Elena Shumilova, photographer.

Russian mum, two small children, dog, cat, rabbits, ducks, Canon Rebel.

“I largely trust my intuition and inspiration when I compose photos. I get inspired mainly by my desire to express something I feel, though I usually cannot tell exactly what that is” 

I can. It is your subjects, come on, with subjects beautiful as this it not possible to go wrong, and it is your eye, and it is your lenses, and it is knowing your camera, and it is knowing the things that you love.

More at pulptastic.

Earlier today I was trying to place a memory but I could not. I did finally deduce the place, Ohio, by my age, this age, by the absence of a baby sister and by the relationship with my mother, changed after that, I'd be more on my own with her attention diverted. The memory had to do with a chicken coop, the only real live chicken coop I ever owned, my parents did, and I was too young to appreciate how ace that is but at least I got to live the dream for that one fleeting hour.

Come on. Put your hand in there and check to see if there's an egg.

The chicken may as well have been a pecking pterodactyl. I could not reach in there and feel for an egg far less grab one. It was all so beyond me. I was terrified of even going in the coop, a lean-to affair on the side of a larger barn. Mum did. Brave woman. She is amazing. Found one. Handed the egg to me and I held it as if it were a bomb. For about half a minute. All the way out of the coop then I handed it back and added to the other less dramatic eggs. It was a big deal. The dirt path, the scraggly plants around, the wooden threshold type board to step over, the relative darkness of the coop, the atmosphere inside.  It was a huge new thing to venture into where the chickens are, the edge of my known universe. The smell is unforgettable. Chicken coop poop. Seared in memory. It is a primal smell right up there with kneaded erasure.