Category Archives: photography

A beautiful reminder

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After spending my day off trying to catch up on all of the essential chores, the sky subtly reminded me to take the time to look around at the beauty that surrounds me.

This was the calm after the storm in the early hours of the morning.

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The dark storm-ridden sky gave way to the sunny day and the clouds lightened the mood.

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The sky on the opposing side of the compass competed in the composition challenge and dappled the sky with its own picture.

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The sky cleared in the early afternoon and left this single image.

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Winds churned and the clouds in the southern sky formed again, shrouding the sun behind their dense configuration.

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After a battle in the sky the collaboration was complete and the sky was a brilliant landscape of mottled grey and wisps of white, reminding me that amidst the chaos in my own life there is still beauty in every day.

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Summer – Trifextra challenge

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Sun kisses clouds and warms everything it touches.  Skin burns, lakes soothe and breezes quell the heat.  Laughter echoes, bonfires burn and families make memories.  I watch from inside.  I work in hospitality.

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Written for the weekend Trifecta challenge – Summer, to us, is both complicated and uncomplicated. Intricate travel itineraries and kicked-off sandals with sand still clinging to the soles. Carefree cloud-gazing days spent lying beside one body of water or another and big money spent on childcare and amusement parks. It means leaving home or coming home. This weekend we’re asking you to describe summer in your own words. Thirty-three of them exactly, of course. Good luck!

With the stroke of a brush

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Mother Nature saw the blank canvas before her and reached for her brush. She used bare branches to frame the side of her masterpiece and dotted the sky with white to give the sky some depth. But she was unsatisfied with her work.

She let the bristles of her brush absorb some color and added the green of freshly awakened leaves.

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Her emotion felt one-dimensional. The canvas felt naked and she changed the structure of her portrait to frame it in a better way. The brush strokes continued and she stepped back to look at her work in progress.

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With genuine emotion and grace, she brought romance to the sky. Her brush stokes became more whimsical and the portrait danced and shifted before her.

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She made the blue a deeper hue and scattered the sky with feathers of white.

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After watching the relationship blossom between clouds and sky she felt she had created a true romance.

The Call of Nature

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I’ve had these pictures on my phone for a while and wanted to share them.

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A crack in the armor of ice.

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Intricate patterns in the early morning freeze on my patio table.

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Ring around the sun.

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Hashtag in the sky.

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The atmosphere air-brushed the sky.

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Same effect in lighter shades.

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A stunning sky to ease me into the morning.

Head in the clouds

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These clouds made me happy today.  Spring may actually be here….although the forecast is snow on Saturday.  Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen.

Freedom of expression in the sky.

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And similar….but never the same.

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Ethereal beauty

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Mother Nature can be a divine creature.  Every day she amazes us with her beauty and she presents us with images that may last for only a visual moment, but they are able to be photographed and conjured up at the click of a button.  Technology helps us hold those moments and preserve them to be enjoyed again.  These are some of the beautiful images I was presented with yesterday.  Although I was having reservations about Mother Nature’s sanity, she has restored my faith in her.

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I love the sunlight shining from behind the clouds.

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The sky changed so quickly in a matter of minutes.

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Although the cold temperatures are back, the clouds look like they are on fire.

Mirror, mirror

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This post is written for the weekend Trifecta Challenge:  This weekend we’re asking for exactly 33 words inspired by the following photo.  Please remember that if you use the photo on your own blog, you must give proper credit (with clickable links).

Photo credit: Bérenger ZYLA / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

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Life’s mirror reflects the things that I hold close.  It may not involve truth, but it involves dreams.  My dreams.  And it will only make me see the things I want to see.

In like a Lion

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With a little nudge from the Daily Prompt yesterday, I heeded their request but deviated slightly from their “rules”.  I’m crazy that way.  Remember when you wrote down the first thought you had this morning? Great. Now write a post about it.

Instead of a notebook, I kept my iPhone close and was happy it was readily available to take these shots.  I woke early this morning to take my mom to a doctor’s appointment and as my eyes adjusted on the view beyond my window, my first thought was “are you effing kidding me?” After several days of gloriously warming spring temperatures, the looming month of March morphed into that predictable “in-like-a-lion” and the feline giant roared and spilled its vengeance across the landscape.

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There were a few expletives that escaped my lips but as the caffeine began to course through my veins, I calmed down.  The sun struggled to free itself from the grasp of the horizon and cast whimsical hues into the clouds and the day became a little more beautiful.

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Storm clouds have since saddled up and ridden in on that lion.  He is continuing to roar his introduction to the coming month of March and marking his territory with more snow.  After I say my ‘white rabbit’ three times tomorrow morning for the first of the month, I will be wishing for the March days that are more like the lamb.

Who else is ready for spring to arrive?

The Watchers

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As I child I would lie in the grass for hours, watching the clouds and their ever-changing patterns to see what images I could find in each collection of vapor that passed by.  It is still something I love to do, but sadly I don’t get to do it very often anymore.

Recently I have begun to notice patterns in the snow, especially the patterns created as that snow clings desperately to the bark of the trees.  The position of the snow and the melted remnants of snow around it created what I saw as a panda bear feeding himself.

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This is the image I saw this morning.  The snow pattern on the left made me think of Santa Claus.  It wasn’t until I looked more closely adding the image to this post that I saw the face on the right of what may be a youthful member of the chimpanzee family clinging to the tree.

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If this was my Rorschach Test, I hope I passed!!  Do you see what I did, or do you see something entirely different?

Something feathered, something blue

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It’s February – blah.  I shouldn’t complain too much about the weather since this past weekend was gorgeous, but now it’s Monday and the rain has been falling continually for a couple of hours.  Any of the beauty of yesterday has been washed away and the trees no longer seem to be stretching to reach the sun.  Their branches have resolved to reflect the mood of the weather and are hanging limply, not even attempting to fight the rain that saturates their bark.

I took these pictures on Saturday and wanted to post something uplifting to help me hold the memory of the sun that kissed my cheeks on the weekend and the canvas that the wind created in the sky by using soft bristles to paint the clouds.

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