A few weekends ago I drove up to Minnesota to surprise my mom for her birthday weekend. The surprise was a big success (the look on her face was priceless), and it ended up being a perfect, albeit short, weekend with my family. That Sunday, her actual birthday, we went on the St. Croix Garden Tour. My family generally goes every year, though it has been a while since I was able to join. We saw some beautiful gardens, and it was fun seeing my nephew enjoying it all as well.

This first garden was my favorite from the tour. It was located on a plot of land that used to be a dairy farm, and had massive gardens that sprawled through the woods, and included a perfect little creek, the old dairy barns, and a tennis court tucked in the back. It was stunningly beautiful.

The gardens after that were a bit smaller, but each had their own charm. My family got lots of ideas for their own gardens from the tour, and I kept on dreaming about the home I will have someday.

New posts over the next few weeks may be a bit sporadic, as I get ready to help Scott move to Colorado next week, and then move myself a few weeks after that. I will try to keep things up here, but if it go quiet, trust that I will get caught up again after I am settled in somewhat.

A few weeks ago I went out to a new (to me) location to take some self-portraits. You may have already seen one image from that shoot, since it is currently featured on my homepage. Beyond just a basic headshot, I had the goal of also shooting a more conceptual self-portrait, as it had been so long since the last time I did so.

I went into the shoot with only a very vague idea of what I wanted, which has occasionally worked in the past. Unfortunately, that was not the case this time. The location and materials I had didn't quite work for what I was aiming to do, and in this situation, the lacking of a very specific visual idea left things a little flat and uninteresting. So, the self-portrait failed, but the setup that I had for that ended up being fairly interesting on its own, which is what I have to share with you all today.

I have always really enjoyed images of moving fabric in general, but especially ones that involve some sort of interaction with a landscape. The photographs and paintings by Laura E. Pritchett have served as sources of inspiration for some of my own photographs, largely because of her use of fabric in motion. Thomas Albdorf has also influenced my work, because of his manner of interacting with the landscape. Though I wasn't consciously thinking of these artists at the time, the photographs in this post have likely been shaped by both of them.

As always, thanks for stopping by, and feel free to share this post, as well as comment below to say hello! Happy Wednesday!