New Blog Address!!
For you that follow or happen to come across this blog...thanks to you for checking in. But updates are no longer here at this site. You can find me at the TRUE IMAGE PHOTOGRPHY blog for the continuing story of My Little Town and more. Please come and see me...I love to hear your comments and imput! Thanks!

Love the cowboys!!

New Showing!

The "My Little Town Series" have officially been shown for the first time (in print) and the response has been extremely gratifying. These small towns are such a large part of our country, and in my own small way I want to give them a voice, often drowned out by the urban. These three image were taken at the July 4th, Yoncalla Rodeo.

Home on the range. The east side of the Steen Mountains in the southeastern most tip of Oregon is a still a paradise of by-gone days.

Wizard of Oz....

This is a favorite...showing well a culture that is quickly leaving us. The dog has lived a good life on the farm at 18 years old...so have his owners.

Brothers, Oregon....on route 20...population 41...established 1914.

the old hotel Madras, Oregon...We were hungry after a long drive from French Glen, Oregon. Pulling into a drive-in restaurant (I didn't know they were still around) the surrounding buildings caught my eye.

life is a lot slower in the country....

It is 'Paco' who has taken over ruling the roost...he is the smallest of all of the chickens.
the baby chicks at the local feed store...

Rescue of the rooster's owner

He was (still is) a Rhode Island Red, in the spring of his second year. A beautiful rooster with gorgeous plumage and long, long talons. This was a rescue of the rooster's owner from being attacked (she, the owner who loves her chickens, and gives them names) Bartholomew got too big for his britches and found a new home with fellow roosters to put him in his place.

Haines, Oregon

We had just missed the 4th of July rodeo, but were in time for the annual country singing contest. It was refreshing to see the hats come off for "America The Beautiful" sung by a young girl...she won the prize money for the evening.

My little town...a documentation of small town America through the photograph.

There are powerful stories that are being acted upon and told on a daily basis in towns across America. These stories are of who we are as a people, revealing, after the trappings are gone, that we are essentially the same.

The idea formed when a friend gave me her copy of "The Family of Man", an accumulation of 503 pictures from 68 countries created by Edward Steichen. It is a powerful tribute to all of us that we are the same, no matter where we come from. How great a power that it held and the power that the printed photograph held was shown to me in part, when I watched the tears coming down the cheeks of people who I shared the book with.
But why go around the world...most of us will never have that opportunity. Our own "back door"...shows us an intimate picture of that "family of man" with its cultural gaps of the urban and the rural. I have very little access to photograph the financially well to do, but the door to the majority of America is in reach. The challenge is to capture it in all of its honesty...approaching it with the belief that no man is a stranger.
The journey still remains for me to fully understand the effects a picture can have on people. That is where part of the joy of photography remains and stays ever fresh.