My mother's statue of Mary stood in her garden for as long as I can remember. Mom gave it to her mother in 1954 as a Mother's Day gift and brought it home in 1976 after her mother died. Now the Madonna is on my mom's grave site - she died a year ago last September 3rd. My dad wanted her to have it because it meant so much to her. My sister repainted it and although she did a very nice job, Mom's Madonna is just not the same. She's lost the texture that comes with age, the character and the beauty that only time can provide. The texture is still here in the photograph - I'm so glad I took it. In the image, the Garden Madonna is still standing guard over my mom's hydrangeas and Mom is sitting in her chair at the kitchen table watching the goldfinches and the sparrows and, if we're lucky, the indigo bunting, fuss over the feeders.
I love visiting the zoo. I feel guilty about loving the zoo because I know that the animals are caged and that they don't really belong caged far from their normal habitats. But how else would I get to see these amazing creatures? And it seems like the Tucson Zoo takes good care of them. At least they are not hunted by poachers, only by photographers.
I recently spent a week in Oregon, four days on the northern coast and three days in Portland. I took hundreds of photographs, so many that I'm still editing them four weeks later. I probably took way too many photographs of ocean waves but, being from the desert, I felt the need to record the total experience on the beach, the changing light, the shifting sands and the waves that at certain moments crashed and at other moments undulated softly onto the shore, but always, always moving. There is no one precise way to capture “the ocean.” Every image is a unique and transient moment that will never be seen again.
