February 2016

The Starkness of Winter
Butte, Montana
2016

Even when the sun is shining, winter can still feel bleak and stark. The sun itself seems to carry light but no heat.

When We Were Young
photo by Betty Duff Lewis
Lyndon, Kansas
circa 1963

My Aunt Betty died yesterday morning. I posted this photo she took of me many years ago because she was an artist in her own right and had an interest in photography and this was the only thing I could put my hands on that she had produced.

I grew up around Betty’s artwork, from her teenage drawings of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley in her bedroom at home to the various paintings hanging around my parents’ and grandparents’ homes as well as her own home over the years..

She was an active photographer in her college days (when she took the above photo of me) and has always had an interest in my work. She had a degree in art and taught art for several years, so was way more knowledgeable about the basics of composition etc. than I am. I could tell when a photo of mine seemed to work; she could tell me why it worked.  I will miss our email exchanges that started with her response to a particular POTD but ended up being newsy accounts of family and other things.

I will remember her happy chuckle, always cheerful and smiling as in this photo of the two of us from a few years ago taken by my cousin Connie. (Note the painting by Betty in the background, and the birthday cake she made for me because I was smart enough to visit on my birthday.)

Combat #5
Bozeman, Montana
2016

Combat #5
Bozeman, Montana
2016

Combat #3
Bozeman, Montana
2016

Combat #2
Bozeman, Montana
2016

Combat #1
Bozeman, Montana
2015

Or You Could Look At It This Way
Bozeman, Montana
2015

I seem to remember a sight gag from TV many years ago where, when one person said “You could look at it this way…,” the other responded by saying “…or, you could look at it this way.” and then twisting their head and neck until their face was nearly upside down. It was funny when I saw humans do it, and even funnier when I saw this raven looking at the world a different way.

Line Dance
Moab, Utah
2015

Natural Tendencies
Bozeman, Montana
2016

When I started photographing crows and ravens some years ago, a wish of mine was to someday come across one with a red berry in its mouth. I thought it would take a long time to stumble on to such a scene, but it was actually only a couple of months before I was able to capture this image:

Crow With Berries
Bozeman, Montana
2009

Since 2009 when I took the Crow With Berries shot,  I’ve come across other instances of crows or ravens with something red or reddish-orange in their mouths, so came to realize it was not as rare an event as I thought it might be. But what I noticed in my old studio at our mountain house the other day takes that kind of occurrence to a whole other level.

I did not setup this scene on purpose. While moving my studio into town a year or so ago, I temporarily and haphazardly pinned a crow mobile I had to the wall by the door. I don’t know if it ended up positioned like in today’s POTD from the beginning or if it happened later somehow, but I just noticed it the other day when I was up there doing some work. Perhaps there’s a natural attraction of crows to red objects even when the crow is inanimate!