Sketchbook.

Here and there I do a little painting. Mostly in my 4×6 watercolor sketchbook. It's been, oh, three years since I brought my sketchbook on a trip and actually painted something, but after an inspiring visit back east, I vowed not to let three years go by again. I get too gung-ho: "I'll do one every day!" but inevitably that just sets me up to fail. So, if I can paint something every week or two, I'll be super-proud of myself. And I just made a new blog category to post them in. Here goes...

The first one is from a photograph I took last fall - soybean fields south of Kenton, Ohio. The second is a view of the lily pads on the pond at Innisfree Gardens in Millbrook, NY.

Camera in my pocket.

I've been trying to figure out why my blog posts are so few and far between. When I am working for clients, it's easy: I finish an edit, I make a post. Simple. But when the work is for myself, I am such a slowpoke. I went to Wales in June... have I posted any of the photographs from my trip?

Part of it is that images just don't make it off the memory card into the computer (or into the scanner if it's film) until it's too “late”. Sure, I could post news about summer vacation in the middle of winter, but by then it's not really news anymore. The other issue was my photo-taking conundrum. I don't always want to lug my big camera around and I'd been having a “what-to-use-as-a-point-and-shoot-camera” dilemma for at least a couple years. Don't ask how many digital, film, and Polaroid cameras I tried and abandoned, never really finding the one that felt right.

What's finally changed? My cell phone. Ha! I'd been fighting it for so long. I was the dinosaur who hung on to her rotary-dial land line as long as humanly possible, and when it came time to finally get a mobile, even a querty keyboard seemed an extravagance (Texting? What's that?). But when my little green LG Rumor finally gave up holding a charge, I knew it was time to venture forth into the land of the smart phone, and, inevitably, to the iPhone, which set off another ridiculous internal conflict: I wanted one but I didn't. So trendy... Everyone has one... My haircut isn't cool enough... etc etc.

But here I am now, wondering why I didn't do this sooner. It really isn't a phone at all - it's my new camera! I can photograph and edit an image without having to get to my computer. I can send it to my Mom or post it to Instagram right then and there. Will it replace my “big” camera? Or film? Of course not. But I think of it as a modern-day Polaroid, capturing my little memories and the stuff of daily life in snapshots that I can call 'art' if I want to. Best of all, it's getting me to think creatively about things I see every day.

Here are a few iPhone photographs from picnics near Detroit: Willow Metro Park and a cornfield off Vining Road.

Victoria & Dragan

Truly a perfect fairy tale wedding at DYFFRYN GARDENS in Wales including acres of enchanted scenery, a horse-drawn carriage, a sixpence in a shoe, velvet crowns, fascinators, top hats, and Serbian traditions like apple-shooting, negotiating a fair price for the bride, and, later, selling her stolen shoe to the best man (who was apparently offering 20 pounds per theft). Best of all: a miraculously sunny day at the end of a week of torrential downpours and flooding.

What can I say? It was an honor and a privilege to be invited "across the pond" for this beautiful wedding, to catch up with family friends after twenty years of lost contact (thank you, Facebook) and to be welcomed as family by new friends - Hvala!