Weekly Photo Challenge: Liquid…contrasts

Today’s theme is “Liquid.”  We’ve been getting lots of that recently in the form of rain, rain, and more rain, although this shot of a flooded parking lot was taken some years ago.  I know some of you have seen it and a few have written a 100-word story about it when it was a prompt for Friday Fictioneers.  But it’s still one of my favorite photos and, I think, just right for today’s challenge.

In contrast, I offer a macro photo which has been the most popular post on my site in all these years and one I love as well.  Enjoy!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Unlikely in Sedona

The red rocks of Sedona, Arizona are justifiably famous as one of the most beautiful places in the Southwest.  In addition to the beauty, many people go to Sedona to search for inner balance.  It’s unlikely, though, that you’ll see many coming out as balanced as our younger daughter in this shot.  I don’t know about you, but it’s also unlikely, no, let’s make that impossible, that I would ever be doing this!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Lines…print shop

Happy Wednesday to all of you reading this!  In NE Illinois, spring is gradually taking over: temperatures are warmer (enough to have windows open for a bit yesterday), the grass is getting green, and the sturdy survivors of the cold weather, daffodils, and the like, are showing their beautiful faces.  The sun is shining today, which always makes things better.

Today’s photo challenge theme is “Lines”,  which immediately brought to mind a photo I took in the print shop one day while hanging out with our daughter.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Prolific…spines

No work today, so I can participate in the Weekly Photo Challenge again.  This week’s theme is “Prolific.”   In the desert, there are many plants that have a prolific number of spines, such as this cactus.  It’s beautiful, but don’t overbalance while admiring it!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Morning in the Big Horns

What?  Another Wednesday off so I can be part of the Photo Challenge?  Life is good.  Spring is trying hard to get through, although winter is fighting back, so we’re cold and (often) windy but with spring flowers pushing their leaves daringly upward.  Hopefully the below-freezing nights won’t be cold enough to cause damage.

Today’s theme for the Photo Challenge is “Favorite Place”, someplace we love and return to again and again.  That’s easy, but I’ll have to try to find a photo I haven’t already used.  This is a early dawn photo shot on the day I was leaving last year, unretouched at all.   Yes, it’s that beautiful.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Story…Every picture tells a story.

Hurrah!  I have a Wednesday off, which means I can participate in the Weekly Photo Challenge, something I’ve been missing for some weeks.  Today’s theme is “Story”.  Jen asks us to share a photo or group of photos that tells a story.  As a photographer, I think that Rod Stewart’s words apply here:  “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?”, so I could pick pretty much any photo and you could tell your own story about it.

However, I’m going to be, as Gollum said in Lord of the Rings, “tricksy.”  This photo actually does tell a story of a time past in Naperville, Illinois.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Weathered…in the Vosges

At a time when weather in the northern US has been a hot topic (or a cold topic), “Weathered” is an apt theme for the Photo Challenge.  In the annoying tradition of making a word a part of speech it wasn’t meant to be, those of us in that part of the country have been getting (winter) weathered like crazy.

But my example comes from a summer day in the Vosges Forest of France, a place where you don’t expect to come across a chair of any sort while following a trail.  This chair obviously had weathered more than a few nights in the forest and come out the worse for wear, something with which we who’ve experienced many days and night of sub-zero Fahrenheit temperatures might identify!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Growth…pufferbelly

This week’s theme is “Growth”.  Although Jen’s lovely shot of spring makes me happy, real happiness at this time of year would be temperatures above zero degrees Fahrenheit, both the actual temperature and with wind chill!  As I said to her, “Simple joys!”  I think our furnace would rejoice as well.

A strange phenomenon is winter is the growth in the circumference of birds.  As you can see, this fellow has puffed up much larger than his original self, just trying to keep warm. His expression says it all:  “I’m SO ready for spring.”  🙂

Weekly Photo Challenge: Temporary…deliciously temporary

On Wednesdays (couldn’t we go back to Fridays??), timing is everything.  The Photo Challenge goes live (usually) at 11 am CST here in the Chicago area, so by 10:55, I’m usually sitting with my laptop, ready to start looking for photos.  But wait!!  What if my laundry is ready to come out at that time?  I don’t want it sitting in the machine getting wrinkled but I don’t have time to hang it up.  I have to be photo hunting!!  🙂  Hopefully this week the comments and pingbacks will work right away.  Anyone else having trouble getting posts to load in the Reader?

Today, everything is under control.  The laundry just went in, I have my opening paragraph written, I have a half-priced cappuccino for National Cappuccino Day, and I’m ready.  So here we go…

Today’s theme is…drum roll, please…”Temporary.” While there are all sorts of choices for this, my mind is on food and these wild French raspberries were very temporary indeed, but oh, so good!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Peek…an a-moosing peek

Welcome to November!  For some of us, that means colder weather, leaves changing color a/o falling, and the anticipation of winter.  For others, summer is just around the corner.  But whatever the weather, the Photo Challenge keeps on going, this week with the theme of “Peek”, showing just enough of a subject to pique the interested of the viewer.

This summer I crouched on the hillside in Wyoming just up from the corral, taking photos of two bull moose head-high in the willows, contentedly chomping away.  A peek now and then was just about all I could capture.  And that’s not a lot of bull (although this one was.)  🙂