This image was taken in that forest on Lambsburg Road about a dozen years ago. It's one of my all-time favorites ever, shot with my first camera, a trusty Olympus OM-1 on a cold, dreary, but mysterious day. At that time in my life, I wasn't shooting any black and white to speak of because I thought I had lost my touch. In reality, I didn't have a darkroom I could use, and had just resorted to sending my black and white film away to the Walmart lab so I was repeatedly disappointed in the flat, muddy results. But I just knew when I was shooting that day, I had something special. So I found a true black and white lab in Greensboro, called "Dalmation Black and White," and sent that roll of film to them to develop and contact print (along with several others that I had shot at Corolla during our Christmas vacation week there. I was so pleased with the results, that I now had a new problem. It was going to cost me about $250 dollars for them to print up everything I liked. At the same time, my friend Monika (thanks for the props on the blog today, my sweet friend!) was a student at New River Community College and she was urging me to go take a photo class over there because they were begging people to sign up for it so the class would make. Well, I did the math, and figured that it was cheaper to pay tuition at NRCC than it was to send all those negatives away for somebody else to have all the fun printing them. So I signed up for the course, and did it myself.
Later that spring I got a post card in the mail from the Dalmation lab that they were sponsoring an exhibit of Ansel Adams prints in the High Point Museum and also they were sponsoring an amateur photo contest in honor of the Ansel Adams exhibit, Since I had made some pretty good images I thought I would share them. I had to take them all the way to High Point, North Carolina. The following week, I received a phone call from a lady at the museum. The lady asked me would I like to have some good news? "Really?, Of course!" I thought to myself, "What do you know; you got an honorable mention!" But then she said, "Your print, "Trees in the Mist" won second place in the show!" My Goodness, was I surprised and ecstatic!!! After the whoopin' and "I can't believe its" settled down a bit, she calmly asked me if I would like some more good news? I really couldn't imagine what else she was going to say, so I was actually stunned speechless when she continued, "Your print, "Season's Rest" won FIRST PLACE in the show!" As I said, I was literally speechless! I really could not comprehend that I had just won the first AND second place awards in the first juried show I had ever entered!! And to beat that, my prints were hanging in the same exhibit space with Ansel Adams' work. I had to go down there to a reception to pick up my awards, and they actually wanted me to speak to all the others there (like I knew what I was doing, HA!) One of my prizes was a huge enlargement of this photograph, "Trees in the Mist" which hangs in my precious husband's office to this day. I guess you could say, he has a big refrigerator door in there!
Here are some shots I made at the same place on Monday while waiting for my car to be inspected:
More Trees (Not in the Mist):
Not bad, but not quite the same impact. Leqving the comforts of home on a cold day in January does have its rewards!
Here are a couple more shot at the Felts Bros. garage while he was inspecting vehicle number 1 this week. 2 more to go . . .
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