Blog Archives

Day Seventeen/Photo101: Treasures

Easy choice. My mom kept a diary for a few short years when I was a baby. She was a very special person and it gives me great pleasure mixed with profound loneliness to take it out and read randomly from time to time. Touching it feels almost like touching her hand.

Nice visit tonight Mom.

Nice visit tonight Mom.

The happy and sometimes sad story of a young woman from a solid South Dakota farm who married a lumberjack in the wild woods of northern Minnesota.

The happy and sometimes sad story of a young woman from a solid South Dakota farm who married a lumberjack in the wild woods of northern Minnesota.

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Day Sixteen/Photo101: Bosque/Rio Grande

Landscapes. I think of landscapes as being of far mountains or the beach and the ocean from a distance. Mine are a little more intimate.

Green is coming.

Green is coming.

Day Fifteen/Photo101: Voodoo versus Big Man

So I could not make our Day 15 assignment, Scale and Observation, work on my river walk. Had to stage it right now.

I’ve traveled quite a bit, makes for nice juxtapositions if I try. Whose most powerful? Voodoo guy from Haiti or very special nesting dolls from Estonia? I think Mr. Putin is about to be eaten?

Voodoo rules!

Voodoo rules!

Day Fourteen/Photo101/Movement

Please remember my main goal for joining Photo 101 was to make myself think photographically every day. And to take pictures! I need an excuse for this past week. Not well. So I’m cheating a little (a lot) and trying to catch up by taking a long walk in the Bosque today and hitting all missing themes.

So movement is a problem. I didn’t spend time with the ducks and geese early on in the walk and then forgot and took a slightly different route home (besides, I was tired).

I’ll try and make something up. I know this is not what we were trying to capture-I really had intended to take some speedy bird movement. Next walk maybe I can get that. But there is some movement in photos that follow.

Just a pretty picture with some water movement included.

Just a pretty picture with some water movement included.

The muddy moving Rio Grande.

The muddy moving Rio Grande.

Day 13/Photo101: Grand Architecture

Me-missing also. Sick. Back to my WordPress assignments. I cannot think of many examples of interesting architecture in Albuquerque. There are some buildings around where the extreme ordinariness is leavened with the odd detail or sort-of original angle. And there’s the old Spanish architecture. Some nice. It’s prettied up substantially all over California, but probably more authentic here.

After finally feeling well enough to lift my camera out-of-doors I did what I could on a neighborhood walk this morning. Here it is. The original Albuquerque Country Club-in color-monochrome. I love what removing the color does and yet I never remember to play with that.

Not a very good shot but you get the idea.

Not a very good shot but you get the idea.

Nice I think. Now looks much more interesting than just the big pretty picture.

Nice I think. Now looks much more interesting than just the big pretty picture.

Day Twelve/Photo101: Pop of Color

Hard to find pop OR color on a Monday–even though this was a fine Monday by everyday standards. But our WordPress photography workshop instructs us to try.

Sorry about my feeble late afternoon, almost time for the gym, efforts.

Adjusted a bit to try for that elusive POP. No luck.

Adjusted a bit to try for that elusive POP. No luck.

Well, it is color in otherwise drab surroundings. One poor scraggly dandelion.

Well, it is color in otherwise drab surroundings. One poor scraggly dandelion.

Day Eleven/Photo101: Mystery

THERE IS SUPPOSED TO BE A PICTURE OF A KNIFE HERE. BUT I CAN’T FIND IT SO THOUGHT I’D JUST POST A PICTURE OF SOME MURDERERS THAT AREN’T BUTLERS TO COMPENSATE.

Childcare is expensive…eating up most of many mothers’ or fathers’ salaries. But wait until you have to support a butler! Not easy on my pay. And unlike Carson, who seems so wise and kind at heart in spite of that stern exterior, my butler has started playing with knives and other blunt but potentially deadly implements. Seems more than usually surly lately too. So when that snotty old lady who lives next door disappeared and I remembered Butler Hyde had been sharpening the knives a lot lately, I did wonder. But it wasn’t until he asked me if I knew where our shovel was that I grew seriously suspicious. But enough about my problems…

I do take things very literally and always from a crime fiction perspective. So a mystery is a mystery is a mystery and there’s always crime involved. None of this mystery of nature, life, truth and beauty stuff for me.

Happy Friday.

 

 

Day Ten/Photo101: Warmth

To photograph warmth, today’s assignment, I should have taken a selfie of me hugging a grandchild or a picture of a nest of baby birds with their mommy or the warm spring New Mexico sun (projected to be a hot New Mexico sun by Sunday) or at least a fireplace. Unfortunately, I came to work early and will be here all day and none of those metaphors for warmth are available—well the sun is but not at its dawn or dusk prettiest. Much as I like and respect my staff I’m not feeling like a photo of several of them holding hands is where this photo challenge wants to go.

Then I looked down at my personal, low-maintenance and reliable source of warmth, “HeatDish.” You see most of the people who work and study here like it cool. I don’t; I always like warm.  So here’s a small photo album dedicated to — the personal heater.

Day Nine/Photo101: First Green

Day Seven/Photo101: Connected!

Fear of Being Connected is a State of Mind, baby! Whatever makes you feel as in touch with people and places as you want to be is what you should do. You want one or 5000 Facebook Friends? Pick. You want to blog, tweet, other stuff? Do it. You do not want to do any of that. Do not do any of that. You want to limit your connections to real live human beings and animals? No animals, just grandchildren? No neighbors, just your work comrades? IT. IS. YOUR. CHOICE.

That’s what I love about right now in this time and this world. Soon every single thing will be electronically connected–my computer to my car to buying and eating my cereal to wiping my butt. And every single person you have ever known will just be sitting there in the Cloud waiting to drop onto your shoulder for a chat about your attitude.

Back then, we wrote letters and had different physical things called keys for doors and drawers and cars and cabinets. But right now, lucky us, there’s a moment of choice. So get over it. Enjoy…

 

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