Spotted at the Birmingham Mural

Photography

 

While I cop to being lazy about dragging out my big camera, I do have legitimate photo news. I signed up for another evening education photo class.

Birmingham’s History in Plain Sight
Taught by Meg McKinney
Samford Academy of the Arts

This is the same Meg who has guest posted and given me photo lessons [List of MM posts]. One reason I took the previous classes was to meet the prerequisites for Meg’s classes [Photo Class Without The Photos, It’s All Grist for the Mill, Spotted at Kymulga Grist Mill].

Yes, I will be taking Spotted along, in a blatant attempt to turn my homework into blog posts.

“Wells Fargo Community Murals celebrate the legacy of the communities we serve, highlighting the geography, industry, and cultural diversity that give each community its unique character and sense of place. From small towns to big cities, we have installed custom community murals in over 2,300 Wells Fargo locations nationwide.” Wells Fargo Community Mural Program

I found this 10 minutes into my search for a suitably historic photo op. Photography is all about learning how to look.

Update. Forgot to include the address. The bank is at 316 18th Street South. The mural runs along 4th Avenue South.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Filling Out The Historical Record, Show Photos Dixie Cup 2017

Adventures in Saddle Seat

 

HB Whizbang
After the Class

Casey McBride Photography

Another example of good photos from a bad show [Show Report]. With a two-for-one deal, I ordered the win photo to soothe my ego after ordering the terrible ProAm photo [Show Photo] & the candid because I have always been more interested in editorial than in presentation.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

XC, Kinda, Sorta, Maybe

Home Team

 

What is lower than Tadpole? Fish Roe?
What is lower the Amoeba? Blue-Green Algae?
Whatever you call the level, we set up a course at home and schooled it. It was more of a horse question then we expected.

As a giggle, for a little variety last weekend, Husband Greg put three cavaletto at the lowest settling along a well-trodden path in the field. Voila, instant “cross-country.” We expected both horses to trot casually back and forth a few times.

Rodney & I have walked the path to the corner many times. Rodney has done it an infinity of times on his own, see photo. In the ring, Rodney knows how to handle cavelleti. However, path plus cavelletti was a whole new world. I could almost feel him thinking, Path – check. Poles in my way (he doesn’t speak Italian) – check. Poles in my way on the path – Hmmmm. I … I … I got this.

We walked the line. We trotted one of the three. We trotted the entire line, complete with an imaginary start box were I counted us down and told us to have a good ride. (Verisimilitude is important in training exercises.) By the end, we did the mini-est of mini courses, trotting one way, circling the ring at a trot and trotting back the other way. Rodney was a star.

I think he had fun. For Rodney, riding is serious business. He doesn’t know how to have fun undersaddle. He is scared of so much – leather halters [Here We Stand], loading [Trailer Training] – that I forget in other situations, he can be quite bold [Dry Pool]. He sashayed back to the barn like he was the king of the universe.

Milton, not so much.

He too knows the path & cavalletti. He did not like the combination. He sucked back when we walked over them. He was so concerned when we trotted them that he spooked at Greg sitting at the end of the line. This does not bode well for encountering jump judges.

Me: Seriously horse? It’s a pole.
Milton: Yeah boss, but it is exhibiting unusual behavior. I must watch it closely for signs of danger.

I consider myself a weenie. It was weird to be the brave one.

He started to (mildly) pull when we trotted the line heading toward the barn. It was less Wheeee and more, I don’t like this, I gotta run. We did one more in that direction to prove we could and then trotted the other way with a lot of Whup, Whup on my part, to keep him slow. Groundcrew said Milton handled it fine. I, on the other hand, felt the storm brewing, distant, small, but on the horizon. The amount of nervous sweat on Milton’s shoulders supported my thesis. Of course, it is entirely possible that the next time, Milton will be all, Oh yeah, I’m an expert at this.

So, we inadvertently came up with a way to expose the horses to the essence of cross-country with none of the jump.

Yes, I’m still chugging along with Rodney. Slowly, oh so slowly. Not writing about it helps [not a post: Ramifications], [About: Two Names].

Thank you for reading.
Katherine Walcott

Our New Four-In-Hand

Home Team

 

Four.
In-Hand.
I crack myself up.

Need a hint?

Yes, we have kittens. We brought home the 8-week-old litter of a local barn cat after Milton’s show a week ago [Show Report]. The carrier rode in the extended cab of the truck. So, technically, they followed us home.

Cuteness overload.

All four are healthy & lively, even fierce, but so tiny. Mom was a teenage pregnancy, on the list to get fixed as soon as she was old enough but opted make questionable life choices before her meeting with the vet.

Maybe that’s why the kittens are so small. Despite being 8 weeks old, their heads were the size of golf balls. Their little rib cages were not much larger. I felt I had to be careful touching them with my big human paws. After a week, they have gotten bigger, mostly longer. Now they feel like kittens rather than like breakable kitten-shaped ornaments.

The troop has no names yet. I’m not sure how much work I will put into the project. In addition to being on the record as terrible at coming up with names [Help Me Name My Horse], our cat names never stick. I give them fancy show names, e.g. Rhyme and Reason, that end up with descriptive barn names, e.g. Smudge and Pudge.

Right now the kittens are know by their outstanding characteristic, the size of their tails, or lack thereof: Stubby, Stubby, Three-Quarter Tail, & Long Tail. They came that way. I will try to get pictures of the various tail styles. One thing I can tell you, when you don’t have a tail of your own, you play with your brother sister sibling’s tail

The reason for the cross-outs is that in addition to no names, the little dears have no sexes. Well, they have them, I just don’t know what they are. Google says male parts are round and the female parts are slitty. Undertail inspection reveals private parts that are round in a slitty sort of way, or perhaps slitty in round sort of way.

For the moment, we are living the non-gendered lifestyle. It’s harder than I would have thought. Good girl boy kitten. One of the Stubbies is developing more obvious boy bits. The others are girls or still undeclared. If we end up with three female cats, I hope they don’t take after their mom in precocious fertility. No one wants an endless loop of kitten production.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

The SSF Letters Have a Run-In with Inkscape

Graphic Design

 

In honor of two weeks of Stepping Stone Farm Advanced Camp: one week of camp, one week of reliving it on the blog.

Messing with handles in Inkscape. The result proves that powerful tools are pointless without underlying artistic vision.

Notes for myself, in case I ever need to remember how I did this.
S – corner nodes, handle ends tented together, i.e. /\/\/\
S – smooth nodes, handles turned 90 degrees
F – pulling handles out of nodes, pulling one handle way out

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

In Which I Wonder About The Reality Of Photographs

Commentary

 

Harold: Why are there no photographs in these frames?

Maude: They were representations of people I dearly loved yet they knew these people were gradually fading from me, and that in time all I would have left would be vague feelings – but sharp photographs! So I tossed them out. My memory fades, I know. But I prefer pictures made by me with feeling, and not by Kodak with silver nitrate.

Harold & Maude
Quoted from the Daily Script

Have we become dependent on photos to confirm our reality?

I have.

I was thrilled to find out that Cara Mitchell had photos of Milton from the show [Show Report]. It happened! I was there! I have proof! We don’t look so bad!

I wasn’t even primarily excited about visuals for the blog. I already had Husband Greg’s ribbon shot. I was simply happy the photos existed.

I could make a case that one learns from photos. For example, the corkscrew down the long side did not look as extreme as it felt. Milton’s head is definitely to the outside, keeping his eye on the umbrellas just out of frame, and you can see from this feet that he is four-tracking rather than traveling straight. But it rode as if he was going completely sideways. Wherein lies the truth?

I completely buy into this. When we went down to Silver Lining Equestrian Center for a jumping lesson [Up & Over], I deliberately dressed in my good britches, a well-fitted shirt, and my show hat, into the hopes that someone would be taking pictures. Again, thank you Ms. Mitchell.

I refuse to blame smartphones and social media. All they have done is make it easier to indulge our obsession with documentation. When I was in school, one day every year was School Picture Day. (Do they still do this?) A professional photographer would construct a backdrop in one of the rooms. We all filed through one by one to sit in front the mottled blue background. The resulting image would be sold by the package to be sent to grandparents &/or non-resident parents &/or anyone who wondered what we looked like cleaned up. Somewhere is a picture frame with my headshots arranged in a circle from kindergarten to senior year, as if 13 years of my life could be summed up in 13 bits of paper.

I think about the Harold & Maude quote often. If I were a more enlightened person, would I rely on my lived experience rather than external proof? Will my memories of the show gradually erode down to these two images? Is that a bad thing?

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott