Sunday, August 23, 2009

Scavenger Hunt Week 8

So our topic for week 8 was "Church". This is the image I chose.



It is a nearby Ukranian Orthodox Church that I was FINALLY able to capture with clear skies after nearly 2 weeks of rain every day.

This was an especially difficult week for choosing though - I had several that I really loved.



Monday, August 10, 2009

Scavenger Hunt Week 7

This week's topic was "Unusual" and I think that the broadness of the topic made it the hardest one yet. And the rules for this week really didn't seem to help narrow it down.
Rules:
1. The photograph has to make you think about what the image is.
2. Can not be manipulated in photoshop
3. It can be any object, person, place or idea.

This is the one I eventually chose:


Stuff like that is why I think God allows little brothers! As always, I had a tough time choosing once I had a good selection of things I liked. Here's the extras!

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Isaac's First Nature Walk

One of the fun parts of doing daycare for my 4 yo nephew once in awhile is that I get him all day and we can do and see new things! In an effort to tire out the wiggles from the little legs, we went on a nice long nature walk to see what we could learn. We got lucky to see a LOT of bird life that day and learned some new trees too - he absorbs everything like a sponge and Mommy was very impressed.

The first thing we encountered was a gorgeous egret. Now we see a LOT of those in this area but I have never seen one this close or for this long. We sat and watched it wade in the shallows and eat for at least 20 minutes.


and by close, I mean REALLY close!


this was actually a pretty low branch but Isaac wasn't so sure about getting up in the tree until he was there - and realized that there were foot and hand holds just like his favorite climbing wall at the park. It was one of many trees he learned the name of that day (he's especially fond of the different kind of birches that line the trailway with Paper Birch as his favorite).


Another very rare sight for me - this is a Little Green Heron. I can only recall seeing one in person once before in my life and Isaac thought it was cool to see it only about 20 ft from us.


he LOVED the lily pads and the flowers.


a very pretty gold finch that flitted above our heads for awhile - Isaac can even tell you that's a boy and how to tell the difference between girl and boy.


This was actually later in the afternoon/evening. This is a juvenile Red Tailed Hawk that was the cause of a royal ruckus at my folks house between his shreaking and all the other birds complaining about him being there.


We got to see a lot of things that day but I couldn't believe how obliging the wildlife was. Here is a collection of stuff we got to see:

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Willow River State Park

Back in the spring, May 10th, some folk from the photography group got together to do a trail hike at Willow River State Park in Wisconsin. We hiked about 8 miles, I think - nothing too strenuous except a brief stair climb up a cliff face. But it was worth it. Turned out to be a fun day of playing with light between sun and clouds and a few teaching moments.

It took me a long time to sort through and pick the shots I really liked since I took about 500 frames but now that I finally have, here are a few of my favorites!





















Believe it or not.. that is just the tip of the iceberg! The rest of the album is in the slideslow below.

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Scavenger Hunt Week 6

The assignment for week 6 was "Fences" which really had me looking at my surroundings in a different light. I admit that I don't normally NOTICE fences around me all that much unless they are ugly. You could get very deep and philosophical about a statement like that but let's just say that I started to notice the boundaries in my environment a LOT more.

I also went a pretty different direction in my choice of photo than I usually do in my photography. I think that is the point of the hunts so I let myself be a bit more creative. Even though I took some of the standard "cluttered, cuddly" or "artistically colored" shots that I usually do, I ended up going with a Black & White with a more industrial feel:



That's actually layers of fencing from a local zoo around the lion habitat. Kind of glad for all the fencing but it was remarkable that so many layers were necessary in one place.

Here's the extras that I didn't use: