Fuzzywunkle

A New Look

2010-09-22T23:01:00.000-07:00

It was time. I haven't revamped my website since 2008. I have always wanted to add a store for people who are interested in getting prints or merchandise with my photos on. Finally set it up. More photos are being added daily so soon it will offer many of my photographs for sale. Kind of exciting. :)

My splash page is a photograph of Hodari. I hope I spelled his name correctly. He's a yearling zebra who belongs to the barn owner where we board our horses. He's a cute little guy. BF makes it a point to spend time with him every time we're out there. I love this picture because it shows how his stripes don't match. He bonked his nose when he was about 5 months old and when it healed, his stripes didn't quite come together correctly. I think it makes him very distinctive.

I've also changed my photo pages to turn them into slideshows, which I think neatens things up and makes the layout more interactive and less confusing. There's a few new links...and obviously, I've started a blog. This blog may not always be all about my photos but certainly it will always have photos...my shutter finger is addicted.

Now it's time to update my trimming site.....

For the Birds

2010-09-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, the BF and I went to Fair Oaks to see the New Christie Minstrels. While everyone else stood in line to get in, I had a lot more fun photographing the roosters. Fair Oaks is famous for its feral chickens...except most of the hens get snatched up by people who want eggs. So mostly it's a bunch of lovesick roosters strutting around in search of the few hens who haven't been abducted. The evening light made their varied plumes particularly interesting. Here is my favorite image of the evening.

We went back up a week later to attend a family party for members who graduated this year. After a while I started looking around for things to point my camera at...turns out, BF's neice has a very nice chicken coop. So the chicken theme continued. I particularly liked one of her polish hens, whom I named Tina Turner. She's on the left below.

I named the one on the left Tina Turner

When I'd run out of chickens to photograph, I moved onto the flowers.

Where does color like this come from??

I guess really need to work on my social skills.

Getting Started

2010-09-06T00:08:00.000-07:00

So I'm starting a blog. Like I have anything to say. But since this is a new chapter of my life, may as well write it all down.

I quit my "day job," which was working in the call center for a major insurance company. I got tired of being a statistic, literally judged by a set of numbers. I got tired of being as frustrated with our billing department as the people calling me, knowing there was nothing I could do to make the situation better. And so I quit. Good thing I have a wonderful, hardworking BF who is willing to let me have a go at being unconventional.

So now when people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I'm a barefoot trimmer. I trim horse hooves for a living. Feels good to be able to see horses get better because of something I'm doing. Feels good to work with owners to help their horses. Beats the hell out of giving some stranger the run-around. If you're interested in finding out more about what I do, got here: www.practicallybarefoot.com ...my "other" website.

That site is focused on promoting barefoot trimming, but THIS site is for my other passion, photography. Now that I'm officially "alternatively employed," I have enough time to revamp and expand a site that's just been limping along. The facelift is nearly done, so let the unveiling begin.

Question 1: Why is it called Fuzzywunkle? I get that a lot. It's called Fuzzywunkle because I wanted to name it someting to do with horses, but when I typed in any equine-esque domain name that I could think of, it had invariably been taken. So I decided to name it something that no one would think to name their website, horses be damned. And so, here we are.

I started taking photos back in, I think, 1986, which is when I bought my first 35mm camera. It was a Canon AE-1. I knew absolutely nothing about taking pictures, and with the technology of the time, if you didn't know anything, you were bound to take a lot of bad pictures (which I did). This was back when taking a picture required some knowledge of things like f-stops, reading a light meter and (horrors) focusing manually. I still find it amazing that you can get away without worrying about that stuff a lot of the time these days. It's kind of like cheating.

Getting back to 1986, I had no grand dreams of being a photographer. I just wanted to take some pictures. Even with all that f-stop stuff, it turned out to be a heck of a lot of fun. Here's a picture from my very first roll of 35mm film.

That's Wally. Wally was a sheep dog on the estate for which I worked. It was Wally's job to guard the ram, whose name was Victor. Somewhere I have a picture of Victor too. Wally looks all cute and fluffy, but he wasn't a dog to be messed with. I'm sure he's long gone but I will always remember him because his photo on that first roll of film encouraged me to keep pointing a lens at stuff.

Now that we've been introduced, please go to my site and enjoy a few pictures: http://www.fuzzywunkle.net/

And there you have it, my first blog entry.