Helen takes care of Aunt Eunice (in the image from a few days ago). She had, I kid you not, FOURTEEN children. Brave, brave woman. She was so nice.

I’m heading to Orange today. I’ll be back in a few days with pictures.

This is one of my mom’s friends from work at the Stark House in downtown Orange. I haven’t heard definitely yet, but I think the Stark House was mostly unharmed by the hurricane. We’ll see soon.

By the way, Zenobia was awesome. She had a cajun accent. Awesome.

Original Post: The first of my portraits from Orange. Coincidentally, it looks like Orange might very well be devasted by this hurricane. I really feel awful about it.

As best as I can remember, Aunt Eunice was actually the neighbor of my mom’s grandparents. She’s 97 years old, and despite her bad hearing, she’s incredibly lively. It was good to meet her, though I’ve probably met her before and just don’t remember. After all, she was 73 when I was born.

Just a detail from the previous post. Actually, it’s a different image entirely, uncropped. But I must admit, after looking at it for two days, it was a lot more interesting in person. Perhaps color would have been better? Or maybe I’m just in need of a silver print.

I’ll post a close-up of one of these windows on Wednesday. But for now, this is the beginning of a series of images I shot in Orange, Texas. Though this doesn’t show it, the majority of the shots were portraits. But I’m getting these shots out of the way first. I still have 9 sheets of film to develop tomorrow, and I’ll be picking up two sheets of E-6 tomorrow as well.

As for the background on this shot… this is where I ate lunch every day for three years in junior high. For those of you not hip enough to be in the know, a “cafetorium” is a cafeteria with a stage. At least it was in this case. The condensation is from the ridiculously high level of humidity, as is usually the case in Orange. I’d say that’s the single biggest factor for why I wouldn’t want to live there anymore. As is probably the case in most small towns, there wasn’t a whole lot to do very late in the evening, but the trip was good because I was in during the week and people were actually out and about. I also got to catch up with quite a few folks.

Miss Laura has worked for the House of Representatives as a cook (among many other duties) for 33 years. She’s 82 years old, and a sweetheart of a lady. I met her several months back during an event held by the Speaker’s office. After talking for awhile, I asked if I could take a picture of her sometime soon, and she eagerly agreed. But as session raged on, we never had a chance to meet up.

Then, a week ago I ran into her while she was waiting for a cab to pick her up from work. We spoke a bit and she told me that she was still interested in posing. So today I walked over and asked if she was up for it. We shot this next to a window on the House Floor, and she was one of the best, most patient models I’ve ever had. Even with my Polaroid back malfunctioning and one of the Polaroids falling apart in front of my eyes, she pushed her schedule back to accomodate me. And I like how this shot turned out. I’m going to print it gigantic.

UPDATE: Thanks for all the kind comments, folks. I really appreciate it. However, I’d like to clear up any confusion, whether implied or not (and this is directed at no particular person… it’s more a pet peeve of mine). Laura seems to come across to people in this shot as very solemn, perhaps indignant, and downtrodden. I can’t say I know a whole lot about her background, but I do know that she is very upbeat, happy and an absolute joy to be around. She pretty much lights up a room. And our first take of this shot was her with a nice smile on her face. But smiles are hard to keep still during a long exposure and maintain a natural look. So I asked her to relax her face and try not to laugh. A more accurate portrait of her character would probably have to be taken with ISO 1600 film and a smaller format camera, because she seems to always be laughing and smiling. Still, you’re welcome to interpret the photo how you wish, but I felt that background was necessary for a little more accurate depth.

As this place has obviously been a bit devoid of new photos lately, I thought I’d do what most others do at this point: post an old photo that I probably wouldn’t have posted otherwise. This is just a shot where Robert was playing around before the final 4×5 shot, seen previously on this photo blog.

I know cemetery images tend to be overdone. No, there’s no “but…”. I don’t have an excuse for shooting it, I just did. I was on vacation.