TexasGirl Photography

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything here on my website. Months ago, I put some effort into a draft about the HOT Fair and Rodeo, lamenting its cancellation last year (just one more event in a long, long list of cancellations). Then my Grandmother died and I dropped everything.

An interrupted life, the shedding of every enjoyment and activity outside the home, was pretty much the theme for all of us in 2020. It’s something I am thankful is over (over for quite a while, to be honest, since I live in Texas and we opened back up with a quickness) and hope that we never return to. Home is good, but forced home for an extended period is not. Just ask the kids who haven’t been allowed to go back to in-person school, they’ll tell you.

Soon, I am going back to Big Bend National Park, where we began the journey of lockdowns during spring break of last year. The day after we headed for home, the park shut down; we timed that trip perfectly! It seems fitting to bookend the experience that 2020 became with a return to the positive adventure we had right before things deteriorated.

Preceding all that, last year, in what I am assuming was February, I went to Pedernales River State Park, a place I love and never tire of visiting. The park was crowded when we went; we weren’t able to park the truck at the falls and didn’t feel like walking in, so we left, intending to return soon. We have yet to return.

The photographs I made on that day were largely forgotten; in fact a whole roll of pinhole images was entirely forgotten until this week, when I found them as I perused Lightroom for other pictures of last year. Except for road trips, all my previous photographic fire has been extinguished. It began in 2018, but 2020 managed to douse whatever embers were left. The vast quantity of hatred I encountered, fueled by politics and spewed on social media, was enough to drive me back into my shell.

Maybe I’ll come out again, and maybe I won’t. I have no desire to photograph people wearing masks, so street photography is a thing of the past for me until face coverings become a thing of the past. Nature, fortunately, remains open and inviting, so it’s to her that I will look until the world comes out to play again.

From the banks of the beautiful Pedernales River, I give you these images, made with the Ondu 6×6 and Kodak TriX. I hope I get to return there soon.