Snail Hand.

Amon Carter has it along with Houston Museum of Fine Art. Several collectors. Just got the word that it's going to be used to represent the Marilyn and Jerry Comer Collection in a show in Dallas. The snails will be proud!

Fledgling American Crow

Fledgling American Crow

Sociable and amiable birds blown from a nest across the street from my studio.

Just-hatched Sliders

  Just-hatched Sliders

  Someone gave me a handful of eggs that I thought were turtles.  They turned out to be Texas rat Snakes.  This bunch turned out to be turtles.  You have to keep the sand slightly damp, by the way.

Feeding Crow

  Feeding young American Crow

  A storm pitched an entire nest of young crows to the ground at the studio.  I had to raise them with crickets and worms.  You had to shove the food down their throats.  I kept them in an upstairs room at the studio with the windows open so their parents could come and go.  These days, I would just put them in bushes and let the adults handle it.

  They were very gregarious and preferred company to solitude.  When I was at the studio they would all walk down to where I was working and sit next to me preening and cleaning their feathers.

  I think of my fellow natives of the Blackfork watershed as my neighbors.  In this case they literally were.

Stacked Box Turtles

  Stacked Box Turtles

  Well-behaved fellows.  The background is paper from boxes of fireworks.

Woodpecker Under Glass

  Woodpecker under glass

  Rescued from the vent line into my Central AC at the studio.  I pitched him into the sky outside and he forgot the whole thing before he flew across the street.

Bull Frog on lacrosse ball

  Bull Frog on Lacrosse Ball.

  Very young and personable Bull Frog on the lacrosse ball.  Amphibians are about waiting and watching.  The run on a different set of parameters than hot-blooded simans.  Tough to get it slowed down.

  Most of these portraits are supported on very ordinary background and posing props.  I think that's a toilet paper roll on the bottom and some kind of plastic lid under that.

  In the studio with 5X7 and flash.  He was released back where I found him.  

Blue Jay

  Blue Jay

  A never printed negative from the Bestiary.  He was a pet who had broken his collarbone flying into a window.  He seemed to like people quite a bit.

Flying Box Turtle

  Flying Box Turtle

  Another gregarious Box Turtle.  Found trying to climb the new curb along the highway just outside of town.  Turtles are better climbers than you might imagine, but they can't climb a concrete curb.

  He's flying in front of an antique aluminum zeppelin chair.

  

Great Horned Owl

  Great Horned Owl

  Great Horned Owl.  I rarely photograph dead animals but he was too graphic to pass up.  A fighting rooster farmer trapped and killed him at his chicken coops.  He said he posted the owls to warn off other owls.   I doubt that works.

Ducks in a bucket

  Ducks in a bucket

  Little ducks being moved to the lake.  I'd raised them in the bathtub and darkroom sink.  They were ready for bigger water.

Swift in hand

  Swift in hand

  Many hands in this series- one of the underlying themes is human interaction and control of native species.  This was a Swift who somehow was trapped in the hallway outside my upstairs studio.

  Background is a palmated moosehorn.  The Swift was out the window and into the sky a few minutes later.

Box Turtle and hand

  Box Turtle and hand

  In the studio.  Box turtles vary in temperament and personality as much as people.  This one was quite the outgoing terrapin.

  I replaced him exactly where I found him at the same time of day.  Perhaps he forgot all about his photographic adventure.

Scorpion

  Church camp scorpion.

  Just a little brown scorpion tucked underneath a lacrosse ball.  I got him at church camp where the boys of my cabin would go on scorpion patrol every night as I gave them an inservice on insects, wasps and arachnids.  We killed a couple hundred scorpions that week and a dozen Black Widows.  I lined up the big gallon jugs along the front wall and we had a few specimens of everything interesting.

  Only had one kid stung- against advice, orders, reason.  The teenage stuff.   He tried to stash on in a ziplock bag to take home.

Post Turtle: Southern Snapping Turtle on fencepost.

  Southern Snapping Turtle on fencepost.

  This photo is from 1993.  It has been featured on a notecard from Borealis Press since 1995.  The card sells nationally in Barnes and Noble, et.

  It spawned this joke, which has adapted and shifted depending on who is in the presidency.  First it was Clinton, then Bush, now Obama.  

  I guarantee you, there is no tradition in Texas, or anywhere, of putting live or dead turtles on posts.  It all started when I turned my coffeecup upside down and balanced this female Southern on it.  I use this same technique and viewpoint on several animals in the Blackfork Bestiary.  

  Photo in several museum collections.

Raccoon on chair

  Raccoon on chair

  Not the happiest animal in the gentle woodlands.  A advertising exec came over to help handle him and he nearly tore the studio apart.  My brother came to help-made of a little sterner stuff_ and we held the animal on the chair and got a few sheets of film.

  I shook him loose next to the storm drain in the street.  Once he was free of the capture stick, he had a long thought about attacking rather than disappearing into the drain.  Good sense prevailed.  He left.

  If raccoons were the size of dobermans, they would be as extinct as sabre-toothed tigers. 

Toadstool

  Two sheets from the same shoot.

  Toadstool.

  Two versions of the same image.  I had to borrow a toad from my friend Greg Zeorlin.  He insists that I return them.

  I have several frog images in the Blackfork Bestiary but none on a mushroom.  I like both of these.

  Both copied from platinum contact prints from my 5X7 negatives.

Striped Bass

  Friends bring animals over all the time.  Two hybrid bass showed up in a cooler.  I photographed them and then took a break to get coffee.  I came back to find one drying on the floor.  Back in the cool water of the cooler he revived.  Later at the lake I placed them in the water one at a time and held them gently until they slid away into green water.

Winter-starved Anoles

  Winter-starved Anoles.

  They rode in on plants coming in for the Winter and ended up in the screen of an upstairs window.  Just warm enough up there to keep them from hibernating.  I released them on the Westside sun-warmed brick wall of the studio but there isn't much to eat in February for an Anole.  I don't think the chances were good.  Still, you never know.  They surely have been here longer than people.

  Platinum contact print (5X7 image) or silver gelatin print on 20X24.  Edition of 40.  This image shows the shape of the film.  1,200.00.  

Horned Toad

  Horned Toad.

  Extinct for all practical purposes in our area.  When I was young they were common.  Things change.  I had a chance to photograph a young one and posed him on a bull hoofbone and styrofoam cup.

  Platinum contact print (5X7 image) or silver gelatin on 20X24 paper.  Edition of 40.  1,200.00