Hiya Streamers.... so yes, I went and shot a few pics yesterday.... It was in the afternoon and I was tired having spent the morning mowing the big Hollow yard and then completely cleaning out, sweeping and then spraying out the Hollow carport of all the green pollen that has been building up on everything out here... I was COVERED in the powdery pollen when I was done and my head was full of that crap.... Then, after an abortive attempt to get over to the part of Alabama where I am in the middle of one project, I was heading home when I saw an incredible image... it was a beautiful horse drinking from a pond with a near perfect reflection. I stopped and jumped out to try to get the photo and then realized there was an electric fence between myself and where I needed to stand to get the pic. Now, out here in rural Alabama, property rights are intensely guarded and I usually like to get permission before going on anyone's property.... besides the danger of getting buck shot in your ass from an unfriendly landowner, there are the big vicious dogs... always the dogs... anyway, I got back in the car and drove up the long driveway to the house, eyed the premises for a killer dog and then got out and went up to the door... I presented my driver's license to the man (standard procedure for me) and while I was TRYING to explain that I was a photographer, and need to get down to his pond, I saw the horse trotting back away from the water to rejoin the other horses.

Dang it!

He told me where I could get in through an opening in the fence and I raced back... hoping to coax the horse back to the water... I parked and jumped out and was looking off to the horse and the pond and then I did the big dumb thing that I am getting to here... I walked right into two electric wires the owner had strung across the opening..

BZZZZZZZZZ!!! Shocked the tar out of my bare Randy leg, just atop and below my right knee. Now, THAT got my attention for sure! I was already mad and after that I was in a state of supremely painful frustration... I slid under the stupid wires and got to the pond and all that was left were two ducks, mockingly swimming away from me... So, this can be a frustrating hobby at times... and dangerous perhaps, but oh, I love being out with my camera.... I am truly happy with myself and my world when I can do that....

Here are a few of the photos I took yesterday... all near the Hollow...


Here's the pond... without the horse!











The night shots are from a church that I have always wanted to photograph but never had... until I was coming back from the store last night and saw the crosses lit in the graveyard, for Easter...

All Images Copyright;Scott Scarborough; 2007

Hiya Streamers.... I have had a couple of questions about my latest icon, which is a pic I took last October from the front steps of the real estate office I worked at... I thought I had done a post with the pics but here they are again.... It had been a day of severe weather and the storms were leaving just as the sun was setting... I had to borrow a camera from the office staff to take it since my camera was at home. These two pics don't even really capture the beauty of the moment. Forgive me if I have posted these before.





Images Copyright; Scott Scarborough; 2006

I've been sleeping too well lately.....My insomnia has been much improved in the last few months... I'm just cycling. I'll be back on the vampire crew eventually. But I dug up this little essay from the Hollow basement that serves as a good illustration of how many of those long late nights went for me.... so, from July 24, 2006..

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"Nights In The Hollow"

As a chronic insomniac I am often awake in the small hours of the morning, usually reading or surfing the www or just staring at the ceiling wondering why God didn't answer my pleas for sleep to inhabit my tired mind and body. I enjoy the quiet of the nights here though. It's a time when the cacophony of the house dies down and there is a stillness throughout the home that feeds my need for solitude and quiet. It's a time I can sit and create without feeling guilty that there might be something else I could be doing with Secret or the kids. An average night for me will run well after midnight and I will occasionally put on coffee and pull an allnighter just to prove to myself that I can still do it.

The best thing about the quiet is how it lets my thoughts gather themselves together in more cohesive patterns than when I am dealing with alot of distractions and noise. My alone time at night let's me daydream against a blank wall without fear of being caught in another world. I will sit and read and then realize I need another book out of our bedroom and I will tiptoe as quiet as a mouse through the maze of cables and cords and music equipment in the bedroom to fetch my prize. It's as if I am a ghost gliding up and down the halls, the only light being the little nightlight in the hall that casts a spectral glow across my bare feet on the plush carpet....... I would make a good ghost. I like to roam at night. I like to check and recheck doors and maybe even go outside to have a look around the yard at any late night visitors such as a very large rabbit that I only see in the predawn and of course the frenetic diving of the bats.

The predawn is also a time that I am likely to be visited by those ghosts that haunt my soul. Some of these ghosts I know quite well, having been visited by them for many years. Some of these ghosts are people I used to know and love. Some of these ghosts have my own face, but are cartoonishly contorted to show my various agonies such as self doubt or shame or even jealousy. My mind can be a frightening place after two in the morning. I am an overthinker by nature and I take that zeal for playing mind games with myself to the limit. It can get scary! It's an overactive imagination gone wild with no one to intervene to stop me from looking in the mirror in the half light and seeing a face I don't always recognize as the pleasant and good humored man of sunny afternoons and busy evenings.

"You look too healthy" a ghost will whisper into my ear with it's icy breath.

"What, do you want me to die?" I will say in my head to my own troubled spirit, looking at me from deep within the mirror.

"We don't want you to leave us!" the ghost will snap.

"I'm too tired to do this anymore. I have exorcised you. Now, be gone!"

....and so the conversations will go on in my head.

I will read my Bible and dream of a protecting angel coming to lay waste to these apparitions from my past, present and possible futures.....

Then I will either write on my PC notepad or just read until I become possibly groggy enough to pass into rest.

Nights are a time for introspection, of negotiating with personal demons and ghosts to let me live free and happy. It's a time to pray, to meditate, and to finally fall asleep, hopefully before the silky gray of dawn rises up behind the house and spills into the hollow, bringing word that the sun and it's wash of unbearable yellow is not far behind.

But as for now, the crystalline sprinkling of stars fills the sky and my ghosts are afloat about me. It's the "middle of the night" for a few more hours.....

Sleep well, loved ones.

Sleep well.

Hiya Streamers... well, we who reside in the great and deep south, are enduring one of the worst years of pollen on record..... everything is covered in a fine green dust and the air is thick with the stuff. I saw on the news where a "high" pollen count would be somewhere between 100-200 and our count was well over 5000. So, it's a mess. I'm apparently not allergic to whatever kind of pollen this is, cuz I can breathe.......but my car is green. windows are green. Secret's carport is green..

TODAY is to be the peak day for the pollen and a record heat day as well... so fun fun fun!

We are supposed to get some rain over the weekend to wash some of this out of the air........

I don't feel that this warrants going to the HAZMAT speedos and trout bras just yet but stay tuned my southern cronies.

"...Love pets? Tell everyone about your cat "Peaches", or even write a Blog for Peaches!"

So, it says on the homepage of our lovely Blogstream...

Well, here's "Peaches". He doesn't like you and he doesn't give a rat's ass about anything but rock-n-roll, ciggys, and booze.

Any questions????