Tuesday, June 18, 2013

169/365 Pastoral


"Object Lesson"

Pastoral is not a word that describes life in the suburbs.  With no time to head out in search of "pastoral" I amended the prompt and decided that I might be more successful if I looked for serene as we walked around our neighborhood.

I suspect that you are looking at this picture thinking that it is neither pastoral or serene.  In fact, it isn't even a good picture.  All of those things would be true.  So why did I include as my picture of the day? For me, it represents an object lesson, hence its title.

I was photographing the flower.  (I did actually take several images of it that are technically pretty good.)  With this one, I think the wind blew the flower a bit and obviously my focus shifted.  It wasn't until I was looking at the day's images on the computer that I noticed first the moon and then the bird in this shot.  No, this is not a good shot of either, but perhaps it could have been had I realized that they were even in the frame.  That is the lesson.

Sometimes we get so fixated on what is right in front of us that we miss things that exist just beyond, things that may be equally or even more interesting or more beautiful.  So, I chose this photo rather than any of these others from today's walk because of its reminder to me to look and then look a little more.


This is the in-focus version of the above flower.


I'm sure there are those who consider the golf course pastoral.  I am not one of them, but I do love this tree.


I like the symmetry created by the reflection.


And, another flower.

Like I said, nothing even remotely pastoral, but all of this pictures are images of today.

168/365 Splash


"Uncontained Passion"

Today's prompt was intended to be a splash at the beach or pool, a picture of summer water fun.  That wasn't happening around here.  We did, however, have a brief afternoon downpour.  I grabbed a clear bowl and set it out to collect the rain.  I managed a few splashes as the bowl filled.

And yes, I'm obviously still on my quote kick.