Day 5

Sown
Copyright Jennifer Geisert

In October of 2007, local wilderness areas burned in some pretty horrific wildfires, but you might not know it today. The dry season was followed by an exceptionally wet season, and the abundance of life is unbelievable. Even the oak trees with their blackened trunks and charred branches had new green shoots and leaves springing from them.

Perhaps a Shooting Star

Copyright Jennifer Geisert

Seeing wildflowers and mustard carpeting the hillside, you'd never be able to picture the way the land looked 6 months ago. My guide assured me that absolutely everything we saw today had been burned to the ground. You can still see some evidence, where the trees have burned so completely and hot that they've left ghostly impressions in glassy ash on the ground, the only bare patches among the new plants.

Limestone Canyon

Copyright Jennifer Geisert

I've always loved photographing the local canyons, so today was a special treat for me. I'd been invited to hike through areas restricted to the general public, areas that you can only access with a guide. It was a lot to take in. I need to go away and process today, so I'll leave with a wonderful quote my fiance saw:

"Take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints."

Day 3

Spring Medley

Copyright Jennifer Geisert

In another lifetime I would have the time and energy to garden. As it is in this lifetime, however, I manage to kill seemingly hardy plants like cacti. I have three plants of my own, a basil plant, a tomato plant, and a bell pepper plant. So far, the tomato is looking pitiful, the basil's leaves are being eaten by something, but the bell pepper is fine.

Day 2

Fresh Cut

Copyright Jennifer Geisert

The seemingly simple process of Polaroid emulsion transfers is not at all simple, in fact. The sheer ammount of crap I drag out to the kitchen from the back room and dig out of various kitchen drawers is unbelievable. The list is as follows:

Polaroid Daylab
Polaroid film
source photographs
contact paper
siscors
watercolor paper
watch
extra garbage bags
air duster
black jacket (my Daylab has a light leak so I take pictures with my coat covering the maching)
distilled water
brayer
paper towels
saucer
frying pan
wooden spoon
4 flat Correlware dishes of various sizes
did I mention paper towels?

And so, I worked for four hours, past the time everyone else decided to go to bed, past the time when the cats are in their night hyper stage and fight, past both episodes of the Golden Girls, taking a break only for chocolate pudding gone wrong. (How can chocolate pudding go wrong, you ask? By eating the kind cooked on the stove, left in the fridge long enough to get a crust, that's how.) All of this after a normal working day at the gallery. As I said previously, creativity does not understand a full work week.

The end result is the above image, "Fresh Cut", also known as my entry to the jurried exhibition at my work. And the pleasent suprise that I don't have to work every spare moment until Monday to frame the image - it was done today in our framing department. Now I can spend my Friday night relaxing with Sweeny Todd and Jell-o.

Day 1

Cedar Grove Park

copyright Jennifer Geisert

I tried writing a daily photo blog once before and predictably lost interest. In another lifetime I'd love to have the time to photograph interestingly every day and to sit down at the end of it and write about anything that comes to mind, but there just isn't enough time in the day. However, now my next big project to work on is a book of photographs, and I suppose this is as good a start as any.

Today was a day off for me, although I rushed around all over the place. I work in an art gallery that's putting on a jurried exhibition for the local art league, and I've been encouraged to submit something. The catch is that the image has to have been taken somewhere in the city, and I have no images that fit the criteria. Oh, and the deadline is Monday. So I spent my morning walking and driving from one end of the city to the other with the intention of getting some good images. But that typical thing happened, where you decide you're going to be creative and then the creativity doesn't come. One thing creativity doesn't understand is a full work week.

At any rate, I have images to play with over the next few days. Even if I don't get accepted, I'll at least have a nicely framed image.