Where did winter go? We never had one in Chicago. This is by far the most beautiful spring I have ever enjoyed in 35 years of living in Chicago. The old joke is that Chicago has two seasons — winter and construction. In between we have about a week of fall and one day of spring.
I was so excited by our March spring (???? — when will the other shoe drop?) that I decided to take photos of the amazing forsythia that popped into bloom over the weekend. While driving through the parking lot of our newly renovated mall, I spied a well-shaped forsythia bush and stopped to take a photo. Sounds innocent, right?
As I’m focusing my camera on the perfect spot, behind me I hear someone asking, “Can I help you?” I turned around, saw what apparently was the shopping center security guard in his seekie car, and replied, quite obviously, that I was taking a photo of the beautiful flowers and that everything was fine. Still innocent, right?
Oh, no. It’s illegal to take a photo of forsythia in this particular shopping mall because if I can take a photo, so can terrorists, and terrorists aren’t allowed to take photos of anything in America. You know why.
I was very tempted to mouth off, but I said I understood and got back in my car. As I drove away, I really wanted to drive back around and flaunt the authority of “the man.” But then I thought about how getting arrested would look in the newspaper. It might just affect my credibility in the classroom, don’t you think?
I’m a law-abiding citizen and proud of it. And here’s the photo I took of another beautiful forsythia bush from a legal spot on the sidewalk. I’m really glad I didn’t get arrested for it, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get much out of my yellow petals blowing in the breeze. Note to self; don’t use HDR when the wind is blowing.
What did I learn about using HDR Pro after my iPhone camera class on Saturday? One needs to have a steady hand — and apparently I don’t. When the two photos merge together the edges need to match. If your hands shake, you get shaky edges. You can see them in the original photo I took. I chose this one because of the cute little snow nipple. 🙂
The other thing I learned at class is that if I take a shaky photo, I can tart it up with effects. Using Picnik, I added the Heat Map 2.0 effect. It certainly takes your mind off of my shaky edges and gives a whole new dimension to the snow nipple!
And I’m heartbroken that Picnik is “merging” with Google. I tried it, and it doesn’t have the effects and framing capabilities that the original Picnik does. Picnik was just so darn easy — who’s got a recommendation for a busy teacher?
It’s a good day when I can learn something new. When we go to teacher’s in-service presentations and courses, we demand a “take-away” — something that we can go back to our classrooms and use the next day. Today I learned a lot about the capabilities of my iPhone and its camera. I’ll give you a little teaser, but there will be more in upcoming posts.
Armed with my new app, HDR Pro, I took my trusty iPhone to the floral section at Costco. HDR Pro tells my camera to take two pictures, then merges them together. My only problem is holding still so that there are crisp edges on the merged photos. At home, I loaded up the photo to Picasa, used the HRDish function, the fade function, and the vignette function to get rid of the edges. I don’t like Picasa’s fonts because my favorite’s not there, but this will do for the purposes of copyrighting this photo. The color in these chrysanthemums just knocks my socks off and warms my heart on this snowy Chicago weekend.
And look what a double dose of HDR did for my trellis!
One of my RENEW goals for 2012 is to be more intentional about my photography, and my friend Jerry is an inspiration for better pics. He’s doing a class in photography using the iPhone on Saturday, and I’m really pumped to learn more about what my phone can do!
I decided to go to Trader Joes and take some pictures with my phone, so here’s some spring for Wordless Wednesday on this gloomy winter day.
And just in case you didn’t see it, this is why I love Glee.
While hanging around my computer last weekend looking for something to do where it wouldn’t matter if I had a coughing fit, I met a new reader who introduced me to the One Little Word family — thanks, Merrick — and I have chosen RENEW for my 2012 word. There’s a lot about my life to renew, and this is the year to do it.
One of my goals for the year is to learn how to photograph intentionally rather than haphazardly, and I’m looking forward to help from my friends Ken and Kelly as well as darling husband on this path to renew my love of photography. I’m open to suggestions, if you want to chime in.
Since one of the rules of engagement if you really want to change something is to make a stand in public, I’m going to share with you the reason why I need help with photography. I have an eye, but no craft. These photos are proof of that.
I tried tomatoes.
I love my amaryllis blooming in the window by the Christmas tree. Could I get an artful photo? Not so much.
When I went to make the coffee later in the day, I saw the amaryllis with the light from the window shining through the petals and the green stem of the next one to bloom sticking its sturdy stalk up in the air. It was so beautiful that I thought I would try again. This one’s not bad, but I have no idea how I made this happen other than just catching the light at the right time of day.
These aren’t bad either, but they don’t tell the stories that go with them. They seem static to me, and the magnolia blossom’s not actually in focus.
Ali and Merrick both scrapbook their way through the One Little Word challenge. I’m probably not going to do that, although I do have masses of scrapbooking stuff in my closet. I am going to choose some renewable resources that lie dormant in me and blog about them throughout the year. Just writing this down has made me feel better today and I hope it’s stirred up some achievable goals for 2012 for you. I’d love to hear about them and please, don’t be afraid to comment on my photography. I can take constructive criticism… if it’s delivered with love. Just remember I’m still sick. 🙂
I’m pretty much a pacifist. I am married to a pacifist. Although I don’t judge those who choose the military as a career or as a way to gain an education, I wish we didn’t have to make that choice at all. I wish that our global community could learn to get along by using our words.
That being said, visits to two very important battlefields in France and England have been meaningful and spiritual. This photo is the closest I can get to my father’s experience when he landed at Omaha Beach in Normandy in 1944. As a part of our river cruise on the Seine last year, we spent a day roaming around the Normandy beaches.
Image via gunandgame.com
The day that we were docked near Normandy, we had a choice of visiting the Normandy battlefields or going to Mont St. Michel or going to see the Bayeux Tapestry. The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the events of the Battle of Hastings, and was most likely created in about 1070. Since my dad landed at Normandy, it was really important for me to see that, but I didn’t really understand that seeing the Tapestry would set me up for understanding this year’s visit to the site of  the Battle of Hastings.
Image credit: Got My Reservations
When I look at these pastoral scenes, it’s hard to visualize the enormity of an army composed of mostly foot soldiers under the command of King Harold II being ambushed by a far superior Norman-French army of archers, cavalry, and infantry working cooperatively together and led by Duke William II of Normandy. The Battle of Hastings occurred on October 14, 1066, during the Norman conquest of England, and marked the last successful foreign invasion of the British Isles. Harold II was killed in the battle—legend has it that he was shot through the eye with an arrow. Harold II became the last English king to die in battle on English soil until Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field.  Although there was further English resistance, this battle is seen as the point at which William gained control of England, becoming its first Norman ruler as King William I and is known as William the Conqueror. (Don’t judge me, but I got a lot of this from Wikipedia and I have to give credit.)
These two battlefields remind me of how I feel when I visit the Gettysburg Battlefield — horrified and sickened at the loss of life. Apparently,  so was Pope Alexander II, because he ordered the Normans to do penance for killing so many people during their conquest of England.  William the Conqueror vowed to build an abbey where the Battle of Hastings had taken place, with the high altar of its church on the supposed spot where King Harold fell in that battle. He did start building it but died before its completion; it was finished in about 1094 and consecrated during the reign of his son William Rufus. William the Conqueror had ruled that the Church of St. Martin of Battle was to be exempted from all episcopal jurisdiction, putting it on the level of Canterbury. It was remodelled in the late 13th century but virtually destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII. That’s the Battle Abbey we visited — another reminder of how powerful and ruthless Henry VIII was — and we were able to walk freely through the ruins.
Image credit: Got My Reservations
These buildings were used as dormitories and workrooms; the actual church only exists where there has been excavation of the crypt, and a plaque marks the site of the high altar that was placed where King Harold was killed. Some of the Abbey buildings are used as a school.
Image credit: Got My Reservations
As with most of the other places we have visited in Europe, really ancient and important relics and buildings are often side by side with evidence of normal people living normal lives. The same applies to Battle; the town square right outside of the gatehouse to the Abbey was decorated with garish figures advertising an upcoming theater presentation. That’s probably why I love history so much — it’s just a bunch of stories about people living their lives — and at Battle, the living coexist with the dead in perfect harmony.
Since it’s Saturday and we’re midway through the 31-Day Challenge, I thought it was time for a little reflection about all those photos that we take on vacation.
There are good ones…
Image credit: Got My Reservations
and there are bad ones.
I'm not claiming any credit for this image.
There are the ones that IÂ should have erased from my digital camera as soon as they were taken …
War memorial at Dover Castle
and there are the funny photos that it’s quite probable only you and a few select friends would even laugh at.
There are the ones that you collect…
We collect photos of stupid and ironic signs
and the ubiquitous photos of flowers that when separated from their context, look just like the other flower photos I took.
Image credit: Got My Reservations
So — what do you do with all of those photographs? In my house, we have a relatively healthy competition over whose photos are the best. We each keep photo files on our computers and historically haven’t been very good about sharing. This year was a breakthrough, though. As soon as we got home from England, we created a Snapfish hard cover scrapbook of our vacation photos. Husband went through all of the photos and pared them down to about 250 out of about 2,000 photos we took. Then we imported them into the Snapfish program and created our book. The fact that we had a 50% off coupon that was expiring provided motivation and created momentum to get the job done, and I’m glad we did this. It’s a lot easier to take a photo book to a party than to take my computer and hook it all up for people to view on a small screen.
Snapfish Photo Book
I think I may be addicted to these photo books. I used to try to scrapbook my vacations and events, and even though I have friends who regularly have scrapbooking parties and encourage me to share their scrapbooking habit, I just bought materials and never used them. I also think that in the long term goal of getting rid of things, these relatively small mementos of vacations are more likely to be cherished and revisited over the years.
What do you do with your photos? Do you still have hard copy prints in the envelopes from twenty years ago? What will your children do with your photos? I hope that the fate of your vacation and family stories won’t lie on the floor of a closet in a deserted home, as my next door neighbors’ are. When both parents passed away, the kids left all the slides and photos in the house they let go to foreclosure. It breaks my heart.
Although not a vacation photo, I thought I’d share a precious personal photo with you. My cousin and her mom (my mother’s sister) recently broke up their scrapbooks and sent me the photos that were of me and my family. I’ve never seen this photo before, but my forehead still bears the scar that resulted from the injury that is pictured in the photo. Thanks to the thoughtfulness of my cousin, I now have a totally cute picture of me with my band-aid.
Is there anything more beautiful that the pristine perfection of spirea in spring? Officially it’s Vanhoutte spirea (S. vanhouttei), the classic bridal wreath spirea.
My father was an extraordinary man. Some of his behaviors were corrosive to our family relationships, but in some of his eccentricities he turned out to just be ahead of his time.
He was punching holes in gourds and tin cans to make lanterns long before Martha Stewart thought of it. He was an organic gardener when no one was very concerned about putting chemicals on food. He canned and froze the summer bounty from our orchard and garden with abandon not only because it was good for us, but because it kept us fed on a teacher’s salary during the long winter months. He built and then taught himself to play all kinds of instruments when he became intrigued with them in museums and books; we had steel drums, lawnchair chimes, and the ever popular spoons. He even built a stand for his musical saw. You can imagine that there was quite a lot of embarrassment around our house when Dad pulled out his current project to show our visiting friends.
Dad become enthralled with genealogy early on — as the eldest child, I spent quite a bit of my childhood in courthouses and cemeteries looking up family information. I know how to use divining rods to find unmarked graves in burial plots, and before Mr. Internet was there to help us, I could find a will in an old courthouse record in minutes. I still love cemeteries, but he would have LOVED today’s internet genealogy programs and the instant access available on the Web!
This isn’t our family cemetery, but we had one that looked like this on the banks of the Ohio River by Cincinnati. Image via www2.vcdh.virginia.edu.
As Dad learned more and more about our various family connections, he began to create books of photos and anecdotes. This hobby grew and grew until family members no longer wanted to take more of his scrapbooks. “Enough was enough,” we said. As digital imaging become more available, we encouraged Dad to get his original collection scanned so that the old photos were captured for posterity. That was the point that he discovered that libraries often take genealogical records, and he sent his scrapbooks to pertinent libraries in various places across Ohio and Indiana. With computer access to library catalogs, Dad’s work and name was visible on internet files. He was thrilled because he had a new audience for his hobby. When I checked the catalog of the State Library of Ohio, Dad got 39 hits! He would be proud that his work lives on.
Image via library.ohio.gov
In Dad’s later years, he began to write reminiscences and what were essentially religious tracts and disseminate them to family and friends via electronic mail. Unfortunately, many of his family members didn’t read them, and some didn’t really appreciate them. He would ask what we thought of his work, and would be disappointed that we didn’t want to talk about his writing. I remember being annoyed about his frequent emails that didn’t actually have any family news in them. I regret it now.
Someone once told me that a person’s writing is like poop. Little kids are horrified when, after painstakingly teaching them how to use a toilet, we flush their “results” down the drain. As writing teachers, we do the same. Our students present us their gift of words, and we rip it to shreds, usually with a red pen. How cruel is that? And I did that to my dad by being critical of his precious writings.
Image via girlgonegrad.blogspot.com
Today I am that writer, the one that pretty regularly produces “results” for my family and friends to read. I am often disappointed to find that some of my loved ones don’t read my blog posts. I try not to take it personally; they are, after all, busy with their own lives. I had not really thought about how much that makes me like my father until I was back in my hometown for Mothers’ Day. Â I can see why he continued to try to get us to value his work, and in hindsight, I understand how deeply we may have hurt him.
Image via Got My Reservations
My father was born on May 11, 1923, and died on June 6, 2009. Over the next weeks my family members will each remember a father, a grandfather, and a husband, a man who was sometimes difficult to love but ours all the same. If he were alive today, I would try to get him to stop talking about his own work and read mine :). In any event, I’m sorry, Dad, that I wasn’t as supportive of you as I should have been.
Today’s post is linked up to Mama Kat’s Writers’ Workshop. After reading and commenting on my post, stop by Mama Kat’s site and check out some other writers’ work!
