the.hottie.that.is.special.K

{my dear friend, Special K - the loveliest of the lovelies}

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a lover of the unguarded moment in photography.  I think it's because those moments are so downright elusive.  You have to really commit yourself to being mindful, to paying close attention, or they're liable

to slip right on by, without so much as a sound.  

They are what I call the 'in between' and, at first glance may seem unimportant, but, they are the ones that will capture my attention and give me pause every time.  As in the images below, they reveal her quiet warmth, her unfettered laughter, her softness of being.  All of these speaking so much about the substance of who she is in all the moments that really matter ... the ones that aren't typically captured by a lens.

Call those moments what you will ... 

candid, unplanned, fleeting, unexpected.

As for me, I call it my favorite thing about photography.

road.tripping

This is what it looks like when you take a vacation with a photographer.

She just can't seem to put the *@#% camera down.  

If anyone knows a support group my family can join

to help them cope with my obsession, 

give them a ring, wouldja?!?

mountain.flowers

"What we call the secret of happiness is

no more a secret than our willingness to choose life."

{leo buscaglia}

lazy.days.of.summer

"Summer afternoon, summer afternoon ...

the two most beautiful words in the English language."

{Henry James}

Couldn't agree more.

Love,

{me}

conquering.the.urban.assault

Special K and I reprised our Girls Just Wanna Have Fun team name for the New Belgium Urban Assault bike race and
we just may have convinced the reporter to interview us and
we just may have convinced him to do the slip 'n slide in his fancy-pants dress clothes while I filmed it and
we just may have broken quite a few rules of the road Sunday morning and had the time of our lives doing it.
I dunno ... you decide.

the.writer.and.the.artist

Ashley is incredibly gifted with the pen and the brush.

My mom and I had the pleasure of photographing her and meeting her sister as well.

{hiya, Sage!}

Lovely, lovely women, I tell you.

The following poem was written by her

and it's one of my very favorite poems of.all.time.

Yeah, it's that good.

Ode to my Range of Mountains

The mountains live in my backyard

pressed tight against this valley—

a mother wearing an apron of snow

father with a jagged beard

little sister burned in summer—

Tell me, mountains that raised me,

why didn’t you warn me

when I was going to make a mistake?

Still, thank you,

for many things:

for long grass in springtime,

the red fox who darted out,

the deer and the steep path,

the stream and beaver dams,

for the time I hiked to your top at night

and lost the trail coming down,

for the way the weeds glowed like gold

under the navy sky as I came down through them—

the way I felt that I too had been alive a thousand years.

{Ashley Mae Hoiland}

For more of this yummy goodness, check her work out here and thank me later.

love.affair.with.summer

{the spacious skies & majestic mountains of Vail, CO}

Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun,

to have lived light in the sky, to have loved,

to have thought, to have done?

{Mathew Arnold}

Lily.in.the.desert

{a Lily in the desert - mine, of course; Arches National Park July 2010}

in the midsummer parch

of the desert

i saw new life

defiant and undeterred

a throaty whispering of

the very same possibility

in my own soul

xo,

{moi}

my.firstborn

The camera loves this girl, but this girl does not love the camera.

Six months or so ago, she decided she was done with having her picture taken.

Done.

Finished.

Nada.

{I'm not finished with the mourning process, by the way.}

But, on this day, she was feeling just a smidge generous and I may or may not have bribed her with the promise of letting her wear my sunglasses.

{Please? Pretty please?? With sugar on top??}

So, now you know ...

if you ever see her make an appearance on this blog, it's because I either got really lucky or there was heavy bribery involved.

Or both.

hiking.in.the.summer.sun

I have a great big love for Sundance.

As a child, I learned to ski on it's forgiving slopes.

As a teen, I hostessed for a summer in the upscale Tree Room Restaurant.

As a young adult, my sweet Tim proposed to me at the base of Stewart Falls.

Needless to say, it has a special kind of hold on my heart.

Our visits to UT don't feel complete until we have made

at least one trek up the canyon to spend some time at Sundance.

This week, we took a gaggle of grandchildren for a hike up the mountain to play in the runoff and spray of Stewart Falls and it reminded me

all over again

why.I.love.this.place.

blowing.bubbles

"... a gentle breath gives birth to another gem of wonder ..."

{Paul Holmes}

happy.independence.day

a silent bloom of color

bleeds into the inky black then

gives way to a crackling haze

of repeated encores

each one expanding it's reach

of technicolor hue in efforts to be

to be more spectacular

than the last

don't they know

they are each magnificent

in their own right?

{xo, moi}

P.S. Happy birthday to our very own US of A and a very special thanks to each and every one of her citizens who has worked or continues to work to make it a better, more beautiful place to live.