Well, I have just been informed that the hummingbirds will be migrating away soon, so no more little guests on our back deck until next year. I have been meaning to post pictures so here you go. One of the Hummers of 2008 at the Schock house.

I am sure that the cats will miss seeing them from the screened porch. I know I will.

I just wanted to make sure that the changes to the site don't confuse anyone. Obviously, the color scheme has changed. I also have added several new galleries of new images. Soon I plan to add a color gallery, look for that in a few weeks. Basically, the site is laid out as it was before except for the following:

The Guest Artist link has been moved to the left menu under the sections header. The artist's photo isn't on the home page, but will show on each artist's profile page.

I have added a little slide show on the home page, and will try to put new images there occasionally for a fresh look.

I have finally photographed some of my artwork and included that under the My Artwork link in the left hand menu.

New images may not all have pricing yet. If there are questions, email me.

At least it is for me... Time to go back to class, summer session 2 begins tomorrow and I'll be there. Finishing up my last general requirement. The good thing is, after this one all I have left are major classes. So I will be immersed in nothing but ART,ART,ART!!!! So, I will try to keep up the blog, in between Geology homework. Time to study some rocks!!

I'm Tracy Schock and this is the first of many blog entries I will be posting on the site. I am hoping to interact with visitors to my site and get some feedback on things I'm doing and what's coming up in the future.

I guess I should give some background on myself ( a little more indepth than my "about me" page. So here goes... I am a wife and mother who is lucky enough to have a husband and a daughter who are willing to pick up my slack. For the last few years they have done housework and you name it, in order for me to have time to do the massive amount of homework and artwork that is required of me as a Visual Arts major. Now that I am nearing the end of my college career, they are still manning the trenches so that I can spend time in the darkroom, or behind the camera. I have to say that even though I have worked hard to do well in school, they are a big part of my success. They have not only been tortured with posing for my camera, but have sat for drawing class assignments(sometimes for hours) while I struggled with new techniques.

I am very excited about this website and I hope in some way that I can connect to people and share my love of images. I not only love looking at great images, I totally enjoy making them. From the click of the shutter all the way through to the matting and framing, I absolutely love photography. The time I spend in my darkroom is mine and mine alone, I can stay in there for hours on end. I know that there are faster and easier ways to make a print, but for some reason it means something to me to be able to have my hands in every stage of the process. From the moment I first saw an image appear in the developing tray, I was hooked.

So now I have a website and I have to make it work. At this stage the biggest challenge is bringing people to the site, so if you like the site-please tell someone else about it. Or better yet email it to everyone in your address book. I have a lot more content to go on the site and we are adding it as fast as we can. My wonderful husband Mike has hand coded this entire website and I think he has done a fantastic job. So if the how to pages take a few days to get here, be patient, and rest assured that Mike is at his computer every night after his real job-typing his little fingers to the bone. I can't even express how amazing he is.

With that I will end my first blog entry. I hope you will check back to see whats going on. I will be posting images and you can comment on them, feedback is always appreciated.

Hope you have the best day ever-see you in the next blog.