architecture – Mary Rice's blog

November 3, 2022

Blog Time!

Welcome back and apologies for the interruption in service. Seems like those pesky supply chain problems affect everything.

Anyway, I’m back to share some photographs I made on a recent trip to the quirky little town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, home to the most haunted hotel in the US, many interesting engineering and architectural feats, a thriving artist community, and the seven story Christ of the Ozarks statue.

pictured left: home on a rock; pictured center: Jesus with a hump back; pictured right: man viewing specimens of real (but not live) human body parts in the basement/morgue of my hotel.

But aside from these curious sightings I also found the real reason for the trip – beautiful fall color.

As an added bonus, I also discovered some classic black and white images.

On the way home I spent the night in an impressive Victorian B&B in Little Rock.

Then, when back in Tennessee, I stopped to photograph cotton fields:

Except for some brief interludes, I’ve always lived in the South. You’d think I’d tire of cotton fields, but I don’t. I still stop to photograph them. There is beauty and/or intrigue in everything; well, maybe not in the chiggers.

Thanks for following my blog.

April 22, 2018April 22, 2018

Introducing Mary Rice Photography

Spring is the season of re-birth, of new beginnings. And, so, equipped with a brand new “spring green” logo, I’m inviting you to take a peek at the newly refreshed website for Mary Rice Photography. You will find it at http://www.maryricephoto.com./

It seems there are often glitches in new websites, so I have a couple of favors to ask: 1) please give me some constructive feedback on the site, especially anything that’s not working; and 2) regardless of how the website appears, please spread the word that I’m open for business and welcome any and/or all of your referrals.

Why am I advertising Mary Rice Photography now? It comes down to this: I’m curious. I’ve never really marketed my photography skills to the general public (at least not in earnest) and I’m interested in learning what will come of it.

So now, borrowing the wonderfully descriptive words of Maya Angelou, “I’m a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.”

I really hope you visit my website, but I suspect some of you won’t, so here’s a little teaser with some of the new content:

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What’s my niche? Probably at this point babies, headshots, and products. What do I want to develop? Pets, other lifestyle photography (especially seniors, couples and families), architecture, and assignment/editorial photography. I also want to create some collections of fine art photography.

I’ve set up a FB page for Mary Rice Photography. That’s where I plan to advertise promotions or specials and share some of my recent work and projects. You would just make my day if you got on FB, searched for Mary Rice Photography, and “like” it.

I’ll continue blogging on the same types of things here – thoughts and photographs on recent events, travels, and posts on photography related topics. All the while I’ll keep trying to figure out WordPress.

Anyway, thanks, as always, for following my blog AND a special thank you today, friends, for supporting Mary Rice Photography. Yes, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” — the Beatles

July 12, 2017July 29, 2017

The Visual Playground aka Chicago

Chicago.

Most people know it as the Windy City. Sports fans walk around the streets in Cubs uniforms still relishing last year’s World Series win. Many in Nashville know Chicago as the closest city to see Hamilton. Politicians and the media seem only to talk about its high crime rate or financial troubles. But for just a few hours on Thursday afternoon, I saw it only as one big and vast visual playground.

Just after lunch my sister (Jody) and I boarded a two hour architectural boat tour. It was very hot — so hot that I remember wishing at the beginning of the tour that the boat could spend more time under the shaded bridges and less time in the bright sunlight. But by 3 pm we were both saying — “wow, that was the best boat tour we’ve ever been on” and “the architecture here really is just amazing.”

We had made dinner plans for 6:30 with a friend from my OGC days in Atlanta, so after a little scurrying around in our hotel room and bits of conversation of what we could squeeze in next, Jody decided she would attend one of the intro sessions of a conference she was attending and I decided to do a quick trip to Millennium Park and the new adjoining Maggie Daley Park. I had never been to Maggie Daley Park and they certainly weren’t ice skating in July, but there was still quite a lot of eye candy to take in.

Frank Lloyd Wright is credited with saying, “Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.”

I really can’t agree or disagree with Frank Lloyd Wright’s sentiment, but I do think, based on my whirlwind exploration of Maggie Daley Park on Thursday, someone is trying very hard to preserve Chicago’s heritage of beautiful architecture and endless discovery, and I am thankful for that.

Architecture is art, it inspires, and it beckons us to explore, discover and to look up.

Go Cubs.