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.

October Photo Hunt

I love to play with words.  I like word puzzles and games.  You may have noticed that puns find their way into my writing from time to time.   You may have noticed that some of my past photo hunts have  included words that can be used in different ways.   Thinking about playing with words led me to my subject for this month’s photo hunt: idioms.  We all use them, often without thinking about them.  If you’ve studied a foreign language, or even Funky Slug’s website, you may have noticed unusual idioms and wondered where they came from (or is that just my twisted brain?)

For this month’s photo hunt, I’d like you to try to make pictures of idioms!  Because this might be a little harder than my usual photo hunts, I am doing two things.  First, here is a great list of idioms if you need some inspiration.  You don’t have to pick one of these.  It doesn’t even have to be a well-known saying – if it is something your grandma always used to say, and you can illustrate it, go for it!  Second, I am cutting my usual requirement of 6 photos down to 3. Please choose 3 different idioms or sayings to photograph.  If you are an overachiever and would like to do more, please do!

Bonus: Show me Halloween!  No, it doesn’t have anything at all to do with idioms ( though if you found a spooky idiom or a spooky way to photograph an idiom you’d get quadruple bonus points!), but I’ve loved Halloween for a long time.

When’s it due?  October 31st.  Please help me spread the word!

About my photo: “Cool as a Moose” is a fun, quirky store with several locations in Maine (and apparently Canada, according to the bag).  I love shopping there, and have often picked up souvenir t-shirts there while on vacation.  Something about that cool, smiling moose caused me to snap its picture, and voila I had a shot to illustrate this post!  What, you’ve never heard the saying “cool as a moose”? 😉

Little Reminders – Picture Fall, day 5

I hope you don’t take my picture for today the wrong way! I’m not bragging. Our instructor today wanted us to photograph a word as a little reminder of something we need to hear, or something we would like affirmed.

My mother gave me this charm years ago – for my first Mother’s Day, I think.  Today, as the mother of two teenaged girls, I question all my decisions.  Am I doing the right thing?  Will they appreciate what I do for them – if not now, someday?  Have I done the best that I can to raise people who will make good decisions and do right by themselves and those around them?  I’m sure I’m not the best mommy ever, but I hope that some day my girls will know that I’ve always tried my best to be the best mother I can be to them.

Of possible photographic interest:  I took this photo of my 3/4″ long charm with my 55-250mm lens and Raynox macro-converter attached.  I liked the vignetting that was created by the lens and use of flash – photographers, please correct my terminology or explanation here if I’m not saying this correctly!