It is not a simple thing to charm Zelda, I know, I’ve been trying to do it for years. She has butted me and knocked me down several times, and led several breakouts out into the woods. She is a tough sheep, and Gus is winning her over day by day, one lick on the nose at a time.
Zelda keeps approaching Gus with some attitude thinking of driving him away or stomping him. Each time, he seems to stand his ground and find a way to charm her. He thinks he is a great hound, and that may turn out to be true.
As a wise and kind Uncle told me once, size doesn’t matter, the heart does.
It’s an odd comparison, but Gus reminds me of that advice. If you take the “small” out of dog, you just get a dog, and that is what we have in Gus. He’s just a dog, like almost any other dog, except he is uniformly affectionate, smart and startlingly agile, he can jump right up onto a chair or soft without hardly blinking.
Every morning, he goes out into the pasture and surveys his realm. He seems to think he has been appointed King of Bedlam Farm and is both imperious and lordly. The sheep stop when he tells them, the donkeys love him, the border collies, often ungenerous with their sheep, get out of his way.
Gus proves the old adage that you are as big as you think you are, and defined by no one. I have stopped referring to him as a small dog, in my head or elsewhere, unless I’m making a particular point about these dogs.
My uncle was right, size doesn’t matter, it’s the heart that counts.
I’ve received quite a few requests to purchase this photo, “The Farm On Route 67,” one of the most beautiful roads in my county. To me, it’s an especially interesting photograph, it was taken with my Dagueorrotype Achromat lens in misty sunshine over the weekend.
The color is striking, as is the depth of field and the magical feeling. The photograph is interesting, at times looking like a painting, and them melting back into a photograph.
It has some of the best qualities of a watercolor and some of a photograph I think.
The house and barn at the center are in sharp focus, the trees and meadows are in soft focus – not digital sharpness – to draw the eye to the center and heighten the impact of the image.
Some people see the soft focus as being out of focus, but that is not the same thing, it is a very deliberate effort to create an atmosphere as well as picture.
I think it is exciting and original, and I think we have found a way to sell it inexpensively and with the highest quality. I do not copyright or watermark my photographs, I want people to use them freely, but some pictures stand out and warrant selling, I think.
And despite rumors to the contrary, even New York Times bestsellers are not big shots these days.
I will watch out for the responses to certain pictures, and also the number of people who take the trouble to contact me about buying them. In this case, as with the Blue Heron, it was a lot of people.
We have sold more than 40 Blue Heron prints, which are $110 plus shipping, and are 8×14 inches.
Maria is going to sell the photos on her blog, she will get a commission, I don’t want her working on my stuff without getting compensated. She has grudgingly agreed to the commission. The print will be smaller than the Blue Heron, around 8 x 10 inches on high quality archival paper and printed by George Forss, a technical and artistic genius.
Every print will be signed.
It is a pure joy to work with Maria and George on any project, it is blessed from the start.
We are still working out the details, but we think we can sell a print like this for $60 unframed plus shipping. It’s a good size to hang on a wall, and inexpensive to frame. That may change a bit, depending on what we figure out about the printing.
A number of good friends have suggested to me that the occasional selling of unusual and distinctive photographs could provide a small but useful revenue stream, along with the blog and other subscriptions and work donations.
After dawdling for several years, I have started accepting new sources of revenue to compensate for the traditional loss of income writers are experiencing. It is not a crime to get paid for your work.
I rejected the selling of lots of pictures, and was not happy or successful selling $400 framed photographs at art shows. For someone like me, those days are gone. The smart phone cameras are very good. But not as good as handcrafted art lenses on powerful digital cameras.
If all of our calculations turn out to be correct, Maria will put a Paypal button up on her website later this week (people can also send checks if they prefer) and people can buy them. The ship out in very sturdy special tubes.
We will print to order and if 10 people want the print, we’ll print that many, if 50 do, we’ll print that many. If no one does, we’ll move on. If I make four or five thousand dollars a year, that will pay our local school and property taxes. If I make more, we may go on vacation next year as well.
I will make an appropriate profit, but not much. The photos I choose to sell will be occasional and distinctive pictures that can’t be taken with smartphones or conventional cameras and lenses and that might evoke feelings and emotions.
Maria and I will only sell prints of photographs that people wish to buy or have requested. She’ll post the photos on her gallery pages on her blog. We’ve been trying to figure this out for years, but this approach feels right to me
Very few photographs will be offered for sale. So if you’re interested, look for an announcement later in the week. To buy any of my pictures, you will have to e-mail [email protected]. She gets a commission now.
In the forest, it is dark and quiet, like being in a big and beautiful cave. I love to look up every now and then, and see the canopy and the bright lights beyond, they look like holy sparks, the power of the soul.
There are only nine prints left of “The Blue Heron” photograph I took last week, we set a cap of 50 on this signed and Limited Edition series. If you wish to buy it, you can e-mail Maria at [email protected], she is selling this photos and some smaller versions of others at our October Open House. We planned to sell most of these at the Open House, but It looks as if there won’t be any of this series left then, I am humbled and surprised and pleased.
It is a wonderful thing to take a photograph that touches people so much they wish to hang it on their wills. That is an indescribable feeling of pride and accomplishment. I thank you.
I did not realize when I took the photo of the Great Blue Heron, now living in our pond that this bird was such a powerful symbol of independence and purpose and creativity. Many independent and creative people call themselves heron people. I guess I am one of those now as well.
Yesterday, I was reading, or re-reading Wendell Berry’s wonderful book about agrarian life, “The Art Of The Commonplace,” I had the vaguest memory of having read something in it about the heron, and I came across it quite quickly, on page 10.
Berry inspires me and he spoke right from my heart as well as his:
“But there is not only peacefulness, there is joy. And the joy, less deniable in its evidence than the peacefulness, is the confirmation of it. I sat one summer evening and watched a great blue heron make his descent from the top the hill into the valley. He came down at a measured deliberate pace, stately as always, like a dignitary going down a stair. And then, at a point I judged to be midway over the river, without at all varying his wing beat, he did a backward turn in the air, a loop-do-loop. It could only have been a gesture of pure exuberance, of joy – a speaking of his sense of the evening, the day’s fulfillment, his descent homeward. He made just the one slow turn, and then flew on out of sight in the direction of a slew farther down in the bottom. The movement was incredibly beautiful, at once exultant and stately, a benediction on the evening and on the river and on me. It seemed so perfectly to confirm the presence of a free nonhuman joy in the world – a joy I feel a great need to believe in – that I had the skeptic’s impulse to doubt that i had seen it. If I had, I thought, it would be a sign of the presence of something heavenly in the earth. And then, one evening a year later, I saw it again.”
– Wendell Berry.
Heron do not need a lot of herons – or people – in their lives. They are solitary free spirits. I am learning something new about them every day.
They only time they gather in colonies is during the breeding season. They stand out in their uniqueness and they know how to snatch and take advantage of things and events that most people do not bother with. The Great Blue Heron is considered the king of the marsh. The long thin legs are a reminder that you don’t need massive pillars to remain stable, but that you must stand on your own.
I am beginning to understand why the Blue Heron came to our pond, and stood still long enough for me to take his photograph, and why so many people want to own it. There are only eight or nine of these prints left, and we don’t plan to make any more, it is a limited edition.
