Stripping Away the Color

When Scott announced his photography assignment for this month, I wasn’t sure I would participate. Black and white photography!I thought to myself, oh dear, not a favorite for me.
For me photography is all about color – yes, composition and subject are huge parts too, but I just didn’t know if I could find any of my photos that would be interesting enough to present in black and white. I don’t react well to black and white photography as a general rule. I’ve had this pre-conceived notion in my head that black and white is always moody.
However, to show my support of Scott’s tenacity for bringing us new assignments every other month ( I know how much work it is to write those wrap-ups from when I did the photo hunts), I decided to peruse my archives to see if I could find some shots of interest. I believe I still like these photos better in color, but I can see some appreciation of the subtleties of black and white as well.
In this first picture, Meghan had asked me to take a picture of her in an arebesque on pointe so that she could use it for an art project.

In removing the color from this photo, I noticed shadows both on the walls and in the mirrors that I hadn’t seen in the color version. I think that adds some interesting movement to the shot that wasn’t in the color one. The Christmas decorations still hanging on the walls are little less emphasized in the black and white version as well.

For this photo, it occurred to me that Teddy could make a good subject for black and white photography since he is really a study in contrasts to begin with.

Teddy has a truly expressive face, and at times it is quite comical, but black and white seems to bring an unusually sorrowful look to his usually clown-like face.

I chose to include this last shot in the black and white assignment because when I originally posted it in color in the “What Winter Means to Me” assignment, my mother happened to comment on how much she liked the “black and white” photo of my backyard! There was very little color in the original, so I decided to see what it would look like completely stripped away.

The photos don’t look extremely different, but I think the black and white looks more like bad weather is imminent.

For a transitional month, so lacking in natural color, this black and white assignment turned out to be one that I could work with afterall! I am, however, very much looking forward to the colors of spring!

Scott’s assignment isn’t due until this Wednesday the 20th if you think you’d like to join in!

Peeling Away the Layers

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Hi there! I took a little blogging break without even really meaning to. Did you miss me? I did my best to still pop in on all of you.
The blogging muse in my mind has been quiet for a while. She has a tendency to do that when it is gray outside. That’s how it has been around here for a couple weeks. Gray, snowy, rainy, drizzly, wintery-mixy. Until today. The sun came out and it is 50° outside.
Snow is melting.

Water is flowing.

Sap is running.

And I feel like peeling away the layers. The layers of warm winter clothing. The layers of dry winter skin. The layers of the few extra pounds that I probably put on this winter. The layers of cabin-fever cobwebs building up in my mind. A sunny 50° day in March can do that.
As a life-long New Englander, I’m not naive enough to believe that Old Man Winter is done with us BUT I’m finally starting to feel that spring is around the corner. A colleague and I were discussing how the birdsong has changed recently, as though the birds know that spring’s arrival is imminent.
While the dogs and I were walking today, I was stopped in our path by the sounds of many red-winged blackbirds cavorting in the trees above the stream. I was unable to get any pictures of them, but I did find this video on YouTube providing the sound that I heard:

Surely that’s a sign of spring.
Cedric enjoyed the sunshine today as well.

Several blogger friends have me contemplating for days ahead of us.
Scott has announced his photo assignment for the month of March: Black and White Photography. I told Scott he’d chosen my personal bugaboo when it comes to photography. I don’t have confidence in my choices for black and white photos, and often, I don’t react well to black and white photography. It is a challenge for sure.
Kate has me aching to find a wildlife sanctuary within day-trip driving distance of my home with her adorable photos of otters and ducks and other wonderful creatures.
Kathy has me thinking about thinking. She asks a wonderful question: What am I alive to discover? I’ve been asking myself similar questions recently, but Kathy asks it most poignantly. I’m definitely going to need to peel away some layers in my mind and soul to search for the answer(s) to that one.

Here We Snow Again!

Would this be called a bark-a-lounger?

I didn’t even know it was in the forecast, but this is what I woke up to this morning:

Yesterday, it was 49°F.  The snow from Nemo was melting.  I ran errands in the afternoon without wearing a coat.  The snow out here today is nothing to cause any concern – its only an inch or two of the gently falling stuff.  But its February now.  My patience is wearing thin.  At Christmas time, I was wishing for a little bit of it, but now I’m ready for it to be done.  Robin was showing pictures of crocuses this week!  Kate has a beautiful bud of some sort featured in a gorgeous week of photos.

Have you all met Kate?  I’ve recently discovered her blog and her gorgeous photography.  She has inspired me to want to get out there and try to do more with my own photography.  I’m on school vacation this week, so I’m hoping to spend some time driving around looking for interesting photo subjects, rather than wallowing in the fact that I’m not off to some wonderfully warm locale for the week.

This could be happening to me!

(above comic from Rose is Rose by Don Wimmer and Pat Brady)

Morning Views from Nemo

Western Massachusetts turned out to be the lucky ones this time around. It is a little after 10am on Saturday morning as I type this blog, and the power, internet and cable are still on. The snow seems to have finished and the winds are diminishing. The snow plow still has not been down my street, so I won’t be going any where any time soon (although hubby has a 4-wheel drive vehicle should we really need to get out). It is hard to tell exactly how much snow we have because of all of the drifting from the wind, but of course I have some photos to share with you to give you an idea.

Walking into the kitchen first thing this morning, this is what the dogs and I saw:

When I first opened the slider to let them out, the dogs really weren’t sure what to do when faced with snow nearly as tall as them. Then they jumped into it and plowed their way through:

Here are some views of my deck and back yard:

You can see in that last shot that the trees are not coated in snow. I’m thinking that must mean the snow is more of the light and fluffy type rather than the heavy and wet stuff.

In my front yard, you can’t tell where the yard ends and the street begins since the plows are yet to make their way by.

Happy to report we are all safe and cozy and warm here. I have family and friends who are still not out of Nemo’s grips just yet. Eastern Massachusetts and other parts of northeastern New England are still under assault from the storm for a good part of today, and power is out for some. I’m hoping for the best for them, and that power is restored as soon as possible.

Waiting for Nemo

No, no not that Nemo of course! It is Friday morning in western Massachusetts. School has been cancelled across the state, and probably across most of New England as we await what is being called “possibly the most dangerous winter storm of all time.” Right now the snow is yet to begin. My area has 18 to 24 inches predicted.

We’ve been through heavy snow plenty of times around here.

It really isn’t anything new, and we are used to the quirks of forecasting for this area. The media builds it up: It’s the BIG ONE this time!!! And it may really and truly be. But all we can really do is wait. By all reports, this storm is to be a doozy and to be taken seriously, but it is difficult to take in all the information and know what to expect. It really doesn’t matter to me how much snow we get AS LONG AS THE POWER STAYS ON!

I’ll be charging up my Kindle

Anyone want to play Words with Friends? Email me and maybe we can start up a game!

I bought plenty of snacks for my likely-to-be-housebound-family

I’ve washed and dried additional blankets and checked the batteries in the flashlights. I know where the candles and the matches are. And now I’m writing a blog about the impending storm. What else can I do, but wait?

Just Winging It!

Hey there! It’s been a while! My last post was almost 2 weeks ago now, and the blogging muse in my mind has had enough silence. So what’s been going on you may ask? Life, the universe and everything has sent me on a bit of a roller-coaster ride.

Meghan actually did get to go on several rollercoaster rides! Last Saturday morning I dropped dear daughter at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, CT for a school computer and technology department field trip to Disney World! She was gone for three nights and came home Tuesday. They got to stay at the Disney Port Orleans Resorts

participate in two Disney Y.E.S. programs

and visit all four of the major parks.

While she was in Florida, the temperatures were in the mid-70′s. Around here we were in the middle of that nasty cold snap when the daytime temps struggled to get out of the teens. Needless to say I was just a tiny bit envious!

After I dropped Meghan at the airport that morning, I travelled north on Interstate 91 back into Massachusetts and stopped to visit with my sister for a while. The previous day she had pretty much the same surgery that A-Rod, reviled NYY player, had recently. She’s been couch bound for over a week now, and this, I believe, is a rather regular daily view for her:

That’s Ozzie, her faithful cavachon, which is a mixture of Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and Bichon Frise.

While Meghan had a wonderful time in Disney World, life continued here. I made some more progress on Sarah’s birthday quilt:

Um, yeah, Sarah’s birthday is in August, and, uh, yes, that was supposed to be a 15th birthday gift for her. So far I’m only 6 months behind schedule…got something to say about that?

When Meghan got home from Florida, New England weather was showing its weird side again. We went from bitter cold to strangely warm temperatures, had rain and thunder and wind, and even lost the power in the middle of the night during the windstorm. I got up and went to work the next morning, hairdryer in tow! It hadn’t come back on by the time I had to leave so I went to work with a wet head. Thank goodness the bitter cold hadn’t returned just yet.

I don’t think all the wild swings in weather did Meghan much good. She had been fighting a cold before she left, but seemed to be getting better. Upon her return she didn’t sound good to me. Off to the doctor’s office: upper respiratory infection. I felt bad for her one evening and on a whim made her a cup of hot peppermint tea. We’re not really tea-drinkers in this house, but on this occasion it seemed like the thing to do. And what do you know? She gratefully took the cup and seems to have taken a liking to it.

The cold has returned, and so have the birds to my feeders. I’ve been practicing some more with my heavy new lens, and I’ve been doing okay. I have to shoot in manual focus on this lens because autofocus doesn’t allow the focus ring to be manually adjusted – one definite downside to this lens – and that adds a bit to the challenge of quick moving birds!

Dark-eyed junco

White-breasted nuthatch

Sparrows

Male house finch and sparrow

Male house finch
That finch looks like a friendly chap, doesn’t he? It almost seems like he could strike up a conversation. How about you? Strike up a conversation in the comments section if you’d like!

What does winter mean to me? (and a little mystery too!)

If you ask me how I feel about winter in general, “Grumpy Cat” does a good job of expressing my feelings! (You’ve all seen Grumpy Cat around the internetz by now, right?)

I generally don’t like being cold, dealing with poor driving conditions, having the wind whip across my face or feeling like my nose has frozen shut when I step outside. I am a summer girl at heart, as I have expressed many times here on the blog. So when Scott proposed this month’s assignment on winter, I felt a bit like Grumpy Cat up there.

However, having lived in Massachusetts my entire life, even I can appreciate some of the simple beauties and offerings of wintertime.

My backyard does have a tendency to look a bit like a Currier and Ives painting after a fresh snow fall:

Although I’ve pictured them many times here on the blog, a blog about winter has to include my two goofball dogs loving the snow:

Winter time sometimes also means an afternoon hot coffee break. Curling up on a cold afternoon with a cup fresh from the Keurig and a biscotti for dipping can be a nice way to warm up:

(like my cute teacher-cat mug?)

I enjoy bird watching all year round, but I have a tendency to fill the feeders and watch and enjoy the birds more in the winter (especially since there are no flowers to take pictures of!):

Birdwatching on this particular day brought me the answer to a mystery I’ve been trying to solve for years now. I took this picture of this adorable little brown bird sitting in the rhododendron right outside my window:

and set out to identify it afterwards. It was about the size of a sparrow but didn’t look exactly like most of the sparrows around here. I went to my go-to birding site, Cornell’s All About Birds and started searching. I found what I believe to be a match, a Carolina Wren. Now here’s the mystery part. For years, my husband and I have been joking about a bird call. One day he said to me, “I wish that bird’s girlfriend would answer him! Can you hear him calling ‘JudyJudyJudy’?” Then the call seemed to change slightly and I said, “Hey, I think she’s finally answering – it sounds like she’s saying ‘JimmyJimmyJimmy’!” And hence began the saga of Jimmy and Judy. One of us would often say “I think Jimmy and Judy are having a fight!” or “I wonder where Jimmy and Judy are today?”

Throughout all this bird-calling, I was never able to identify Jimmy or Judy. I’d see a little flit of a brown bird pass through the yard, but could never quite make out exactly what the bird looked like. Now the Cornell website includes typical bird calls for help in bird identification. While identifying the Carolina Wren the other day, I clicked on the bird call and guess what? “JudyJudyJudy,JimmyJimmyJimmy” played out from my computer speakers! Mystery solved!

Thanks again for the photo assignment Scott!

New Year’s Walk

Hi there everyone! We are nearly a week into the new year and this is my first blog post of 2013!  2013 – a year I’ve looked to since my first baby was born as so very far away and now it is here.  The year my first child graduates from high school.  I’m excited and nervous and happy and sad all at once.  But we’ve got months to go until that happens so I’ll contain myself for now.  You’ll be sure to hear more from me about that as June rolls closer with all the events that go along with it arrive.

My first photos of 2013 were of a snow-covered walk in the woods, and I’d like to share them with you.  I’ve published pictures from this walk that the dogs and I take many times, but I’m pretty sure these are the first completely covered by snow.  It was a heart-pumping, feel-good-about-myself kind of walk.

The meadow that I walk into in the summer time that is usually filled with helicopter-like dragonflies, was shiny and sparkly in the snow.

The brook where hot-and-tired Daphne likes to rest in the summer was partially frozen over.

Our “tunnel” path had a different look with a snowy bottom.

There were no bluebirds to be found in this section of the walk this time around.

The new year began with a beautiful blue sky. If there were leaves on the trees, you could almost look into it and believe summer wasn’t too far away.

Near the end of our walk, nearly back to the house, I noticed these peeling birch trees. Funny, I’m 43 years old and I’ve lived in suburbia with birch trees my entire life, but I don’t remember ever seeing them peel like this.

Near the end of New Year’s Day, I took a picture of my dinner for that dinner blog-along I suggested in this post, and guess what? That’s the last time I remembered to take a dinner picture! The rest of the week was back to school and back to the routine and taking pictures of dinner disappeared from my mind! I’m going to try to make myself remember this week so that I’ll have at least 7 dinner pictures to share with you.

I hope 2013 is treating you well so far. I have a couple ideas for photo projects that I may or may not get to this year, but will definitely share with you if I do. Looking forward to another year of sharing photos and adventures with you.

Sunny Sunday Morning

My snowy Saturday morning has turned into a sunny Sunday morning.  It is still plenty cold outside, but the gray snow clouds have departed, and left us with sparkly snow

and shiny, sunlit branches

This morning was also good for the neighborhood birds; I replaced my broken feeder.  I bought a set of two glass and copper feeders:

I figure I will lose some seed to the squirrels inevitably, but they shouldn’t be able to destroy these.  My favorite winter birds wasted no time in locating this new food supply this morning.  I had a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal and they seemed more than willing to hang around for a few photos this morning (although I still haven’t managed a shot with the two of them together yet):

This is clearest shot of the Mrs. I got today; she seemed rather coy – but I thought this over-the-shoulder look was cute. (Do birds have shoulders???)  Mr. happily posed for a few more:

First day out with the new feeders and I’m lucky enough for pretty cardinal shots! Money well spent, I say!

S.P.D. – Seasonal Photographic Disorder!

Almost a year ago, Mr. Scott Thomas challenged those of us inclined to do so, to participate in a year long photo assignment.  The challenge was to photograph the same location throughout all four seasons of the year.  I had read about something like this in a book Scott had recommended to me, Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson, and thought it was a great idea.  When he announced the assignment last December, I thought to myself – I already have a jump start on this from some photos I took in the fall, in an easily accessible location, that I was pretty happy with.  At the time of the announcement, I also made the decision that I’d feature two locations throughout the year by including the view from my favorite lounging spot, my oft mentioned backyard deck.

Now you might be wondering why I’ve titled this post the way that I did.  One reason was that the assignment reminded me how unorganized I am about my photo archives.  I use Photoshop Elements to load my photos on to the computer which organizes them by date.  That’s the only organization I have – no tags.  So, just like for Scott’s favorite photos of the year assignment, I had to scroll through a year of photos to try to find the shots I took for this assignment.  Another reason you shall discover closer to the end of this post.

I’d like to begin with my winter photos.  Locals might recognize my first location as humble little Spec Pond:

Winter took us by surprise this year and piled on more snow than we’ve seen in these parts for many years.  Teddy enjoyed it at least:

Spring came around and thawed us out:

The deck furniture was unwrapped, but only my Mother’s Day hanging plant was in bloom and the pool was still closed:

Ah, summer!  My favorite season.  At the pond, extra life guard stands appear and the diving floats are in the water:

Back at home, everything is lush and green, flowers adorn the deck and the pool is open:

This is one of the photos I jump-started Scott’s assignment with, fall at Spec Pond:

This is also where you’ll find out the other reason for the title of my post!  I never took a fall photo from my deck specifically for this assignment!  Yep, I’m admitting it, I messed up a bit.  In my head, fall was taken care of; however, at the time I decided to add the deck to my year of photos, it was already winter.  This past fall came along and I never took a deck photo thinking it was already done.  Scrolling through my archives, I chose two alternative almost-fall-from-my-deck photos.  There was this one that I did for my Picture Fall class last October:

Not really the view I’ve given you the rest of the year. OR we have this monstrosity:

The view from my deck on October 30, 2011 after the Freaky Freakin’ Snowstorm - technically this is a fall photo of the view from my deck!

What a year it has been.  I think I will be ready to bid 2011 adieu!