Ok so today I’m going waaaaayyyyy back……… close to 40 years. YIKES! As I celebrate 40 years of wandering this world I decided to dig into the boxes of old slides my Father took of me growing up. Here are a few from babyhood to some early Birthday Parties. Wow check out the cool home-made hats. Perhaps I can convince Dave and the boys to hit the town tonight in some of these.

I am so grateful for the unique and wonderful childhood I had and these photos remind me of that. I will make it a mission this year to help preserve these memories. These slides were scanned on a cheap desktop scanner and I am not super happy with the quality.

Sending hundreds upon hundreds of photos out for professional scanning is cost prohibitive as is buying a quality scanner. Thus my increased use of rental services. With the price of pro photo gear and accessories beyond my current budget I am finding an increased use of rental services. I’ve been very happy with the services provided by Borrowed Lens a great photo equipment rental company.  This seems like the perfect job for rental equipment.

So In this my 40th year I vow to better archive the past, enjoy my present and of course wear more silly hats!

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So on this flashback I’m traveling back almost 13 year to the day. The date was January 22, 1999. My husband and I both worked for the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle in Tennessee. We woke up to an early morning phone call from our editor, “Get downtown now there has been a tornado, the town is gone, including the newspaper,”

We soon came face to face with the destructive nature of an F4 tornado that had leveled a good position of Claskville’s downtown and tore the corner off of our office. We marched forward into a long exhausting day reporting and photographing. We set up a temporary shop in a local hotel using borrowed equipment, getting our photos processed at a local camera store. Amazingly even with the destruction of our office we as journalists were still expected to put out a paper and with the help of a neighboring paper’s press and the hard work of many we did. Below are few photos from that day and the days that followed.

Finally a photo of the compassion evident when  disaster hits a small town.

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Recently I’ve been loving doing some baby photos with the most adorable little guy and gal. I must admit my two red-headed “babies” are growing up. Jacob, 11, has become a moody middle-schooler and Will at age 9 is too cool for dear old Mom. So I relish the moments of a baby shoot when I get to hold a baby, especially one that reminds of my own boys when they were chunky monkeys. Both my guys were “fat” babies and I don’t think there is anything more comforting and adorable. So I hope there are many more “fat” baby photo shoots to come where I  get my baby fix and then happily hand them back over to Mom and Dad.

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So I thought a good way to help me look back at photos I’ve taken would be to institute a “Flashback Friday” theme. I have a closet full of slides and negatives and making myself re-examine those is a good thing. A type of forced organization and converting images to digital. Perhaps even looking back will help re-inspire my current photography. To start I’m going to cheat a little and not delve into negatives or slides but some digitals files from last summer.

Winter is here and remembering the pleasant sights, sounds and smells of one of my favorite place on this earth seemed a good choice. Since birth I have spent at least sometime each summer on a small Island just off the coast of Maine. This space is a respite for many members of my family and was originally built by my Norwegian immigrant grandparents. Their love of the cold water, evergreen dotted coastline has been passed down to many a generation. This island is also one of the first places I discovered the true meditative quality of photography. I have walked the rocky shoreline with a camera more often that I recount. Here are a few from 2011. No doubt I will flashback again to photos from this most wonderful place.

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So we were invited by a friend to do a first day of the year hike. She was inspired by the State Park initiative entitled first-day-hikes. With no local State Parks offering this opportunity we headed to some local land and had a wonderful first hike. Encountered a snake in a tree, explored the remains of an old homestead and finished it off with a champagne toast in the woods of course. Cheers and Happy New Year!

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So everyone and their brother has a blog. In fact both my brother’s do;

CLICK here for brother Tim’s Blog on hiking in the Adirondacks.

CLICK here for brother Aaron’s Blog about his humorous adventures in the world of kid-lit and other random stuff.

So I guess I’m going to enter the blogoshere as well and what better time than the new year when we all set semi–unattainable goals.

This blog will serve more as a visual journal for my own selfish needs.

My hubby has always kept a roughly scrawled journal over the years. He has stacks of books chronicling our life together; the trips we’ve taken, the bike rides he’s ridden, beers he’s brewed etc…

There is a certain satisfaction in being able to look back over what you’ve done in a year. Unfortunately I have tried the pen to paper method and it just does not work for me.

I’m a visual learner and for me my memories are visual as well. Therefore this blog will be more visual than anything, chronicling my pursuit of better images whether it be through work or in documenting my own life.

I do not really expect anyone but close family to follow along.

So blogosphere here I come!

My visual memories from 2011 in our Christmas card

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