love – Mary Rice's blog

September 1, 2020

Photos for Food

Welcome September! As 2020 marches on as a year of formidable challenges, this month the Society of Nashville’s Artistic Photographers (SNAP) steps in with a unique opportunity for us to come together to do something good, something beneficial, for ourselves and our community. Photography, and art generally, has long been considered a means to nourish or feed the soul. Over the next two weeks, SNAP breathes new life and meaning to this truism through a wonderful initiative called Photos for Food.

Photos for Food is a fundraiser for Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee (Second Harvest). It is made possible through the generous support of 41 SNAP photographers, Chromatics PhotoImaging Printing Service, and Aerial Innovations of TN, Inc. These photographers have selected 79 images for inclusion in a virtual gallery open now through September 13th. For $100, visitors to the gallery may purchase an 11 x 14″ print of gallery images. Chromatics, Nashville’s premier photo imaging lab, will print the images and send them to the purchasers at no added cost. All proceeds from Photos for Food benefit Second Harvest. How? Each print purchase will provide nearly 400 meals to the hungry in Middle Tennessee. Yes, you read that correctly, $100 = one 11″ x 14″ print and nearly 400 meals!

I’m an enthusiastic supporter of Photos for Food and I hope you will be too. Please click on the link below to view the gallery of available images:

http://www.snapgallery.org/shop/

It’s an inspiring gallery and endeavor, right? Something in it for everyone I think. In fact, you may very well want to consider purchasing multiple prints! This is a great way to start (or continue) your holiday shopping.

Since this blog is themed “photos in need of explanation,” let’s briefly cover that. Any guesses on why I chose to submit the image below?

Well, I was just thinking … who doesn’t need a little more love in their world right about now?

Thanks, as always, for following my blog. Please consider sharing this post with others. Take care of yourself and be generous with your love.

April 26, 2020

A Time to Tug

Have you ever read The Invisible String? It’s a children’s book by Patrice Karst. The mother in the story tells her young twins who have woken up in a storm that they needn’t worry and can return to bed. She then describes the invisible string which connects them to her and all whom they love. They can tug on the string whenever they want and, because the string is made of love, it will tug back. Karst asks readers to imagine how far their strings may stretch. It ends by assuring “no one is ever alone.”

Would you agree there are millions of invisible strings stretching around the world right now? They’re connecting grandparents with grandchildren who are social distancing, families gathering on balconies in the evenings cheering in support of first responders and healthcare providers, farmers and grocery store workers with neighbors waiting patiently in crowded food lines.

I could fill this post with countless examples of invisible strings connecting humanity (a good thing for sure) but I’d like instead to invite you to consider another invisible string – the one connecting us to spring and to God.

A couple weeks ago when the news seemed particularly sobering, I felt a tug to go outside and photograph spring. Honestly, it didn’t feel quite right at the time. It wasn’t the eerie quiet in the neighborhood so much as a feeling of guilt in doing something enjoyable. But the tug won out and, as is often the case, the more I photographed, the better I felt. By the time I returned home, my sadness had turned to gratitude. I gave a little tug to my string.

Here are some of the images from that day and another that followed:

patch of paper whites in a neighbor’s yard

bee sucking nectar from cherry tree blossoms in our front yard

large white pom poms on Chinese Snowball Viburnum

I hope you like these images from around my neighborhood. Granted, they are not as showy as something I may have shot in a botanical garden, but they’ve given me a nice lift. That’s partly because, as devastating as COVID-19 is, it’s helped me appreciate beauty in people, places, and things that, only a few months ago, I’m not sure I would have noticed. I’m thankful for that.

Spring is best known as the season of hope. We’re excited to see the first robin or daffodil because it suggests we’re turning the corner away from the cold, dark nights of winter. Each bud fosters anticipation of something more joyous to come. Yesterday I walked through our neighborhood and saw purple irises, pink azaleas, and Knock Out Roses. Yes, they’re all proclaiming hope, but also providing comfort and reassurance from a loving God who gently, sometimes boldly, tugs our invisible strings made of love. Each little miracle of spring is a reminder – “no one is ever alone.”

Thank you for following my blog. For a free screensaver of the featured image in this post, or for a vertical version from the same tulip patch, please visit http://www.maryricephoto.com/spring. Click Select Photos in the bar at the top right corner of your screen. After the screen refreshes, click download. Should “menu” appear over the top left corner of an image, click it and then download.

Feel free to share the images with others. It’s a good time to tug someone you love.

Take care.

August 10, 2017

Do you have a favorite photograph?

Here’s one of mine.

It was taken in March, 1953. The teacher had taken her class of kindergarten students to Kentucky’s Blue Grass Airport to watch the airplanes fly in and out. A photojournalist with the Lexington Herald took this picture as a feature for the newspaper.

Why is it one of my favorites? Because the teacher is my mother and it’s a great environmental portrait. My mother always loved children. Even when elderly and dementia prevented her from remembering familiar names or events, it was really not too surprising to walk into her room and find her singing or reciting a nursery rhyme to one or both of her very young great grandsons. So I like this photograph because Mom is surrounded by children and looking happy. It’s how I remember her looking at me as a child. And I think the photographer achieved what all great portrait photographers strive to achieve. He captured the essence or soul of his subject at that moment. For me, that renders this otherwise 1950’s era photograph timeless.

What else do I like about it? I like the leading lines of the fence and the kids hanging all over it. I like that the girls are closest to the teacher and smiling for the camera while the boys, for the most part, are climbing every which way at the end of the fence and just being boys. They’re a mess. I like the expressions on the girls’ faces and especially the shy grin on the girl closest to the camera. I like all the coats, hats, bobby socks, Oxford shoes and even my Mom’s shoes. I especially like that Mom is the only one pictured who is not wearing a hat, cap or scarf and her hair seems to be blowing freely in the wind. To me that’s symbolic of the relative freedom in her life at that time. Eight months later she would marry my dad and become a preacher’s wife. While many good things came of that, I think it’s fair to say her hair never blew quite as freely again.

Mom died in November 2014, but I still think of her often and always on August 10th. Today would be her 95th birthday. Yes, 95th. She was a little ahead of the curve in having a career first and then getting married and having children later in life. She was years ahead of Sheryl Sandberg who penned the bestseller Lean In. Look back at the photograph again. Mom is “leaning in.”

So … recently when attending a neighborhood happy hour social a new neighbor innocently asked, “What is your favorite photograph you’ve taken?” His question caught me off guard and all of a sudden I had that sinking feeling you get when you’re interviewing for a job and the interviewer asks you a wide open question just to see how you respond. It’s the “what’s your favorite book” question. After thinking about my neighbor’s question for a minute, I answered, “I really can’t say there’s one photograph I’ve taken that I like more than all the rest. Usually I have a group of favorites from each shoot, but there’s not one over-arching photograph I like better than all the rest.” He seemed disappointed and we moved on to other subjects.

I’ve been thinking about my neighbor’s question and my response from time to time since. In hindsight, I should have added, “but while I don’t have an all-time favorite photograph I’ve taken, I do have some favorite photographs – some I have taken and some others have taken. One of my favorite photographs is of my mother who I loved very much. One day in March 1953, a photojournalist I will never know took her picture …”

Do you have a favorite photograph? I ask only because I’ve learned it’s worth taking a little time to think about.