Here are a few photos I’ve taken over the past couple of weeks…No particular order, no particular theme…just nature showing off.
Nature Scenes
Tag: Photography
Additional Photos from GSMNP
Snippets from this Past Week
Here are a few photos depicting life these days…
Photo by ba
Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10
Cross Country Skiing
The weekend snowstorm brought fresh snow, and enough of it to make it decent for cross-county skiing.
We went out skiing the day before the snowfall and it was icy, cold and cloudy.
We went out a day after the snowstorm and it was sunny, warm (relatively), and good skiing conditions.
We’ve been going to Riverbend Nature Center to cross-country ski. It is a nice park, close to home. The trails are well groomed and there are a lot of trails – both flat and hilly.
We stop every once in awhile to look at the horizon and listen to the silence. These are peaceful stops.
Recently this quote caught my attention, from the book, Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple.
“When your eyes are softly focused on the horizon for sustained periods, your brain releases endorphins. It’s the same as a runner’s high. These days, we all spend our lives staring at screens twelve inches in front of us….”
Taking pictures while skiing requires a different kind of stop. It more complicated than a listening/peaceful stop. You have to stop, unstrap your ski poles, take off your gloves, get the camera ready, and shoot. Then put the camera away, put your gloves back on and poles back in place and continue skiing, all the while hoping you don’t drop the camera in the snow. It slows us down and that is another reason I don’t take many photos while skiing.
On cloudy days it’s easier to get better photos because I can see the screen. On sunny days I cannot see the screen on my camera so I just point and shoot and hope for the best.
Cross-country skiing helps us enjoy the great Minnesota outdoors for fresh air and exercise in the winter. Our stops along the trail to look out over the horizon seems to be an added benefit.
Slides
It took a little digging to get beyond the definition of “slide” as a movement or slippery surface in the app Dictionary.com. What I was looking for was the definition of a photograph slide. I came upon this: “a small glass plate for mounting specimens to be examined under a microscope.”
That must be where the name for the pictures we took with a 35mm camera came from. The development process produced small square cardboard frames encapsulating a negative. When you shine a light through the negative an image projects onto a screen.
There were a few years in the 80’s when we took slides (we also have a few slides from my childhood when my parents also took slides.)
Then there were many years we simply took photographs and had them printed out. I dutifully put them in to photo albums (chronologically).
For several years now we’ve taken digital photos, and our pictures are on our phones or “in the cloud”… How does one keep them all in order?
Looking at our photo albums is the most fun…it’s easy; holding the photos albums and turning the pages is enjoyable and…it doesn’t require any set up. But every so often we decide to look at our slides, as we did the other night.
We set up the old screen which is still in very good condition, we got out the vintage slide projector (the light bulb still worked – yay) and brought up our many carousal slide trays and other miscellaneous boxes of slides.
We did have fun looking at old pictures. Plus, we took our time so we could do some organizing and purging. This is not a one evening process. It is time consuming.
Soon we will tuck everything away again, until the next time we decide to take a trip down memory lane by viewing our slides. Hopefully the slideshow will be even better with only the best slides to be viewed.
Tulips
One day last week, in-between rain showers, I went to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and the tulips were in bloom. The tulips were bright and colorful – oh so many colors! – and all delightful. I didn’t take enough photos.
In Matthew 6 it says “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.”
As I “tiptoed through the tulips” in the arboretum I thought about the beautiful bouquet of tulips I received just a few weeks prior…and how gorgeous the “non-descript” white tulips were also.
Such beauty, such wonder, such intricacies in one specific specie of flower…and there are so many different species! It’s truly amazing.
Postcards
I have a renewed interest in postcards.
A few years ago a colleague started sending me postcards from her destinations on business trips, now she will occasional send one from a fun trip destination. I soon started reciprocating and sent her postcards from places I’d visited.
Postcards do seem like something from the past…something people do not send anymore. They tend to send their own snapshots from their cell phone in an email or text message…and what can be better than that? Immediate messages and up-to-date photos. But postcards can be fun too.
I found the ZITS comic strip below amusing.
I began looking at postcards again while traveling, and I buy one or two to get a different perspective than I get on my iPhone camera but in some places it’s hard to find postcards.
For instance, last week my friend and I went into a variety store in a tourist town and asked “Do you have any postcards?” No was the reply, and it happened a second time at the next store. As we continued down the street we saw a carousal of postcards and stepped into the shop to take a look. There were winter scenes and fall scenes but it was springtime and we were seeing such vibrant spring colors, but then we found a collage print and that would do.
However, the postcards seemed a bit different…a little smaller than normal and the back was blank…no “postage here” or a line separating the message from the address…so we asked the clerk and he said he made the postcards himself (and he worked for the Post Office so he knew the size was OK.) How fun is that? I bought the postcard and sent it off. The personal connection with the photographer made it so much more fun and interesting.
I will continue to buy postcards, and send some occasionally…keeping a few postcard stamps available in my purse.
by Gustav Klimp
Who’s Listening?
One afternoon while in Colorado, my husband and I took the grandchildren to the sandy shores of the pond near the apartment complex where they live. It was a sunny, warm day, with temperatures in the 70’s.
After awhile we decided to rest in the shade of a cabana near the water. There were four covered areas, divided by sailcloth and each area had two lounge chairs and a small table. It was inviting, and a lovely spot for a respite from the sun.
We each reclined on the lounge chairs, with one grandchild. We were happy and I said out loud, “It would be fun if someone could capture a picture of us.”
A few minutes later a kind woman popped into our area and said, “I heard you wanted your picture taken!”
She had overheard us…she was tucked in a different cubby of the cabana. She graciously took our photos, telling us to “shake it up” for one of them. It was fun and felt so welcoming.
She was a cheerful woman who was visiting her son, who lived in the complex. But, most interesting is that her husband was on a plane to Malawi, Africa on a mission trip…Malawi is a country bordering Mozambique – we’ve been there. She said she had been to Africa several times.
The next day we were at the playground when she walked by. She told me her husband made it safely to Malawi. I introduced her to my daughter-in-love. She gave her a big hug and told her how much she loved Africa and they visited for awhile.
I was happy for this connection but felt sad knowing this woman was leaving that day to go back to her home a couple hours away. Of course she will return to visit her son, and when she does I hope she and my daughter-in-love connect again.
Lake Superior Waves
The photo of a man’s head popping up, in what looked like Lake Superior, caught my attention. It was on the front page of the Variety section of the StarTribune, Sunday April 14, 2019. I recognized the north shore… I love the north shore, and Lake Superior and am always interested in reading stories about it.
The article told about Christian Dalbec, a photographer, who puts on a wet suit, swims out into Lake Superior and catches the waves…on camera! What a clever idea and a unique niche. He not only takes pictures of the waves but of sunrises and sunsets and shipwrecks and all kinds of scenes while in the waters of Lake Superior.
He’s a recovering alcoholic who became interested in photography, which aided his recovery. He came up with the idea of getting into the lake to take unique photographs. The article said this kind of photography is uncommon since the lake is cold and dangerous.
There were four of his photographs of waves in the newspaper article and a link to his website which I’ve included here.
I was impressed by this unique way of taking photographs of Lake Superior.