Chris Burdett Photography

A Few Party Pics

2011-12-10T22:18:00.002-05:00

Last night I took a few formal portraits at my wife's work Christmas party. Here are a few of the best:

Benton Family Photos

2011-11-27T22:16:00.001-05:00

I went to my cousin Scott's house on Saturday to take some pictures of his family, including his wife and two daughters (age 11 and 15). Here are some of my favorites from that session:

Jessica in Costume; Elyse Dancing

2011-10-23T21:43:00.003-04:00

On Saturday my older daughter went to a birthday party for one of her classmates. It was a costume party, and she wore her Snow Princess outfit:

(I don't know if it's really a Snow Princess outfit, but with the hood up, that's what it makes me think of.)

My younger daughter wasn't dressed up for anything, but she wanted to dance in front of the camera:

And she wanted a picture with Snow White Bear:

You can see all the pictures at these two spots on my photography Web site:
http://www.chrisburdett.com/princess/slideshow
http://www.chrisburdett.com/elyse21/slideshow

Fridays with Elyse

2011-10-16T21:41:00.002-04:00

On Friday afternoons my older daughter has ballet, so when I pick Elyse up from her preschool class, we have another forty minutes or so before Jessica's ready to go. So far, the weather has been good on those Fridays, so we use the time to walk around the church and play on the playground.

Last Friday I had my camera with me, so I took a few pictures as we went along. Here are four of my favorites:

Rich and Jumelise and Family

2011-09-27T14:55:00.001-04:00

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of taking family pictures for Rich and Jumelise and their three beautiful children. Here are some of my favorites from the days portraits:

Jessica at Vines Gardens

2011-09-10T21:47:00.002-04:00

This morning my older daughter, Jessica, and I went to Vines Gardens to walk around for a while and take some pictures. We had a great time, and got some really good pictures--and then we went and had donuts.

Here are three of the best pictures:

I took around 180 pictures of her altogether, but only about 13 are truly good. You can see all of the keepers in a slideshow at my photography Web site, here:

http://www.chrisburdett.com/jessica_vines/slideshow (opens in a new window)

Elyse's First Day of School

2011-08-24T21:44:00.005-04:00

Today was my youngest daughter Elyse's first day of school! She's in the Toddlers class at St. Matthew's Preschool, the same class--though with two different teachers--in which her older sister Jessica started school three years ago.

Here are some pictures we took this morning, after the girls had gotten dressed but before we had to leave to be there:

(Elyse was not nearly as cooperative as these pictures suggest. Jessica did a great job of acting as a child wrangler and helping me get some good pictures.)

Lucye

2011-08-06T07:50:00.000-04:00

Yesterday our good friends Audrey and Lucye came over to visit for a while. I managed to take a few pictures of Lucye before Jessica pulled her away to work on stickers or play Polly Pockets or something like that. Here are three of those pictures:

(She was wearing Jessica's fairy costume, as you can see.)

Billy Jo and Bruce

2011-07-29T23:12:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I ported my portable home studio to my parents' home to take some pictures of my second and third cousins, Billy Jo and Bruce. I enjoyed taking their pictures, and it was good practice aiming my camera at kids who aren't my own.

Elyse at Eighteen Months

2011-07-19T23:11:00.000-04:00

Today, Elyse is exactly eighteen months old. Here are some portraits we made to honor the occasion:

Self Portrait

2011-07-08T23:10:00.001-04:00

I was playing around with my lighting setup a couple of days ago, and took this self portrait (and several others), which I then played around with in Photoshop:

There aren't all that many pictures of me here, mostly because it's usually me wielding the camera. Sometimes, though, I put it on a tripod and wield it at myself.

Elyse

2011-06-11T22:49:00.000-04:00

This afternoon I spent a couple of hours making a foam-board-and-duct-tape soft box that will fit in our suitcase for our upcoming trip to Minnesota. Here's a test picture I took of Elyse using it:

(She was moving when I took the picture, and I was shooting at 105mm at f/4.5, so her ear is more in focus than her face, but still I think it's a good picture.)

St. Nick and the Dragon

2011-06-03T22:54:00.001-04:00

Here is a Little People reenactment of St. Nick slaying the dragon with his mighty candy cane, Ascalon:

Easter Portraits

2011-04-17T21:17:00.000-04:00

Today we took some Easter portraits of the girls, and here are two of the best of them:

We tried, but could not for the life of us get a decent picture of the two girls together; I think herding cats would be easier. But I'm pretty happy with the pictures we did get.

Detail: Pants

2011-02-06T21:52:00.000-05:00

Anything can be worth photographing, even a pair of pants hanging up in the bathroom.

Elyse's First Birthday

2011-01-19T20:09:00.002-05:00

Today is my daughter Elyse's first birthday! I can't believe she's already one; it seems like only yesterday that.... Well, that's the thing about being a parent, isn't it? Children are constantly growing and changing, whether we want them to or not; only we adults are stagnant.

Here are two versions of a picture I took of her during a formal photo session tonight:

In the above picture, I was going for a sort of Julia Margaret Cameron feel in the processing, and I think it succeeds, but I think I prefer the color version anyway:

Snow-Capped Trash Cans!

2011-01-13T07:55:00.000-05:00

This is what four inches of snow looks like on our trash cans:

Christmas Portraits

2010-12-26T23:19:00.000-05:00

Here are my four favorites of the formal Christmas portraits I did recently of my two daughters:

Granny's Bible

2010-12-13T19:00:00.002-05:00

Here are five pictures from a photographic study I did of my mother's fifty-year-old Bible (which has ended up somehow amongst all our books):

Christmas Essentials: Books, etc.

2010-12-05T22:44:00.002-05:00

Passions: Old Cameras and Old Books

2010-12-01T22:45:00.000-05:00

Recent Photos

2010-05-29T22:48:00.000-04:00

Here are some pictures I've taken on recent photography expeditions:

Behind Publix
Loganville, GA:

(This wasn't really a photography expedition, I was just waiting for our pizza to be ready at Little Caeaer's, and I happened to have my camera with me.)

Flowers
Vines Gardens
Loganville, GA:

"Mama, What is Daddy Doing?"
Vines Gardens
Loganville, GA:

Vines Gardens
Loganville, GA:

Geese Heading in for the Night
Vines Gardens
Loganville, GA:

Abstract: Sunset on the Lake
Vines Gardens
Loganville, GA:

Round Oak, GA:

Flowery Branch

2009-07-26T08:44:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I went on a photography trip to Flowery Branch, Georgia, about 30 miles from where I live. Here are five of the pictures I took, including a self-portrait in a door window:

Sparta, Georgia

2009-06-26T12:42:00.005-04:00

On Thursday, June 25th, I took a little road trip to Sparta, Georgia; my primary purposes were to go to the Hancock County Public Library to pick up Chet Raymo's book Honey from Stone, and to have some time to myself. But, of course, I also took my camera, and found a number of good things to shoot in downtown Sparta:

My Daughter's Hands

2009-06-17T22:14:00.004-04:00

My little girl has very expressive hands:

Jessica in the Sandbox

2009-06-07T00:10:00.005-04:00

My daughter Jessica is my favorite subject, and also the one I have most ready access to. Here's a picture of her today playing in her newly-filled sandbox:

Loganville, GA
June 6, 2009

Make Way for Goslings!

2009-05-02T05:37:00.003-04:00

Three of the geese couples at Vines Gardens currently have babies:

Loganville, GA
April 30, 2009

Jessica Drawing

2009-03-27T09:18:00.002-04:00

Loganville, GA
March 24, 2009

My Little Girl

2009-03-14T22:23:00.002-04:00

Here's a picture of my beautiful two-year-old daughter, Jessica, watching TV one afternoon:

Loganville, GA
March 12, 2009

Jackson and Juliette

2009-03-13T21:55:00.003-04:00

Last Wednesday (March 11) I went on a brief road trip through a couple of small Georgia towns, Jackson and Juliette. I enjoy taking pictures in back alleys; I took this in an alley in Jackson:

Jackson, GA
March 11, 2009

This was on the side of a building in Juliette; I'm not sure if it's genuine (that is, actually old) or if it was put there to enhance the atmosphere of the town:

I found this old Radio Flyer wagon stuck up under the back side of a building:

Juliette, GA
March 11, 2009

Snow!

2009-03-02T09:04:00.002-05:00

Yesterday we got about four inches of snow. Here's a shot of our backyard this morning at about 7:30:

Loganville, GA
March 2, 2009

Loganville

2009-02-15T15:23:00.003-05:00

This morning I went to downtown Loganville for a little while to take some pictures of the alleys and back doors. Here are three of them:

Loganville, GA
February 15, 2009

St. Matthews

2009-02-15T08:04:00.003-05:00

Friday morning after I took Jessica to school, I took a few pictures of our church, St. Matthews (which is where Jessica attends preschool):

Snellville, GA
February 13, 2009

Two Pictures from Vines Gardens

2009-02-08T23:38:00.000-05:00

Loganville, GA
February 1, 2009

Porterdale

2009-01-20T19:00:00.008-05:00

Here are seven pictures I took yesterday on a photography trip to the small town of Porterdale, about twenty-five miles south of where I live in Loganville.

First, the Porterdale Mill Lofts, a former mill converted into loft apartments:

Detail of the door on the Julia A. Porter United Methodist Church:

A Porterdale resident working on his truck:

Some sort of depot (I think):

Locks and door handles on a shop door:

Self-portrait taken in a shop window:

Porterdale, GA
January 19, 2009

Books and Camera

2009-01-16T22:40:00.002-05:00

Here are three pictures I took about six years ago in my basement studio (back when I had a basement studio--and oh! how I miss it):

January 2003
Lawrenceville, GA

John Deere

2009-01-02T20:00:00.005-05:00

Here are three pictures from a study I did of a John Deere tractor one morning in Greenville, Alabama, while my family and I were on our annual post-Christmas trip to Pensacola Beach:

December 29, 2008
Greenville, AL

Mourning Dove and Daisies

2008-09-25T17:24:00.002-04:00

Mourning dove and daisies:

September 25, 2008
Loganville, GA

Crows

2008-04-16T23:20:00.002-04:00

Tuesday evening the two rolls in the Styrofoam leftover container are too hard to eat, so I throw them out into the backyard. The following morning as I sit at the kitchen table with my bowl of Cheerios and cup of hot Ovaltine, I see three crows land in the backyard. Almost immediately one of the crows flies off with a roll in its beak. A minute later another crow follows. The third crow struts its bobbing gait around the yard for ten minutes before it flies off, its beak empty, with a derisive Kaw.

steam from my coffee
rising in the morning chill--
up to watch the sunrise

Wednesday night we have one piece of pizza left, which, in our stuffed-to-feeling-sick condition, we decide isn't enough to justify the room it would occupy in our already crammed refrigerator. I am careful to tear the slice into three roughly equal pieces before I throw it out into the backyard.

as I sit down
the rocking chair creaks in protest
and so do I

Thursday morning I spend two hours at the kitchen table waiting for the crows to come. They never show. Later in the day I happen to look through the dining room window and I see them in the yard two houses down, and I feel a twinge of jealousy. I also feel--either incongruously or not, I can't decide--a mild hunger that I know could be satisfied by a single slice of pizza.

birdfeeders
dancing in place on their pole--
my own snores awaken me

Friday afternoon as I feed my one-year-old daughter at the kitchen table, the phone rings. It is my wife, calling home from work to see how we are doing; I tell her we are doing fine, that Jessica is in a good mood and we are both having a good lunch. I glance out into the backyard and I see our crows land. With the phone cradled between my shoulder and ear, I pull a hamburger bun from its bag and tear it into three pieces. The crows fly away when I open the sliding glass doors, but I fling the pieces of bread outside anyway. The crows return as my daughter announces that lunch is over by ripping her bib off and tossing it to the kitchen floor. By the time I get her cleaned up and out of her high chair, each has flown away with a bit of bun in its beak.

my cup now empty
I rise, return to bed--
ah, Saturday morning!

Tai Chi (a haibun)

2008-03-09T00:07:00.001-05:00

What I worry about is not remembering the intricate moves of the forms--when the right hand glides slowly above the left, when the palms open up to the sky, when to put my elbow on my hip bone so as to improve liver function. What I worry about is remembering to bow when I enter the dojo, and to call my instructor "Sir." I know I will be corrected if I turn one way when I should turn the other or if my shoulders do not stay parallel to the floor, but what I want is to avoid the awkwardness of having to be corrected--or having others know that I should be corrected, even if I am not--for not embodying the respect and civility that is such an important part of this most peaceful of martial arts.

movements so slow
not even the fish notice--
stalking blue heron

Scifaiku

2008-03-08T06:20:00.002-05:00

I originally resisted--"abhorred" might be a more accurate way to put it--the term scifaiku.

When was first becoming a die-hard science fiction fan in the late '70s and early '80s, I read almost as much about science fiction as actual science fiction. I learned pretty early on that in the serious SF community--that is, those concerned primarily with novels and short stories, rather than movies and TV shows--the term "sci-fi" was considered by most (except for Forrest J. Ackerman, God love him) to be a degrading term; in fact, I have heard (but have no primary knowledge of this, so perhaps it is apocryphal) that Harlan Ellison once likened the term "sci-fi" to the N-word. The preferred term was, and in some circles still is, SF.

So, scifaiku first struck my ears as vulgar.

The little science fiction poems the term describes, however, did not. I loved them from the start, and for basically the same reasons I love haiku: if haiku is very compact nature writing, then scifaiku is very compact science fiction. Both, when well done, can say a great deal in those seventeen or fewer syllables. Both invite the reader to participate in a way that longer forms do not, and if the story I weave around a haiku or a scifaiku is different than the story that same haiku or scifaiku evokes in you, all the better.

I have realized over time that "science fiction haiku" isn't an accurate way to describe scifaiku, for they aren't really haiku. If a haiku is, as the Haiku Society of America describes it, "a short poem that uses imagistic language to convey the essence of an experience of nature or the season intuitively linked to the human condition," then a scifaiku is "a short poem that uses imagistic language to convey the essence of an experience of something science-fictionish intuitively linked to the human condition." A haiku might be about a frog leaping into a pond, or a heron building a nest, or a full moon appearing from behind the clouds, while a scifaiku might be about a robot saving a child, or a spaceship missing its destination, or time travel being used to avert cataclysm.

So I have come to accept the term, even warmed to it. I still refuse to say "sci-fi" and have trouble taking seriously those who do (even though no less a venerated figure than Orson Scott Card uses it), but I can now say "scifaiku" without blanching.

So, I present here three of my scifaiku:

My alien host
offers the traditional feast:
broiled slice of himself.

Two-headed mutant--
one head flinging insults
at the other.

Spaceship crash imminent:
the robot pilot
is the first to bail.

Professor (a haibun)

2008-03-07T13:37:00.013-05:00

After two semesters of graduate school I haven't gotten a single date with any of the smart, pretty young women who I correctly assumed would be in my classes, but I have learned a great deal about modern literature. In both respects this is the opposite of how I had expected things to turn out.

under the feeder
the squirrel with half an ear
gathers the other's crumbs

Five years later, M.A. tucked into the inside pocket of my tweed sport coat, I start my college teaching career. I expect to have intelligent, motivated, engaged, hard-working young men and women as students. I am correct in one respect: I do have young men and women as students.

scolded by the finch
on the empty feeder--
paralyzed with ennui

Shortly after I leave the small university where I first taught to take a job at a community college--where, I am happy to report, the students may not all be so young, but most often they are motivated and hard working--I learn that one of the students from my very first semester has changed her major from Business to English, and I feel a note of triumph.

outside my window
fledgling titmouse on a twig--
contentment

--This haibun was published at Haibun Today on March 27, 2008