Now that I’ve discovered graphic arts, I am planning to make some changes around the site, particularly in the masthead, but the first thing I did was get rid of the remaining stock photos in my changing photo in the upper right-hand corner. I had removed most of the photos, replacing them with pictures we had taken of the desert around Sabino Canyon some months ago, but I still had a few left. Here are the replacements:
Kids brave -25 degree Fahrenheit to skate in downtown Anchorage
I like this photo; it was taken at dusk so the lights hanging over the rink are glowing against the darkening sky. It had been about 5 degrees above 0 until then, when the sun went down (it was about 3 p.m. or so) and once it got dark, it got much, much colder. I walked around town, stopping at the mall to buy lined pants and using up the chemical handwarmers Julie and Neil had loaded me down with. I went to the museum downtown and stopped in the old railway station — along with about a dozen homeless people — to get out of the freezing wind. I still ended up a tiny bit hypothermic, as I was exhausted and slightly confused when I got back to Julie and Neil’s house. They had started looking for me, as the cold had frozen my cell phone battery (despite the warmer I stuffed into my purse to keep it from freezing) and I was unreachable — my last, cryptic message reading, “Headed home, don’t worry” at around 6 p.m. It took me over an hour to walk what was probably less than a mile, due to the extreme cold. Somewhat ironically, I passed some teenagers wearing nothing but coats, open and flapping — no hats (mine was wool) or scarves or gloves — waiting for the bus.
The mountains on the way to Chugach
This photograph was, like most of my photos, taken from the car. It was simply too cold outside for my camera to work, so I had to get snapshots through the window of the car. I took this on the way to what I believe were the Chugach Mountains, although it could have been any of the four ranges (Alaska, Chugach, Talkeetna and Kenai) around Anchorage. The mountains were really, really tall — I could see them poking out above the clouds — and I grew up in the Rocky Mountains, so when I say really, really tall I mean really freaking tall.
Ben in Joshua Tree National Park
This photo was taken New Year’s Eve on one of our worst car trips ever — a trip to visit friends in Twenty-Nine Palms, California. I take full blame for how the trip turned out, because I should have called the couple who were planning to come stay in our guesthouse to find out when they were actually going to arrive. They said they were leaving Arkansas on the 1st of January, so I expected they might arrive around the 3rd or 4th of the month, even though they were paying from January 1st. It’s not uncommon for people to pay “just in case,” but what happened is that they decided to drive to Tucson and arrived on New Year’s Eve. They had been trying to get ahold of me to let me know, but my cell phone wasn’t giving me the messages (I got them all in a clump several days later). So, on Dec. 30th we packed up and drove 9 hours to California, got there and settled in; the next day we were waiting around for our friends to finish work and such so we went and spent the day at Joshua Tree National Park. Later that night a friend flew in from Okinawa, and all seemed well — until I finally got through to my would-be renters, who were already in Tucson. We quickly packed up and left shortly after midnight, driving all night long and arriving in Tucson again shortly after eight. We were gone a total of 44 hours, 17 of which were driving. It was a complete disaster, but I will say this — the national park was beautiful, and I enjoyed one early-morning walk in the desert with Saffron. It was beautiful after a light rain, and walking across the creosote flats in the rising sun, the smell of the rain-washed desert in my nose, is an experience I cherish.
Ben models my cape for Ethan
I came across this photo and burst out laughing — the look on Ben’s face was reminiscent of Ralphie on A Christmas Story, one of my dad’s all-time favorite shows. I saw the irony when I was making this cute little cape for my nephew Ethan, who is just a year old, so I made Ben try it on and snapped a picture. The old-time truck in the back is actually ‘Mater from the movie Cars, but that along with changing the photo to sepia in Paint.NET made it look like a classic 1950′s moment. The photo was a bit square to fit into my masthead photo area, but I squeezed it in because I thought it was fun.
So, you’ll be seeing these photos on the masthead for a while — just click refresh to get a new photo — but I do hope to make some other style changes in the near future, if only because I’ll be using my site as a portfolio. I hope you like the new photos, and let me know if there is something you’d like to see that I haven’t considered!
