Over the years, I’ve snapped many photos of eyeballs – horse eyes, to clarify.
I don’t know what is about their eyes, something soulful and deep that just draws me to them and makes me want to capture that moment with my camera.
This horse, Steve, was one my niece was training at the time. It was getting close to sunset when I snapped the photo. When I got home and blew it up on the computer, I could see the silhouette of the skyline in his eye. Thanks to Photoshop, I was able to enhance it. This remains my favorite, favorite eye.
This is our neighbor’s horse. He used to hang his head over our fence all the time. It was just starting to snow when I took this photo. You can see a few white specks clinging to his dirty face.
This was one I took when we were on vacation in Central Oregon. There’s a resort there that keeps several horses and we went out to see them one morning. The deer were wandering around at the time too.
This old fella was also at the resort. I didn’t get any fun reflections in his eye, but he was such a sweetheart.
This is a horse my niece was working with a few months ago. He was such a laid-back guy.
What about you?
Do you ever snap photos of animals? Landscapes? Flowers?
Just post your answer for a chance to win
an art print of Steve’s eye and some other goodies!
I’ve long desired to write a western historical with a lady photographer, but while I was writing them as Laurie Grant, the time never seemed to come. Now that I’m writing inspirational western historicals for Steeple Hill Love Inspired Historicals, the time finally came, and THE OUTLAW’S LADY is now out.
My research for this book was fascinating. We have it so easy these days with tiny digital cameras, loading our pictures onto computers and elsewhere in less time than it took to write this sentence. We have the ability to crop and enhance them, print them in color or black and white, even sepia, caption them, make videos—the possibilities are endless! But it was not always so. The cameras of yesterday required the ability of its subjects to hold still for at least 15-30 seconds. Action shots were impossible—all that registered was a blur. No wonder the people in portraits of that era looked so stiff!
A camera such as those used in the Civil War, and by my heroine, was a bulky affair, and if the photographer desired to develop his pictures on the spot, it had to be transported with its bottles of chemicals on a little cart complete with a leather or canvas hood over it to provide “darkroom” conditions. When Tess is forced into accompanying the infamous bandit on his exploits to make a photographic record, her “What-Is-It Wagon” must accompany her, and she has to make him understand that she can only take “still shots”—photographs of him and his banditos in action are not feasible. But he is perfectly content to pose of pictures with his booty, and have her use her drawing ability for the rest.
Old-time photographers of this era used the “wet collodion” process—glass plates were prepared with solutions of collodion, a thick liquid which left a thin transparent film, then dipped in silver nitrate to make the plate sensitive to light. While the plates were still wet (they had to be used within the hour), the photographer placed it into the camera, exposed it while the camera was aimed at his subjects, developed it, and washed it with water. When the negative, which developed it, was dry, it was placed on a sheet of light-sensitive paper and exposed to the sun. Finally this paper was developed, fixed, and washed, and voilà, a photograph!
I was fortunate enough to do a research trip to Texas for this book and for my upcoming series, “The Simpson Creek Spinsters.” We also went to Big Bend. Imagine my surprise when comparing the cover of THE OUTLAW’S LADY—easily the most beautiful, most scenic cover of my career–to a picture of me standing on the bank of the Rio Grande by the Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend revealed that the artist used this exact spot! How cool is that? I had to contact the artist and praise him, of course.