Insomnia and Owls

I was up all night again. le Sigh. This happens a lot. I'm usually too out of it to go try and shoot any horizontal light photography at dawn but I actually remembered this morning. However, we've had rain (woot woot!) and it's overcast. But the radar was clear so out I went thinking there might be a magical break in the clouds to give me a great sky shot or two. Well, it stayed overcast. But that was okay. I followed this guy around the cemetery and wished I had a telephoto lens for my camera the whole time. His eyes are SO beautiful! Click the images to see them bigger and better!




This old "marble" headstone is my favorite one in the cemetery. Whatever was placed in the center of the marbles is long gone and I can't tell you how curious I am about what had been there. Whatever is inscribed on the front of the headstone is very faint and hard to read but I think I'll go back soon and write it down so it isn't lost forever.

I've Shot This Headstone Before. There is a lovely older man in Brackettville who gets around on foot, is always wearing pointy cowboy boots, and knows everybody's name. I only know him as Chapo and don't know anything at all about him except for what he told me one day. All he usually says to me is, "Hey Geeeneeee!" So I was surprised when he stopped me once and wanted to tell me something. He said that when he was a boy he used to play marbles in what is now my yard. This delighted me as I've found many handmade marbles in the yard over the years and my husband has found several underneath our pier and beam house. I need to remember to take some of them to Chapo! I love to think that some of these marbles may have been his. This headstone always makes me think of dear Chapo as a little one shooting marbles with his friends.

I believe the deceased passed in 1934 which would be about the time that Chapo was a young boy.

It's touching to me that whoever put this up obviously had very little money for the kind of headstone they might have liked to honor their loved one with. So they made up for lack of money with creativity. This headstone shows a lot of love.

Dawn of the Dead

I'm really proud of the above photo because I've tried to shoot this little tree inside its little metal fence before and just couldn't get it right until this morning. I only wish I'd cut down some of the grasses that interfered with the bottom of the shot. Believe you me, I'll go back with a pair of scissors at some other sunrise and shoot it again.

I wasn't feeling well at all yesterday and pretty much slept the day away so when I woke up at 1:00 a.m. this morning, I was wide awake. I killed time until dawn so I could go shoot out at the cemetery and this blog entry is a sampling of what I shot. To see more of what I shot, check out
Sunrise at St. Mary Magdalene's for the rest. And now... I need a nap. By the way, something I did while I was waiting for the sunrise was watch Mojados: Through The Night on Free Speech TV and it was REALLY good. I highly recommend it. Especially for anyone who owns property near the Mexico border. I'm a proponent for putting people to work who are willing to work. I don't understand why we aren't allowing people to just come on in, taking their information, and handing them a guest visa so they can earn some cash legally. Then the only ones sneaking in would be the criminals and drug runners and who cares if they suffer trying to cross over? But these guys who just want to work? Why make it so hard for them? They're just people.

I love the colors in the above shot. It's what I was hoping I'd get.

And I did get it... with a little enhancement from Photoshop.

A girl's just gotta shoot

I'm behind on everything this week (and last week, and most of the week before that) but when I saw how overcast, cool, and beautiful it was outside today, I grabbed my camera and walked to the cemetery.... a mere three blocks from the house. I didn't shoot much worth sharing, but it was fun anyway. The Rest Are Here. Maybe now I've snapped some stuff and gotten my fix I can catch up with other things!