Want to Play?

Hi there bloggy-photoggy friends. Do you remember 2 years ago when we did this? I found on Facebook yesterday that the #iheartfaces ladies are running another month long photo challenge that I thought maybe we could use for a photo hunt again. Here is their graphic of proposed photos for the month of August:

I’m proposing we try this real loosy-goosy style like we did back in June of 2013. Like last time, I’m inviting you to play along with them and/or with me. Choose as many or as few of these words that you’d like to photograph. Make one big post or as many smaller posts as you would like, following the dates the ladies layed out or not, and leave me a link in the comments of this post. If you wish to participate with the I Heart Faces folks, check out the directions in the link above.

This challenge runs at I Heart Faces, as you can see, from August 1 to the 31st. I’m going to stretch the deadline for sharing with me a bit because I know for me, August 31st is my first day back to school – a teacher work day, followed by the kiddos returning on September 1st. So let’s set September 5th as the date any posts you’d like to contribute to this photo hunt should be up by. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Wrapping Whimsy

The whimsical photo hunt did what I was hoping for – it brought a lot of fun and happy and silly photos to this little blogging community. In a month that was at times trying, visiting all your posts made me smile. We had 10 whimsical participants, my own being the 11th.

In case you missed any of the fun, here is a little summary of what we got to see.
Robin of Breezes at Dawn was the first. Robin found quite the array of whimsical sculptures for us to enjoy. I loved the dancing bunnies.

Dawn of Change is Hard came next. Dawn had some funny little visitors to the garden for a glass of wine one summer evening. Thanks for the adorable little scene, Dawn.

Amy-Lynn from Flandrum Hill was the third post and found a little whimsy out in nature. I loved the idea of imagining just what could be found on the other side of that door.

Mike of Picture Day showed us his love of toys in his post. “Pool Vader” especially tickled my funny bone.

Carol of Wanderings of an Elusive Mind posted a fun variety of whimsical shots. I just loved “Cat in the Hat” and thanks again, Carol, for helping to inspire this photo hunt!

Sybil from Eastern Passage Passage played along with a post that slightly pushed the definition of whimsical. That’s totally fine by me, since you all know how I feel about so-called “rules”, but does anyone else get the feeling that Sybil has an unusual affinity for poop? LOL!

Isa from Isathreadsoflife found a unique group of whimsical photos. Those shoes trying to keep the balance are how I often feel in day to day life!

Kathy of Lake Superior Spirit found the time to play along with a whole park full of whimsical sculptures. They are all so much fun and so creative I’d be hard pressed to name a favorite, but the final photo of the moon and stars taking off for adventure seems to be the very definition of whimsy.

A new-to-me blogger from a blog called Purpleborough posted a cute shot of crazy little flamingo. Thanks for participating purple!

Bearyweather from Bear in Mind lamented that she thought dipping into her archives would be cheating, but please remember how I feel about “rules” Ms. B – they are just guidelines as far as I am concerned. I just loved all your whimsical animal shots and you are so right, is there a more whimsical animal than a bear cub?

If you didn’t see my silly little bit of whimsy, you can find it here. Whimsy was not presenting itself to me in the month of June, so I had to create my own with a visit from Scooby Doo and some friends to my garden.

Thank you very much everyone for all your enthusiastic participation in this photo hunt. I had great fun visiting your posts – they all put a smile on my face and in some cases really did make me laugh out loud.

It’s “Z” Wrap Up!

It’s Z wrap up, get it? Z like the end of the letters and Z like speaking with an outrageous French accent?

Where are my Monty Python fans?

The return of the photo hunt seemed to be a popular idea as those of us in the northern climes battle our way through this very cold and snowy winter. By February, we’ve had about enough of this and I think the photo hunt turned into a welcome distraction. We had 8 wonderful participants in the

themed photo hunt this month.

Sybil jumped on board almost immediately! She had her photo hunt, in which she tried to fool us a bit (and succeeded!) posted the day after I announced the hunt!

Next came Dawn, with some very lovely reminders of my favorite time of the year in her photo hunt from the south. Ahhhhhhh!

Robin played in her wonderful Robin way – going far above and beyond the general photo hunt requirements. Faithful readers of Robin’s blog are familiar with Robin’s creative style and were treated to not one, not two but three pretty posts leading us to her chosen word.

Mike thought maybe his choice of words would be a little too familiar to his regular readers, so he mixed up his letters in attempt for it not to be too easy for us. He has a beautifully photographed array of indoor shots leading us to the place that I believe you would find Mike right now if you were to go looking for him!

I was happy to hear that Michaela had decided to play along. It had been a long time since I’ve posted a photo hunt and even longer since she had participated. We had no mystery to figure out over at the Daily Click because we were told that she decided to use her name as her word. Michaela showed us a gorgeous display of her tack-sharp photog skillz.

Carol’s life these days has been a flurry of household activities and get ready for her upcoming cruise (very jealous here, by the way!). She found a perfect word with perfect photos to remind us all of what she has been up to lately.

Isa decided at the last minute that she’d like to play too, and asked if archived photos would be okay to use. You know how loosey-goosey the rules are around here so I said “but of course!” Isa has a colorful arrangement of beautiful objects, but I must admit she stumped me good. Our friend Sybil from up above was the smarty who first figured out Isa’s word!

Nye also came in with a last minute submission. She tricked me a bit by using her first photo to represent two letters rather than one. In the comment section where she revealed the answer, she reminded us about the rule of thirds in photography – that’s where she wanted us to look to discover the real clue to her letters. Nicely done Nye!

If you happened to miss my own photo hunt photo hunt (no that’s not a typo 😉 ) you can find it here.

Thank you so much everyone for your enthusiastic participation! I’ll do my best to come up with some other fun hunts throughout the year.
Happy end of February too! Spring begins in just 3 weeks! Let’s hope it feels like spring really soon!

My Photo Hunt Words

So far the submissions for the photo hunt this month have been wonderful and fun! There is still time to play. Posts aren’t due until Tuesday the 25th, and I can extend that for you if you let me know you need more time.

Several bloggers have said that the hardest part of this hunt was choosing the words. I think I agree. I came up with a couple different ideas but had difficulty coming up with objects to represent certain letters. Then I realized the answer was right in front of me!

My submission includes two words. Here is the first, with 5 letters:

 

 

Second word, 4 letters:

 

Tell me in the comments what you think my words are. Yes, I’m having a little fun with you! 🙂
Looking forward to seeing the rest of the submissions. Don’t forget to leave me a link or a pingback in the comments of post announcing this hunt. There is a link to it over on the right of this page under “Photography Scavenger Hunt” as well as in the first sentence of this post.

A Blogger Contrived Photo Hunt!

You know what? You blogger-readers are pretty darn awesome. I mean that.
In my last post, I lamented my lack of inspiration photographically as of late. Helpful people that you are, many of you jumped in with suggestions. Robin and Sybil commented that maybe it was time to do a photo hunt again. Robin’s idea was an “around the house” photo hunt. Sybil’s thought had to do with using the letters of the alphabet. Two interesting suggestions. Here’s what I propose:

Choose a word. Or two. Or three. It really doesn’t matter. It could be your name – real name or nom de blog. It could be a favorite noun, verb, adjective or interjection. Anything is fine. Now go find pictures of stuff around your house, objects not letters, to represent each letter of your chosen word or words! Get it?

For example, if I chose “CAT” as my word, I’d need to shoot 3 photos: one photo of an object that starts with “C” – like a cookie maybe, one photo of an object that starts with “A” and one photo of an object that starts with “T”.

We could even throw a little twist into to this one! Don’t tell us what your word is when you post your photos; let us try to spell out your chosen word in the comments. I will leave this part up to you to decide – if you would rather tell us what your word or words are before presenting your pictures, that’s okay too. But it could be a lot of fun for all of us to go around to each other’s blogs and try to figure out the word puzzles. So what do you say? Does that sound like fun? Maybe a good way for us to break out of these winter doldrums?

It would be great if we could have lots of participation in this photo hunt, so if all you wonderful readers wouldn’t mind sharing this photo hunt with your blog readers, I’d be oh so appreciative! Let’s say this photo hunt is due in three weeks – by Tuesday, February 25th. You remember how this works, right? Leave me a link in the comments of this post when you post your photo hunt. And if you need more time, just let me know. Deadlines are really loosey-goosey around here! Questions or comments? Feel free to leave those too.

Bubble Wrap

Did I make you wonder about this blog post with that title? It is me trying to be cute. I had three brave participants (four if you include me) in the iHeartFaces June Photo Hunt, and I’d like to draw your attention to their posts if you haven’t seen them already.

Mike of Picture Day jumped right in, going so far as to create a category for the hunt on his blog page, but then felt he kind of petered out. I gave him a gentle nudge explaining the easy ways of a photo hunt around here and how I’m pretty much “rules shmules”. He ended up finding a beautiful variety of photos to share from the month of June.

I was looking forward to the gorgeous collages that I was sure that Robin of Breezes at Dawn would create. She not only came through, but managed to showcase something for all 30 words of the hunt! Robin has some really lovely photos and was very creative.

Carol of Wanderings of an Elusive Mind also thought that she would jump all over this photo hunt, but lamented that she got distracted and forgot to take the photos she planned. I’m happy that Carol decided to post the photos that she remembered to take. No worries, Carol, about being “feeble” or anything else! I enjoyed your photos and am glad you made the effort to participate!

(Pssssst…. hey Joanne and Dawn….weren’t you going to show me some photos for this hunt? 😉 )

You can find my photo hunt here. I had fun just taking random photos here and there during the month, trying to keep the list in mind when I had down time. On the day I did the post, I had Sarah come outside and blow bubbles for me. I had forgotten how difficult photographing those could be.

That same day, I started picking raspberries from the patch in my yard. I’ve been enjoying at least this many

each day since. I’ve been thinking about making this pie again soon if it isn’t too late to still find local strawberries.

I’m starting to wonder, my friends, is the hey-day of blogging starting to wane? I know we all have busy lives and other things going on. It seems to me that this WordPress community that I feel lucky to have become a part of 3 years ago, has started to lose interest. I was doing a little housekeeping around the blog the other day (you may have noticed a couple widgets I have removed and a couple I’ve added) and realized I haven’t seen posts from plenty of favorite bloggers in quite a while and folks that used to comment fairly often, rarely do anymore. Do any of you find this to be the case at your blog?

Is there interest in another photo hunt this summer? Let me know what you think about this -and my other questions too – in the comments. Thanks!

June Photo Hunt Thingy

I noticed when I was popping around visiting many of your blogs this month that I often had a hard time deciding what name with which to reference the June photo hunt. Was it a photo hunt? Sure. Was it my creation? No. The fine ladies over at iHeartFaces call it a “challenge”. I took their challenge and tweaked it to my liking. I ended up calling it a photo “thingy” or some variation of that when I left a comment on some of your blogs – hence the title of my blog post showcasing what I ended up doing with the iHeartFaces photo challenge.

These photos are in no particular order as far as the way the dates were listed out in the original challenge. I plopped photos that I liked together in collages. Yup, that’s my technical term: “plopped”.

I thought this last one could use a little explaining. The top left is Meghan getting a hug from her high school principal during the graduation ceremony – sorry for the blurriness, all my photos from that night are pretty blurry. The bottom photo is the hall where we had Meghan’s graduation party. The upper right is one of the well-deserved beverages I had after setting up that party! 🙂

I ended up doing 20 of the original 30 prompts (21 if you include the “selfie” in the post when I announced this photo thingy). How did you do? I’m looking forward to coming around and seeing your photos.

Hearts ‘n’ Flowers

Wow, it is June already! This is going to be a crazy busy month around here with prom, graduation, recital, and the end of school all coming up. I was trying to think about a photo hunt for this month since everyone enjoys them so much, but I also didn’t know if I could really do it with everything else that is happening this month. I was on Facebook today when I found an idea.

The fine ladies over at I Heart Faces posted this interesting photo challenge over on their page. If you click that link, you can read about all the different ways you can participate in their photo challenge. There is a great variety, and rules are pretty loosey-goosey: participate as much or as little as you like. Do it every day, once a week or whatever you’d like.

So here is what I am proposing to you: since the nice keepers of the web page said we could feel free to share their graphic so that lots of people could participate, I’m inviting you to play along with them and/or with me. Choose as many or as few of these words that you’d like to photograph. Make one big post or as many smaller posts as you would like, following the dates the ladies layed out or not, and leave me a link in the comments of this post. If you wish to participate with the I Heart Faces folks, check out the directions in the link above. I’ll make the deadline for posting links to my blog July 1st, in case you’d like to do the day-by-day challenge.

Playing along with the photos of the day, here’s a picture of me from a day when it was NOT 90 degrees outside like it is today:

I have no idea how much I will keep up with this challenge myself – I’m going to try to do as many as possible, but I’m sure there will be some days when it just won’t happen.
I’ve also got some more flowers in bloom to share with you.

Lily of the Valley

Bearded Iris

Nearly open iris

English daisy

Evening Primrose

Foxglove
I hope you’ll let me know what you think about the I Heart Faces photo challenge. Have fun!

Wrapping Up Color

It has taken me a week to do it, but I am back with a little wrap of the Color Photo Hunt! I’d say I was slacking, but I really haven’t been. I’ve been taking pictures and working outside and reveling in the fact that spring has really, truly arrived. My usual Saturday morning ritual of catching up with all of you over a cup of coffee was even put on hold for a visit to the garden center. Another blog post relating to that is still to come, but let me get on with the wrap-up!

Robin jumped in right away with a post about the color purple. She found a stunning variety of shots to showcase in purple. I don’t think she had to hunt too hard for her beautiful collection!

Joanne, my inspiration for this photo hunt, also brought us a lovely variety of photos of purple. Her purple Australian sunset is amazing! Joanne also includes the psychology of purple. Joanne has been delving into the psychology of colors, so I am happy to add a link to another post she did about blue. I just love the shot of the misty morning in this one.

Kathy found it pretty much impossible to choose one color to which she is drawn, so she chose them all! ROYGBIV is her favorite. I still remember learning that mnemonic device for the order of the colors of the rainbow when I was a child. Click here to have some fun checking out Kathy’s post!

Stacy did a color that many of us probably would not have considered when thinking about the colors that we are drawn to – she chose brown. For anyone who loves nature, this is really a perfect choice when you think about it!

Isa hadn’t even realized I had posted a photo hunt, but she happened to pop over and see my post and kindly asked if she could include a link to a recent post of hers about the color green. I said, “Mais bien sûr!” (French for “but of course!”) Well, I didn’t actually say that but I wish I had been witty like that at the time! Isa has a pretty collection of shots to remind us in those days without much color, that spring will someday arrive.

It wasn’t too hard to figure out what color Sybil would choose when it came to this challenge, even though she did try to trick us! If there is one blogger that I read that is a more hard-core gardening lover than me, it has to be Sybil, so her color naturally had to be green! I still remember Sybil’s response to Scott’s “Winter” photo challenge because it made me laugh and I totally agree.

Dawn was totally right when she said that I posted a photo hunt about color at a time when a lot of color was not easy to come by for those of us in the northern climes. But a color hunt would have been too easy in the middle of summer, wouldn’t it, Dawn? Dawn wracked her brain and came up with some beauties to feature about the color red and the joy that often goes with it.

Carol is another who had trouble choosing just one color to present in her photo hunt. She talked about neutrals, and burgundy and green, and gave us a nice peek into her life. I love blog posts that give us those little peeks, don’t you?

Indecisive bloggers turned out to be quite common in this photo hunt! But you know I’ve never been a stickler for the so-called “rules”. Sonali’s lovely post starts with a beautiful burst of yellow, which I thought was going to be her color choice, but she went on to present a pretty variety of colors.

Apparently I made Tamara worry that she wouldn’t get her post in on time! (Tamara – see that part in the last paragraph about me not being a stickler for rules, LOL!) Tamara is another lover of purple and has a sweet post presenting her favorites.

If you happened to miss my post (but probably not since I haven’t post anything else in a week, I’m guessing!) it was completely in the pink!

I’m glad so many of you jumped in and enjoyed this photo hunt. I thank Joanne one more time for the inspiration. I can’t promise it with any regularity, but I will try to come up with a few more photo hunts in the future, oh, I don’t know, maybe when I feel like it? 😉

Colors of Your World

(from April 2011 archives)
As so often happens to me when I am making my way around the blogosphere visiting all of you, I got inspired this morning. This time my inspiration came from Joanne at Home Life Online and this post of hers.

(from April 2012 archives)

I’d like to use Joanne’s lovely post as the basis for a photo hunt. Many of you mentioned in the comments of my last post how much you enjoyed the photo hunts that I’ve posted in the past. I fell out of the habit in recent months, but Joanne’s post got me thinking. So here’s what I am proposing: Choose a color that you are drawn to. Post at least 3 photos (can be more if you like!) that feature this color in some way. Tell me what it is that draws you to this color. If you’d like, take it a step further and do a little research like Joanne did and find out some of the psychology of your chosen color.

(from August 2010 archives)

I’m going to post a deadline of Sunday, April 28th for this photo hunt, but you know how I am about deadlines – it is more of a loose goal than a firm commitment. If you want to participate and you need more time, just let me know. As we have done in the past, leave me a link to your post in the comments of this post and I will do a wrap up post a few days after the deadline. It would be great if you could help me spread the word about this photo hunt to your own blog readers so that we can have lots of participation. Thanks, and I hope you have fun with your chosen color!