Tag: weekly photo challenge

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge-Autumn Scenes

I’m longing for Spring but today, Cee challenges us to share scenes from our archives. I love her challenges. Helps me appreciate the beautiful things I have seen, and sometimes think to photograph.

My favorite Autumn scene is the “Wonder Wall”. Just a couple miles from my house. It’s a block-long retaining wall across from our local Home Depot. I take pictures of it every year because it is so amazing.

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This wall is such a great place to experiment with your camera…macro vs telephoto, time of day, color adjusting, week by week, individual composition, balancing colors, etc., etc..

Clearly, I never get tired of it. I have snapped so many pictures, I printed them and turned them into a photo card series…even had a poster made of one!

Oh and the featured photo at the top? It’s to remind you Autumn is not just spectacular colors in the Pacific Northwest.

It’s also weird fungi! Lots  of it! Huge! Like from-another-planet strange!!

 

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Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Autumn Scenes

Many Shadows for WPC 2/8/17

Shadow

 

I LOVE this topic. I take a lot of photos of shadows. I think they can be so beautiful and thought provoking.  Here are some of my favorites, all in one post!

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…his toe, connecting with the shadow, is all that keeps him earthbound

 

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a shadow love note

 

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road trip of a lifetime

 

no filters, no settings change, all shot at once, with and without flash

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I LOVE my Cobalt and it lives in sunny windows for exactly these shadows!!

 

I love shadows I can’t identify (or remember…no idea what these were!)

I love to see things popping out from the shadows.

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And then of course, there is the whole dedicated activity of AVOIDING the shadows!

Relax by ChosenPerspectives for WPC

Relax

Two slideshows to facilitate the theme…hope they work for you…..

Here are my contributions….

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WAIT! I just took a bathroom break while writing this post and look what I found!

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But if I really want to relax, it has to be in the presence of one of the following…

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To me Sunsets are Holy…to the degree that it feels sinful to not freeze in my tracks to witness and appreciate the statement being made by that which is unfathomably bigger than me…

ChosenPerspectives on Nostalgia for WPC

Nostalgia

The day this theme came out, I had been sitting, blank-minded, struggling to finish a chapter in a series of posts I’ve been working on called My House as a Life. It’s about having lived in an amazing old house for well over 40 years, along with more than 40 various people, and 20 some animals. I needed some pictures for this chapter but simply didn’t have any.

Then I got an email from my son. A friend of his had come across some old public records, really old ones and found these photos!

(Imagination required here as the photos will not download! I will figure out how and fill this big empty spot later.) (OK, I am officially removing this statement now…because I finally got the photos to work!)

Fantastic shots that show how the rumored stories of my house are true…that it was picked up off its 1908 foundation (it kept sinking-underground springs) and somehow hauled up the hill to its current, dryer location.

And THEN I read the theme for this week!!! PERFECT timing!!

Can you be Nostalgic for a time BEFORE your time??

(I am so frustrated because as of this posting, I STILL cannot get my media library to load these dang photos of my house!) (Figured it out. They were bmp’s or something like that. I didn’t know there was a difference. I am learning SO MUCH here!)

Chosen Perspectives Quest for WPC

Quest

I have been after a shot of this guy for it seems like years. He’s there, at the top of our power pole, most mornings, making that sound. Wakes me up. No idea what he could still be eating up there. You’d think the pole would be chewed down to nothing after all this time. If it’s carpenter ants he’s after, I’d happily wake up even earlier and invite him closer to feast on the swarm of those damn ants that are eating my house!

As much as I miss my flowering plum trees that hid part of the pole and where this beautiful guy used to hide between drummings, I am glad to be able to finally see him.

Ahh, for a better telephoto shot!

Check out the sounds at this link. My “Pileated alarm clock” is one of the very last sounds listed.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Pileated_Woodpecker/sounds

ChosenPerspective on Edge for WPC

 

Edge

I take a lot of “perspective” photos but the word this week brought up a completely different image for me.

Most animal people have that one special relationship, that stays with them forever…a “heart pet”…sort of an animal “soulmate”.

For many years, mine was an animal I won at a Saturday afternoon matinee. It was close to Easter and there was a drawing for a baby bunny, a tiny chick and a duckling. My ticket stub was the winning number for my very own DUCK!! I raised that duck in my bedroom, even “house broke” her. I was nine years old and simply didn’t know that was impossible to do.

Many animal friends later, I had a huge, beautiful purebred German Shepherd named Joy. Another heart animal for me….She lived until she was sixteen years old!

I’ve written about that amazing dog many times.

Here’s an example about Joy.

Partners from ChosenPerspectives

But then we come to Zorro.

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I have never been so in sync, so bonded, so in love with an animal before. He is 16 years old now himself and has his own long story. I treasure every single day with him. I am very clingy with the Big Z right now, but Zorro is not the focus of this week’s post so back to the theme for the week.

“Edge” is the name of my daughter’s most beloved cat. Edge only very recently left, after too short an illness for my daughter to prepare herself at all. A quick trip to the Vet, lots of tests and boom, he was gone. This loss completely broke her heart.

I have often thought that sometimes the loss of a pet can hit us even harder than when a human loved one dies, in part because we can love our pets from such an innocent, child-like place in our hearts.

And really, what human in our adult lives can love us as unconditionally as our heart- animals do?

Edge’s sudden departure and my daughter’s devastation are why poor Zorro is getting smothered these days. I know when I lose Zorro, I will undoubtedly be a nine year old, inconsolable child for quite a long while.

Below is my daughter’s story about her sweet “Edge”. She took this picture.

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I met Edge on Valentines Day in 2003 at the animal shelter.  He’d been abandoned at 6 months old and all 4 paws were severely frostbitten as it was -20º outside here in Minnesota.  It was love at first sight. I didn’t claim him as much as he claimed me. He had gigantic, long white whiskers and his face had odd splatters of white, making him look like he’d been in a paint fight. I named him The Edge on the way home in the car after the U2 guitarist. Some of my favorite things about him – when I’d come home from work and open the front door, he’d be on the stairs waiting but would act startled and then hop sideways with his hackles up back up the stairs.  It made me laugh every time.  He also would flop on my head whenever possible, whether I was sleeping, doing yoga, reading, he didn’t care.  If my head was accessible, he was on it. From the time I got him, he made a loud, rattling noise when he breathed, like a 90 year old man, which had limited charm when he camped on my head.   When Sarah would come over to visit, I’d let Edge out the door and he would run down the corridor meowing to greet her. He knew how to open the medicine chest in the bathroom and if he felt ignored, he’d open it and knock everything off the shelves and into the sink. He was such a good companion, loved to be picked up and hang out with me on the patio.  This is one of my favorite photo’s from my patio a few years back. I love how crazy his whiskers are, how happy he looks and how much we enjoyed hanging out in the sunshine together.

Mirror/Selfie? for WPC

Mirror

This is about as close as I ever get to a “selfie”!

(seriously, who first coined that word???)

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Photographing my bugs as the late afternoon sun hits their terrarium.