For those that actually come here looking for pictures – sorry, but my printing studio is temporarily out of commission.

Tropical storm Irene saturated the ground here well enough that the fallout from Lee flooded us pretty well. What you’re looking at here is water coming up from the ground through a hole in the upper-left corner of the picture – the water table rose higher than our basement floor, and these three pumps (almost three-quarters horsepower between them) managed to keep the water at bay for about a week. After we flooded, that is; during the peak of the flood, these three would have been about two feet underwater. On the other side of our basement, a half-horsepower pump chugged for just as long doing the same.

The dim room took a bit of a hit when the 2″ PVC pipes leading out of the half-horsepower pump blew apart from the pressure and repeated vibrations. At about 2 AM. Spraying water everywhere.

Luckily, an early casualty of the spraying water was the table where I had a plastic stirring rod drying after it had been washed. It was sucked in to the half-horsepower motor and jammed it; the pump overheated and shut itself off. (And all this time I’ve been wondering if I should have had the plastic stirring rods at all! I much prefer glass rods.)

SO, here’s the news: I’ve got an Olympus E-P3 that I’ve been shooting with for the past few weeks, amassing digital detritus while I piece back together the dim room and replace supplies lost in the floods. I’m hoping to actually print and post some new things soon. Maybe from this camera.

For those that are checking back regularly to see what I’m posting… thanks for looking! Here’s hoping that my print studio returns to normal soon.