at night there are enough stars the the big Texas sky to make all your wishes come true. Pssst- you only have cell and internet service in one small area of the ranch so it is quite literally a true escape…

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A Texas White Christmas

Never in my life had I been able to wake up on Christmas morning to a White Christmas until this past one. It’s not that snow is a new thing to me, I have to deal just like everyone else with it in New York (see my Walkin in a Winter Wonderland story) to the point where I kick at it to go away. It’s just, this is Texas. The state where my mom wears her Christmas sweater despite the fact she is sweating. Where when I was little my parents made me change because I was wearing my Santa sweat shirt with shorts to school. So for the first time I got to wake up, look out my window and stare in awe at an undisturbed blanket of glittering white snow. These are the pictures from my morning walk, A Texas White Christmas, From Me To You.