Livia Harper's Blog

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Someone painted this lovely eye on a building downtown, Spring of 2014.  It only seemed right to photograph it.

We drive to Kansas City, MO sometimes.  This is what we see.

This is another from a spring jaunt downtown with Mr. Harper.  “Again with the lensbaby?” you ask?” Again, I say.  And again, and again.

When I was in my early twenties, I used to force my friends to pose for me.  I’d invite them to my home or a friend’s studio and play an adult version of dress-up.  Eventually, they got sick of it and told me to f-off. (Not really, I just got less pushy about it.)  But before that happened, I got to take some shots like this.

This is from 2012 when Mr. Harper and I took a hike up to Hanging Lake near Steamboat, CO.  Some of the clearest, bluest water I’ve ever seen!

Took this one last spring, just bumming around downtown with Mr. Harper.

This one is more recent, maybe three years ago, and a selfie of sorts.  I love it.

Today’s photo was taken sometime in the early 2000’s, in an area of Denver known as South Broadway or, for locals, SOBRO (which always makes me want to pronounce it like frat boys say “S’up Brah?”)  The area is pretty trendy right now, full of hip little clothing stores, art galleries, nice bars, and my absolute favorite ice cream shop on the planet–Sweet Action Ice Cream.  But back then…not so much.  The movement had started, but hadn’t yet taken the firm hold it has today.  Many of the shops, like this one, were vacant…and not just a little bit creepy.

I’m starting a new thing today.  Photos!

For those of you who don’t know, I used to be a professional photographer.  I loved it, but writing was a better fit for a lot of reasons–not the least of which was that taking pictures professionally really zapped all the fun out of it for me.  Not sure why that’s not the same with writing, but there you go!

Anyway, I’ve recently begun the long, laborious process of digitizing some of my images.  I’m about to date myself here, but when I was studying photography, I took pictures on actual FILM.  For those of you too young to understand that word outside the context of cinema, just know that it meant you had to be a lot more judicious about which pictures you snapped, because it took a lot more time and money to see the final product.  I even had a DARKROOM, in which I hand-printed a lot of my work.  (Dinosaur alert!)

In the age of Instagram, it’s easy to take for granted how far we’ve come and how g-d easy things are right now to share.  (I sound like your grandpa, don’t I?  Get off my lawn!!)  But having not grown up with the aforementioned social media, I’m used to letting my work hide in my basement.  This makes me prematurely elderly, but not in the good, wise way.  So I’ve decided to finally get out of the dark(room) ages and share more of my photos, both past and present.

Here is the first one for your enjoyment.  It was taken at a fancy Easter service at a megachurch in Denver, CO, somewhere around the early 2000’s. (And hand-printed by yours truly.)