All posts tagged: Nature

People on the Beach

Nurtured by Nature

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I have to be honest here. This Alphabet Game has had me stumped for days. Every time I sat down to address the letter “N” I’d get frustrated. All of the words I came across were so… well… Not Nice. Narrow-minded Nagging with Neglect up the wazoo,Naysayers Nitpicking and Nasty Name-calling too. It’s so weird that “N” has so many Negative connotations! No, No, No… that is NOT good. I starting rummaging through my summer photographs. Seeing people having fun at the beach made me think. There is mysterious magic in Nature. The ocean, the lake, the mountains… all of these places have something in common. They soothe us. Nature makes us forget all of our troubles, even if only for an hour… and brings us back to life—Nature resuscitates us. We look up at the stars and realize that our problems, which seem gigantic, are pretty insignificant compared to this beautiful infinite universe. So… in tackling the “N” word, I’ve come to realize how much I love Nature, and the way it Nurtures my …

In a Flash

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I finally got around to deleting my calendar that was counting down the days to my 3 year sober anniversary. It’s about time, since the date flew by almost three months ago!

In the Distance

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I think this photo was made for color, but I thought the lake and mountains in the distance were perfect for Cee’s Black & White challenge today. Also… I found an interesting quote that I’m going to keep in mind when I go back to school… The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it. Ansel Adams

Wings to Fly

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I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings. Gustave Flaubert I’m back from my mini vacation… and I feel like I’m ready to fly! I’ve got a ton of catching up to do, and a plethora of images to sort through… but I wanted to share one of my favorite photographs thus far. I shot this the first day of my trip, at a park near the beach. I love capturing birds on the move (as many of you already know), so I was thrilled when this duck struck a pose and I was able to catch it. I just love it when that happens! Until later…Peace & Love Everyone!—Janet

Raw Beauty

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I had a revelation the other day, when I was pondering what breathtaking means to me. I realized that my relationship with photo programs began when I was shooting nature in Colorado. There’s just something that you feel—when you see nature with your own eyes—that can’t be reproduced when you look at a photograph. At least that’s how I see it. Post-processing started as my way of trying to recapture that feeling somehow. Of course, now my images often morph into wild or wacky art—and end up looking quite different in the end. The first photo above literally became last night’s Circle of Life. Feeling playful and rebellious, I shaped it into something abstract. Anyway, all of these images were taken from our apartment, when we lived in Colorado, and I’ve done as little as possible to them. We had the best view in the complex, and Mother Nature… with all of her raw beauty… never failed to put on an amazing show.

The Monsoon

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—Photo Memories This photograph was taken when I lived in a mobile home for a few short months, in a town called Catalina… in Arizona. It’s about 20 miles or so from Tucson, and those are the Santa Catalina Mountains in the distance. My best guess is that I took it a little over ten years ago, and probably with a cellphone. There were actually a handful of old images that I found, that would probably qualify for the Word of the Day Challenge—breathtaking, but I wanted to use this one because of what breathtaking means to me. One of the things I remember the most about Catalina is being outside in the middle of a sunny afternoon, blue skies above, and hearing the thunder start to build in the distance. It was faint at first, and if you followed its echo you could see the dark and ominous cloud billowing in the distance. The sky would begin to darken, ever so slightly, and gusts of wind would send whirls of dust through the air. …