It’s the Ends of the Earth as We Know It

Did anyone else have this song playing through your head when you thought of the photo hunt this time around?  You definitely will if you click the play button while you read through the wrap-up of all the awesome participants who played along this time!  Thirteen of you submitted photos for the hunt, including many first-time players.

The very first submission was from a first-timer, and she posted the August photo hunt before it was even August!  Lynne from Beyond the Brush featured two photos with words that back up the position of being at the end of the earth as well as a fascinating shot from a place many of us may never get the chance to see.  I’m glad you found me for the hunt, Lynne!

Sybil over at Eastern Passage Passage was another early-bird photo hunter with a very different take on the hunt.  She presents an ethereal looking end of the earth with each of her shots enveloped in fog.

Ellen of Taj MuttHall has posted an amazing series of photos with a wide variety of considerations of the ends of the earth.  As she says, she shows us places that look like there is nothing beyond them as well as locations that look like the earth could literally be coming to an end.

Isa’s Threads of Life shows us some beautiful Swiss Alps and a variety of other locations.  I love the para-glider “sailing away to end of the earth” as well as her take on an extreme, showing the fearlessness of youth.

Could there be a more mysterious place to find the end of the earth than the place once known as the dark continent?  Truels takes us away to Africa to contemplate the far reaches of the Serengeti.

Robin of Life in the Bogs always brings a magical touch to the photo hunt, and she did not disappoint this time around.  She sweeps us from one end of this continent to the other with gorgeous shots looking down on clouds in the Rocky Mountains to distant looking vistas of Nova Scotia.

Beauty, life and our whole selves are considered in Kathy from Lake Superior Spirit’s entry.  Kathy is a writer who always challenges me to think differently about the world around me, and her hunt does this with both photos and words.

Scott of Views Infinitum put a new spin on the photo hunt and tried to mess with our minds a little bit by taking us to the Twilight Zone!  Go check out a pretty cool look at a “distant alien planet”!

Long time reader but first time photo-hunter Holly of Photo by Holly, hunted in her archives to a favorite vacation, a Carribbean cruise.  She had to endure some scary rough waters, but got the chance to take some shots that looked like she could have been sailing off the end of the earth!

Another first-timer Kristen found her way over to the blog and shares a photo on Flickr.  She explains that she doesn’t feel she’s ever been to a place that feels like the end of the earth, so she shared a shot of her young son exploring the boundaries of his little world.  Very sweet, Kristen!

North America, Europe, Africa and now on to Australia!  This has to be my most intercontinental photo hunt yet!  Joanne from Home Life Online was inspired to pop out of a little blogging respite to participate in the hunt and I’m glad she did!  Joanne and I have been “bumping into each other” in the blogosphere on mutual blog-friends’ blogs but never really “talked” to each other.  I’m glad we have now with a look at the land down under and some beautiful sweeping views of a place that would definitely be an end of the earth.

Carol’s “wandering mind” takes us to places that look like you might not make it back if you weren’t careful!  Lonely roads, a crater and the badlands give us a somewhat sinister feel for the end of the earth.

My own photo hunt was here, where I took you to three places dear to my heart: Cape Cod,  Hills Beach in Biddeford, Maine and my own home town.

Finally, Dawn, my original inspiration for this month’s hunt, shows us a great variety of ends of the earth at her new blog address! (Dawn’s had some server issues recently so if you’d ever so kindly update your links if you are a follower of Dawn’s she’d appreciate it!)  Thanks again, Dawn, for kicking my mind into gear that morning back in July!

I hope everyone enjoyed the August photo hunt.  How fitting that a photo hunt theme “ends of the earth” really did take us to places at all different ends of this planet of ours.  I hope you’ll have the chance to visit all of our photo-hunters a leave them a little love in their comments sections.

Ends of the Earth Photo Hunt

Today is the due date for this month’s photo hunt with the theme “Ends of the Earth”.  I just finished my own photo-taking yesterday, so here I am creating my post on the due date.  It was back-to-school week here, so it has been busy, but I have just started taking peeks at the photo hunts that have been submitted so far.  If I haven’t been over to see yours yet, don’t fret – I will definitely be coming around to see them this weekend, and I hope to have a wrap-up  post completed before the long weekend is over.

You may remember back when I first announced this photo hunt that I mentioned that Provincetown, Massachusetts is the place that I’ve always considered to be “the end of the earth”.  If you are unfamiliar with P-town, it is the town at the very tip of Cape Cod, sticking out into the Atlantic Ocean:

I haven’t been back to Provincetown since I bought my Rebel, but I found a few shots that can help give you that end of the earth feeling in my archives.  A spit of land like this ( did you know this was actually the first landing place of the Pilgrims in 1620, not Plymouth, Ma, as many think of it to be?) needs lighthouses and Provincetown has a couple.

Long Point Lighthouse

Race Point Lighthouse

I remember wondering once if I could travel east along a line of latitude from Provincetown, what country would be the next land that I would encounter.  In my mind’s eye, I thought England or France.  I was very surprised to find out it would actually be Spain.  Hence the title of this photo looking east across the huge sand dunes of Provincetown:

“Next stop, Spain!”

Since this was a photo hunt, I was not content to hunt only in my archives.  While I was on vacation in Maine, I took some photos on a cloudy day of another place that could be an end of the earth.  The beach that we visit has a set of breakwaters that contain deep water for entry into a small harbor.

I’ve climbed these rocks since I was a child, and there is a certain feeling of isolation and end of the earth here.

I didn’t want to leave out the other possibility I mentioned for photo hunting in the original post – extremes.  The place that I live in doesn’t have much in the way of extremes, but I’ve always thought the top of our little mountain here in town was a very pretty place.  Our highest elevation is only 910 feet, but it made for pretty pictures as the sun began to go down.

These shots were taken on Peak Road here in town – apropos, no?

I hope you had fun with this month’s photo hunt.  I’m looking forward to coming around and seeing your posts this weekend.  I hope you get to enjoy the 3-day Labor Day weekend.

Photo Hunt Inspiration and Early Announcement

Provincetown Harbor

I wasn’t even sure I was going to do a photo hunt for August, when WHAM, inspiration struck.  I know it isn’t August yet, but this post needed to be written while the inspiration was with me, and I started thinking that a little heads up on this one could probably be helpful.

Let me back up and explain my inspiration.  I was over at Dawn’s blog this morning and I read this post.  She referred to Point Pelee in Canada as “the end of the earth.”  I immediately thought of the area that I have always thought of as “the end of the earth” – Provincetown, Massachuesetts.  It is the very tip of Cape Cod sticking out into the Atlantic Ocean.  That got me thinking about geography and whether there is a place that other people consider “the end of the earth” and wouldn’t that be a cool thing for a photo hunt?

Sure it would, but that might not make it easy for a lot of folks to participate in a photo hunt – and that of course is what I like best about photo hunts, having lots of participation.  So how could I tweak this “end of the earth” idea to fit a photo hunt?

Here’s what I’ve come up with.  Show me the place that is “the end of the earth” for you OR show me some of the “extremes” of your city, town, area, state, province or favorite vacation spot.  Take a photo at the highest spot, the lowest spot, the northernmost, southernmost, westernmost or easternmost point.  If you can think of another “extreme” that I haven’t included here, please share it in the comments.  You choose how many photos you would like to share.

Because of the nature of this assignment and the fact that you may have already traveled to somewhere that you’d like to feature for your photo hunt, please feel free to use archived photos for your post.  Assignment due date will be the very end of August, Friday the 31st.  As usual, leave me the link to your post in the comments of this post. I should be able to get the round up posted over Labor Day weekend.

I’d love to have lots of participation in this assignment, so if you’d do me the favor of helping to spread the word I’d be very appreciative!