In the Trees

The first altered book I ever did was called In the Trees. I took a memory from my childhood -- playing with plastic horses in the tree roots of the huge maples that grow in Kentucky -- and created a book with images and plastic horses that reflected the feeling of those times in my life.

Today I took three small horses out with me to Deer Island and took some simple photos along those lines. My knowledge of digital camera function is abysmal, and so I kept it very simple with only a few settings of my Canon Powershot. I had fun placing the little equines in various tree limbs, boulders, spring waterfalls as I ambled along the path. I had my childhood Stuart Marx rearing stallion(a collectible now, $45 on Ebay); a solid bronze, tailless foal that used to reside in my mother's aquarium; and, a small, sprite-like metal horse that I bought in Vienna, Austria in 1973. All seemed to prefer certain locations, the white horse on a boulder or in the grass, the brass horse on the snakey oak tree limb, the little sprite horse standing in a hillside waterfall.

I had to quiet the voices in my head that were saying "You aren't a photographer -- what are you doing?" "You should be jogging, not dillydallying -- what are you doing?" "You should be pruning roses -- what are you doing?" Seems like the critic just won't ever shut up. But I don't have to listen, do I?

What would it be like to not hear all those voices? To just feel my mane blowing in the the wind?