"Storms will swell, the days will fly; I'll love you like the passing time"

Summer ended, and so did we.

This one was late, cool, and short.

As August ends and September falls like the first leaves I will return to the prairie, I will roam the Rockies, and perch upon the Red Rocks.

"Did I stumble through your darkness, or was I just another one?"

February;

This month is often something of a false spring. A few days of 60 degree sun before the frost returns. Seeds planted that don't get to take root, scorched away by winter's last freeze.

"Did you open up your heart there, or were you quiet and afraid?"

There's something magic and timeless about watching the sunset from the road. The west glows as the east is dotted with the first stars. Cars glow and zoom off to the wide horizons, and you remember watching night fall from the backseat, when money was for milkshakes and video games. Soft accoustic nostalgia glowing like velvia dusk, flash bulb glimpses of memories firing off like distant heat lighting.

You and I were so many moons ago, that I almost forgot. There’s comfort in that.

I’ve moved on, you have too.

I miss the love that you showed me- and I hope someone is returning it all to you. It’s late and I’m sitting in my new partners home, I do not miss us, but I hope you are well.

Photography in Our Time

Photography is capturing the permanence of the stars and mountains and bringing it into our lives, to see what has always brought humans joy in our own futures.  Nights spent by a fire, watching the first stars of the east appear; travelling the world with the person you love; sheltering together for warmth against the first chill breeze that turns the leaves red and foretells the Coming Dark.

Whether forged in C-41 or upon CMOS, we can take this foreverness as an amulet to remind us what is most important, to guide us through the night to the sun’s promised return. The stars watch their progeny from afar, reminding us of the power of that which we cannot see; gravity, time, love.  Hope.

A photograph can capture what we wish lasted forever, and memories of what was Before.  Sun-kissed smiles and friendships made on bicycles, the brightness of young eyes before taillight scars, before forever could mean Gone instead of Always.  

Most of all though, photography can be a blueprint. The unchanging mountains and forests can be a quiet whisper of the inheritance awaiting all of us. Behind the facade of lives spent in cities and defined by monetized tasks are people, people who have the same hopes and hurts and dreams and dreads that people have had since the beginning.  People that know the pain of cancelled dreams, or the bright hope of a new pair of smiling eyes that already look like Home, and arms that already feel as safe as the morning sun. 

People that take pictures of the timeless things, hoping it will connect them to the ageless joys of Those that Came Before.

2016

The sun came shining and I went roaming;  

Every life has a great adventure, foretold in half remembered dreams and a deja-vu smile shared with a girl who holds flecks of gold and soft redemption in her eyes.  Promised with subtle certainty, like a mother’s whisper or the gradual brightening of the eastern sky. 

You can go farther from your house then you’ve ever been and still be Home, where the land is as vast as the ocean and horizon stretches in every direction, singing of the open road and wild places.  Where every town is an island in the vastness, tree-lined streets and stone buildings telling of past glory and heartland revival.  Your hand settling in hers and knowing that’s where it belongs, the interstate taking you where it will.

“Leave a note on your bed, let your mother know you're safe. And by the time she wakes, we'll have driven through the state.”

We expect adulthood and finding ourselves to be dramatic singularities; flashbulb moments of sudden epiphany we can search for, to guide our way like the north star.  But maybe these are things we can only find when we aren’t looking, maybe home has nothing to do with latitude and longitude and everything to do with the way the girl with gold in her eyes smiles in her sleep and puts her arms around you as you settle in to bed. 

Maybe Home is that moment your bodies warm each other against the darkness, far far from where your journey began, love and safety guiding you both to sleep, as you smile softly into her hair and know that you are saved.

Home and Hearth

“Winter’s cold finds you upon the land, roaming the high ridges where the pines give way to autumn tinted, snow-speckled grasses.  Summer’s memory lingers when the noon sun brushes your upturned face, but daylight is fleeting now.  The leaves have mostly fallen, the dark hours far outnumber the light. We are not naturally suited to survive Winter, but the beauty of humans is our perseverance. When we know the cold is coming, we gather wood.  When we are safe and sheltered by a Fire, those of us who have felt the cold dread of Winter Dark know we must tend the Fire that saves us, that love only dies if you let it, and that nurturing kindness can sustain the flame that will save you from all the Winters yet to be.”

Photographers on Tumblr

I’m looking to follow more original photographers, like this if your blog is mostly your own work :)

Sunrise

“The Long Summer scorched them, turning their needles a sickly brown-green. August heat-lightning in the distance, wildfire, lack of water fought them, but still the ancient firs stood, for now the mountain air whispered of cleansing rain, of the snows to come.  At sunrise, the air was chill, and the clouds glowed, and the birds sang of redemption.”

“The faint rumble of a jet under the ancient light of stars, the rustle of a summer breeze carrying the faintest scent of autumn down from the mountains, dancing in the pines, chill and refreshing after the day’s heat; these moonlit nights sustain us”

Flowers under Moonlight III - McKendry

A book was once published of twenty photographs by twenty photographers, of the same model. They were as different as twenty paintings of the same model. Which was proof, once and for all, of the flexibility of the camera and its validity as an instrument of expression. There are many paintings and buildings that are not works of art. It is the man behind whatever instrument who determines the work of art.

 Man Ray (via letstalkphotography)

紅葉  - McKendry

Summer Nostalgia  - McKendry

She Waits  - McKendry

High Garden Summer  - McKendry

Miss Emily  - McKendry