What's New

Below is a list of announcements or other items added to this web site:

April 6, 2007

• We have posted some new photographs that are available as notecards or enlargements. There are kaleidoscope-like images as well as two bird scenes. One is of a robin, the other of a cedar waxwing. Both were grazing in Helen's crabapple tree in Ames on February 18.

October 22, 2006

• Helen has recently moved to Ames, Iowa, and we have updated her contact information.

August 31, 2005

• We have posted information about how people can contribute to the Salvation Army for disaster relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

July 30, 2005

• We have added a piece titled "A Harvest Walk" that Helen wrote in 1995 for a book The Road I Grew Up On that she intends to self-publish about her rural heritage.

July 27, 2005

• We have slightly revamped the web site and added a page about purchasing prints of Helen's photography. Both the photography page and the notecard page point to the same images.

• We have added a section of six panoramic photos. Helen started experimenting with panoramic work a year ago when she purchased a Canon Digital Rebel camera and discovered that it came bundled with software to stitch together a sequence of photos.

June 21, 2005

• Finally, the prototype version of one of our web site dreams is in place. It is an E-Postcard feature that allows visitors to select one of Helen's photographic images and send it as a cyber postcard with message and all. Give it a try, and give us some feedback if you would like. Thanks.

June 9, 2005

• We have posted a bit more information about Helen's barn postcard as well as related links.

June 2, 2005

• Helen will be one of the featured artists at Big Table Books on Main Street in downtown Ames during the Artwalk sponsored by the Octagon Art Center. The event will be from 5-9 pm on Friday, June 3. There will be live music in Tom Evans plaza, local artists displaying their works in 34 downtown businesses, refreshments, and more! The event runs from 5 - 9 pm and is something the whole family can enjoy!

• After a hiatus this winter for many things, including getting her computer upgraded, Helen is resuming work on the postcard shown at the top of this page of Iowa barns. She has decided to switch from using black and white photos to using color images. We hope to have the postcard available for sale by the end of June, if not before.

January 25, 2005

• We are learning to use PayPal and hope to add its services to this site in the near future.

January 24, 2005

• Iowa Governor Tom Vilsak has proclaimed 2005 as "The Year of the Barn and Family Farm."  Helen has designed the postcard shown above and will be making it available within the next several weeks. The postcard is 4 1/4 x 6 inches which meets the Postal Service standards. The card is being printed at Heuss Printing in Ames, and soon we we determine how to price the card. Helen also has color photo notecards of six of the scenes. You can see them in the notecard gallery in the section of photos of farm buildings.

January 13, 2005

• We've added two winter photographs to Helen's quasi-webcam of the garden on her apartment deck.You can go directly to the photos or begin by going to an explanation of the project or by going to the index of images.

November 16, 2004

• We've added a new image to the notecard gallery. Helen took the photograph of a barn and silo in Hardin County in central Iowa when she was on her way from Gilbert to Cedar Falls yesterday. She went to see the Gilbert High School team win the semi-final game of the state tournament at the UNI-Dome, but instead of taking Interstate 35 and four-lane Highway 20, she traveled the less direct county highways, looking for photo opportunities.

November 2, 2004

• Helen edits an unofficial web site for Gilbert, Iowa, where she lives. The town of 987 people is just north of Ames. She has written an election-day essay that offers a grassroots, year around, attitude toward divisiveness. Interested people can go to the Gilbert Gazette and read the piece.

October 25, 2004

• Today we took the CD with the file for calendars of Helen's rural Iowa photographs to the printers and should have copies within a few days to sell directly or through Big Table Books in Ames.

• We also have prepared a calendar of images from watercolor paintings by Helen's mother, Marion A. Gunderson, of Rolfe.

October 21, 2004

• We are creating a 12-month calendar of Helen's photographs of rural Iowa that includes scenes of grain elevators, corn cribs, barns, and field work. The calendar should be available within about 10 days.

October 4, 2004

• A slight revamp of Helen's 12-month photo calendar of images of Gilbert, Iowa, and the surrounding rural area.

October 2, 2004

• A 12-month photo calendar of images of Gilbert, Iowa, and the surrounding rural area. Hopefully, Helen will soon have at least one other calendar ready for 2005. We'll keep you posted.

September 29, 2004

• A long overdue update of the garden photo section.

July 3, 2004

• More garden photos.

• Helen has been taking photos of town and farm scenes around Gilbert and is getting some enlarged as well as made into notecards for sale locally when the town celebrates its 125th anniversary on July 30-31, 2004. So if you are in the area, stop at the Daisychains and Laughs coffeebar to see some of the notecards, and stop at the Consignment Gallery to see the enlargements. Both places are on Main Street, just south of city hall. Eventually, Helen will post these new images as well as others such as an image of pink and red hollyhocks that she took yesterday.

May 28, 2004

• Helen has created a section about the tornado that hit rural areas south of her hometown of Rolfe, Iowa, on May 21. The material is on the Rolfe Alumni Web Site, a cyber project that she edits and publishes.

• There are also some new garden photos on this site.

May 19, 2004

• More garden photos.

May 15, 2004

• Helen will be one of three artists at a reception at Big Table Books on Main Street in Ames, Iowa, on Friday, June 4, from 5-9 pm. The event is part of the Ames Artwalk with lots of artists at many downtown locations that evening. The Artwalk is sponsored by the Octagon Center for the Arts. Big Table Books carries several of Helen's color photo notecards. For the Artwalk, Helen will some of her new images for sale either as photo notecards or matted enlargements.

• We've posted 46 new images that Helen has added to her notecard gallery. Some are ones she has taken in the past year. A few, such as those from the Living History Farms, are ones that she took many years ago. Interested persons can arrange to have matted enlargements made of these images. We have also posted an index to the new photos in pdf format and an Excel (version 3) spreadsheet. And there is a spreadsheet index to her entire portfolio of over 250 images that can be used for color photo notecards,  enlargements, or other uses..

• We've just put up a new feature. It's a quasi-webcam of Helen's container garden. During the course of the season, she will photograph her garden and post some images.