Peaceful Remembrance

Peaceful Remembrance
Originally uploaded by Brina Bat (Sabrina Simon)

Explored on Flickr! #369 for January 28th 2010!

Noccalula Falls & Anniston Museum of Natural History

So this past Friday Paul Michelle and I took a little road trip down to Anniston. On the way down, in Gadsden, we saw a little sign for Noccalula Falls. Michelle said it was pretty nice and Paul and I had never seen it before. We were in no hurry so we made a little side trip and man I'm so glad we did! We were greeted with a gorgeous 100ft waterfall just roaring away! The top photo's my fav - and I posted it to my flickr - the one below gives you a sense of scale...with Michelle and Paul...waaay tiny on the other side. I can't wait to go back and hike down to the bottom of the falls!



Noccalula Falls is named after an Indian Maiden that threw herself from the falls rather than marry someone she did not love. You can read about her story here or on the placard photo below.


All three of us were super pleasantly surprised at the Anniston Museum of Natural History. They not only have a pretty groovy 1960's-ish modern style logo that I really like (see below) but they have an amazing collection of goodies on display - minerals, fossils, all sorts of Alabama flora and fauna, birds, animals of Africa that are just amazingly cool and HUGE - they even have a cave exhibit!! All three of us at some point in time asked the others..um.. how big is this place? Cause it kept going...finally ending with two Egyptian mummies.

W&S in 3D!

No it isn't your eyes... Go grab your nearest pair of red-cyan glasses 3D glass and check out Jay Clark in the Totem Gallery of Tumbling Rock Cave! You can check out some more of our 3D works on flickr HERE!

photo by Nathan Williams and Sabrina Simón

So I've been doing a lot of photo super fun 3D photography lately with a good caving buddy of mine - Nathan Williams (of Realms of Reality). We decided we needed a logo for our joint efforts - since the 3D photos are taken with both our Pentax cameras side by side. So it was discussed... sketched... looked over...talked about some more... resketched and then finally drawn up over the past couple days time by me in Adobe Illustrator....and Voila! Here's the logo!

Ashes and Snow

Came across this photographers site as a post on FB from a friend. And I have to say - this exhibit is absolutely beautiful. I'm utterly stunned at the idea and beauty and impact you can feel from these photos. Ashes and Snow is an exhibit by Gregory Colbert - and I'm SO going to have to look into more of his work. Go to the "Explore" section on the link - its flipping amazing - combines short video clips, tons of photos an hauntingly beautiful soundtrack and selections from the book. I just played around with it for two hours and I still don't think I saw all the photos! At first I thought that some of these had been photoshopped... but apparently not. I highly recommend watching the short little video clips on the website - shot while the photos were taken - they're amazing!!

Four friends

I have four friends. Four pieces that have been and are a part of my life's grand puzzle. Four wonderful souls that all are in some stage of the toughest fight of their lives right now. Up against a sinister and sneaky foe that no one ever asks for - that no one ever welcomes or needs. That corners them all in their very own skin - on their own ground.

None of them will probably ever meet or see each other which makes me kinda sad. They will not learn how to rig a pit from one, or learn how to dress up in medieval costume from the second, or stay up all night in the rotunda from the third, or make a new sister-in-law feel welcome in the family from the forth. But I know. I know each of them in turn and in different ways. I have these memories tucked away - a gift from each of them. And their common fight unites them.

I am worried for all of them but I grip tight to hope for all four - as bright as a torch my hope burns - no matter how hard the battle ahead. And I want to tell them that they've made a difference in my life and I feel very lucky and privileged to call these four souls my friends.

My lists have lists!

Its funny I've wanted to blog all day long... and I had 20 different ideas of what I was going to write about...but my time ran short and the pretty light that I had this afternoon to take photos in disappeared too fast while I did the things I had to do - instead of the things that would have been more fun to do. So I'll save my idea for a later post. And now I'm staring at my desk ... looking at all the lists and sticky notes I've got stuck on the lists and papers. I'm a big list person. If I can get it out of my head and on paper I feel better and more organized about what I have to do. But when my lists have their own lists... I have to work through everything yet again... cross off what I've done, figure out what I need to do first and then reorder and rewrite my lists. I need to do that pretty soon because my lists are overrunning my desk right now...and the to-do's in my head are all fershcmekled (aka mixed up).

So for now I'll leave you with the beginning... the lists I've got going right now:
1. Letterpress Projects
2. Photography To-Do's
3. Design Projects
4. Events to look up and to write on the new 2010 calendar
5. Two lists of people to contact for a two different caving-related projects
6. My New Years Resolutions
7. Programs scheduled and folks to contact for a program for the grotto
8. Business stuff I need to do for Triple S Letterpress
9. several lists of random items I want/need to do - all in various stages of completion...(some of which include things like - order volume II of a type book...clean out some boxes of stuff...get the back issues of the grotto newsletter out... make macarons....write letters to a couple folks...

Driving Home

Tried something a little odd on the way back from the NAPG (North Alabama Photographers Guild) meeting this evening.... a bit of driving photography - straight from the dash board. Had kinda mixed results but at least I can say I've tried it! I know some of you are probably cringing at the thought of driving and photography - but I set a timer - my camera just rested on the dash board - punched the button and left the shutter open for about 15 to 20 seconds. So don't panic - it was probably even less distracting then say changing the radio station on my stereo.

I took several more... but I really liked this one the best of the straight driving.

This one was a double exposure of my speedometer and me sitting at a red light and then finally turning.

Trite

Happy New Year everyone! Hope everyone had a great holiday! I spent Christmas in Florida and had a lovely time! Its been a while and I've been an utter slacker... although what with being away for two weeks and then promptly getting the flu/food poisoning.... um.... yeah... neither really helped my motivation to blog. One of my resolutions is to try and fix that! And anyway... I've kinda been missing my blog and comments and posting. I like the flow of writing my thoughts and sending them out into the world... even if they are rather trite.