Mary Bedy Photography

    What do you do with those old photos that you took on vacation if you lived most of your life before the digital age and took film photos that you had processed at the local mini-labs? Sometimes the developing was excellent, but more often than not, it was so-so and the color was slightly off, etc. There was a period of time where my husband and I used a commercial lab in California that would also develop for the general public, but the vast majority of our older photos were done at the local K-Mart or CVS pharmacy. For those of us who have enjoyed photography for the last 50 or more years (in my case more), but we never got into our own developing, most of us have some marginal photos that were actually well composed and the lighting was good, but they still needed some help, that wasn’t available until the advent of editing software. I use Photoshop, but for those out there that are not into shooting for sale, or for printing large images, but would like to fix some of their old

One of the places I’ve had the pleasure of visiting twice is San Antonio, and specifically the Missions National Historical Park, which consists of five buildings, including the Alamo, the formal name of which is San Antonio de Valero, built in 1715. The other four missions are Concepción, San José, San Juan, and Espada. Mission Concepción was built in the mid 1700s and looks essentially like it did back then, except that the colorful exterior tiles have faded. I do remember that there are several frescos inside the building which are still quite visible and vibrant, along with a beautiful domed roof and a small clerestory windows at the bottom of the dome.       Mission San José was founded in 1720 by Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús, and it became a major social center. It is the largest of the missions and has a beautiful arched walkway with buttresses leading to the main building. This is an impressive structure with beautiful carved details around the doorway and lovely wrought iron g

Not only the National Parks are interesting. There are a lot of beautiful and interesting state and county parks scattered throughout the country. Fayette State Park in Michigan's upper peninsula along the shores of Lake Michigan was one of the largest iron smelting locations during the 1870s and 1880s. The population at its highest point was about 500 people. The salary for the Iron workers was about one dollar a day. They would attempt to save some of that for the harsh winter months, or in case there was a shutdown in production. The old, stately hotel has been under renovation for some time, and the giant brick smelting furnaces, the building of which you can walk through, are impressive. When the smelting operation shut down in 1891, some people stayed in the town, including commercial fishermen. The town catered to the tourist industry in the summer. The hotel operated well into the 20th century and in 1959, the state acquired the land and turned it into a state park. The bla

We are bombarded with signs everywhere we go. Even out away from urban areas, depending on where we are, we see billboards and directional signs, town signs, animal crossing signs, construction ahead signs, points of interest signs. I’m old enough to remember Burma Shave signs. They would advertise their shaving cream with four or five signs in a row alongside the highway (not expressway, just regular rural highways), and it would be something like: sign one “ don’t try passing… ” sign two “ ….on a slope ” sign three “u nless you have a… ” sign four “ …periscope ”. The final sign would be the “Burma Shave” logo. I used to look forward to seeing those, which they spaced about three hundred feet apart, so you had time to look for the next one in the series while driving 55 mph. There have been some unfortunate font choices for signs leading to some hilarious, but unfortunate-looking phrasing, which most of you have probably seen samples of on the internet, so I won’t bother to post those

I’m drawn to natural patterns, like most other people. When you choose wood for a piece of furniture or flooring, or any other application, you pick the wood grain with the pattern that you most respond to. It’s the same thing with granite slabs for your kitchen counters. The pattern and color that you enjoy the most is what you will choose. But natural patterns and textures extend to so much more, like fuzzy patterned fungi growing on a tree stump, rugged tree bark, ice bubbles in a pond in winter, a snow laden tree. Nature is the ultimate painter and sculptor. She brings things into existence and makes them grow in patterns, she freezes them according to the laws of physics of crystal structures, and she paints them interesting colors. She surrounds us with so much beauty, it’s hard to see it all. The colorful arrangement of the feathers on a duck, the camouflage of various insects and animals, the beautiful bright fish in the ocean, and the waves of sand molde

In 2015, my daughter was living in Flagstaff, Arizona and we went there to celebrate Christmas with her. Flagstaff is a beautiful town surrounded by the San Francisco mountain range, and while we were there, we experienced more snow than they had in the Port Huron area of Michigan where we live. Of course the city itself is at about 7,000 feet elevation. During our visit, our daughter took us to a restaurant called Josephine’s in Flagstaff, where for Christmas Eve they had a buffet dinner with no menu service, but five years later we are still talking about that meal. It was easily one of my 10 best meals ever while traveling, or really just ever in general. They had salmon, ham, other meats, about ten difference salads and sides and three or four deserts, including chocolate mousse, that I ate verrryyy slowly to enjoy it as long as possible. I’m not a huge fan of ham, but the ham they had at this buffet was to die for, and I kept going back for more. Anyway, during this visit we

Arches National Park in Utah has a catalog of over 2,000 arches ranging in size from three feet wide to Landscape Arch, which measures 306 feet wide at the base. The park lies on top of a salt bed that came from ocean cover that came and went 300 million years ago, the top layer of which solidified and the weight of the top layer forced the unstable salt layer below to buckle, and arches, trenches, fins and other structures were formed when layers under pressure fell into the shifting base. Arches National Park is part of the Colorado Plateau and is considered high desert. It lies at about 5,500 feet on average above sea level. It’s hot and dry in the summer and there are signs all over the park warning people to watch out for altitude sickness. I visited the park several years ago with my husband and daughter, and we stopped along the road at the very popular and impressive spot called Double Arch with two massive stone arches that you can sit under or walk back through to explo