228/365-2 Looking From the Outside

"Dog Envy"

Frankie is an indoor cat.  The only time she goes outside is when she is invited to sit on one of our laps out on the back patio.  Most of the time she is perfectly content being an inside cat.  She has her own comfy chair and the food and water are plentiful.  Every now and then, particularly when the dogs are outside, she looks a little unhappy about not being outdoors with them.  Today was was perched in the ding room window watching the lizards play on the front porch.  This is the look that she gave me when I went outside to take her photo - and unintentionally scared away her entertainment. 

I'm a bit surprised by how orange she looks here.  It seems that she continues to get darker and darker.

227/365-2 On the Phone

"Phone Photography"

Recently I have probably spent more time taking and editing photos with my phone than I have talking or even texting.  Today was a good day to document my new love affair with my phone's camera thanks to The Phone Photography Project that I have been involved with over the last month.

226/365-2 Favorite Food

"Be Fruitful"

My problem is that food in general is a favorite!  As long as there are no mushrooms, olives, or shellfish I will eat it.  Coming up with a "favorite" food, therefore, was difficult for me.  After some serious thought, I finally came to the conclusion that if I had a list of favorite foods, fruit would be at the top.  Really...fruit...not chocolate.  If I look at the possibilities reasonably, i realize that fruit serves many purposes; it quenches my thirst, fills me up when I'm hungry, and, if I think about it before chocolate, it has the ability to satisfy my wicked sweet tooth.  Right now, the choices in tasty fruits are nearly unlimited.  I will miss all the choices come winter. Thankfully, the choices in tasty chocolate are also unlimited!

225/365-2 Homegrown

"Downtown"

First of all, I am not doing well with daily posts here.  I think that I have too many irons in the fire right at the moment... and school hasn't even started yet.   I am still taking my daly photos as well as  finishing up the phone photography class (where I am also two days behind) and I have just started another online photography class.  In addition, regular choir rehearsals started last evening.  

Weber goes back to school on Monday.  We have been finishing up some summertime  "have to's", like eye doctor appointments and so on.Despite having things that could have and probably should have been done, we decided to have a "date day" in downtown Dallas yesterday.  We often go downtown to the arts district for specific performances, but we have not gone just to explore intentionally our city. 

I have been to the Sixth Floor Museum, but I had never seen the JFK memorial.  I also had no idea that there are so many eateries open during the week.  The one specific thing that we wanted to do was visit the chapel at Thanksgiving Square.  As luck would have it, the chapel was closed for maintenance yesterday.  It would have been nice if that had been posted on their website, which I did check before we left.  Though I was disappointed with this closing, we still had a delightful day and have already decided that we will try to visit again on some Saturday later in the fall.

We did visit St. Jude Chapel, a small but beautiful urban place of worship nestled between the office buildings of downtown Dallas.  It is a calm and quiet repute from the business of the downtown area. Mass is said over the noontime lunch hour and then the sanctuary is open for personal prayer.  The sanctuary is surrounded by stained glass windows of the Stations of the Cross.   This is definitely a downtown Dallas treasure.

None of this, including the photo above, has much of anything to do with "homegrown", the prompt of the day.  We have no garden this year because we knew that we were going to be traveling most of the summer and a garden would not have been properly tended; so, nothing homegrown to photograph.  I did like the way these dainty flowers looked against the mirrored downtown office building in the background.

I will try to to better with daily posts.  Thanks for your understanding and continued support.

224/365-2 Resilient

"Lone Survivor"

Because of all the traveling that we knew we would be doing this summer, we did not plant anything this year.  Back in the spring, however, we did buy a basket of color for the patio.  It was full of pretty yellow, blue and red blooms.  I'm sad to say that all that is left id this lone survivor.

223/365-2 Trails

"Open Heart"

Today was a day of not much artistry but a great deal of learning.  The trails referred to in today's prompt are light trails.  We have all seen such images, the ones where the cars and trucks on the highway are reduced to streaks of red and white lights.  I have never photographed light trails before, I just wasn't sure where to go to try.  Most of the ideas that I had turned out to be poor choices of location.  I can say that I was successful with the technical aspects of photographing light trails.  From am artistic perspective, the location I chose was boring and there was not a lot of traffic so the photo was rather blah.

I then attempted something else new, light painting.  This was done with a flashlight and a long exposure.  Again,  I was success flu the technical elements of the process.  The photo itself is kind of "meh" as my girls would say.  It was made a little more interesting by adding a background texture and the text.

I am looking forward to trying both of these techniques again.  I may be willing to go stand on an overpass of a busy highway to capture the light trails now that I know how to do it.

222/365-2 On the Brink

"Teetering Troll"

August 10, 2014

It has been a long time since these trolls have been out in public.  Over the weekend we cleaned out the garage, etc. at the house in Denton.  I brought home with me all of the girls' toys that I saved.  I am not one of those mothers that saved every single thing, only those that have weathered the test of time.  When I got these out for the day's photograph Brooke remembered playing with them and we had a little stroll together down memory lane.

I will admit that I had fun playing with this guys as I tried to figure out how best to capture the idea of "on the brink."  It is hard to beat the entertainment created by balancing tessellating trolls atop one another!  

Perhaps I need a real life!

I also photographed the super moon Sunday night.