endless sky

This week's "You Capture" assignment is SKY. Those of you who know me or have followed this blog know I'm a complete and utter sky and cloud freak, so this assignment was a joy. I've incorporated some photos shot this week with a few taken over the last year. I like to use textures on some of my photos, so I've included a few of those. Enjoy!









One of my favorite poems is Wallace Stevens' Sea Surface Full of Clouds -- it's one of the only poems I've read that gets the language of the sea and sky just right. Here's a bit:

The sea-clouds whitened far below the calm
And moved, as blooms move, in the swimming green
And in its watery radiance, while the hue

Of heaven in an antique reflection rolled
Round those flotillas. And sometimes the sea
Poured brilliant iris on the glistening blue.

Oh, and there's one more sky photo over on my 365 project blog today.

Don't forget to always look up.

depth of life

This week's "You Capture" assignment is depth of field. I'm kind of stuck on photographing the emerging spring, so bear with me.

I love the watercolor detail of these little blue flowers, in focus or unfocused.

And the way the light turns the viburnum buds in the background into little beads of pink.

The fern leaves unfurling into the distance.

And ajuga abstracted.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "it's not the length of life, but the depth of life."

Or depth of field. :)

Happy Thursday!

yellow!

I'm a girl that likes an assignment, so I'm joining the ladies over at I Should be Folding Laundry and participating in the weekly You Capture. See that little You Capture box in the menu bar over on the right? Click on it to read all details.

Anywho, this week's assignment is yellow. So here are my sunny yellow shots, which make me very happy and might even bring on bouts of spontaneous tuneless whistling.

See all the other participant's yellow shots here.

same difference

One of the magic things about having children is to be able to see glimpses of myself, their dad, our parents and grandparents in their faces, their mannerisms, even their way of speaking. Nick's got my eyes, his Dad's talent for drumming, his grandfather's interest in helping people through medicine. Hannah's got my hair, her Dad's ears (:)), her grandma's love of cards.

But to me, even more magical and mysterious and wonderful is to see how very THEMSELVES they are. How unlike me they are. How they come with their own look and style and set of talents and personality quirks and frustrating tendencies and creativity and intelligence.... amazing. Like the photo above, we may all be beans, but we're unique beans after all. (Human beans?)

They both love math (insert puzzled mommy-expression here). Hannah has amazing organizational skills that would put any life planner to shame, and she just DOES things so easily, without making a big fuss about it. Nick has this deeply spiritual side and a quiet curiosity about the world that always takes me by surprise. Both of them are capable and competent beyond their years -- I feel like when I was their age I was still stumbling around in geek-land, trying to figure out how I could get away with all play and not much work.

So -- today, I'm reveling in the differences. A great example is Hannah's willingness to take photos when I hand her the camera -- but in her own unique way. When I need a photo of myself, I trust her to take a good picture and delete the bad ones. On our recent road trip, I asked her to take some photos out the car window so that I wouldn't set a bad example of shooting and driving....(at least not while she was in the car.)


So she takes the pictures, and I edit them -- like a little photography team. What I LOVE is that she has a talent for taking pictures of people which I don't have at all. And she has her own unique vision that is completely different than mine -- which is, to me, what photography is all about. So today, all the photos in this post (except the last one), are ones that she took. Now I'm wondering what we'd see if we handed Nick the camera? Stay tuned.

She gets me. I love that.

Uncle Tom

Conor

Me and Fallon, with Sara and Grant in the background (shellseekers)

Claire and Livy

Holiday lights

So, to Nick and Hannah -- here's an old cliche -- thanks for being exactly who you are, similar, different, YOU.