Hank, Merle and Waylon. West Asheville.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Dinah Jen Grace, a portrait montage

You gotta wonder how long it took at the studio to get these precious poses?!?!

I'm winding down my blog Tomfoolery for the rest of the year, and will very likely put it aside - at least new posts anyway - until next Spring or Summer.  I started Tomfoolery in 2007, my very first post being Lake Espy on December 13 of that year.  But as with a lot of my posts, Lake Espy was a work in progress.  Over time, I revised the layout, rewrote some things, added more content, encouraged family to contribute, then introduced YouTube videos.  Tomfoolery has 1167 posts (now 1168!).  My goal, though, is to shrink it down to the essentials and really work on consolidating blog posts of similar content.  Incidentally, Tomfoolery and the name of my travel blog (Ballyhoo) both came from the same scene in one of my all-time favorite movies, Good Will Hunting.  It's when Will visits the very first psychiatrist.  Try to Google that one.

My YouTube channel, Major Allen Espy, was started the summer of 2008.  My first video was simply titled Dad with Horses.  And back then I simply used whatever digital camera I had - low pixels, pretty shaky, no frills.  Now I use a nice camcorder for a lot of my work.  Both the blog and YouTube channel have been fun, but to get them where they are now, it just took doing it over and over and being willing to learn and be creative. There's nothing really magical.  The ingredient, though, that stirs all this is passion.  I hope that's evident.  And, too, almost every blog post I've created has been touched or influenced by someone else. Maybe they simply gave me the inspiration.  In some cases, they collaborated with me by supplying facts and history or agreeing to edit what I put together.  Sometimes I even got bigger participation - showing me homes, agreeing to an interview or video project, handing over family photos for me to scan, or like with the image above, just getting a text today from my sister after she discovered this portrait and other treasures in an antique trunk that belonged to my grandmother.  It appeared, and I posted it!  Simple as that.  I bid you all adieu until 2017. If you want to get up with me before then, see my email address in the right sidebar. Ta ta!

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