Celebrating 2013, Part 4

We head for New Orleans next for our alumni workshop. Everyone is excited, and there have been some very funny e-mails zinging back and forth. We love New Orleans and can’t wait to enjoy the sights and sounds and great food.

Thank heavens for our house sitters. Without them, we could not do the traveling we do. We can leave, knowing our house is safe. If there are going to be high winds, they batten down the hatches. If a tree falls — and that has happened to us whilst we are away — they let us know and call the appropriate people. They take phone messages and pass them on to us, delete the Spam ones, return phone calls when we cannot, cope with the mail, water the plants, feed the birds, and all the assorted things we cannot do on the road. That, and we have great neighbors that also watch the house when the sitters are out and about. Those who travel know what I mean.

And now, we revisit the last four workshops of 2013 and Arnie’s and my favorite images from them…

From the Southwest, we headed back for New England Fall Foliage. It is a long drive from Colorado to New Hampshire, but we have done it often. We put “Tara” on auto-pilot and enjoy the scenery. Just kidding … at least about the auto-pilot part.

Each state has something to offer. We have stopped to photograph wind farms, The Pony Express site, silos in the late afternoon (or early morning), whatever catches our interest; however, there was not a lot of extra time this round.

“Phew, there’s some foliage,” we said as we crossed Upstate New York. The previous year, because of the horrendous rains and strange weather across the Northeast, the foliage was scant, a very unusual situation. This year, we saw plenty of great color. With changing weather patterns, we never know quite what to expect or where. That’s the beauty of knowing a location well. If one place does not work out, another surely will.

Arnie found a patch of colorful reflections that curved around and set off some still-green grasses, their tips echoing the orange in the water..

I was attracted to some Pickerelweed, kicked off my flikp-flops, waded out into the shallows of the lake, and isolated one plant against some brilliant reflections and lily pads.

Back in North Carolina, we had some time to catch up on paperwork before driving down to the coast we love so well for Lighthouses of the Outer Banks. Here, we photograph a lot more than lighthouses. Home to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, there are a lot of pristine scenes here. Often, our favorite images from this workshop are, in fact, from the National Seashore. Not this time.

On the sound side of these barrier islands, there were some marsh grasses that set off a magnificent evening sky. The colors were unusual for that time of day.

At our favorite fishing village in this area, Arnie had fun with this old trawler, using the morning sky and village lights to set it off beyond the lone piling.

Last winter, we did our first weekend workshop. CatchLight Gallery along the Blue Ridge invited us to exhibit our work there and run a weekend photo workshop, using the gallery as our base. It was an offer we could not refuse, and so was born what we now call Blue Ridge Mountain Magic. There is a reason that this area is so popular, and because we

Celebrating 2013, Part 3

As I started to write this, our third installment of our celebration of 2013, I enjoyed a beautiful, balmy, 51-degree day out my French doors. What a welcome change from yesterday when we got close to, if not in excess of, an inch of rain. Entirely unnecessary in my book!

We were not only back stateside, but we had returned to Maine, a different area where I had spent even more time sailing, for Summertime on the Maine Coast.

I love all those narrow, often-bumpy, back roads, ones I got to know as an adult, as I was always on the water as a child. We drove along one to our morning location that was blanketed in fog. It was beautiful as the sun drifted almost-in and out.

Arnie gave his shot a mysterious and eerie look. The old KISS principle is at its best here.

I like to look for different ways to show up the craggy coast and rocks that look like hugs slabs laying against one another.

In September, we headed to the Southwest for our trio of photo workshops. We started with one of my favorite locations, Canyon de Chelly & Navajoland, a place inhabited by the Anasazi long ago and now home to the Navajo who consider themselves descendents of these amazing people.

I found an old wagon at one of our locations and loved the way the light gently graced it, adding to its old-world feel.

Arnie made this shot that gives the viewer an inkling of the maze of canyons in this incredible place. If one did not pay attention, one could get lost.

From Arizona, we went to Santa Fé & Taos, an area that has seen artists for well over 100 years … the likes of Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Weston, Edward Curtis, and

Celebrating 2013, Part 2

Our first blog in this 2013 series took in our first four workshops of the year heading into spring.

As I sit at my computer, it is what my family used to call a “soggy-biscuit day” or what others might simply say, “duck weather” or some such. I don’t feel so bad not being outdoors on such a day (or evening), as the sun has long since set.

For this blog installment, we start Downeast in Maine…

I grew up sailing the Maine coast, as many of our readers already know. I love it and always look forward to returning.

Acadia National Park is a special place, the first national park east of the Mighty Mississippi. We go there in early spring, we avoid the “madding crowd” that plagues the Bar Harbor area in the summer.

Arnie likes a dark, moody look in many of his images, and this one is no exception. With the delicious, inclement weather that is part of any northern coastal area, it makes for dramatic photographs.

Having grown up in this area, I know fog. I have sailed in wisps of light fog and often in what we call pea-soup fog, it was so thick. One morning, the sun tried to break through and gave this ethereal effect.

Later in the month, we headed for Europe. Our first workshop there was a return to Taormina, Jewel of Sicily. We love this island that does not think of itself as Italian. No, the people here are proudly Sicilian, plain and simple … Sicilian!

We were up on the slopes of Mt. Etna, a source of great wines, waiting for a tasting at a wonderful bar overlooking the valley below us and mountains beyond. I was drawn to this still-life of a simple drain pipe. The angle, colors, textures, and shapes all appealed to me.

Arnie has always been a people shooter. Not that he doesn’t do all sorts of photography, but people in their environment interest him the most. Here, a young boy shows off in what is probably his dad’s Mini-Cooper, all dolled up for a wedding in one of the squares.

From there, we went on to Tuscany, a place we also love to photograph. We call that workshop Romance of Tuscany.

We have a favorite location that always produces wonderful images for our participants and for us. I well remember the first time we went there. I was weaned on back, country lanes, often not much more than two tracks. Arnie was driving, as he prefers that I navigate in foreign countries. I saw a scene I wanted.

“Turn here,” I said.

“Where?” Arnie responded.

“HERE!” I exclaimed.

“You want me to take this car down THAT?”

And begrudgingly, he cautiously started down the simple tracks. Then he saw what I had seen, and we spent the rest of our scouting afternoon there.

Surrounded by wheat fields, there are so many views and ways to photograph these old buildings. Arnie found this view that we had not explored before.

I love the way the late-afternoon light streaks across here and how it makes the Tuscan landscape look like soft, rich velveteen.

Ahhh, Paris. How we love that city. We have been there together many times, and probably even more times before we met. We have both had assignments there, and I spent part of a summer studying French just outside the city. The City of Light truly holds magic for us. It rained part of the time we were there. It made no difference. The light shining of the wet pavement and the stores devoted to umbrellas make it easy to photograph here.

We were sitting at one of our favorite cafés one morning, having our coffee and goodies, and a woman rushed by, her colorful parapluie begging to be photographed.

Arnie found this wonderful scene of a woman arranging the patisseries, the city hustle and bustle going on “behind” her.

Next: Part 3, Back state-side…

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