Well Cowboy, "Where the Heck Have You Been???"

Well, where in the heck have you been, Cowboy??? Don't you know I just been hanging out waiting for you to show up??? If you like my profile send me an e-mail;

Good morning Mr. Holbrook Well, thank goodness we got that politics thing out of the way! Its like our family get togethers---we are either alcoholics or podium pounding religious fanatics, and all hot headed rednecks, so we avoid talking about anything to do with churches! You don't have to worry about those little ponies coming this far to see me--I take the big grey dog every where! You didn't get the picture because I couldn't figure out how to do it on this confounded machine. I believe you are quite good on the computer, but I have a love/hate relationship going with mine. My son says that the reason I have so much trouble with it is because I call it so many mule skinning names that it thinks its a mule! I do have a couple of other pictures that I think I can send. I used to follow rodeos and flea markets around selling cowboy/Indian fry bread. That was fun.
Hey, pardner, have a good one!

Shirley wrote me on Yahoo Personals and we enjoyed a short correspondence and it faded away when the Rodeo Finals came on TV. Writing, photography and beautiful women do seem to go together. She had talked about packing mules and spending all her life on and around horses. I found Mr. C.M. Russell's “Mules are Diamonds” on the net and placed three of her e-mailed photos in the foreground. The following are excerpts from some of my mail to her:

What a blessing you have given me. You are a truly beautiful lady. You write with style, verve and directness giving me a breath of fresh air, a promise of Spring while heading into the stillness of Winter. I am attaching some photos that date back to 1983. Cussing out a computer is like cussing out that dern mule, you get the same amount of attention back. If you think a mule's stubborn why there I am on "Squeaks" an American standard Jenny that I packed for several thousand miles and have enough donkey tales to fill a book of her own. More I read what you have to say, the pattern of your words and see the strength in your face, the more I want to spill over excited words and photos and carry on like some tenderfoot not even knowing the words to "Home on the Range." I love country music especially the old tunes and most of all Bluegrass. I wrote a music column on country music years ago for a Bakersfield CA newspaper. Norton yelled at me about the on the road photo but it should be fine. I was replacing a shoe on my wheel mare crossing California's coastal range from Tracy to Niles on my way to a draft horse show in Oakland. It gives a good view of my first wagon which had everything Mr. Goodnight said a chuck wagon must have.

I am not sure we can be a match, for traveling between Utah and Western Wa can be a far piece at 4mph and slower yet when your hoss hits an upgrade over the pass. You look and write like quite a package and not only do I like what I see. I love what I read.
I am bypassing the normal Yahoo personals mail system since word verification is more than just a pain in the ol hinney. (I used to have a real hinney but traded that mule hybrid off for a portable generator some years back.) I work ponies during the warm festival season and in off season I am helping disabled senior citizens in their homes as a caregiver for Lutheran Community Services. I am also learning about the new age of journalism and digital photography. I dislike too much me in anything and want to say more and will if you wish. I have lots of photos even of me shoveling the old HS.

I never argue politics. Darn gal, you have this ol teamster athinking that's for sure. When I was bounding along the highway on my six-hitch I was more than once termed an "American eccentric" by some city slickers met along the way. You have long marched to a different drummer and I see in you a lot of the qualities that epitomize the spirit of the Old West which have been long romanticized but are at the same time so very real.( A convoluted sentence this). I did not receive the picture. Yahoo seemed to hiccup and it said to try again and I did and your mail unloaded sans attachment. I am using the beta version since it is a near carbon copy of Mozilla's Thunderbird. I use Firefox instead of IE. I like to avoid the black hats out lurking in the net and run some decent security programs to keep them out of my computer. I tried to IM you late this afternoon but could not seem to connect properly. I do not IM much. I feel too rushed and there goes spelling and syntax and gadzooks, no spell check. I returned to Western Washington in '95 (no, not 1895) and so many times I have felt out of sync.

A Start of Sorts (But Could Well Be the Reverse) With A Whole Lot Later (Certainly Not Sooner)

I find it difficult to write about myself perhaps due to my years as a photojournalist. I started out hoping to be a great author, to be creative, to write the definitive American Novel. Is that enough cliches or what?

Joining the local writer's club was not where I wanted to be for it seemed to be a farce, a circle-jerk of people wanting to read their prose first and foremost and then happily accept any plaudits offered by all and sundry. Viola! The proverbial bright light lit: why not go to college?

I did.

A digression: As a child and as a young adult I never was interested in taking pictures. If it wasn't for Emily (1^st wife) there never would've been one baby photo of any of my three oldest sons. I have four and the youngest arrived during my after I discovered photography period. I was an inverterate reader willingly walking 6 miles the length of Bell, CA to practically “read out” the local library. I ended up traveling solo on the street car into Central Los Angeles to devour books at the public library. LA in 1951 was far different then it is now. But then why should I point out the obvious?

I do just because I can.

Digressing further, downward, or upward (you choose), I went to a community college and majored in journalism which meant I had to write for the student newspaper. Fortuitous this as it turned my life in a different direction and nudged me into my love of photography as well as a decade long odyssey traveling America's Pacific Rim in a pony drawn covered wagon.

“Can you use a camera?” John Jopes, managing editor of The Ontario Daily Report, asked well into my job interview. “Of course,” I replied. As the cliché goes my mama didn't raise no dummy!

I was interviewing for a job since my second son was on the way and my GI Bill wasn't about to handle the expense. I had a pile of clippings from the junior college newspaper as my “portfolio.” I use that term quite loosely. “Ralph, what do I do?” I know Mr. Viggers saw right through me. He handed me a Mamiya C330 with a Honeywell “Potato Masher” strobe already attached. “F8 at 125^th and use your strobe,” Ralph advised.

I soon began laying out my own Sunday photo features and started drifting away from my stillborn career as a Ernie Pyle wannabe. Another paper, another town, I had traded in my medium format Mamiya with a Honeywell potato masher strobe for a 35mm Nikon.

Richard Nixon, campaigning for reelection, stopped at the local airport for a photo op with then Gov. Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy. I snuck under the restraining ropes and calmly waited while the entourage of politicos and good fellas passed by encapsulated within their living wall of beady eyed secret service agents.

I melted in with the White House news hawks, press passes flashing under the halogen lights, and sans legality snapped frame after frame only to have my ego smashed against the shoals of hubris. I had forgotten to check the rewind lever and had not loaded the film correctly.

Us unlettered illiterates, and at times unwashed, called our paper, The Ontario Daily “Distort.” but softly and just when bending elbows over at Jake’s Grill. I composed under daily deadlines listening to the clackity clack of the lino types in the background.

I was a general assignment reporter primarily covering the police beat as well as photo features for the Sunday paper and specialized in covering the minority communities in the Pomona Valley.

I went on to work for a Fontana paper which published six days a week. There I covered school, city and county government as well as police and prisons. I handled all darkroom duties as well as photography in which I compiled my own file of photos those with a queasy stomach would be well advised to ignore.

I was soon promoted to Sports Editor in addition to my other beats. I enlisted the aid of a local police officer who delivered box scores like the pros. I wrote and photographed high school football, basketball track and baseball. There were no such critter as a “soccer mom” back then.

I enlisted the help of a local bowler who wrote a weekly gossip column about life on the lanes. She kept me in stitches and hot water as she tended to be bawdy and risqué at times.

I covered three cities and three counties and wrote stories about the big races at Ontario International Race Way as well as Riverside International and if space required did features like a photo spread on the 1st and only Nude Rodeo.

I briefly worked as managing editor of a small weekly in Colton, CA where aside from helping my one and only reporter choose what kind of pipe she should smoke and layout an ad rag for Bull Head City, AZ, I spent most of Wednesday afternoons sorting through a two foot length of chain from which dangled a huge assortment of varied and unmarked keys. The keys were for the coin vending machines which it was my duty upon duty, upon duty to fill with largely unwanted papers and collect the most wanted coins.

I published a monthly rock magazine with the help of young vigorous friends. My wife who used what then was the most advanced word processor, an IBM compositor, was my back shop and we quit when Guy, the most important one, left his job at the printing plant where he ran the press for us after hours.

I worked for The Bakersfield Californian where I covered eastern Kern County and wrote a column on country music but this was before Buck and Merle feuded their way out of “Nashville West.”

After moving up North, I opened my very own portrait studio since no publication in Puget Sound expressed much timely interest in a penniless ink stained wretch from down south who foolishly ignored the “No Californians Wanted” signs sprinkled along northbound I5.

During my decade traveling the dusty roads of rural California I stored my clip file with my mother. When she died the album walked away from her widower’s attic.

No longer doing film although I used to have a complete color darkroom, I now own a Nikon DSL with four lenses and am familiar with professional level photo editing software, I have my own laptop as well as a modern up-to-date desk computer.

I own and operate a pony ride business. I can write humorless when proper but then life can be quirky at times.

I really value this computer age for what would we do without spell ck and control-alt-delete?

Fun on The Home Front

Ethel who from hither on shall be known as "ET," was showing me off to her daughter and granddaughter when I took this quick shot, the same kind of picture which all of us have I hope taken. Age and Youth go together.

Dropping Backgrounds Makes for Better Portaits Than A Muslin Sheet

I love the digital era. When I operated my portrait studio in Tacoma WA I used sheets and rugs for back drops even though rear projection was available but costly and certainly not as real as some diligent time at the computer can provide. There are a lot of legal backgrounds out in the web especially on CD's sold on e-bay. I also did portraiture in the home starting out with Olympus PenF Half Frame 35mm cameras. I took this portrait at a company event using an 18% grey muslin sheet as a backdrop, lifted Tami out of one layer and onto a second photo from a old tyme theatre broadbill which is on a CD I bought off of e-bay

The Best There Is in Pony Portaits

I believe I am the only pony ride operator in North America that does this type of portrait. I also think these photos are the best there is of this genre and will gladly compare with anyone out around the net who can do as well. I spent 25 years taking pony photos starting out walking the streets of Tacoma WA using 35mm and printing the photos in my studio and then delivering them. This was quite costly and I soon found it was more profitable to sell a Polaroid and a ride along with the picture. I have used Polaroids vending along the roadside while traveling with my covered wagon and at fairs & festivals. Now, in this digital era, I have not abandoned the instant photo but offer pony portraits such as shown working with layers in Paint Shop Pro. I started with a Fuji602Zoom and now will be using my Nikon D50 but will need to stay out of my Tokina 12-24 wide angle zoom which I really enjoy.

One More Sunrise

As all this is a learning experience I decided to post a 2nd copy of Mt. St Helens just to see what it looks like. I think it is a better straight type of photo and you can see the volcano and the leaves on the trees. I took this while camped at The Garlic Festival in Chehalis, WA late August 2006. I have spent years with a film darkroom and bless the digital age there's so much more I can do and not get quite as "geeky" as so many shutterbugs are today.

Sunrise Over Mount St Helens

This is one of the photos in which I could've arrived at the scene a few minutes earlier and might have been happier at the result but still like the sun coming over the shattered top of the last volcano to erupt in North America and lately it has been suggesting it might do so soon. This is part of the "Ring of Fire" which is composed of active volcanoes throughout America's Pacific Rim. This also gave me a chance to play with Paint Shop Pro's clone brush as well as it's high pass sharpening and a little extra on top of that. Downsized a bit much and like it even better. 80% compression jpeg

Nothin' Like Candy at a Tailgate Party

Here's a famed poster of the Sex Symbol of the '50's and 60's, the ex wife of the subject of "say it isn't so Joe" sung I do believe by Simon & Garfunkle carefully taped to the trunk lid of a car at a Port Orchard WA car show. Perhaps the owner means M&M's are a treat for his tail gate parties or an eye catcher on a more modern version of the chuck wagon that my ponies pulled around western highways and byways. Makes me wonder what Cap't. Goodnight would think if the inventor of the famed cowboy chuck wagon was still alive and a'kickin'.

Life In The Field of My Dreams

No not baseball but sort of a graphic version of life with horses as well as my youngest son who's loading hay on my prized F-350 1976 flatbed. I enjoy messing around with backgrounds using Paint Shop ProX which is a poor man's Adobe Photoshop and does 'bout as well in my humble opinion.

I'm Not Shure She Liked It

I am not sure if Joanne liked this exploration into Renderosity and its community of 3D artists but I do. She never replied when I emailed it to her. Just a nice lady briefly met and definitely needed some humor in her life but I guess I am not her type of clown.

Sqeaky

Here I am at a younger more foolish age during my preparation for a 10yr odyssey traveling about America's Pacific Rim with a covered wagon and a 6-up pony hitch. I am astride Squeaks. an already aged standard bred jenney which if all you civilians don't know is a female Ass or more familiar to the ignorant, the donkey. Don Q rode around Spain tilting at windmills it has been told and packing this girl for thousands of open road miles was sorta the same.

All I Got Was a Friend & The Old "Fingaroo!"

I was strolling around Jubilee Days at White Center located in the Seattle WA area on a break from giving pony rides and photographing some of my fellow vendors. She said she didn't like her picture tooken and she got "took" anyhoo. For my effort she flashed me the ol fingeroo while her grandaughter chortled. We had a great time visiting since we are all part of a community of "carnies."

Rita, Oh Rita, Your Family & I

Rita, who's a sweet lady with skads of relatives & grandchildren and a whizbang on e-mailing to all & Sundry. Here I am pausing before the camera while pony riding at my hacienda.

Not a Blast of Brass, eh? Bobbi

Just a memory of a fine lady, one of our few female brass trombonists now learning jazz which' s all about the "cat's meow!"

While traveling about the Northwest corner of Washington State I stumbled across a stopping place on the Snow Goose's annual migration south out of Canada. I sorta like the shot.

Hello Moreah Vestal, author of one book and finishing up on another. Visit an interesting woman who has something to say at http://www.pleasuresandponderings.com/

"Moostache Pete"

I admit this gentleman I photographed at a car show has about the bestest handlebar mustachio I have ever seen. I have one myself. I'm green.

Here I am Again

Could not resist another photo but again egotistal I a photo of me, the subject, with camera taken bt another special lady, thanks Bobbi.

I want to celebrate a fine lady with as quirky a sense of humor as I have, I have valid reasons giving Ethel her moniker, "ET"