Alpaca Shearing

This past weekend, the girls and I met up with my mother and visited Spruce Ridge Farm in Old Chatham, NY, to help out with their alpaca shearing. We’ve been to events like this before, and usually we find ourselves standing outside of fences with a lot of other people, just observing. But on Saturday we got to participate, which was a real treat.

Please do forgive the  slightly wonky formatting of this post and the fact that there are still winter photos in the blog header. It's been a while since I've used this blog, and I am a little rusty.

Here are a few of the alpacas enjoying the last of their long wild hair.


The girls and I mostly helped by corralling individual alpacas in fields and pens (they are not easy to catch!) and holding them while they waited for their turns to be shorn. The alpaca in the next two photos, Adele, is currently the baby of the farm, at just seven months.


We didn’t specifically help with the shearing, but we got to watch up close. The various people working there that day, farmers, shearers, and volunteers, were all very friendly and helpful.


These two bags contain the fur from one alpaca:


You don’t think I’d leave you without photos of some of the shorn alpacas, would you? They looked so proud of themselves! But maybe you can't help that if you have a naturally long neck. I love the way the unshorn alpacas felt the need to come over and check them out.


If you are interested in yarn or products made from these alpacas’ wool, you can visit Spuce Ridge Farm's shop in person or online.

detour

Thank you for stopping by my blog. I haven't quite gotten the hang of keeping this thing updated. I will soon -- it's a promise to myself. In the meantime, please visit my photostream on Flickr.

it’s been too long…

…so I’ll just jump right in with some family photos.  If I don’t deal with family photos immediately, they don’t get dealt with. I had to force myself not to spend too much time post processing these and just get them up.
This weekend I had the rare experience of getting to spend time with all my siblings at once. This only happens once every few years, as we’ve been a bit spread out. I have a feeling it will happen more often now as we are, at least for the time-being, all on the East Coast now.
As exciting as it was to see my family, getting to meet The Philly Lily, my sister and her boyfriend’s new dog, was certainly the highlight. Diana and Matt gave Lily her first bath at my parents’ house:

My girls had a party to go to after the bath, so we had dinner without them. My Mom served a lovely meal out on the lawn. Despite my being “the photographer,” I forgot my tripod so didn’t get a photo of us altogether. I didn’t even get a photo of one of my brothers. Lame, I know. Here are my Dad, Mom, sister, one of my brothers, and my sister’s fabulous boyfriend.

I’m way behind on my Picture Inspiration photos. I’m trying to catch up with some other stuff – getting my Getty images sorted out and uploaded, for example, and pulling photos together for some other projects.
Leaving you with one last photo of Miss Lily:
 
Next, maybe I'll manage to get some photos from our trip to Philly up (in honor of Lily?).

Two

Tracey Clark, our guide through Picture Inspiration and all the other Picture ___ classes, likes pairs. She likes them so much she made them a project and put a slideshow together. Her photos are honest and ordinary and beautiful, and they actually make a me a little teary (those toothbrushes!!!), but me? I don’t tend to see in pairs. I see in ones and threes and larger groups. One of the Picture Spring prompts asked us to look for pairs. I had a hard time last year, and I just skipped over it this year. So I groaned when I saw that this week’s Picture Inspiration prompt was “coupling.” I really want to get through this whole year. I don’t mind getting an entry in late, but I want to do each of them, and this was going to be hard.
But I managed to find something, and only a few days into the week, and I’m actually a little excited about it because I think I might actually have the start of a series of my own here.

I saw them at an estate sale on Saturday, and they instantly reminded me of this favorite photo of mine, that I took back in April at our doctor’s office:

The yellow estate chairs even cried out for a similar processing to the doctor’s office chairs (using CaraRose Presets).
The yellow chairs bring me back to kitchens of my childhood, and the color reminds me of my grandparents’ gold Chevy.
Now my mind is working – a series of chairs – ideally a series of vinyl chairs processed in a filmy style – what if I even started shooting some in film? I don’t know how often I’ll find these, but I’ll be keeping my eyes open for them from now on. I think I can do this pair thing.

Farmer’s Market

I’ve fallen behind in blogging (see below), so I’m starting fresh. Here is last week’s Picture Inspiration assignment (week 14: double vision):

Have you ever seen a more beautiful head of lettuce? I fell in love with the bunch, and took the one on the right home (in the photo on the left, it’s in the back on the right). It made a lovely salad. I am so happy to be eating fresh local vegetables again!
Why haven’t I posted in over a month?
I actually think that as much as I love how assigments challenge me and keep me on my game, I’m in over my head with them right now. There’s Picture Inspiration (weekly) plus I did much of Picture Spring in May, and now I’m doing Picture Color, and while all this is going on I’m trying to get photos ready for Getty Images, which is pretty awesome, of course, but it’s taking some time. And I have a few gallery possibilities to think about (exciting, but I’m overwhelmed), and I’m also trying to start an online shop (probably at fineartamerica.com). Then there’s the rest of my life… eek! I'm having a hard time getting just one thing done.
I think I’m going to enforce less photo posting in July. I’m thinking of posting to flickr two or three times a week, no more, and hopefully I’ll have more energy to post here. I have no idea how people who work full time and and/or have young children manage photography and online sharing as well. 
Speaking of trying to manage one’s time, my friend Holly posted a great link on facebook today:  How to Browse Flickr Like a Pro

International No Diet Day

I Pledge:
• That I will not diet for one day, on May 6, International No Diet Day.
• Instead of trying to change my body to fit someone else's standards, I will accept myself just as I am.
• I will feed myself if I'm hungry.
• I will feel no shame or guilt about my size or about eating.
• I will think about whether dieting has improved my health and well-being or not.
• And I will try to do at least one thing I have been putting off "until I lose weight."
• 

Dieting is something I think about a lot these days. I have a loved one with a severe eating disorder. When I see what she is going through, I want to ban diets and any thoughts of weight loss from this world. But I am conflicted, because I have fallen into the obese (or more) category on any medical chart for nearly ten years, and I have not been happy with myself. Most of the weight came on post children and post moving to the country from NYC (living here has slowed me down significantly). I have taken it for granted that I am fat and that I need to lose weight and that there is something wrong with me for not being able to lose weight. I’ve tried dieting. I’ve been on weight watchers. I’ve counted calories. I lose weight, and then I gain it all back plus more. While dieting, I become obsessed with food and numbers. Thankfully I recognized that tendency in myself and was able to stop each time without it turning into a disorder. I will never do weight watchers or count calories again, because I see how close that mindset is to the mindset of someone with an eating disorder. Some people can do these things without it getting out of hand, but I feel like I’m at risk.
It’s quite possible I would never have started my steady rise upward on the scale if I had never started in the beginning. I really have no idea. And I don’t really know what to do about it now. Perhaps taking for granted that where I am now isn’t healthy is what needs to change. I eat well. I am relatively active. I get clean bills of health from the doctor. Why not learn to be happy where I am and stop letting worrying about my weight affect my life?
The last line in the International No Diet Day pledge struck a chord with me. What have I been putting off until I lose weight? I never thought that through before, but I realize I’ve been putting off a lot. I have put off seeing myself as beautiful. I shrink from certain things because I am afraid of how people will see me. I see myself as worth less. I give up on doing things that are good and healthy for me because I think “what’s the point”? These are big things, and I need to work through them.
One smaller thing I have put off is taking a full-body self-portrait of myself. It’s can be hard to see myself that way, and because most of the people who see my photography are friends I’ve made or reacquainted myself with through the internet, I’ve deluded myself into thinking I can present a different and better side of myself by hiding certain things.  So I decided the full-body portrait was how I would honor the last line of the INDD pledge. I took my camera to a local orchard where I knew I would have some privacy and gave myself what I am coming to look at as a gift. I know I’m off in the distance here, but it’s a big start toward presenting myself as I am. I hope this is the beginning of my loving myself more and showing myself more respect.

What have YOU been putting off until you lose weight or until some other obstacle in your life changes? If you care to share with a photo, I’ve started a flickr group for International No Diet Day. I welcome you to join.

Sisters

We've been through a lot this past year, and sadly it's not stuff I can talk about openly and not the kind of stuff one can EVER say good things have come out of. There is no silver lining.

However, even in the worst of circumstances there is always something positive to focus on and always something to be grateful for. This is probably the inspiration behind most of my photography. One of the positive things this past year has been my daughters' relationship. They have always been close, and they have always felt comfortable with each other even when they weren't able to feel comfortable elsewhere. In the lead-up to our crisis, their relationship suffered, and it was hard to watch. But now, as we are trying to heal, their relationship has blossomed once again.

My younger daughter has a school assignment to create a doll representing a part of her ethnic background. My daughter has chosen to create an Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish doll (from my father's side of the family). Most of the students are drawing their dolls on paper, but my daughter wants hers to be special, so she is sewing hers. Thing is -- sewing doesn't come so easily for her, and this is where her sister stepped in. Her sister made a point of coming straight home from school yesterday so she could help plan, cut out, and sew the doll.



I hope to get a photo of the doll when it is finished.

I find myself often converting to black and white for indoor shots. Sometimes the indoor colors can be a distraction from the meaning of the photo.

This past week's Picture Inspiration theme was Observation Mode, and we were supposed to take shots with a documentary feel. The photo on the left is my entry for the week.