Why "ImaginationRanch" ?
Since this website, and my photography business, went official in January of 2017, the name ImaginationRanch Photography has started to take off. Plug it in to any search engine ( but particularly the king of search, Google), and the number one site you'll find is this one. I can also be found on Facebook and Instagram,and, fortunately or unfortunately, my older digital footprints on a number of other platforms that I used to use for photography, like 500px (which I'm considering reviving a bit), Photobucket, and a handful of others. You can largely disregard those, as I've moved on to bigger and better things.
But some of you may by now be wondering, "Why 'ImaginationRanch' ?", "What does that even mean?" Well, it's not a real earthshaking tale, but lemme give you a little background on where the name came from.
THIS....with DIAL UP internet....bring a lunch and a pillow. If you download anything, you're gonna be here awhile....
Back in the "olden days" of the Interwebs, when having a desktop PC in your home was still relatively uncommon compared to now-- I mean, just look at how inundated with electronic devices our lives are, and how many of them each of us has, not just our household as a whole, but each of us!-- in about 1994, we were living in Tehachapi, California, with our newborn son and his 3 year old sister. As we had decided to make the leap from the big metropolis of Bakersfield, we were temporarily living with my in-laws, while looking for a home to buy and waiting for the closing. We decided we needed a personal email account, for whatever the reason was at the time (look, it was 24 years ago, I'm lucky if I can remember what I ate for lunch 3 days ago!).
Mom & Pop's old Tehachapi home....hasn't changed much, other than the exterior color!
Before it was Outlook, it was Microsoft Hotmail, that was the big thing aside from Yahoo! Mail, and we wanted to go the Microsoft route instead. "Yahoo.com" sounded dopey to me. I recall sitting at the computer thinking about where we were in our life at the time, wanting a bit of land, and room to have chickens, a garden, room for the kids to play, all the good stuff that comes with living in the country.
Our last "ranchette" before we left T-town for the Midwest....our little "house in a hole". We thought we were livin' large on nearly a whole half acre! But we made the most of that half acre, and the land around it, too.
Hotmail prompted us to choose an emailname@hotmail.com, and being an artist, I thought, "Hey, I am a believer in the importance of the imagination....and we are growing a family, and will be adding a garden and critters too....we want to build a little farmstead, how about 'imaginationfarm@hotmail'.com"? " Well, seemed like a good idea at the time, til I found that someone else already had that.
Great. Now I had to use my imagination a bit further. "Okay....well, how about 'imaginationranch' ?" My basic reasoning being, since the places we had our eye on were only parcels under n acre, it was going to take a whole lot of imagination to see our new home as a ranch....but we had kids, and were creatives, and figured imagination was always going to be cultivated on our place, so why not?
And thus, ImaginationRanch was born.
The most recent incarnation of "ImaginationRanch", most likely our last....but never say "never", right?
Now, three kids and 24 years later, we now live on about a 7 acre parcel in the Midwest. We have been through almost every critter you could imagine on a farm (though we never did get sheep or a cow, and I always wanted to....but I think after 24 years, I am over having large livestock, now!) We even rehabbed a raccoon on pur place for a season, til it was time to let her go be a raccoon in the wild. I've done daycare, I raised kids, I've trained horses, We raised poultry. I volunteered in the kids' schools and helped with 4H, I've worked retail. I've dabbled in just about anything creative that my imagination leaned toward. I moved from painting and drawing to photography about a decade ago, and have been at it ever since. Can't see that ever going away. It's been a pretty full life on our imaginary farmstead.
We are now down to the youngest daughter in college and almost ready to leave home. We're down to two dogs, a Boston Terrier who thinks he's a hooman and a German Shepherd who thinks my husband is the center of the Universe. We have a handful of fruit trees, a pretty decent veggie garden, and my in-laws even moved out here to be nearby. We just found out we will be grandparents for the first time in February. We've had a lot of adventures, and a lot of fun.
The family so far....Grandbaby #1 is coming this winter!
The imagination is still strong and growing. Aside from photography, I keep my imagination primed with tons of reading, time spent in nature, looking at other artists' works, and learning something new everyday. I try to get out of what used to be m comfort zone more often. In addition, one of my favorite photography subjects is agricultural themes. Farm stuff, the like. So, with the new foray into professional photography, it only seemed right to name my business ImaginationRanch Photography. Why the capital R in the middle of ImaginationRanch? Well, that I don't really have an answer or a reason for. It just looked a little...different. Iliked it. And different is good when you want to make a dent with your business. But other than that, no real reason.
I guess you will just have to use your imagination on that one.
