Photos and Words by Jim C. March

I love close-ups of flowers! And this poppy was backlit by the setting sun!

I wonder who keeps painting the old sign on the Ghirardelli building by the Petaluma River?

On the way home from a weekend in Mendocino we stopped in the vineyards.

Early morning walks give me low sun, deep shadows, high contrast. I saw this window on my way down "D" Street just before the bridge, across from the Fire Department.

I have walked my daughter to school for 10 years. She has been kind enough to let me walk her to high school. She has only 32 more days of school, then she's off to college this fall. Will I still get up and take my early morning walks?

When I walk home from Lucchesi Park, I follow the river trail west, under the freeway. The trail ends abruptly, the path truncated by a welded metal railing planted in a concrete platform; obviously the work of government funding, probably related to the flood control project and the nearby rebuilt train bridge.

At the left end of this substantial barrier, detached from a running chain link fence, there is just enough room for me to squeeze past, as if put there to discourage the casual passerby, but not dissuade the resolute.

I cling to the hillside along a well-worn path in the wet mud, walk past the abandonned remains of a homeless person's quarters, and slip through the upturned corner of another chain link fence. The fence is new, but already modified to suit a different purpose. I suspect the fence was put there to protect me from the railroad tracks, which I must now cross. I smile, unable to remember ever seeing a train on this section of rail. I dutifully stop, look, and listen before crossing to Lakeville.

Looking south, I see the delivery dock for Clover-Stornetta. It is empty now, but this morning there were certainly tank trucks bringing the morning milkings.

Downriver, the grain elevator pokes into the gorgeously cloudy sky. Until I read the Press Democrat newspaper article about the fire last August, I didn't know the storage facility was owned by the Dairyman’s Feed & Supply Cooperative. I had only known the silos as "the tallest California building north of San Francisco," something like being the best double-A baseball team?

I head over the river, drawn by the smell of malting grain at Hunt & Behrens, one of the last Petaluma feed mills. I look up, searching for the rattling that reminds me of the sound I make sieving rocks from the soil in my garden. Even though it is early afternoon, the winter sun is low. Dark shadows cut through clouds of steam as the mill mixes and cooks another livestock meal.

Empty tracks;
  Rusty rails rarely rumbled;
 Choices made long ago.

Burnished memories,
  Immutable steel.

What if I forgive myself?

There comes a time every spring when the sun rises just as I leave the house in the morning. For a week before, I am impatient, and want to wait in the park for it's imminent arrival over Sonoma Mountain. But my daughter has other plans.

"Let's go, Dad. I have to get to school."

Maybe tomorrow...

If I don't go to the café after walking my daughter to school, I walk home by St. Vincent's. I love the early morning shadows on the relief detail. This is a good example of an infinity point that isn't at the horizon. I haven't seen many artists use this perspective. I am reminded that I live at eye level, the perspective of the self, forgetting to look up.

"Stars, lost in the fog of city lights, forgive me."   -Jim March the Martyr

"If it ain't in front o' me, it ain't in front o' me."   -Jim March the Short-Sighted

Travelling with Sarah through Nice, France and I stopped short when I saw this dog sitting in the back seat of a car. Do you see Sarah, too?

I cut down a pear tree in the back of my house and left the 3-foot stump standing for a couple of years. This year the trunk became host to these exotic fungi.

The fungi grow the entire length of the trunk, encircling it. They are quite embedded into the bark.

High contrast black and white photos put together into an animated sequence...

I like to take pictures of rotting junk. There is something about the variation of subtle earth tone colors that intrigues me. Look at those greens at the base of the mirror!

I also like to use light and dark, like black and white photography. Look at the dark shadow of the mirror and the white reflection of the windshield.

Here is a snail that was climbing up the front window of a rotting truck at Al Stack's in Petaluma.

Originally, the photo was 90 degrees counter clockwise from this orientation. But it didn't look right. So I turned it.

This is a color enhanced shot of a dirt road up at my brother's property in Mendocino.

I love pictures which become paintings. Here I have enhanced the colors, moved into the reds and yellows, and made the road a single brush stroke down through the body of the painting.

I took this picture in the late afternoon on February 16th, 1998 in Petaluma, California just after a downpour of rain. I ran out to take some pictures of a rainbow that was hanging in the sky towards the east. But everything was so shiny and bright, I stayed out looking for some other shots. I took this picture from Petaluma Boulevard looking west up Western Avenue.

There are only a couple of weeks during the spring and fall when the sun comes straight down the street like this.

This is one of my earliest digital pictures, using the digital camera I bought for ZZYZAX.