My Detroit

A wedding at the Belle Isle Casino. Click on image to see it larger.

Oh my, this is when I know that life is good--when I haven't had time to update my blog for over two months! Yes, friends, all is well. Better than well. Spectacular! I'm immersed in a new photo project even as I try to pull together the thousands of photos I took last winter and spring of the hundreds of young musicians who participated in Detroit's Civic Youth Ensembles 2010-11 season at Orchestra Hall. I've promised the kids, their parents, the conductors, staff and donors to create a Blurb book that they can order online, but I've gotten bogged down in the task of transcribing the 110 interviews I recorded and want to use as a basis for the text. Trust me, this is not as much fun as taking and editing photos, but I'll get it done.

Of course, I'm having a wonderful time with my new project! I always do. Nothing makes me happier than jumping into a subject with both feet, hands, heart, mind, body and spirit. Oh I do LOVE photography!!! This project especially. It is my love letter to Detroit, a city that photographers from around the world are showing as a place in ruins, but that I know is full of life, energy and people who never give up. And I should know. I've lived either in the city or within a mile of the city limits for 46 years. I adore Detroit and its people.

So I've been going through my last 5 years of photos and have been out on new photo shoots several times a week since mid-August. What a rich harvest I am gathering! And I have a wonderful deadline to work towards: the Portfolio Reviews at Chicago's Filter Photo Festival in mid-October. It will be my very first Portfolio Review and I've been choosing and printing images for weeks now. I'll be showing 13 x 19 inch prints from my self portrait series (Falling Into Place) and my new project that I am calling "My Detroit." Over a two-day period I will be spending 20 minutes each with one museum director, a museum curator, one gallery owner, one gallery curator, two online magazine editors, one book publisher, and one creative consultant who is considered an expert in marketing and the business end of photography. Each reviewer will look at my prints (and if we have time, my book too), give feedback, answer questions, make suggestions, give critiques and, hopefully, want to see my work gain greater exposure. It is a bit scary and very exciting. I feel ready.

Regarding my precious body, I am fit as a fiddle. In the summer I was regularly swimming a mile of laps three times a week, and now that we've gone indoors, I'm swimming more than an hour four days in a row every week. This is in addition to working out at the gym once a week with Matt, my trainer. I am feeling GREAT!!!

I'll post a photo later. Now I've got to go put our quiches in the oven for dinner. Ta ta...