Things seem to be closing in on me! When I looked at my schedule a week or so ago, I had lots of time - time to take it easy for a little while. The next time I looked, I was already late for a couple of things, and everything else was pressing me hard. Between getting ready for my White Sands workshop and getting ready for the Balloon Fiesta Arts & Crafts Festival, I really didn't seem to have quite enough time. And then, I sort of signed up to help a friend move, and we are having a Grand Opening/Open House at the studio, and I am tasked to build a practice broad jump for agility training: and there's not enough time!

So I am going to do the only thing that makes sense: just do what I want. And what I want is to go down to the Butterfly Pavilion at the BioPark and take pictures of butterflies and maybe dragonflies as well.

Meanwhile, you are all invited to the Open House: Saturday, September 22nd, from 1 to 5PM. The location is at Carr Imaging and Jeremy Stein Photography, 3748 Eubank Blvd NE. Come check out the new place; we'll be delighted to see you! There'll be special prices on the art, too!

We're roughly east of the Mountain View Montessori School building. There's a sign on Eubank for Carr Imaging, turn east there and go straight back behind the school. There's a nice map of our location on the www.carrimage.net website, if  you need it.

We're in the process (long process) of cleaning house. I don't mean cleaning to make everything spic & span; I mean cleaning out stuff that we no longer use or need. We haven't done this for a long time, so there is an immense amount of such stuff!

As part of the process, I am going through negatives from long ago, when I had a B&W darkroom and shot and processed an amazing number of pictures. It's like time travel; I look at those people and I remember them (mostly), but they're so young - so appallingly young! And the details I notice - details about the rooms we lived in, the clothes we wore, the casual gestures and expressions - these bring back so many memories. Some of the people are gone now, but here they are, frozen for a moment to live, piecewise, again. Some of these photos and the memories they bring back are almost more than I can stand.

So this is a plea of sorts: save photos of those near and dear to you! Save them in the most long-lasting, safest means you can. That's probably on your hard drive or maybe on CD/DVD's. Then, someday, you and those who follow you will be able to revisit these friends and loved ones, and you will thank me for this advice.