Posts Tagged ‘Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch’

The photographic road we tend to travel most often is what John is asking us to share with you this week for the Lens-Artists Challenge. It’s a challenge that require some introspection on my part but I do know that my overall road runs mostly through nature, although within that milieu I consider myself to be eclectic. My motto? Perhaps this…

“Nature, especially wilderness, has a calming effect on the mind”Percy Fernandez

or maybe this…

“Nature never goes out of style”– Unknown

My road is slow and quiet…with time to stop and look. There’s a reason people in a group or on wheels rarely see wildlife.

I love to take inroads to see the little things that perhaps might be missed and share them through a photo.

“Sometimes you can tell a large story with a tiny subject “ Eliot Porter

My road can be literal and I’ve been down this one many times for most of my life. I plan travel it as long as I’m able.

“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

My road means wanting to see things no one else has seen or, if seen, have not really noticed as special. I want them to say, “Why didn’t I ever think to make a picture of that?”

“Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.”― Marc Riboud

Sometimes my road even includes the city with all its distortions of nature and sees them as beautiful, yet I always yearn for the road back to and into nature to center me and bring me peace.

“Always seeing something, never seeing nothing, being photographer”
― Walter De Mulder

Wherever your road is and whatever it looks like, be prepared to taste the sweetness of life when the opportunity arises.

My overarching motto as a photographer is expressed perfectly in this quote I discovered while creating this post. It instantly smote my heart:

“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.” ― Robert Frank

Thanks to all of you who take time to view my photos, to “like” my posts, and most of all, to take the time to tell me what you like about them, how they touch you . That is soul food in the finest sense. ❤

Perhaps Jo will forgive me for also linking this to her Monday Walk challenge as it is indeed a walk, albeit a virtual one, through the philosophy of my photography and blogging.

One Word Sunday: washing

Six-Word Saturday 3.11.23

One Word Sunday: wait

“Here Comes the Sun” conjures up dawn and sunrise, my favorite time to be out walking and taking photos, so thanks to Amy for the theme, although it did make it hard to choose. 🙂 So I have to interrupt the retrospective of my Wyoming vacation to go for the sunshine.

This shot was taken on my way down the mountain in Wyoming as I headed home in 2017, the day of the eclipse. As you can see, it began in a stunning way, really more beautiful than the eclipse itself.

At the Preserve here in Arizona…

Sunshine inside the house…

In the morning in Illinois…

As backlighting…

One Word Sunday: fly

Jez is our guest host for this week’s challenge and as I’m posting this on Monday morning, maybe one or two of you really are seeing double after a rough weekend. I hope not. But this challenge might make you feel that you are, even if you had an abstemious two days.

Double pizza on offer at Manhattan Pizzeria at Manhattan Beach, California. Didn’t try the pizza but enjoyed the wall art.

These two pelicans did everything together for the longest time: swam, ducked heads under the water to fish, raised wings, turned, repeated. Someone told me they often do that but I’d not seen it before. Ballet on the water.

Matching boojum trees. I’m not making this up or taking it from Dr. Seuss (of whom more later.) These “trees” are actually succulents from the occitillo family and are fascinating, protected, and expensive! You can read about them here and I promise you it’s an interesting read. The name comes from a poem by Lewis Carroll, “The Hunting of the Snark” which ends:

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,

   In the midst of his laughter and glee,

He had softly and suddenly vanished away—

   For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

Coffee with a friend. These decorations could be a metaphor for us: although we’re not exactly the same, we are definitely a lot alike in the ways that count.

Be the sun on the right!

Bottoms up!

Yes, a repeat but it works so well for this challenge, don’t you think?

Finally, I can’t resist seeing double things here, catnip-filled things that, along with the catnip Cat in the Hat that I cropped out on the left, were a Christmas gift for our younger daughter’s cat last year.

Some weeks ago when Lisa came down from Flagstaff to visit and we wandered in the Preserve, the cottonwoods (or something) had evidently been oversharing, as in several places fuzziness had overtaken everything in the vicinity.

There’s a bit of fuzziness in our lives right now (Sunday as I write this) because my dad passed away tonight, following Mom’s death in early February. It’s been a tough year. One of my sisters-in-law has a very serious form of lymphoma as well, so needless to say 2022 will not go down as one of the best years of our lives. However, my parents both had long, wonderful lives (92 and 93 when they passed) and we know they’re in heaven where my dad is probably taking a horseback ride while my mom throws the javelin, something she did at a Senior Olympic record-setting level while still alive. ❤

One Word Sunday: pier/peer

…this is what comes to my mind. 🙂