I love Nancy Merrill’s photography. If you have never visited her site, she’s quite talented.
https://www.nancymerrillphotography.org/
Of course, I adore her subject matter.
She has been sponsoring this Photo a Week challenge and I am inspired by her chosen topics. This week it is “Whimsical”.
My minds reels, but here are a few of mine I thought fit the challenge. (Of course, I may be mixing up the terms Whimsical and Smart Ass…)
I just crack myself up sometimes….
I wish I had had my real camera for these shots. My phone barely captured the beauty of these colors…
While I watched the following sunset, I kept expecting a BOOMING voice from the heavens, telling me to straighten up, or else!
This is a Sun Dog that WordPress always prints too big on my page… But it was beautiful. Many cars were stopped along the I-90 freeway, clicking away.
I thought this sky was proof there is an artist up there, painting cloud pictures every day!
My adopted Dad, who was an Air Force fighter pilot in several wars, used to tell me about the “hole in the sky (clouds)” pilots would watch for, presumably for the quick getaway?
This was NOT a meteor crashing or alien ship landing…at least, I don’t think it was….
I met a tree yesterday…a real old-timer, in the front yard of the new home of some dear friends. I spoke to it as I entered the house, asked if I could photograph it, and then left it to contemplate its answer.
When my visit with my friends was finished, I walked back out to visit the tree. I told it that while I was inside, I had checked on my phone for the daily photo challenge and discovered, coincidentally, the word for the day was branches and I wondered if it would be OK to take a few pictures of its glorious examples for my daily post.
It told me yes but only if I passed on this statement.
“I am a very old tree, even for my species, and I have sheltered this home, and its people since 1938.
I was here first.
I could live a lot, longer if I am allowed to.
Elderly trees like me are just like the elderly of your species. We are living, and breathing beings, and sentient, in our own way. As we age, we may need extra care, but…
We can tell you such stories……”
I grew up with a giant tree in my childhood front yard. I climbed way up in it to hide. Its branches held me safe and kept me invisible while the pain down in my house was happening.
I believe this tree has also held many children, but in joy and play.
I told the tree “Thank you for posing for my photos of Branches.”
This slide show may take a while but it’s the best way to really appreciate this work of art from a dear friend, Virginia. Working with ceramic and gold leaf, she sculpted this in honor of one of her beautiful and wonderful hospice patients, Peggy, who took a very long time, longer than medically possible, to make her decision to die. Virginia described Peggy’s process as one of deep, and conscious contemplation. I hope you enjoy the slides.
(actually, it’s not letting me do a slide show AND it is cutting off parts of the “featured image” so I am going to post them all in a row as “individual images.)
In responding to this week’s Lens Artist Photo Challenge-theme “Look Up”, I was overwhelmed with the beauty of two posts I saw.
And then I was overwhelmed by how many choices I had in my own files that would be good for this challenge. Apparently, I spend a lot of time “looking up”…and snapping away!
I love all the references in both the above posts to perspective and how changing yours can change everything else also. That really speaks to me. So I am changing mine on this challenge. Nothing I have compares to the stunning beauty of these Cathedrals. Thank you so much for sharing those. But it all reminded me, once again, of my own favorite accidental photo. I have posted it before but will again for this challenge.
I’ll just add the words “look carefully” whenever you Look Up!
In case you have not seen this before, (I post this photo a lot), I did not discover the whole content of the photo until I was posting it for the word Blossoms…
Oh boy, I accidentally did a whopper piece of personal therapy this morning, searching for a song about Search.
I immediately thought of all my life long searches!
First, my youth, I searched for my biological father who left before I was born. I know, in this day and age, it should be easy right? Well, his name was Michael John Kelly. (Might as well have been John Smith!) I started at 13 years old, looking up that name in local libraries. They used to carry phone books from all over the United States, so, using my babysitting money, I would write post cards to as many addresses as I could afford postage for.
Then, in my twenties, I started searching for my daughter, who I had to give up for someone else to raise.
I’ve written about her several times. One example:
Here’s the piece of work I did this morning.
In thinking about a song for today’s theme, I realized even though I had the best (step) Dad in the world, and have found, and dearly love, my relationship with my daughter, I am still searching. Sometimes quietly, in the back ground, but sometimes, frantically, like my life depends on finding…what?? I don’t really know. (Well, I do, but that’s another post…)
At 70 years old, there are so many other things I still and always searched for that are unlikely now. That’s not me giving up. That’s the healthiest part of me, gently and lovingly, coercing me back into the present moment.
I guess that pushy voice, my “Guardian”, has always been there, Sometimes it’s audible and sometimes it is blocked by unfinished grief…but it’s constant and reliable when I am willing and able to listen, to hear.
And most importantly, to accept that it is there for ME, not just my clients, my friends, my family, not all the other lost souls I share that voice with when I forget to listen for myself.
You go Alanis! Thanks for always sharing your “therapy” with us in your music!!
https://helenswordsoflife.com/2018/09/29/song-lyric-sunday-theme-for-9-30-18/
I went looking for photos of fences but just don’t have many. Then it occurred to me that I live in a neighborhood where there are none.
I like that.
My house is the oldest one around for many miles. It’s on a long, dead-end street. We have a neighborhood email and phone list. We keep in touch regarding unusual neighborhood activity (fake solicitors, coyote and bobcat sightings, lost or found pets, etc.) For Halloween and other holidays, the children (and now grandchildren) on the street are the priority with trick-or-treating and caroling! And next weekend is our annual cider-making party. We usually hand press about 50 gallons of juice from the apple trees my neighbor and I share!!
This is the boundary line between my closest neighbor and myself.
I mean, if there were fences, how could we wander through each other’s yards to see each other’s gardens, and to say Hi? Or to watch out for each other, or take a short cut to the next street over?
And how would we check on each other’s animals?
and to photograph flowers?
or be inspired by yard art?
How would the deer get into our yards to clean up the wind fall apples?
I love my street and my neighbors. There just are not many fences on my regular, daily trails.
But I did finally find these in my files…
So my conclusion is apparently…Fences? For me, no thanks..
WordPress used to give us Bloggers a weekly photo challenge and I was dismayed when they stopped. But I now really appreciate how many other challenges there are to respond to.
I love sharing my photographs. I am far from being a pro but I have a camera with me at all times. I enjoy looking at the world, big and small, to see what catches my eye.
Apparently, it is slightly different than what others see.
Maybe it’s all that practice at “choosing my perspective”.
I have a whole category in my photo files called “accidental photography”. Sometimes, an accident turns out to be a favorite of mine.
Here’s my latest oddball/accidental shot.
