Scavenger Hunt Sunday – May 27th

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Good Morning! I really liked this week’s prompts, mostly because they weren’t typical; they were more about photographing moments or stories. Definitely more challenging!

Today’s challenges:

  1.     Beneath Your Feet
  2.     Capturing Movement
  3.     Texture
  4.     Face Your Fears
  5.     Currently

My responses:

I stuck my feet in a cool stream this afternoon. What’s beneath my feet? I don’t know, maybe fish, crabs, or snakes! Oh my!

I had a lot of fun capturing the movement of the cars heading into and out of the city on Friday night

I have a couple texture ones I liked, which do you like better?

Texture of a broken truck window

Texture of a feather

This one is from the archives. Isaac and I, along with my dear friend Ashley traveled to Peru last November. As part of our visit to Machu Picchu, we got up extra early to hike Huayna Picchu (the mountain you see in the background of all the famous Machu Picchu photos). Now, I’m not a fan of heights. That’s my fear. Hiking UP was no problem, because it was still so foggy I couldn’t see how far up we actually were climbing. However, as we headed back down, hours later, I could ONLY see how far up we were! :) Some of those Incan stairs are steep! You can see in this photo where people are walking down some of the steps, and you can see Machu Picchu in the distance. Was it worth it? DEFINITELY! :)

Currently, there are LOADS of this cotton-like fluff in the air, carrying seeds from nearby cottonwood trees (Thanks Marisa!). What an appropriate name. What tree is it, you ask? I don’t know! Anyway, right now it looks like it has recently snowed in some places, the fluff is so pervasive!

Check out all the other fun entries at Ramblings and Photos! Next week’s challenges were submitted by yours truly, so go take a look! Thanks, Ashley, for using my suggested prompts! :)

May 26th, photo of the day: A Few More From Rizal’s Point of View

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I hope everyone is enjoying this beautiful Memorial Day Weekend! Well, anyway, it’s beautiful here in Western Washington!

I’m sitting here at my desk listening to the sounds of the neighborhood – children yelling, adults greeting each other, and dogs barking. We live right next to the “Residence Center” which houses one of the complex’s pools.

I went up to Rizal Park in Seattle last night to get some long exposure shots, and I wanted to share a few more with you.

So here we go!

We weren’t the only ones out there

Vertical view

The beautiful sunset

If Seattle suffered a nuclear meltdown, it might look something like this

I think this is my favorite

my favorite, subjected to a little pse changes.

May 25th, photo of the day: Long Exposure

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Isaac and I just got home (10:30) from Rizal Park in Seattle.

Rizal Park is perfectly situated up on a hill overlooking the convergence of I-5 and I-90 with the Seattle skyscrapers behind.

I’ve been wanting to get up there to take the quintessential Seattle shot since I first heard of it, and today I finally did! I am working on two different challenges this week that have to do with long exposure times, which is why I was motivated to go this week in the first place, but I had to share one with you today anyway!

We arrived just as the sun was setting over the Olympic Mountain Range, making them look like they were on fire. (Which of course I took loads of photos of. Those to come tomorrow) Then we walked into the park a bit further to find the best shot to capture the city lights.

This is the last photo of the night, taken at f/13, for 30 seconds.

I’ll post more tomorrow, but tonight I’m going to bed! ;)

May 24th, photo of the day: Learning New Things & Alphabe-Thursday: A

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I was born in the Bay Area, in California, and moved to Medford Oregon when I was 12 years old.

Last November, I moved to the Puget Sound area in Washington. I naively thought that the foliage and such would be similar to that in Southern Oregon, since both are same general region of the Northwest.

I was sorely wrong. While there are some plants that overlap both places, Washington offers a whole slew of new and strange plants for me to learn about.

Among other things, there are two that I’ve encountered in the last two days that particularly caught my attention.

 

Yesterday, I “learned” about Stinging Nettle. My poor finger. Luckily I had Wikipedia to assure me that it’s only temporarily painful, and harmless.

Stinging Nettle

And today I saw something amazing (Alphabe-Thursday: A – I did it!).

Orange raspberries!

No, not Salmon Berries, but I want to give those a taste at some point too. This was a plant that looked exactly like a typical raspberry bush, but the berries were orange. ORANGE!

Isaac and I thought maybe they were just under-ripe, but even that seemed wrong to me. All unripe raspberries I’ve ever seen were white or green. I touched one – as any curious person would do – and it nearly fell away from the plant into my hand. To me, that means it was ready to be eaten.

I looked at Isaac, who was looking at me apprehensively. I wanted to eat that berry. But I was good.

I bought it home to look up and what it was. If all was well I would give it a go. I didn’t want to die, there in the middle of a little patch of forest.

These are called just Orange Raspberries, or maybe Golden Raspberries (though it seems those are more of a yellow color). As soon as I found this out, I grabbed my little berry and popped it in my mouth.

Such a crazy color to see out in the forest.

Just like a raspberry.

It was delicious. And I’m not dead. It tasted partly like a raspberry, and partly like — something else. I want to say sort of like an orange, but my brain might just be telling me that’s what it tasted like. Perhaps. I’ll have to eat more to be sure.

 

Jenny Matlock

May 23rd, photo of the day: Snail

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Today is another WordCount Blogathon Theme Day! The topic is “if I started blogging today I would…” What would I do differently?

I haven’t been a blogger for very long, barely 4 months at this point.

I started my blog, on something like a whim, when I felt that I needed a better place to share my photos and get feedback about them than what I was getting from Facebook. I can’t remember how I came to WordPress, but I like it here. At least for now, WordPress offers everything I need from a blog site.

So I’ve been thinking about it. What would I have done differently?

The most important thing  I would change is that I would definitely mark my work as my own, from the beginning. I watermark everything I post now, but I didn’t start out doing that. As far as I know no one stole anything from me, but that was a pointless risk to take. I started watermarking my work when my sister encouraged me to do so, at least a month after I’d started blogging.

It seems so obvious now, but I had little idea of how to actually go about the whole blogging thing, and how easy it is to steal and pass off work as one’s own.

Michelle at WordCount compiled a list of newbie mistakes to avoid. You can check them out on her website, HERE

(Sorry, I couldn’t make this photo apply to this topic!)

Anyway, since I started, I’ve started following a number of other blogs on similar topics, both photographers near my level and ones who have been in the business for a years, as well as non-photographer bloggers! All of these have been fun and interesting to read, and many have inspired me to try new  and different things!

For all the bloggers out there, what would YOU do differently, if you started now? Do you have any good tips or advice for a fairly new blogger like me?

May 22nd, photo of the day: Swirl of Nature

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Nature can be so whimsical and fun when we take the time to notice the little details!

These sword-ferns are popping up everywhere here in the Northwest, and as they unfurl I can’t resist taking photos.

This one reminds me of a musical note – a treble clef? (I’m not the musical sort, though I took piano lessons in my teenage years.)

May 21, photo of the day: Trailer Haiku

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Today is another theme day with the Blogathon! It’s haiku time, and for those of you not familiar with haiku, it’s a Japanese poem with specific 5-7-5 meters. You can learn more about haiku, here. I remember writing these as a kid, but it’s been a long time!

Here we go….

burned and scattered parts
a home destroyed, torn apart
an abandoned mess


Scavenger Hunt Sunday – May 20th

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Good Morning Everybody!

Here are my answers to this week’s Scavenger Hunt Sunday prompts:

Rainbow – kayaks waiting for summer

Fluffy – A cat named Huckleberry currently living at the Seattle Humane Society

Letters – Who doesn’t love to get mail?

Metal – a box labeled “Butts Here” loiters on the side of the library

Trees – a family of trees

Come join in, it’s a lot of fun!