Tag Archives: Daily Post Photo Challenge

Picture Galleries, Snapshots from a Happy Life

Twelve Months of 2017-November

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November was lovely: there was some wet, even snow early in the month, but the fall colors lasted a long time this year. However, for me it was a tough month. It involved a bunch of stress about my grandmother: the VA sent her a letter saying she owed them back many thousands of dollars, I finally had to tell her that she was never going back to her apartment, then spent a bunch of time packing things up. On Thanksgiving my sister came up from Vancouver (WA). The holiday weekend was a big push to get the apartment cleared out. We had dinner at the nursing home with Grandma. I finally cooked our turkey dinner yesterday.

After the holiday weekend we did get Grandma out once to see the Garden D’lights at Bellevue Botanical Garden.

 2017 Favorites

Picture Galleries, Snapshots from a Happy Life

Twelve Months of 2017

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December 2017

Explanation:

These are a few pictures I selected to give a sense of how I’ve experienced December. I experimented with noise reduction settings in Adobe Lightroom to try and soften these. In Seattle in winter the light levels are fairly low so pictures often have a grainy texture. This setting can sometimes be used to give an almost painting-like feel to pictures.

More explanation:

I’ve been working on a family calendar for 2018. I started it three times but kept getting interrupted. It takes time to go through the many photos I take most months. I decided to do a push to get the calendar finished: it is something my grandmother and father really like (I use Mixbook, which allows me to add family birthdays which is a useful feature. No doubt other companies do as well. I find it easier to stick with one outfit since I’ve gotten used to the way this one works and the quality is good.)

So I’m using the Twelve days of Christmas to put together one calendar page a day, going backwards from December. As I review photographs taken every month I am hoping to post a gallery for each month. As I do this I’m experimenting with different Lightroom  options and effects.

2017 Favorites

Snapshots from a Happy Life, Uncategorized

A Mushroom Memory

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The summer of 2016 seems like forever ago. We took my grandmother on a sojourn to eastern Washington and one of the highlights of that trip was a lovely lunch I had featuring oyster mushrooms, which I had not tasted before. They really did have an oyster-ish flavor.

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On returning home, I was emboldened to get some mushrooms at the local farmer’s market and experiment with them, both in still life photographs (which I rarely do, in part because I don’t have any clutter-free areas in the house to use) and in cooking.

I hadn’t thought about that for a long time, maybe I need to hit the farmer’s market this Sunday…

Experimental

Picture Galleries, Snapshots from a Happy Life, Uncategorized

This fall has had it all

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Weather-wise that is.

This fall has been a wild ride from a gorgeous Indian summer through a week of solid storms, to more gorgeous sunny days now back into a ten day forecast of storms. Snow, sleet, sun, wind, rain, sometimes all at once.

Rain
Mist
Sun
Wind
More rain
Change

 

Response to Weekly Weather: Fall and Daily Post: Temporary

Africa, China, Desert, home, Picture Galleries, Snapshots from a Happy Life

Sky Aglow

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Some pictures of sunrises and sunsets from home and away in response to the Daily Post Photo Challenge:Glow.

Sunrise, approaching Dunedin, New Zealand
Desert Hot Springs California, sunset
Sunset at Cedarhurst on Vashon Island, Washington State
Sunrise in Mulundi Village, Kenya
Sunrise and air balloon Masai Mara in Kenya.
Golden sunset, Cedarhurst on Vashon Island, Washington State.
Sunrise at Penglai, Shandong Provincce, China.
Snapshots from a Happy Life

Collage of the mountain

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Painting_MountainR5

I’m not much of a collage person, so this week’s challenge was a challenge. After humming and hawing I decided to try something totally new to me> making a digital collage of photographs. Here is a collage I made using Gimp from 5 of the pictures I took at Mount Rainier last week. I obviously have a lot to learn, and need to practice a lot but it was fun to try something new.

home, Picture Galleries, Snapshots from a Happy Life

Delta Analysis

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Back when I worked as  stress analyst I did a lot of “delta analysis”. The basic system was in place, but things change: a part might be built of a different material, a particular mission might have higher loads than the initial predictions…The question we were answering is “is it still okay?”

There isn’t a  picture to go with that…but the beach where I spend a lot of time is also a delta for a creek. Over the years the silt has built up and the landscape and animals one sees have changed. One thing I find really cool is that every year the path of the creek through the delta shifts because of winter storms…so it is an example of both fast and slow changes, and yet when the tide is in it looks the same as ever.


Delta

home, Snapshots from a Happy Life

Emergency Sunset

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Driving home from my dad;s tonight I saw purple in the sky. From the raod I couldn’t really see much, but I was fairly close to a waterfront park (Lowman Beach in West Seattle) so I pulled over and trotted the block or so to the park.

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It’s been a busy week: my niece graduated from high school and I arranged to get my 94 year old grandmother who is mobility impaired to the ceremony. My husband retired on Friday and we had a celebration dinner party. We had a family gathering today at my dad’s to celebrate a belated father’s day, the graduation, and retirement.

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I almost didn’t stop for the sunset, since I was ready to be home. However, the twenty minutes or so I spent just being there, watching the shifting colors as the rays of the sun hit different clouds and breathing the salt air were more uplifting than getting home to unload the car and put things away a few minutes earlier. You can’t go back and see a sunset you have missed.

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As the sky darkened I noticed the minuscule sliver of the new moon above Mount Constance. A symbol of a new beginning, change, and the circle of life. All the things today’s celebration were about.

Maybe I need to make a bumper sticker or t-shirt that says: I break for sunsets.

Transient

Snapshots from a Happy Life

Cherry Blossoms

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One of the things I’ve had to learn as I explore photography is that there is a difference between being in focus and having a focus for the composition. Often it seems like for the composition to have a clear focus one does well to have part of the picture out of focus. I chose this pair for the Focus theme because they demonstrate the difference between being in focus and having a focus.
Both of these pictures have the same elements but the one that is the header, while it is pretty much in focus, doesn’t really have a focus. I took it to try and capture the overall effect, how much the blooming cherry tree looked like lace.

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The second picture doesn’t have as much of the scene in focus, but it has a focus: the white blossoms.