One Eyed Jack, the Photographer's Model

I went out to bring in the trash can after the pick up this morning and coming back in I noticed this fellow climbing on my house. Since I had a new macro lens I decided to see if I could get some photographs.

The first problem was a background. I remembered that in the fern bed on the front of the house I have a series of stepping stones so that I can get to the outside water faucet. At the beginning of that pathway is a fairly large piece of petrified wood that I have been carrying with me for nearly sixty years. I found it in the piney woods just outside of Hooks, Texas, while visiting with some cousins. They were accustomed to petrified wood so they were more than happy for me to take it home with me, that was back in the 1940’s. I have had it ever since. It always ends up in a flower bed somewhere. Since it was partially buried I retrieved a gardening trowel from the garage and dug it up. I grabbed a sheet of blue plastic to put it on since I was going to do the photograph in the living room and didn’t want to drop dirt on everything.

In shooting the photographs I tried to avoid the blue plastic but that was not always possible. It ended up being an asset as it almost appears to be water in a stream in many of the photographs which give the photographs more of a feel of being shot outdoors. I am not sure how many photographs I took, probably a dozen turned out acceptable and about six I really liked. Since he always withdrew into his shell every time I moved him it did require some patience. Then every once in a while he would decide to take a nap rather than venture out to explore his environment. It appears that he has had a previous unpleasant experience so I nicknamed him One Eyed Jack. We played off and on for a couple of hours then I had other things that I needed to do so I returned One Eyed to the flower bed so he could round up the gang and tell his story of adventure as a photographer’s model.

One Eyed's little friend Teeny Tiny Tim thought that One Eyed had so much fun that he wanted to give it a try. Teeny Tiny didn't work out so well because in addition of being really, really little, he was rock colored and didn't have the pizzazz of One Eyed so he was retired back to the flower bed fairly early.