Gordon Corbet Powell was my Uncle Bunny. He passed away this week, bringing back a flood of great memories of my childhood and young adulthood.
He was ‘Bunny’ because he was born on Easter Sunday and the nurse gave him to my grandmother saying ‘here is your little Easter bunny’ and the name stuck. When I was older he asked me and the family if maybe we could call him UB instead of Uncle Bunny, which we did sometimes.
He was a funny and eccentric character, a woodworker and engineer. Could fix and build most anything. One of my best memories as a kid was the boat/fort he built in his back yard (right around the corner from our house) for my cousin Jim, who is just a year younger than I am. This was a real solidly built building type fort in the shape of a boat, with a deck and bunks and a bridge to stand on top of and pretend to drive the boat.
They moved up to Mill Valley in Marin County, California in the 60’s and it was great fun to visit them there. Hiking up Mt. Tamapais and seeing ‘black bread’ in a little alpine restaurant on the way for the first time.
He founded the Marin Zeppelin Society, which was only open to people who had survived lighter than air disasters. Of course, since all who were alive had survived everything, anyone could join. It was a joke lost on some people. My father, who was in aviation his whole life, actually got the MZS group a ride on the Goodyear blimp and they got a certificate and everything. The group really was just an excuse to get together with a bunch of guys and shoot the breeze at a local diner.
He did fanagle Mill Valley into putting an MZS plaque on the entry marker to the town alongside the Rotary and Lions club plaques. That always cracked me up to go into town and see that.
He built a home in Mill Valley and around that time read about the ‘Aubrey holes’ surrounding stonehenge in the UK. They are holes filled with chalk in a perfect circle some distance from Stonehenge. They were discovered I think when a certain Mr. Aubrey was walking his dog and stuck his umbrella or cane into the dirt and it had chalk on the end of it. My uncle built an aubrey hole at his new house so he would have the only aubrey hole in the colonies. THAT was his sense of humor.
The photos above were taken in Estes Park, Colorado where he spent his summers with the rest of my mother’s side of the family. He later harness raced at the Del Mar racetrack in California.
He was a great uncle. I have wonderful memories of him.
I met these three women at a Starbucks in Phoenix, Arizona, September, 05. The one with the head restraint was a jokster, having lots of fun, flirting and talking to everyone. I had to negotiate between them all to get my coffee then to use the creamers where they are standing.
She gave me lots of grief about my BIG camera being in the way and ribbing me that I probably just had it with me to impress women but didn’t really take any photos with it! When I asked her if I could take a photo she said ‘You need to tell everyone who sees it I really truly use to be a beauty queen!” I told her I would and so world, here is the Starbuck’s Beauty Queen of 2005!
I went into a jewelry store in Tulsa looking for something specific for my wife. I didn’t find it but had a great salesperson help me. She was informative and thoughtful. The whole front of the store was facing south with big windows and it was winter time so the sun was streaming in. It bounced off the floor and glass cases and landed on her in a wonderful way. I asked her if I could take some photos of her and she obliged me.
I did a collage and showed it to her a few days later. She was upset about how it looked, thinking I had made her look rather ugly. I didn’t think it did, but I didn’t post it out of respect for her discomfort. I did this one later, working with less manipulation and distortion and I think she was happier with it.
I love this piece because of how I got the hair and the line of her face to match up. She is the same top to bottom but then a second look obviously shows something isn’t as it should be. Just a bit of a skewed perspective on the portrait.
My wife and I were on the ferry from San Francisco to Sausalito. She had always wanted to go on it and never got around to it when she lived in the city. It was a very beautiful fall day, clear and warmer than one can ever hope for in San Francisco.
The woman was at the bow of the boat with her boyfriend speaking German. She seemed deep in thought looking out over the bay, the shore, not saying much, just thinking. She watched as a lone pine tree outlined itself against the sky as our ferry docked for a quick stop on Angel Island. Then she sat down facing the sun and leaned her head back to soak up the rays. I kept wondering what ideas and dreams were running through her mind (even if it was in German).
Later she stood and talked to her friend, and I noticed the really bright red stripe across her midriff, I think it was underwear, but I wasn’t sure. I loved how it stood out and snapped a couple of photos.
My wife and I chaperoned about 40 teenagers to Disney World in 2007. We went for a ‘Singabration’ (I started calling the participants ‘singabrats’ haha). The week was filled with images and memories and stimulation. Watching the kids sleeping on the bus on the way home from Disney World, I imagined what all the kids were dreaming of, what little flotsam and jetsam of memories were being glued together in their brains.
I was waiting for my wife to finish getting her hair done and was talking to the owner about maybe helping her with the salon website. I asked if I could take some photos of the environment so I could look for some visual inspirations for the site. I kept finding lamps and lights and beautiful shadows. I saw a woman who was paying after finishing and all those lights and lamps seem to be lighting her just perfectly as well.
This image is a collage of 4 distinct photographs. I used an existing lamp in a foyer of a hotel in Luray, Virginia during the reception for my daughter’s wedding in October of 2006. I simply took off the lampshade to get the light I wanted. Two of the images are of the Model, a front face view and a 3/4 face view that I collaged together in Photoshop. At the same time I took those photos I took photos of her butterfly tattoo and her necklace, among other things. I later layered those onto the collage I had already created and slowly but surely melded them on top of the face image. It took a long time! Created using Photoshop CS3.
The Cake Seller – The Stranger Juxtaposition #7The cake seller at the outlet mall and the cake and the TV image of the flamenco dancer that I shot in the Bose store demo movie in the small dark theatre where they showed off their sound systems which I did not buy but I got a number of shots of the screen that I liked and then realized how the fit and imagined a story of love.
January 31, 2008
