YOU TELL ME

I applied for a popular art show in another state and recently received THE rejection letter. Several weeks later their website posted a list of all the artists that were accepted. Being the competitive person I am, I checked out each of the photographers to see how I compared as a photographer. So here we are. I have inserted two images below.

One was accepted and one wasn't. One is mine and one isn't. Mine was shot last year at Brookgreen Gardens. One was shot in the summer and one in the winter, thus the lack of leaves in the top image. I converted mine to black and white to make it easier to compare.

Tell me what you think. Can you guess which one is in the show?

It's A Nab For Heaven's Sakes...

NOT a sandwich cracker.

A couple of months ago, George, my stepson, (he really is a bright kid...graduated from Calhoun Honors College at Clemson) was in the car with us going to Charlotte. We made a quick stop at a rest area where we bought some snacks, a.k.a. junk food. As we continued our trek north on 85, I opened a pack and said to George, "Would you like a NAB?" His reply, "What's a nab?" What? It was like a knee jerk reaction. I looked at Tom and he looked at me in total disbelief. Shocked. Speechless. Reading each other's mind, we were thinking, "What did he just say?"

I ask you this. How could anyone raised in the south or even the southeast, not know what a NAB is? Since I am his stepmother and he didn't come into my life until he was fourteen, I take absolutely no responsiblily for this blatant failure in parenting.

But wait, there's more. One evening a few weeks ago, as I was watching television as I'm prone to do anytime after 8:00 A.M., I saw a commercial that almost caused me to hyperventilate. They were advertising NABS but were calling them "sandwich crackers." Help me Rhonda! No one, and I mean no one who I know calls them sandwich crackers. They are quite simply, NABS.

So to quell this confusion this is a NAB.

And this is a pack of NABS.


It's that simple. Will someone please tell the Lance people.

A Southern Snow

My sister just called from sunny California to give me an update on the weather. She does this when she knows I'm freezing here in the south. It seems that it's somewhere around 75 degrees there and it's a balmy 45 degrees here. For those of you who care, it's 10 degrees cooler than it's supposed to be...and I'm not happy.

All of this weather talk reminded me of the snow that we had a few weeks ago. It started on a Friday afternoon and continued through the night. The images below appear to be black and white because the snow was falling so fast that it completely blocked out any light.

The next day the sun appeared but the snow stayed with us for much of the day.

Looks just like cotton candy.

I hope that's it for snow this winter.

Note: I wrote this post a week ago, thinking the snow was over for the winter. Today (March 2nd) it's here again. As my friend Susan would say, "Oy vey!"

The Flowers Are Blooming at the... Part II

Southeastern Flower Show

As you can tell, the flowers were absolutely beautiful. They even had grass. Most of it was mondo, but I though this was pretty, so green, so spring and no bugs, no fire ants.


This is a quince; my new favorite flower. Well actually it's a bush. I've got to get busy and try to find one for Tom to plant. I know he's going to be thrilled. Where is the shovel?

So there I was in a great mood, walking around silently planning a garden, when I spotted the photography exhibit. I walked back and fourth, pacing both sides of the exhibit, wondering why my submissions had been refused. I still don't get it. I noticed one photographer had nine, count 'em nine entries. Not fair. Obviously political. Humm. Maybe if I bought a macro lens. Something to think about. Here is one side of the exhibit.

Yep, I was having a mood swing. An African photo shoot is not in my future. I'm not getting this image.
My mood was getting worse by the minute. This image won first place. It is obviously a black and white. It was good. Not my taste, but obviously good enough to win. Could this be sour grapes on my part?
Just when I was feeling sorry for myself, guess who I bumped into? None other than P. Allen Smith! Another mood swing. Things were definitely looking up. When I saw him, I laughed and said, "I didn't know you were going to be here!" (Like he should have called me first!) I told him that I just had to take his picture. He and his escort laughed, and she offered to take a shot with the both of us. What a hoot! What a gentleman!

A few minutes later he began his presentation. For those of you who don't know who P. Allen Smith is, go to his website: www.pallensmith.com. He is an amazing garden designer and represents Bonnie Nurseries. I have one of his books and he's often on the Today Show.

As he spoke, he walked among us, asking questions. He combined sarcasm and humor as he entertained us with his vast knowledge of garden design.

Oh no, here he comes toward the back row. Please, please don't ask me a question.

He did. Something about me growing lettuce. If he only knew. The only thing green about me was the scarf I was wearing.

The Flowers Are Blooming in Atlanta At The..Part I

Southeaster Flower Show!

Earlier this week I volunteered at the flower show. Trust me, I know very little about flowers, but I do love them. My job title was a "runner" which meant that I took plants from the "passers" table to the show where the "stagers" placed them in their sections to be judged. Before last year I didn't know that folks could bring their plants and flowers for competition. I think a lot of garden clubs and master gardeners participate because the process is rather complicated and they thrive on the competition. As a thank you for volunteering, I was given a free ticket to the show. So two days later and I was there with my camera ready just immerse myself in spring.

This was what I saw when I first walked in the room. Six gorgeous cherry trees. Earlier I watched as the workers used a fork lift to place them in their planters.

Vignettes were located near the entrance. This was one of the larger ones. They are full of ideas for those who are ready to put thousands of dollars in their yards, thus transforming a plain old yard into a garden!

Obviously there were thousands of flowers. Here are white snapdragons

and pink snapdragons,

and a variety of snapdragons. I like snapdragons but not one lives in my garden. (This image was blurry so I just added a touch of photoshop.)

And there were lots of shops. Here's a cute one.

Oops! I have a stud finder (Home Depot), but do I need this?

Then I saw this. I needed one, but couldn't decide on a color...so I left...the shop, not the show!

Placed near the vignettes were tables that were judged. This is one of them. I try to stay apolitical on this blog, but I thought this was pretty darn creative. They didn't win. If you peek behind the water bottle, you'll see Al's pic in the chair.

That about sums up Part I. The second part will include the photo competition and a very, very special speaker. Did my photo get in the exhibition? Do you know the famous garden planner? Stay tuned.

It Was Too Soon

My sister and I just returned from a short visit to our hometown. The purpose of our trip was to attend a memorial service for a family friend who had passed away after a long and painful illness. She died too soon. I know we always think that, but she did. She was only fifty-nine. Although I didn't see her during her illness, her mother kept us informed throughout her struggle so we knew how hard she was fighting to live.

She was fortunate to have the comfort of lots of family and friends. At the service I met her two beautiful daughters...very strong...had their mother's gorgeous looks and her personality. It was a pleasant surprise to meet her granddaughter who looked just like she did when she was her age. Both Karla and her husband had many, many friends, some of whom were members of the theatre group at the local university where her husband is on the faculty. Our Karla was a wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, and a friend to many. I will always remember her smile and her infectious laughter. She was an inspiration to us all.

F.Y.I., Karla's the one in the highchair. That's me probably trying to sneak a piece of cake! This was just one of our many, many birthday parties...thanks to our very loving parents. I bet Karla's mother, Doris, made those fancy hats.

Here's The Real Reason I Went To New York

Almost two months ago on Friday, November 13th, Tom came home from work with a copy of USA Today. He showed me an article about a, no, THE photographer, Robert Frank. He thought that maybe I would want to see the exhibit, without him, of course because he's still working, not retired, like I.

The article was about an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that was honoring the fiftieth anniversary of Frank's book, The Americans. Various towns were mentioned in the article where Frank visited and shot the images. Towns such as, Charleston, Detroit, Memphis, Hoboken, San Francisco and Miami Beach to name a few. Since I love black and white photography and I've never had a history of photography class, I though it would be a great reason to visit my favorite city. Also going there at Christmas just made the trip more enticing.

So then I started thinking. Maybe I could fly up and back in the same day, but if I did there would be no way that I could make the lecture that would be taking place 11:00. It was too chancy. Soon one day turned into two. I talked to friends about going with me and one in particular seemed interested, and that was Karen. She often accompanies me on my local shoots and even went with me to a show in Myrtle Beach. Karen was apprenhensive in the beginning because she still teaches and didn't want to take the days. I finally had to have a "come to Jesus" meeting with her and it worked!

Three and one half weeks later we were on our way to New York. We left Wednesday afternoon so we could be at the museum bright and early on Thursday morning. We were able to hear two lectures that morning. The first one was way out there and was called, "Surface Tension: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection." Although it was way out of the box, the associate pointed out some interesting facts. Did you know that you can take a photograph of a painting hanging in a museum (with permission and no flash please) and incorporate it into your own composition? Yep, you can. That was all I needed to hear to motivate me to spend some time later that day snapping Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet and Manet. I've got them all in my computer just waiting to bust loose in some future masterpiece.

Oops, two got loose. The first on is Monet. You can see his signature in the lower right corner.

This one is obviously Van Gogh.

Back to Frank. The lecture on his work was led by the curator of photography, Jeff Rosenheim. There was a huge group of people and 83 photographs to view. The lecture lasted over an hour and was extremely interesting. After working for Vanity Fair magazine, Frank came up with the idea to spend a year traveling the United States and photographing it's people in their day to day activities. In order to do this, he had to find a way to finance the project because he had a family and it was going to be costly. He applied for a Guggenheim Grant and was accepted. The grant, both the rough draft and the final copy were on display. In the application was the question, "What do you plan to do with the grant?", and his answer was "take pictures." I can't remember who the proofreader was, but it was rephrased in the final copy kinda like the way my mother "rephrased" my term papers, only on a different level. At one point the curator was replying to a question and said, "Robert thought that...," then he paused and looked around the room and said that he wanted to give the correct answer because sometimes Robert joined the crowd and listened to the lecture. What a hoot! He lives in Manhattan.

This is the cover of the book with an image taken in New Orleans. If you look closely, you will see that this image epitomised the south in the fifties.

Yes, it was worth the trip and yes, I bought the book. Aaaannnnnndddddd, I need to put more people in my shots...at least some of the time.