Nine

With Christye and Tiffany at No Mistake Plantation in Satartia, Mississippi.  Enough said.

Eight

 

Over the weekend, I rode up to Gainesville, Missouri, to meet my good friends Susannah Alms and her mom Janet Taber.  Janet helped put together an awesome quilt show for the new Historium on the Gainesville square.  As I expected, the quilts were phenomenal - all friendship quilts, each with a very unique story.  I got some great photos for my blog Miles to Go where I plan to tell that story!  After a great lunch on the square, Susannah and I hit the back-roads to shoot photos for week 8.  It was awesome having her tag along to help me pick locations and keep the tripod loaded and ready!  These are some of the shots we took, but my favorites were of her precious daughter and a brand new baby calf we fed with a bottle.  Those are for another blog story too!  Thank you to Sus and Janet for a wonderful time and for some great photos and memories.

 

Seven

This little photo project is getting harder and harder.  Learning about light has been the most challenging aspect of this lesson for me so far, but I am also trying to move from auto-focus to manual, and that offers a whole new series of challenges.  I rode down to Norfork this weekend to shoot these pictures and will hopefully go there again before this 52 week challenge is over.  There is an abundance of beauty there along the White River and so many interesting old buildings!  My pick this week was taken at Wolf House, a dog- trot built in the 1800's.  It's a beautiful home overlooking the railroad along the White River.  It's a perfect setting for any hobby, and I understand in the summertime, folks gather around the house to pick a little guitar.  I'm coming back this summer to take photos of someone else in this beautiful setting!

 

Six

On Tuesday, just before a big snowstorm came in, I decided to take some photos for Week Six during lunch. Thank goodness I did...we got ten inches of snow the next day!  These were all shot at the Vada Sheid Community Development Center on the campus of ASUMH.  I used a cleaning cart for a tripod.  The light in this building is always great, and the walkway out front makes for a cool background.

Five

I had a few hours to myself Sunday morning before my second NAJA meeting of the weekend started, so I traipsed around to all the cool little towns for some photos while I was in the Mississippi Delta.  I love this one, which was actually taken of my reflection in a storefront window that had a gold mirrored tint to it.  B.B. King smiling over my shoulder is a bonus!  I love the Delta for its gritty enthusiasm for life!

I have always wanted to find Po Monkey's Lounge in Merigold, Mississippi, and on Sunday morning it was easy to find.  This is supposedly one of the last of the real "Juke Joints" of the Mississippi Delta, out in the middle of a cotton field north of Cleveland.  There was nobody around, even though you could tell Saturday night had been a good one, so I got to shoot some photos without anybody knowing I was there.  Just me and a cat...

The signs are awesome!  I just wish I hadn't crossed my arms like I was in a straight-jacket.  It doesn't fit the mood of the joint at all. I hope to go back someday and take more relaxed photos and hopefully run into the owner, who hangs out regularly.

Leland, MS, is a tiny town, but one rich in Delta Blues history.  There is a Highway 61 Blues Museum there, but it wasn't open on Sunday.  All of the old brick storefronts are covered with murals of famous Delta Blues musicians like this one of Son Thomas, my favorite (right), and B.B. King.

The Greenville Garden Club has curated a cypress preserve near the Mississippi River and I enjoyed walking the trail there and taking some shots among the beautiful cypress trees.  Unfortunately, the weather was not good, so the light was not as strong as I had hoped for. I'll go back to Greenville for another meeting in February and hope to take some more shots in the cypress preserve then.

Another favorite spot of mine is McCarty Pottery.  The store was closed while I was there but I took some photos in the bamboo out front.  I edited this one to go with the Love Life pink breast cancer awareness t-shirt I had on...I know it's strange, but I like it.