grandpa busche

fixing a lawn mower that someone else "fixed wrong".

i never found out how they fixed it, i was just told it wasn't correct.

cousins

today was a hike with grandma busche, mom, and cousins dana and arne.

grandma proceeded to try and out hike us all.

so wonderful to spend time especially with my younger cousins that have been far away in alaska for all their lives.

the family project

this is my grandma jewell.

and the start of a project that i think will take me a while.

i hope to photograph all the members of my extended family. which, when you have a mother with 7 siblings, a dad with 4, and their kids have kids, turns out to be a lot of people.

i'm doing more formal portraits, and this was taken in 120mm color and 35mm black & white, as well as my double camera technique.

a fun way to see and hanging out with my family even if nothing else comes of it.

found

on a walk with rudy yesterday.

returned to take pictures today. this old catholic convent is being turned into a condo building.

which could either be amazing, or sad, if they remove all the things that make this building so interesting.

what's kinda funny is that, even though the whole thing was fenced in, the fence gates just opened up. so i was able to get right up next to the building and look in the windows. even climbed to the top floor on the back staircase. this is so rare in a city were empty building are routinely boarded up with metal housing on the windows, because so often someone will break all the windows and then steal all of the copper piping to sell.

this building seems to have been empty for quite some time without that happening.

maybe even hoodlums still respect that its consecrated ground and don't wish to destroy church property. an interesting possibility.

wedding hair

i made a trade,

in exchange for helping rachel test out a hairstyle for her wedding

she let me put a doily around her shoulders and take old-timey photos of her.

i like how both the style and the photos turned out.

a sure sign of spring

i have been watching and waiting for these to bloom for a few weeks.

my favorite chair sits in the window that is almost level with the top branches of this tree.

i've watched as the buds went from the first signs of spring color, to the flowers now in full bloom amongst all the new leaves that have popped up on the boulevard.

the ground has started to get sticky and slick with the fallen petals and soon all the flowers will be replaced by new leaves, but as they last, i will enjoy them, and hope that the lilacs down the street will take up the next bloom.

morning on lake superior

less then 24 hrs in duluth, but i still managed to make it down to the lake.

there is something different about lake superior.

i live on a great lake now, but i still prefer the lake i grew up on.

its colder and wilder, and on a clear morning it looks like it goes on forever.

and there's still ice. just a little freeze overnight, but it turned all the little puddles in the rock into spidery glass.

i can't wait to be here for a week, and really get to sit by the lake.

wistful for the ocean

from maine last summer and the building of pirate city.

i'm itching to get out of chicago. to go somewhere my view lasts longer then a few blocks and it's not all flat.

the ocean, but even lake superior would be a welcome change.

the mountains, or a sea of prairie grass.

i love my city, but the spring and warm weather always makes me want to move around and see new things.

time for a trip.

but where to go first...