Photography

Day in Muir Woods

By / June 19, 2014 / 3 Comments

Gleek was excited to go see the redwood trees. The boys were along for the ride willingly. I guess they’ve learned to trust that Mom takes them cool places even though all she could really say about it was that there were trees. Link was less than pleased to learn that there would be walking involved. He pictured looking at trees out the window of the car, maybe getting out at a few viewpoints. Muir Woods is all about walking. You walk from way down the road where you finally found an empty space. Then you pay to walk inside, where you walk some more. On the way to the entrance Gleek looked around and said in a disappointed tone “Where are the redwoods?” The woodland was lush surrounding us, but the redwood groves begin in a very specific place and that is beyond the gate. Once you get to them, they’re hard to miss.

Link is the tiny red dot. He’s 5’9″ inches now. Redwoods are big.

The trees aren’t the only lovely things. There was a carpet of shamrocks [correction: Redwood Sorrel] almost everywhere we looked.

These weren’t tiny clovers like we see in Utah. They were big.

Gleek watched for a four leaf shamrock, but she never saw one. I’ve seen plants similar to these sold in pots. They’d always looked a little wilty, not struggling, but not thriving. It was really nice to see them where they belong.

Redwoods can live for a thousand years or more. The big ones were all there before Europeans ever thought to travel across the sea. I thought about that as I looked up and up to where they reach for the sky.

I also thought about it as I looked at the new growth which sprouts from the base of a damaged tree. These sprouts might be twenty years old. I wonder whether there will be people to admire them when they’ve grown tall.

We walked and walked. After the first bit, Link stopped complaining. In part that was because I bought him a map of the park, which meant he was in charge of planning our route. He likes that. The main trails are boardwalks full of people. Everyone was polite, but I loved it best when we headed up on a dirt path. It was a two mile walk with lots of up and then lots of down, but we were mostly alone with the trees. I liked that.

I also loved that we passed by a spot that I recognized from long ago. On my sixteenth birthday I brought a group of friends to Muir Woods and we ran along the trails. This picture may not look like much, but I remember standing exactly there while one of my friends took a picture.

I pointed it out to my son, who is sixteen now. It meant very little to him, but for a moment it was as if I could see that version of me, so young and energetic.

Muir Woods was definitely worth the trip, though we spent two hours in rush hour traffic while trying to depart San Francisco. I’ve now done my California-native duty by my Utah-raised kids and given them the experience of inching along the freeway surrounded by vehicles. I imagine they’ll be speaking knowledgeably about rush hour traffic to their friends upon their return. Hopefully they’ll also talk about the trees.

BYU Special Collections Tour

By / May 21, 2014 / 3 Comments

If you are ever offered the opportunity to tour a university library’s special collections department, say yes. Howard and I got just such a tour today deep in the basement of the Harold B. Lee Library on BYU campus. On our way in, they gave us bright red visitors badges and our very own security guard. Though really his job was to protect all the things from us, so I guess he wasn’t really our guard. We also had three librarian archivists leading us on the tour to show us the coolest things. It was part sales pitch “See, we’ll take good care of the things that you give us.” But mostly they were excited to showcase their collection and genuinely thrilled at the history that they’ve collected, restored, and preserved. Justifiably so. I came away filled with awe, not just for the things they showed me, but for the dedication and love that goes into making sure that generations to come will be able to see the same things.

The first thing we noticed were the shelves themselves.

They looked like a wall when we first entered the vault room. But they move to create aisles so that librarians can find the materials they are seeking.

It was impressive to see these massive rows slide around noiselessly. We were cautioned to be wary about being between them if they began to move. They have sensors that are supposed to prevent motion if something is there, but the casual way that they mentioned sensors failing made me sure it is a thing that has happened more than once. Fortunately only some metal stools have thus far been sacrificed to the gods of mechanical shelving.

Our first stop was where they keep the first printings of The Book of Mormon. I was startled when the librarian pulled one out of its box and let us hold it.

I’ve seen one before, but not to touch. I was awed to be in contact with a piece of my religious history. I was also impressed with the array of first editions in different languages that they had.

The early Mormon people were not wealthy. It speaks of how much they reverenced this book that the constructions and bindings are all so beautiful.

I spent a lot of time in general looking at the bindings and details of books. I noticed how many of the older volumes had ridges on their spines.

I asked if those ridges were decorative or structural. It turns out to be a result of the binding methods that were used.

They showed us one of the oldest “books” in existence. A cuneiform tablet.

There we all were, six of us staring in awe at this evidence of the first writing of humanity. It was thousands of years old. It is also a receipt for beer.

We didn’t have a chance to see the most elaborate illuminated manuscripts, but this lesser one was still amazing.

The gold shined across the pages and we could see that all the letters were hand drawn. I could have stared at that for a very long time. But there was a different wonder to see. For a time it was popular to create hidden paintings on the edge of book pages. My photo does not do this justice. Fortunately the internet can show you more clearly.

Seeing this one kind of makes me want to take some of my One Cobble books, the really thick ones, and paint something on the edges.

I’d mentioned Jane Austen, so they took me to where the Austen books were. A librarian took this first edition copy of Emma and put it into my hands.

I’d seen this pattern on endpapers of books before, but figured that it was some sort of 70’s thing. Instead it appears to be authentic to the era when Austen was publishing.

I would have loved more time to look at each of these things, to sit with them and really comprehend each one individually. The immensity of what they have down there is staggering. There are fifteen miles of shelving and they’ve just been given five more miles. More than once I was glad of our guides, because I would have had to wander to find a way out.

Books are not the only things they have. This is the Oscar for the movie Camelot.

These days Oscars are not allowed to be sold or donated. They are supposed to go back to the academy. This one was acquired by special collections before those rules were created. I love that you could see the place around Oscar’s legs where he’d been picked up and carried, or perhaps held aloft in triumph.

We got to peek at the cold vault, though we didn’t go inside.

Instead week peeked at it through a window while standing in the yellow lit ante chamber. Film has to be kept cold. It also has to sit in the ante room and come slowly up to temperature before it can be manipulated. The yellow light did strange things to vision. We didn’t stay there long.

The library is making massive efforts to digitize as much of the collection as they can and to make it available online. This set up is for exactly that purpose.

It allows for simultaneous photography of both pages while protecting the book and the spine. All a human has to do is raise the glass, turn a page, lower the glass and photograph again.

They’ve lots of books yet to do.

I walked out of the building with a renewed respect for librarians. They were as excited to show us the amazing things as we were to see them. I could hear in their voices how much they value history, which was why it felt so strange that they’d like to have some of our papers. This is why we got the tour, they want to create a Howard and Sandra Tayler collection into their massive archive. They reach out to alumni who are creators with this sort of request and they found us. This leaves me feeling honored and…with an odd feeling I don’t quite have a name for.

To be remembered is the dream, isn’t it? I’ve read essays from scholars who create treatises on the correspondence of Jane Austen. In daydream moments, I’ve looked at letters and journals of my own and wondered if someday there would be a researcher glad to have them, or at least my great grandchildren might be interested in family stories. Now a library actually wants these things. They are things which have been taking up space in my house because of that daydream. Yet I’ve seen the preservation infrastructure that they have. I know how much all that effort must cost and I can’t imagine anything that I produce being worth the expense to preserve it for generations. Then I think of all six of us hovering in amazement around a little stone beer receipt. None of us have any way of knowing what future generations will want to reference.

So, yes there will be a Howard and Sandra Tayler collection in the Special Collections of the BYU Library. We don’t know yet what will be in it, nor how much will be public during our lifetimes. But if nothing else I can stop having to decide to throw out things which might be interesting for future generations, but which I haven’t the space to store.

Special collections is well worth your time to visit and if you are so lucky as to be offered a tour. Say yes.

Walking in the City

By / May 9, 2014

I walked in Salt Lake City today. I’ve walked here before, but mostly in the central downtown sections. Really I’d only ever been on foot within a few blocks: convention hotel to Salt Palace, Temple Square to City Creek Center, and Jaunts to the Blue Iguana restaurant or to the Gateway mall. I’ve really seen very little of this city. Today I walked along 200 north for about eight blocks. I was (again) traveling to the Blue Iguana restaurant, but my starting location was a quaint little neighborhood. I passed an art store I wanted to peruse, an antiques store which I really must return to, a recital hall with music painted on the outside, and a violin maker’s school where I could look in the window and see rows of students carefully crafting musical instruments. I did not feel comfortable taking pictures of the students as they worked, but on the return walk class was over.

I find I have a greater interest in the crafting of these instruments since my son has begun playing cello. We even checked a book out of the library called Music in the Wood which showed a step-by-step process of making a cello. I never expected to find such craftsmanship on my walk to lunch.

Cities are full of odd corners and little surprises. I never really understood that before. I took this little walk and saw all of these interesting buildings in such a short span of strides. It almost made me want to take up residence in a city where walking and public transit would be my primary modes of travel. Instead I’ll remain where I’m firmly rooted in my suburban neighborhood. Deep roots in a community are not to be pulled up lightly, but it would do me good to go adventuring in other places more often. Salt Lake City is not that far and it obviously has lots to explore.

Tending and Blooming

By / April 23, 2014

I used to be a gardener. It is still a thing that I love and someday I will again make time to tend the ground and grow flowers. Right now it is simply not as important to me as a dozen other projects that I have. I find time to get outside and beat back the weeds, but that is not the same as being a focused gardener. A tended garden is a thing of beauty. My garden is a wilderness where plants have a survival-of-the-fittest battle with only occasional intervention from me. I’m pleased that sometimes the flowers win.

Every year Thanksgiving Point Gardens hosts a tulip festival. I always intend to go. One year I even scheduled an outing to go, but then one of my kids picked that day to pretend to be sick. All of the other years, at least five or six of them, I simply missed the window. Somehow the two weeks in April when the tulips are in full bloom always were busy. I would look up at the end of the month and realize that I’d missed my chance yet again.

This morning, for the first time ever, I didn’t miss it. My friend said “Do you want to go?” and I said “Yes.” So we both ditched our piles of work and we wandered the gardens.

Beauty can be found wild, in untended corners, or even wide open spaces. Yet there is an art to a tended garden, I walk there and I know that it is loved because someone had to get down on hands and knees and dig. They had to get dirty, tired, and sweaty to make sure that all goes well. A tended garden takes a sacrifice of time. I’ve spent my last few years tending other things. This year I’m watching my children bloom when last year was life torn up, mud, and despair. Sometimes tending something is like that, you have to make a big mess before beauty can happen. I’ve also tended many books and last week I got to see them arrayed in a booth where others could see the results of all those invisible hours. My garden is full of weeds, but my life is full of things that are beautiful because of the effort I’ve put into them. So perhaps I am still a gardener, just not of flowers right now.

Continuing Vacation Report

By / April 9, 2014 / 1 Comment

I try to clear the decks and tie up all the business things so that nothing will need attention while we’re gone for our family vacation. So far I’ve succeeded one year out of five. This year several time critical tasks relating to FanX next week, GenCon in August, and the LOTA release in May all sought me out and demanded attention. This meant I had to engage my work brain, which was then hard to disengage.

Today we traveled beyond the reach of cell phone and data service. Canyonlands National park is a place without reception. We hiked until we reached the point of diminishing returns on hiking. Fortunately we hit that point when we arrived back at the car rather than halfway through a hiking loop. We all agree that the best spot was the Cave Spring hike. It was challenging enough to be interesting without ever feeling dangerous.

Last night I wondered if we should just shorten the trip and go home early. It seemed easier somehow. Today I’m very glad that we stayed. Though some part of me is listing the places we need to take Kiki when next we have a chance. She would have loved the Cave Spring and Newspaper rock. Newspaper rock is a section of cliff face with doodles on it from the past thousand years, proving that graffiti is not a modern invention.

Or perhaps it is an older, slower, more permanent version of twitter. People throwing notes out into the universe hoping that someone else will see them and respond. I find it comforting that while humans long ago had different resources, they were still driven by the same human impulses that we have today and that we will have a hundred or thousand years from now.

Tomorrow we pack up and head home. Then vacation will be just a memory until this time next year.

A Pocket Paradise

By / April 8, 2014

Bees are good company. This counts as surprising news to all of my children who tend to run screaming at the first sound of buzzing or glimpse of black and yellow in flight. But I have been sitting for most of the afternoon in the shade of a blooming wisteria and the bees have never once bothered me. They’re too busy digging into the flowers to find the sweetness hidden within. I particularly like the giant black bumblebees the size of my thumb because it seems like they shouldn’t be able to fly at all, but they do. I once followed one in it’s search along half the fence line. She sought nectar. I sought to capture a picture of her in flight. I think she was more successful than I.

Frogs are good company too, sort of. They’re the kind of company that I don’t know I have because they sit quiet right until the moment that I’ve come too close, then the cry out and leap into the water. At first that was all I saw as I walked along the edge of the pond; A motion, a noise, a plunk, and then ripples on the water. It made me laugh. I laughed because I was startled to not be alone with the trees and water. I decided to walk along the circumference of the pond, to see if I could spot a frog before he jumped. I never did. Twenty times I was startled by sound and motion. Half the time I laughed. The frogs were more wily than I. Though I did learn how to turn quickly and watch the frog stroke through the water to hide in the leaves on the bottom. I wish I could tell them not to be alarmed, that they need not fear me. But I’m not the only visitor here and not everyone just wants to look.

This place that we stay is only a pocket in the red rock desert. It is tucked between rock ridge and highway. At night headlights on the highway light the windows of our condo. While the kids swim I can hear trucks as they drive by. There are also other people here, which is sometimes nice and sometimes I wish they would go away. We have to share the space. Share the pool. Share the pond, the frogs, the fish, and the lizards.

We have to share the national parks too. This morning we drove into Arches behind a long line of cars full of people who’d chosen the same hour that we did to enter the park. Many of them turned off at the first big attractions. We drove toward the far end where our planned hike began. This time we carefully selected an easy hike. In fact that was a major feature of our selection process. Each kid wanted to know how this hike compared to that one long hard hike we did two years ago, the one we’re all glad we took, but none of us is quite ready to repeat. We passed people on the trail and listened to the music of their languages. Arches is filled with people who have traveled half a world to be there. It is three hours from my house, tucked into a desert that is mostly boring. A pocket paradise.

I overheard one older gentleman saying he hadn’t seen any arches yet and he’d been there all morning. He was pondering a walk to Sand Dune Arch and wondered if the walk was worth it despite his arthritic hips. I spoke with him for a moment, suggesting the double arch and windows arches as the most spectacular sites with the least amount of necessary walking. We saw him again at Sand Dune Arch. I congratulated him on making the walk. He smiled and gave me a thumbs up, then looked up at the arch. It is tucked in between massive fins of rock, a hidden arch, not often photographed. The man said “I thought it would be redder. I haven’t seen any that look like the pictures.”

Pictures, stories, and social media posts are all curated for point of view. We only see what someone else chose to put into the frame. That gentleman had traveled a long way, and he might never get a chance to see what he expected when he started that trip. I hope that he found ways to be happy with the experience he was having instead of always wanting it to be different. If someone came to our preferred vacation spot based on my descriptions, they might be disappointed at the smallness of the pond, pool, park. These things are not large. There is just a small green place created first by a natural spring and then later by people who wanted to turn this into a place to stay. It is only a pocket paradise, but it is sufficient for us. I notice that there is plenty of wisteria for everyone and no one asks me to share the company of the bees.

Photos at Sunset

By / March 8, 2014

Our outing to the park for sunset photos was a success.

The kids particularly like the odd swinging structure we found in a corner of the park.

When the light dimmed and the air got chilly, we traversed back home.

These were photos that I took. Some of Link’s are better than mine, but he’s not going to process his until tomorrow.

Snapshots

By / March 8, 2014

The sun was setting out the window to my right sending warm rays of light through the wind shield and into my eyes. Link was napping in the seat next to me. He was along on the road trip to fetch his sister simply because he likes road trips and he likes his sister. Three hours to her college dorm and then three hours back so that we could have her home for ten days of spring break. On the other end of those days we’ll make the trip again. But I was not thinking about the drive, I was measuring the height of the sun. Link had a digital photography class and his current assignment was to shoot sixteen photos by the light of sunset. We’d hoped to arrive in Cedar City in time to shoot photos at the historic cemetery there, but the sun was fast vanishing. It would be gone before we arrived.

“Hey Link, if you want sunset pictures today, you’d better take them out the window of the car.” Link blinked himself awake and mumbled that he would just take them some other day. My head filled with unspoken arguments. After being sick for four weeks, Link had lots of assignments to make up. Photography was among them. My task managing brain wanted him to knock out all the assignments as quickly as possible so that they would be done. But they were not my assignments. They were Link’s and I had to get out of his way and trust that his more measured approach would result in work completed by the end of the term. It was a careful dance, sometimes nudging him to do a little bit more, mostly trying to keep my hands off. The sunset was right there. The camera was in the car. Maybe pictures taken from a moving car would all turn out bad, but it was worth a try. I said all these things to Link and he pulled out the camera to humor me.

The sunset hid behind some mountains and then peeked out again. Link began to revel the challenge of trying to catch an object, a tree, a passing vehicle, in relation to the sunset. Once a flock of birds flew across the glowing sky and he attempted to capture that.
“It’s like Pokemon Snap!” he said to me smiling. “Only I need a better camera.” I watched him managing the low batteries by turning the camera off between shots. Unfortunately this meant he was not always ready when a shot appeared. We definitely need to upgrade the batteries, or figure out why the camera manages to drain batteries dry in less than ten minutes. Photography would be more fun for him if he could just shoot without having to worry that the batteries will run out.

Link reviewed the shots on the camera screen and claimed that some of them are good. We planned another photography outing to a park for the next day, just to make sure that he’ll have sixteen good shots before the due date. Going to a park with ducks and a pond at sunset sounds like a lovely way to spend a Saturday evening. We’ll probably bring the other kids with us. They won’t care so much for the photography or the sunset, but they’ll like the park and the ducks.

The light dimmed and Link put the camera away. We sat together in companionable silence. I thought how different this March felt compared to last year. Back then so many things in our family were shifting. We did some relationship recalibration with Link because somehow our love for him was not getting communicated to him in a way that he could see it. Gleek was just headed into the descending slope of her meltdown and stress which would result in major school interventions and some necessary diagnoses. Kiki and Patch were both picking up on the general stress and also dealing with grief over the fact that life was aimed irrevocably toward change. Kiki was going to leave for college. Life was going to be different, and none of us knew how that was going to feel. The emotional landscape of our household in March of last year was a rocky, treacherous, messy place.

This year March arrives with a sense of things coming together instead of falling apart. We’ve passed through the transition year and arrived in a place that is different, but better in many ways. Kiki’s life is hers to direct and she does it well. Link has begun to take the helm and steer his life. Gleek still has many things to learn about emotional management, but we’ve got the right structures in place for her to learn them. Every day I see her unfolding and engaging instead of curling tight to keep herself safe. Patch has discovered his own strengths and how to face anxiety by teasing himself out of it. Everywhere I look, I see growth and family members aimed in good directions. I am no exception. I am less afraid than I was and more ready to embrace the joy that already dwells in my life.

We arrived in Cedar City just barely too late to photograph in the cemetery. The sky was still light, but Link pointed out that the magic hour was gone. Colors and sun had faded from the sky. We still drove into the cemetery to take a look at the generations old headstones and the looming trees. Link was somber at the quantities of grave markers. I felt a little of that too, though I noted that almost every single marker had flowers or decorations of some kind. They fluttered in the evening breeze. These people were not forgotten. I would have liked to get out and walk around and read some of the stones, but Link was ready to see his sister and he was hungry.

Once we collected Kiki and got back on the road, I listened to Link, who often doesn’t talk much, tell her in detail all about taking pictures on the road. I thought about the road ahead, and not just the one we needed to drive that day. Truthfully, we have as much transition ahead as we’ve just weathered, but not all at once. We know how to survive transition and we know that good things come after. Next March will be different, but I don’t need to worry about that now. All I need to do is catch some moments so I’ll have them to remember later, like sunset photos snapped quickly out the window of a moving car.

Images of Fall

By / November 21, 2013

A storm blew in today and it feels like the end of Fall. We’re done with mild days and piles of leaves. Our leaf piles are pretty epic these days. One afternoon we hosted ten children ages two to twelve and they could all bury themselves in the same pile simultaneously. Eventually though we had to get to raking and bagging. Even then, there was fun to be had.
Meet the leaf giant:

He existed for a time underneath our honey locust tree. This next leaf art project used leaves from an apricot, a pear, and a mimosa tree.
The Pokeball:

When all the leaves were bagged, we had twelve big bags ready to be hauled off to the green waste facility. I’m going to miss the bright colors and warm weather of fall.

An Evening Walk

By / June 13, 2013

I went for a walk during the hour of fireflies in the hope that I would be able to capture one in a picture. The fireflies were very obliging, the hovered right in front of my camera more than once, but sadly my skill is lacking. I have dozens of shots of blurry ground or blurry fireflies. So I turned my lens toward some less mobile targets.

This fern caught my eye because it was growing six feet up on the side of a tree. I wondered how big it would get over the course of the summer or if it would always be a tiny thing.

As I walked, I saw lots of evidence that this is a tended forest. Trees that fall across the paths were cut into logs and cleared. I loved the contrast in color between the bark and the heart wood.

This cluster of flowers was no bigger than my thumb, but still lovely.

The small details of this world are amazing.