Body Parts

I had a couple of hours to walk around the state fair by myself and I took the opportunity to snap some pics I wouldn't normally take. This young girl was getting ready to show her horse, and just as I was getting ready to take their picture the horse stepped in front of her and completely blocked her face. I almost deleted the picture when I uploaded it to my computer at home - it wasn't as I intended when I took it. But I started looking at the composition of their feet at the bottom, and with a quick crop, I think it came out sort of interesting.

Up

I don't get downtown very often. This day I was at the Statehouse to watch my daughter sing with the All Ohio State Fair Youth Choir. As we waited for the kids to run onto the bleachers, I took a minute to look around at the buildings towering around us. While the architecture was beautiful and imposing, the sky forming the canopy over it all made it even more striking.

Summer

I can almost hear the buzzing of the bumblebee. This was on one of our walks at the nearby park. It was after dinner, getting toward sunset. I love how the leaves sort of glow with the evening sun. It reminds me of hot summer days going fishing with my Dad, hiking through fields of wildflowers, seeing the milkweed and cattails around the ponds, and it makes me smile.

Peace

Taking a walk at the park today, these little guys were in front of us. Friendship knows no prejudice for the young.

Trees

I took this picture a few years ago. Trees have always been a creative subject for me. I have paintings of trees from middle school and a whole pen and ink series from college. This remains one of my favorite photos of trees - the way the trunk formed out from the rock before growing straight and tall. And to think of the power in those roots to hold it in place all these years. It has a precarious feeling to me and, at the same time, an incredible strength.

Spirit

Spirit in the sky...

Growth

Our oldest daughter was graduating from high school last weekend. I was holding her cap with the tassel while she brushed her teeth and made final preparations to walk out the door to the ceremony. I set it down for a second and - it just hit me: our baby was graduating!

Spring

Each Spring I enjoy the blossoms on our crabapple tree. They're beautiful and fragrant and signal the end of winter. We're having the family Easter dinner here tomorrow and I may take some cuttings to put in a vase to bring some of the Springtime inside.

Work

When I saw these tools in the leather goods store in Roscoe Village, I knew I wanted to try to get a picture to capture the feeling they gave me. I felt an awe as I stood and imagined the hands that have held these tools through the years to allow the art of this lost trade. Beauty can be found in the tools as well as the art.

Tired

Nothing to me says "tired" like our dog Mulligan. He is slowly recovering from another bout with his illness. It is a disease that has compromised his immune system. He is on strong medication (one of them we even have to wear gloves when handling), and it makes him exhausted. It was his second go-round, he came out of remission since last year. The vet staff was even talking about euthanasia, but he seems to have turned the corner. He doesn't like to have his picture taken, so unfortunately this is probably as good as I'm going to get.

Macro

This was one of the first sunny days we've had this year. We were in Roscoe Village and this rope was hanging on a canal boat display. I thought the diagonal lines and the ragged ends and the way the sun was hitting it made something so utilitarian into something beautiful. I'm not sure it qualifies as macro but I think of it as any close range photo that makes you look at the subject slightly differently.

Breakfast

This photo may not be thought-provoking or even that interesting, but when I think of breakfast, bananas are one of the first things I think of. I love bananas, especially when they are slightly green. Once they start turning a little brown and getting mushy, they're good for slicing on cereal, or if you let them go too far - making banana bread.

Cold

This tree is in our front yard, right next to the driveway. We pass by it in our daily comings and goings from our house. In spring it has beautiful pink flowers, lots of leaves in the summer, and it sports berries in the fall. But until the foliage was gone and we had some snow, we had no idea that there was a bird nest in our tree. The snow had fallen from the tree leaving just the little pillow of snow on top of the nest.

Newness

This is the new scarf my youngest daughter bought me for Christmas. She has a little business making duct tape bags and saves her profits. About a week before the holiday, she asked me to drive her and a friend to the store and drop them off so they could pick out some presents for us. She wanted to spend her own money and get us each something she selected just for us. Needless to say, I love my scarf. I wear scarves a lot. After wearing it the first time, I took it off and laid it on the nightstand and it looked so beautiful that I wanted to try to capture the color and texture in a photo.

Photo project

Many people are committing to a Project 365 for 2011. For those that don't know, that is taking a photo everyday and posting them. I came across a list of suggested weekly themes to help accomplish this. Notice I haven't once said that I am committing to this! No, that would completely stress me out if I didn't take a picture one day - I envision laying down to go to bed at night and jumping up so that I can go snap a pic just to satisfy some random resolution.

So what I am proposing to do is use the list of weekly theme suggestions and try to take a picture, not daily, but each week. The title of each photo post will be the theme from the list. I'll try to post them weekly, but if I end up posting a couple at a time, so be it. This is a personal project that I hope will: a) help me learn to use my new camera (Nikon Coolpix L110), b) allow me to express some creativity, c) give me some blog fodder! This isn't becoming a photo blog, I'll try to share stories or some description with the photos too. Hopefully the photos will illustrate the theme and any description will add to it. To really view the photos, be sure to click on the photo itself to see all the textures and details - the pics aren't as clear directly on the blog as they are if you click on them.

If anyone else wants the list of themes, I can send it to you, or you can probably find it or something similar by googling it. I always appreciate any comments or suggestions - constructive criticism as well as excessive praise ;) (I'm totally kidding about that - if you know me, you know I don't accept compliments well.)

Say cheese!