Reflect

Posted: September 17, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Adventures in art, Adventures in Life, Earth, nature, photo friday, Photography, pond, Quotes, Spirit, Summer, travel, Walking, wandering, water | Tags: , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

(Red Rock Canyon.  Colorado Springs, Colorado.)

Today’s Photo Friday challenge is Reflect.  I’m not officially entering the challenge but I do think it makes good fodder for a blog post.

(Pond reflections.  October 2008.)

There are so many different ways to capture reflections.  I could probably fill a month’s worth of blog posts with photos of reflections.  It would make a good theme for NaBloPoMo (if they haven’t already done it).

(Pond reflections II.  October 2008.)

Water is one of my favorite sources for photographing reflections.  It helps to have a nice, calm day when the water is like glass, but I’ve captured some interesting, abstract-like reflections on windy days when the water is rippling.

(An Autumn day in Pennsylvania.  October 2007)

You don’t need a big body of water such as a pond, lake, or river, either.  The puddle from an overnight rain provided reflections in Red Rock Canyon (the top photo in this series).

I have a large collection of reflections on water, windows, mirrors, and a variety of shiny surfaces (including just-washed cars).  I may make this a regular feature here at Life in the Bogs.  It would be worth exploring just for fun and to see what comes up.

Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.

~ Ernest Holmes

Photo Friday: Winter

Posted: December 11, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Autumn, home, nature, photo friday, Photography, pond, water, weather | 4 Comments

(Today’s view of the pond.)

This week’s Photo Friday is Winter.  Since I took a few shots of the pond today, admiring how the ice is forming in swirls, I thought I’d go ahead and post one.

Have a great weekend!

😀

Mountain

Posted: January 12, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: photo friday, Photographers and Other Photography-related People & Websites, travel | 4 Comments

This week’s Photo Friday challenge is: Mountain.

I’m a day late, but here it is:

I took this photo on our way to Yosemite National Park way back in April of 2006. We don’t have mountains here in the Bogs, unless you count the laundry piling up in my basement.

Weather

Posted: December 28, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: nature, photo friday | 2 Comments
(Storm at sunset. June 2006. Photo by Robin)

(Storm approaching. June 2006. Photo by Robin)

Photo Friday‘s theme for this past week is: Weather.

I took these photos last June (and it should be noted that they have not been altered in any way, although I do have one which my youngest son Photoshopped, taking out the neighbor’s house and hiding a DeLorean behind the trees as a small joke). It started out as a series of sunset shots, the sky taking on deep hues of red, orange, and slate blue. Then the clouds and wind moved in, looking like the wrath of the heavens were about to burst over the neighbor’s house. It was one of the most amazing weather sights I’ve seen (and, at times, reminded me of a Stephen King novel). You probably need to see the whole series to truly appreciate it, but these are a good sampling.

I have lots of weather shots in my collection of photos taken over the past year. Weather and nature are two of my favorite subjects. Well, other than my family (especially my lovely granddaughter). I could’ve picked a winter scene which might have been more appropriate for this time of year except that we’re experiencing a warm and sunny day here in WC. Not winter-like at all. I’ll save the snow for another day.

There’s always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down. ~Don Delillo


Fresh

Posted: December 11, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: food, nature, photo friday, sabbatical | 2 Comments
(Sweet corn from Hilgert’s Farm. July 2006. Click on photo for larger version.)

This week’s Photo Friday theme is Fresh. Yes, I’m aware it’s not Friday. I’m getting caught up. The one I did this past Friday was actually last week’s theme.

Our new apartment, like any apartment, has its pros and cons. One of the cons is that it’s cold. Freezing cold on some nights. We have three little electric baseboard heaters — one in the kitchen, one in the living room, and one in the bedroom. There’s no heat at all in the bathroom.

Being a woman of a certain age, I can usually generate my own heat. Some people call them Power Surges, but they’re more commonly known as Hot Flashes. It’s not entirely an age thing as I’ve always been somewhat hot blooded, enjoying the cold weather much more than I do hot weather. When it’s cold you can add layers to get warm, but you can only strip so far when you’re hot. And if you’re naked and still hot, well, there’s nowhere else to go with the stripping.

Heat, ma’am! it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones. ~Sydney Smith, Lady Holland’s Memoir


Anyhow, here we are in this quaint little college town freezing our arses off due to the fact that we weren’t prepared for the lack of heat. We didn’t bring enough blankets, for one thing. I frequently have trouble sleeping (due to pain) and will usually move out to the sofa to sleep (or toss and turn), but I’m unable to do that here because we have no extra blankets. Being thrifty folks who don’t want to have to pay an outrageous electric bill or further contribute to global warming, we try to keep the heat at a low setting.

This has not been fun, especially when the temperature fell to about 18 degrees (f) and it seemed as though it wasn’t much warmer than that in the apartment.

So, in case you’re wondering about the sweet corn, I picked out that photo because it’s one of the highlights of summer. Fresh, sweet corn. Just picked sweet corn. It is, I think, a symbol of hot summer days and melting ice cream nights. I wanted, for just a moment, to feel the warmth and freshness of summer and sweet corn is It. The epitome. Biting into a freshly picked ear of sweet corn is a little taste of sunlight and earth, growth and harvest. It is, I believe, as fresh as you can get.

Sex is good, but not as good as fresh, sweet corn. ~Garrison Keillor

Stillness

Posted: December 8, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: photo friday, sabbatical | Leave a comment



Last week’s Photo Friday theme was Stillness.

Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen — that stillness becomes a radiance. ~~ Morgan Freeman

I could have found some prettier photos of water or flowers or the still flame of a candle, but this was a photo I took yesterday afternoon when the sun was shining in through the windows of the apartment and the world seemed still for just a brief moment of time. We’re now living in the heart of a very busy little town and that sense of stillness was a gift that I enjoyed and very much appreciated.

The near stillness recalls what is forgotten, extinct angels. ~~ Georg Trakl

Immature

Posted: November 24, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: nature, photo friday | 1 Comment
(Yosemite. April 2006)


I stumbled across Photo Friday and decided I like it better than the Flashback Friday thing I had been doing. It gives me a theme while allowing me to use old photos. I like having a theme. It’s direction. Direction can be a good thing when I’m at a loss as to what to post or write about.

This week’s challenge is “Immature.” After sorting through photos of M the Elder and M the Younger, as well as the obvious granddaughter archives, I decided on this one. During one of our short hikes in Yosemite we saw a lot of giant trees. This little tree stood out so much precisely because it was so small and immature.

The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, translated from French by Stuart Gilbert