New Growth #19A
Opuntia engelmanii “Texas prickly pear” What I love about springtime in Texas is that nothing is what you think it is. Not the weather, not a creek, not a rocky path, and certainly not a cactus. There is softness amidst the hardness, and even the foreboding prickly pear explodes with life. In springtime, this … Continue reading
Spring Terrain #64
Lupinus texensis “Bluebonnet” Texans are proud. They are stubborn on many points, and insistent on their individuality (even if it’s vaguely fictional). Not content to be one in a field of fifty, dammit, this is the Lone Star State. They refuse to even call their state flower by its actual name: the lupine. No, here … Continue reading
Spring Terrain #89
Opuntia engelmanii “Prickly pear” & Tetraneuris scaposa “Bitterweed” There are few springtime scenes that represent one coherent theme. Even as bluebonnets cover a hillside or swath a parking lot in indigo blooms, there are other, less enticing elements mixed in. Hardy prickly-pears don’t just go away because spring suddenly arrived. They are an undeniable part … Continue reading
Spring Terrain #68
As the earth absorbs water, it dries out and reforms. The rains carry silt, seeds, and sediment downhill toward hollows and swimming holes. Water comes unexpectedly, infrequently, and often all at once. Somehow the land has to adapt to those changes, taking water when it can and demanding nothing from it: not consistency, fidelity or … Continue reading
Spring Terrain #46
Sophora secundiflora “Texas Mountain Laurel” Lost Maples State Park, West Ridge Service Road The first thing to bloom around these parts is the mountain laurel. As I discovered this spring, it’s everywhere. I didn’t notice it at first; the clumpy mountain laurels looked just like other clumpy bushes from my other homes. Walking around the … Continue reading
McKinney Falls State Park, Lower Falls
The following is the first in a series of photo essays: “Spring Arrives in Central Texas.” Here in Texas, spring is not a time of thawing and waiting for the world to warm as it is in the north. There, it’s a time of year when the cold sleepy earth is rolling around in its … Continue reading
Darkroom Comedy
You’ve got to be joking. Maybe if it weren’t all happening at once and to me I’d think it was funny. Last night, after sitting in the library freezing my ass off, watching the senior librarian explain to me for the second time how to use the online book catalog for THREE HOURS (keep in … Continue reading
El Cumple
Well, I’ve decided that it’s true; the world is indeed conspiring against me. The brainless non-functional idiots in my photo class were clogging up the darkroom for 6 hours this evening, so immediately AFTER I was informed that I will be writing not one, but TWO (yes, that’s 2, dos, due, two) theses this year … Continue reading
Youthful Enthusiasm
So I processed my first rolls of film today all by myself, and only ended up burning one picture out of 48. I was pretty psyched about that, and it made me want to get back into the darkroom so I could make a contact sheet and see how the pictures really turned out, but … Continue reading
Week 2 Begins
It’s Monday again, and I seem to have acquired more reading than I thought I had. Not an auspicious trend to start this early in the semester, but I guess I brought it upon myself by having a relaxed Sunday. I let myself get roped into watching LOTR with my roommate on Sunday morning (with … Continue reading
Amarga 