So Long, 2014

Here's to a happy, happy, happy new year!

Sunny Palomino

During our family trip to Colorado this Summer, we rented out a ranch cabin, and it was right next to the barn where they kept the horses.  In the afternoon, one of the owners left a pretty palomino in the barn, and (as usual) I got super excited and got my camera. 

He stood in the dark for a little while before walking out into the sun.  That amount of light added a new dimension to the shot, in addition to the darkness in the background.  Also, the horse's face is in direct line with the wooden beam, which isn't dead center in the photo.  It's a good rule of thirds, and the colors blend well.

Any ideas or opinions on this photo you would like to share?  Tell me in the comments below!  And don't forget to subscribe to the blog to receive post updates!

Moving

This past month has been a huge whirlwind of activity!  I finally got on to my site today, and I was so shocked when I saw that my last post was November 17!  Happy December.

It's been very different moving to the city after nine months in the middle of nowhere.  And the fact that our neighbors are extremely nice is, dare I say it, just a tad creepy.  I mean, I have never had such nice neighbors in years!  So when three different people rang my doorbell on the same day, I started to get nervous and happy at the same time.

We stayed in a hotel until we had unpacked a majority of the boxes, making it a livable place to stay!  It was kind of boring though, because the only thing we could do when we had time off was either eat at a restaurant (we didn't have all the kids with us, so it was less expensive), go back to the WIFI-less hotel and watch TV, or go to bed.  Basically, all I did in the hotel was watch CNN and Fox News while crunching ice.  I agree with you if you think that is weird.

 Now, we're all moved in (even though there are still millions of boxes...oh, if you could only see our garage!), and Kip, our dog, has a fenced-in backyard.  That's a lot better than a huge field without a fence.

Have a great December!

Red Clover

Sunset is coming earlier these days, and the weather is getting very chilly.  This flower, a red clover, is one of the last survivors in our yard.  Its vibrant color against the green and brown background is still there despite frost.

Dandelion and Orange Insect

I like the dark background in contrast with the bright yellow of the dandelion.  When I was really little, I called the pretty weeds "dandy-flowers."  A few times, my family went into our yard and picked a gazillion of them, fried them, and ate them for supper (Sounds weird, but trust me, it's really good!).

The bug has a orange color that blends nicely with the yellow.  He walked around the small flower near the smaller insect with a silly air of "I'm huge, fear me." 

The Messy Chocolate Bunny

Baby brother had found a big chocolate bunny somewhere, and he plopped onto the kitchen floor and promptly bit into it.  He knew such a messy block of candy wasn't for him, but he delighted in it anyway.

Unfortunately, I'm not one to stop him when it comes to something cute (and safe) to photograph.  Besides, if he had become messy, I would have done the laundry anyway. ;)
Baby brother was happy...until I took the chocolate away from him.  He got over it soon enough, and I came away with some cute photos.  Win-win, I guess.

Silky Webs

The majority of the photos in this series were taken on the same day in the same field.  I was doing a photoshoot with my brother, and the one thing that always happens (just ask my brother) is that I get distracted by interesting things.  Not that my brother isn't interesting, but I'm just digging myself deeper into a hole, aren't I? ;)

The photo above took my fancy, with the spikiness of both the plant and the web itself.  Since it was later in the morning (around 10 or 11 AM), the sun was getting higher, and I had to adjust my shutter speed so as not to overexpose the web.

A flower in the corner is more the subject than the string of web, but the web adds to the composition as a leading line.

I thought the spider above was actually just a piece of dirt...until I looked at the photo on my laptop screen!  There is also a fly caught in the web in the corner, which you might not have noticed.  I like the fact that the web lines are visible.

Dried-out and dead, these flowers (or whatever they once were) sat in my garden, since overgrown now that our plants are gone.  The lines of webbing encircle the plant, and the background is well-blurred.

Stuck against a twig, this web was very peculiar.  The funny-looking lines that are positioned away from the twig seemed like big block letters you might see on an advertisement.

Colorado Cliffs and Fields

Colorado is one of my favorite states.  It's colorful.  It's full of mountains.  There's about a million photo ops.

We drove down road after road, and I was taking shots of nearly everything I thought of as interesting.  This single tree was standing in a field, and I quickly took a photo (when your dad is driving 75mph, this is necessary).  The mountains are gorgeous, and we love to see them turn from faint outlines to massive shapes as we drive through the state.

The dirt road beside us twisted endlessly, and I loved the shape it made.  The green and brown contrast brightly together.  There's a nice leading line, too.

City Clouds

Sometimes, it's a really nice thing to have someone else be the driver.  I have a lack of self-control when it comes to taking pictures (and everybody knows it!).  I must take that photo.  I need to take that photo.  That's what it's like for me most days.

So, when we were driving through the city one afternoon, we were turning, and I made a snap decision (pun intended) to take this photo.  It turned out pretty good for not having much composition.

Textures

Don't you just love that word?  It brings up a bunch of other words, like rough, smooth, hard, soft...

For this series, I wanted to do something way out of the ordinary for myself.  I don't really take photos because of textures.  I photograph things because they look awesome, in my mind.

I went around my kitchen and living room, dodged Lego blocks on the carpet (no easy task when there are a lot of kids in the house), and got really close to the items that piqued my interest.  The ones that had a lot of texture to them.

This one had a lot of different feelings to it.  The flower bead was smooth with tiny indents; and the weaving was rough.  I liked all the colors being in the same group. 

So, that's this week's challenge, per se.  Take a bunch of photos of any textures you find, and tell me about them!

Paprika's Camera

Yes, I know.  A random photo of my friend's camera.

Really?

This was taken in January, out in a field on an overcast day.  We had been photographing frost on tall grasses, and I turned around and took a photo of Paprika taking a photo of the frost.  Have you ever had one of those times when you tried something quickly, just to see how it would turn out?

I didn't crop the photo afterwards, and only added a slight tint, and messed with the exposure.  And added my watermark, of course.

The gray on camera right is different (I usually don't have that much white space in my photos).  It's almost like a cookie-cutter. 

Thanks to Paprika for taking photos with me on cold and icy, or hot and sunny, days. :)

Reading

Little brother plopped himself down on the floor, and selected a little book from the shelf.  He pointed to the cow and the dog in every illustration, and got really excited about them.   I had been taking photos from a floor-view, and I thought this would be a great addition.

 He flipped three pages at a time, and 'read' the pictures over and over again.  I took photos from every side, and liked the background in this one.  His hand in the background is in mid-air, and it was really cute.

This one was funny, the way he has his tongue out, and just looking intently at the book.

He's a sweet little boy who dances to music, loves looking at my photos when I take them, runs around with the big boys (he calls them "guys"), and thinks it's hilarious when we accept candy corn from him.  I don't know what I'd do without him.  He's a great brother. :)

Granny's Recipe Box

I was at my Gram's and Granny's house last month, just hanging out, when I thought of something random.  My French teacher had once told me that her mom makes the best mayonnaise cake in the world.  I remembered that my Granny had also told me that she had a good mayonnaise cake recipe.  So, I asked her if she could find that recipe for me, so I could write it down.

Granny searched through her closet, and found a really old-fashioned box with a lid that was propped open by recipe cards stuffed into it. 

She looked through it, and we took a few minutes to find the recipe.  All the while, I asked questions about her recipes.  One of her relatives had given her the box, along with a few recipes Granny didn't know of.  Granny had collected many of the instructions, and one by one, they were put into the box.  She makes some of the absolute best food I've ever had, and I was really excited when I found my Mom's and Dad's wedding cake recipe.  Granny had made the cake as her wedding gift because it was so big and expensive. 

When we found the mayonnaise cake recipe, I jotted it down on a blank index card and put it in my "busy bag" that I take with me on trips.  I liked how Granny had a few stories to tell about some of the recipes in her little box, and it was a lot of fun listening to them.

When it was time to put the box away, I asked if I could take some photos of it.  She agreed (probably a little surprised that I had asked), and I took all these photos, and then she placed the box back in her room. 

I still need to try that mayonnaise cake, but I'll bet it's one of the best cakes in the world...right alongside my French teacher's.

Fruits

Sorry for the delay.  I couldn't get to this series yesterday due to preparation for the lunar eclipse last night. 

My sister and I made apple butter the other day, and we were washing apples and setting them on a dish mat.  I loved the little water droplets on the two apples, and grabbed this shot before getting back to work.

 

 These bananas have been sitting on our big Fall plate for a while.  It sits on an old ice cabinet near the back door.  There was lovely natural light.

OK, I just had to use this photo.  Back in the 1800s, the Supreme Court ruled that the tomato was a vegetable, but it is actually a fruit.  There's your little history lesson for today! ;)

Guitar Player

My little brother doesn't know how to play a guitar.  He has a toy instrument, and he uses a quarter (Yup, a coin) as a pick.  His guitar is badly untuned, and is missing two strings.  He fingers the remaining strings from the top of the neck, and he doesn't know a single chord.  He's a lefty, but doesn't have a left-handed guitar, so he holds it upside-down.  But no-one in the house cares, and he doesn't care for lessons from me.  We listen to him strum out, and nobody flinches when he starts his off-key piece.  He's the sweetest.

I took this picture to show him what he does.  It was just a quick shot, no in-camera framing.  But I found how great it looked, especially in black and white.

So, this is a post about my little brother who plays a 4-string guitar upside-down with a quarter for a pick, doesn't have a chord chart, and doesn't worry about people not liking his concert.  Because everyone always likes it, and sometimes, we ask for more.

Two Rabbit Friends

 I was at my Grandma`s house this July, and her yard seems to always have at least one furry rabbit frolicking around in it.  In the neighbor`s yard, there were two of them, and I got out my telephoto lens so I wouldn`t scare them.  This little one above was nibbling on some grass, and he reminded me of Beatrix Potter`s Peter Rabbit.

I faded out most of the background, and kept only the rabbit and grass in color.

The other one looked like a jackrabbit, and just stood on the concrete, staring off into the street.  He had this sort of profile look, and only hopped a little ways every minute.  Very laid back!

My Grandma sometimes complains about how one baby rabbit likes to snuggle into one particular patch of grass in her yard, thus creating a bare piece of ground.  But she writes cute poems about her backyard rabbits for the grandchildren, and I know she likes them.  And so do I.

Happy October!