Shadows are so profound on a blue and gold September day that sometimes they're all I see.
I cast these incredibly long shadows in the morning, and I love to watch me and Chet run across the landscape, all stretched out. Here, I'm overlaid on dew-wet dogbane, and it looks like I have a terrific idea.
I mess around with some of my photos, trying to bring shapes out of darkness. It's fun.
Chet stands before our favorite rubble pile, now decked out in goldenrod. Mmmm. This would make a cool jigsaw puzzle, no?
The pines etch ink-black silhouettes on the sky.
And always the little auxiliary inkblot to look for, trotting ahead.
The neighbors' Bartlett pear yields honey-sweet fruit, cold from wet September grass. Yes. Thank you. I'll have that for breakfast, beat the deer to it, and feed the cores to the cattle.
The sun is so low and brilliant in the sky I'm blinded and can't even tell what I'm shooting, but I have a feeling it'll be cool.
And I get an alert sundog and his crazy, inexplicably short-legged Chihuahua shadow. Go figure!
Always worth pointing the camera toward the sun now and then. You never know what you'll get.
We push on, and I watch our shadows. They make me laugh. I'm glad there's no one around at 7:30 on a Sunday morning to hear me laughing as I clump along with Chet, his toenails clicking and scraping on the asphalt. I would make a lot better time if I had legs like these.
We reach the Shadow barn. Presenting...
The amazing Chet Baker!!
Bill saw this and said, "Don't shoot! It's Bacon!!"
Off we go. I marvel that I got the roofline perfectly lined up in this shot as I ran along. Most of the shots I take on the run are all cockeyed. That's OK. I like them all.
Most of my favorite shots are complete accidents anyway. Well, planned accidents.
Chet's shadow looks like some kind of space bug to me.
In this one, his form vanishes into the turf edge shadow, and the space bug seems to slide along the asphalt unexplained, unaccompanied.
At the farm, I find the Concord grapes hanging in the old barn perfectly ripe, waiting for me. I've had my eye on them for several months. Breakfast, Part II. These are so beautiful that I fill myself up on ones I find outside this composition. Chet begs and begs, so I give him one. Grapes aren't good for dogs, but he doesn't know that.
Concord grapes perfectly capture the taste, the nostalgia, the wine-sweet loveliness of a September morning.
6 comments:
Julie, thanks for playing with the shadows today! What fun. And Chet morphing into Chihuahuas and space bugs. And the grapes and pears fresh. Always have more to say but the words aren't there. Bottom line: really enjoyed your blog today. Photos and writing both!
I Love the shadow photos! Good fun!
Nice! Meanwhile, do you find you don't have to clip the Bacon's toedy nails because he's running on asphalt?
This time of year fruit is everywhere. Taste it all!
asked my vet about the grape thing because my first dog ate plenty of grapes (ignorance) and had no problems... also - foxes eat grapes right? and some dogs descended from foxes... grape thing did not make sense to me. Vet said "we think it is like kids with peanut allergies; many are not harmed at all and a few will die with the slightest exposure."
Great huh?
I clicked with just everything in your blog today. I have only picked Concord grapes once in my life( in upstate NY) but I will forever remember the fragrance! Thanks for jogging my memory!
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