Tag Archives: photography

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

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Photographers do the craziest things.

I chased these white horses around the field in Sauder Village trying the get the perfectly synced photo.

It turned out that the first one I took was the best… isn’t that always the case?

P.S. After I prepared this post, I realized that those rocks in the corner were actually little horse pies and was aghast. Then I decided to keep them in as proof of a photographer’s folly in not cropping one’s photos. 🙂

I’m linked up today with Project Alicia. Be sure to stop by and visit the work of these talented bloggers and photographers.

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Friday’ Rant about Facebook

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Any time you want to yell back at me, just refer back to the title; I promised you a rant and rant I shall be doing.

I’ve been seeing a lot of “cleaning out my friends” posts on Facebook recently.

I am cleaning up my Facebook friend list. Please let me know if you wish to remain active by answering… with Yes please.

It made me think about why I would want to eliminate friends from Facebook and about whom I would eliminate. Surely one can pick and choose for herself whether or not to continue being “friends” with someone in her life.

The social media platform provided by Facebook gives me a  look at what people in my life are doing and I really enjoy and appreciate updates — even the ones that tell me someone isn’t feeling well and has retreated under the covers or has checked in at Starbucks. I’m glad to see that all is normal in that friend’s life and things are progressing as usual. It’s not stalking; it’s caring! 🙂

And then there’s the obvious missing comma between Yes and please. Enough to drive me crazy.

I’m also pretty tired all of the photos people are posting showing old-school household equipment, such as a manual ice-cube tray with the flip lever.

I’m finding myself increasingly annoyed by these photos. Nostalgic or of historical import? I’m a fan of both, but glorifying these objects seem silly to me, although this blogger does bring up a good point about using stainless steel over plastic trays if one doesn’t have a built-in ice maker in the fridge. I REMEMBER the fractured ice cubes and chunks that come out of these trays. I’ll stick with my auto-cuber in my freezer, thank you, and I don’t want to wade through junk like this to get to the nuggets of information you are actually sharing about your life — the ones I want to see.

Political crap? OMG, will you stop already?

It’s one thing to post a thoughtful article which allows the Facebook friend to decide to read or not. One of my relatives curates and shares lots of political articles, and his commenters are both supportive and antagonistic about the positions presented. I love that. I MADE THE CHOICE to read it.

Please don’t just slap up your unresearched and sensational opinion about something. Link the article where you found it so that I can make an informed decision for myself. You claim to be patriotic and looking out for the best in our country. Isn’t being an informed voter important to our democratic process? Save your inflammatory rhetoric for your friends who already agree with you. I promise; it’s not changing anyone’s mind, and certainly not mine.

These links to other sites that people are putting up also drive me to the nuthouse.

Yesterday a Facebook “friend” posted a photo link of an artist’s rendering of Jesus bleeding on the cross. Really, was that totally necessary? I get that you want to proselytize about your personal faith and I support your right to do it. But can we think a little more carefully about how such a photo will affect your reader?

At the risk of you defriending me, I’m also pretty tired of your animal photos. But that’s just me; everyone else likes them. 🙂

What I do love about Facebook is the personal photos.

Among the pictures of  little kids doing cute things and adults doing things they probably shouldn’t be putting on Facebook, my friends share photos of their vacations, photos of their beloved relatives, and photos of interesting ephemera that they find along their way. I love seeing their point of view, and I learn something every day about new camera applications and photography techniques.

I’m closing today with a photo a friend took in St. Louis. Yes, there’s a little gentle political sarcasm involved, but this is what I want to see on Facebook.

Something that actually makes me think.

I am the Queen after all, and I can make my own rules.

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Flower Stories: More Orchids

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I’ve been sitting with a friend in the hospital, providing moral support and acting as another pair of eyes and ears for the family when they can’t be there.

Our group of friends sent this beautiful orchid plant to the hospital. Absolutely gorgeous all on its own, but you know I can’t resist playing with the image.

First I took the photo with the built in camera on my iPhone 4 with no applications. It’s interesting how the hospital green background — why are hospitals always green?– turned into blue. I didn’t do anything to the photo.

Then I was demonstrating to my friend how the different photo apps work on the iPhone. For this one, I used Instagram and just took a photo against her hospital tray. I showed her how I can blur out an ugly background very easily. It’s not quite in focus, but I could have gotten it in focus if I took a little more time. I was just playing to keep my friend occupied. 🙂

I’ve taken the blue background photo and applied some saturation, which makes the color even more amazing in this photo. Which do you like better?

Since I was intrigued by the dilemma presented by Leanne Cole on her photography blog, I thought I’d play with these images a little bit. I encourage you to visit Leanne and her beautiful images; is the amount of processing we can easily do with digital images cheating or is it just another form of art?

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Backyard Photo Visit

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My dear friends from church invited me over for coffee and a visit to their garden this morning. Obviously, I took my camera along to see what new and interesting images I could collect. With a little cropping, my trusty Canon Rebel T3i worked its magic again.

George wanted me to take a photo of this chenille plant. 

We fussed around with the lighting until I got something interesting.

I worked on getting the movement of the water frozen in time.

And then I tried to get the reflections of the trees in the water.

The flowers are a little worse for wear from the heat, but still beautiful.

Despite all of our requests, that bumblebee would not stop moving!

Love the sentiment, love the friends. Peace out for today!

Flower Stories: It’s Daylily Week

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We call these simple orange daylilies ditch lilies because they grow wild in the ditches here in the Midwest. They’re still beautiful and worthy of a photograph.

According to invasive.org, “Orange daylily is a popular ornamental that has escaped to invade natural and disturbed areas throughout the United States. Plants are 2-4 ft. (0.6-1.2 m) tall with round stems. Leaves are grass-like, bright-green, 1-3 ft. (0.3-1 m) long and curve toward the ground. Flowers develop in the summer and are large, showy, and orange in color. Flowers occur in clusters of 5-9 at the apex of the stalk. Flowers in a cluster open one at a time and only for one day each. Flowers may have spots or stripes. Many cultivars of daylily now exist in a wide variety of sizes and flower colors. Orange daylily infestations often occur adjacent to plantings or at old homesites. Areas invaded include meadows, forests, floodplains, ditches, and forest edges. Once established, the thick tubers make control difficult. Orange daylily is native to Asia and was introduced into the United States in the late 19th century as an ornamental.”

Writing Workshop: Lessons from Dad

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I’m linking up to Mama Kat this week —

My prompt: Share a lesson you learned from your father.

On Friday, while visiting our son in Oakland, California, we also visited a salvage store. I had been struggling with this week’s prompt, since I’m also struggling with poor internet connections at the hotel, and wasn’t sure I could do my father justice this year. Then the visit to the salvage store made it all clear.

My father taught me to value the unlikely, to see the beauty in the ignored, to have the joy of creating something out of nothing.

Today I met another dad — one who would have loved being friends with my dad. It was hard for me to see all of his work, because it reminded me of my dad and how much I miss him. It was, however, a powerful reminder of how important it is to keep the memories of our loved ones alive through the legacies they leave behind.

Thanks to Grandpa Nick for the new memories I have of Father’s Day.

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