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Oh how we say time flies, but then there are those days that just seem to stay frozen in time. It was just about two years ago that I had to put my good friend down. I still feel a little lost without him. I miss his fierce protection of all under my roof. I miss his smell. Probably only true dog folks can follow that, but every dog I have owned had their own distinctive smell along with their own pedigree of personality:

Samantha (the sweetest), Pork Chop (the happiest), Midnight (a troubled black lab I could never quite follow), Clovis (the only dog we ever paid for, unconditionally the smartest and who was so tight with his pack) and then comes Grace (our blue-eyed deaf rescue found abandoned at a West Texas railroad station and who is now my only four-legged shadow).

I have loved each of them greatly and differently. Each one has brought me their lifetime of joy and buckets of tears upon leaving. Clovis was my poser dog. Whenever I got out my Nikon, he was quick to notice and quicker to upstage anyone and anything.

Since I lost Clovis, I have not, with any degree of seriousness, picked up a camera. He just took that out of me. I have tried to shoot at some images, but every time I pick up a camera I hear his tags a jingle, a bump on the leg wanting to know where he should pose. My heart goes adrift and the camera back in the backpack.

I am a sentimental old coot and damn but I miss them all and can pull up many a tearful memory. I have to ask, how can a dog steal my vision? Hey, if they can steal your heart, vision is pretty much a simple task.

Get busy living or get busy dying!…”Red”…aka S. King

Peace Out,   jasL

Shades of Gray from Grayson Co, TX #862-May we all grow into children

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“To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature.  Most persons do not see the sun.  At least they have a very superficial seeing.  The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.  The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.”  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Grow into the child…monos en theos…†…jim

Shades of Gray from Grayson Co, TX #825 – OPEN YOUR EYES!

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Do you ever think that God made some things harder to see for a reason?

“You can observe a lot just by watching.”…Yogi Berra

“My eyes make pictures when they are shut”.. Confucius

Ah, from Yogi to Confucius, now there’s a leap.

Open yours eyes!…monos en theos…†…jim

Shades of Gray from Grayson Co, TX #822 – SEEING!

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To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

Open your heart and see…†…monos en theos…jim

 

IMAGES OF SMALL THINGS FROM THE BIGGEST COUNTY IN TEXAS #722 – HELTER SKELTER!

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It amazes me how quick our vision of what is going on can all change so quick. A couple of days ago I was on top of the world. Everything seemed crystal clear. Then I awoke with what felt like a plugged up ear. I have this constant high pitched ringing that sounds like a huge industrial fan sitting on my right shoulder. My equalibrium has been thrown out of whack and I have a hard time keeping my balance and have actually fallen a couple of times.

While my vision is as good as it ever gets, I feel very much like this image taken from my chair in the living room.

Trying to get back to center! en theos monos ††† jim

IMAGES OF SMALL THINGS FROM THE BIGGEST COUNTY IN TEXAS #713 – Halfway to nowhere & you can’t pay the toll

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Don’t you just love it when you think you know exactly where you are going. You see something you think you wanted to photograph. You work at it a bit and then as you are walking back to the truck, you look down the road and all of a sudden you realized why you stopped here….Matt Maher wraps it all up very neatly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfa3GZOEb38

MATT MAHER LYRICS

“Rise Up”

When you see the road ahead
That you’ve been down before
When you’re halfway to nowhere
And you can’t pay the tollYou’re hanging onto mercy
Withered on the vine
With your feet on the ground, your head in the clouds
And your heart on the lineOpen up your eyes…

You’ve got to rise up, rise up
When this life has got you down
You’ve got to look up, look up
When you search and nothing’s found
My eyes have seen the glory of the love that’s here and now
It’s coming down
So rise up now.

When you’re told that day is over
Long after the sun goes down
And your mind it keeps on racing
At the dreams that don’t come ’round

When you don’t know how to surrender
Cause your whole life’s been a fight
When the dark holds you and you can’t break through
Cause you haven’t seen the light.

Open up your eyes…

You’ve got to rise up, rise up
When this life has got you down
You’ve got to look up, look up
When you search and nothing’s found
My eyes have seen the glory of the love that’s here and now
It’s coming down
So rise up now.
Yeah rise up now,
Oh rise up now.

en theos…jim

IMAGES OF SMALL THINGS FROM THE BIGGEST COUNTY IN TEXAS #710 – SOMETIMES THERE ARE THINGS THAT YOUR EYES DON’T SEE!

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As I photographer, I have most often looked forward to making images during that “golden hour”. That thirty minutes before and after sunrise & sunset. Recently I have been introduced to “light painting”, which pretty much means bringing my camera out after dark and using flashlights and such to light things that are otherwise unseen.  Last night I was outside looking at the almost full moon and just for the heck of it brought my camera out, cranked up the ISO to 1600 and set about to just see what was out there that my eyes did not see.

Both of these images are not manipulated in photoshop other than some exposure adjustments and running them through some noise reduction software. I was amazed at what there is unseen out there.

It reminded me of laying on my back at night in the back yard as a youngster and staring in wonder at the depth of the West Texas sky. I always wondered where does it all end. Some sixty years later, I still ponder that question, but the answer comes that it never ends,

Enjoy life, see what you never stop to see! en theos ††† jim

IMAGES OF SMALL THINGS FROM THE BIGGEST COUNTY IN TEXAS #676 – Onward thru the fog!

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The last couple of mornings we have had fog. It is kind of a rarity here in the desert.  It has been nice, by not having it too often it seems to bring  clarity through it’s obscurity. There is the comfort of knowing something is there even though you can’t see it at the moment. I love living in the desert. It truly is a box of chocolates every day.

“Most of us live in a fog. It’s like life is a movie we arrived to 20 minutes late. You know something important seems to be going on. But we can’t figure out the story. We don’t know what part we’re supposed to play or what the plot is.”
John Eldredge

Onward brothers & sisters, trust your foglights….en theos †††jim

IMAGES OF SMALL THINGS FROM THE BIGGEST COUNTY IN TEXAS #627- RED DOOR IN THE GOLDEN HOUR OF NEW MEXICO TIME

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I have been delinquent on my posts lately. Resistance comes at you in many forms. For more than a week, mine came calling with a nagging cough that settled in my chest as bronchitis.  My body went into a defensive move of slow motion. I slept away many lost hours. No sense in pining over that. Attempting to gather myself together, to see, find and make some images. I feel as though like I am passing through a zone of limited vision. A slight fog or more likely blowing dust here in the desert. In the mean time, I am pulling from the library of past times.

This lovely door was one of several in a line of small apartments in T or C, New Mexico. The colors warmed by the setting sun reflect such a glow. A nuance of bounty, of simplicity. Warming, giving off a calm amongst the vibrance.

Enjoy what you may see today. ††† en theos ††† jim