Selfies…

I have never been much for selfies. My arms aren’t long enough and my nose always looks too big!  But I decided to go for it on this trip and Steve went with me…

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I’ve decided that the key is to get over yourself. No one has long enough arms.

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Also, it takes some manual dexterity to take a selfie with one hand. I’m not always successful, but I’m better than Steve who was not remotely interested in taking them.

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I also decided that you only need so many selfies. We did not overdo it.

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Jeff surprised us all by coming prepared with a telescoping selfie stick. He acknowledged that if that had been my idea, he would never have gone along but we were all glad he had it. You can fit 4 people and scenery into the frame if you can move the phone far enough away :-).

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Mirror, mirror…

That was the title of our photo challenge last week. We were supposed to incorporate a mirror or mirror-ish surface (like water) in the image. I admit that I didn’t spend a lot of time on this photo but, as it turns out, I like it a lot!

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The round mirror is a small magnifying mirror that I use when I am putting on mascara. When you stand back a little ways from it, the image is turned upside-down. The trick was positioning myself just right which took many tries.

I’ve noticed that I love photos without color, and I love quilts with lots of color. I’m not even going to spend time thinking about why that is. Perhaps, if there were more hours in the day, I’d give it a good think!

Where does the time go?

It’s been 11 days since I posted although it feels like it was just yesterday. Steve says that time is time—always the same—but I think that time is moving faster these days. I’m feeling rushed even though I don’t have any looming, horrible deadlines. Why is there still so very much to do? I know I’m not alone. It’s the same for you. Let’s all take a deep breath and slow down for a moment… and perhaps have a glass of wine.

I am still spending time each week on taking the photo for my photo class. This week’s challenge is to Go Big. We are free to interpret that however we want so I decided to show big hands, or a hand as it turned out.

When you really look a hand in different positions, the proportions and shapes are odd, but because we know what a hand looks like, we know what it is.  In this photo, if you didn’t know what a hand looks like, you might think that it was mostly big fingers.  Side note: I have a new prime lens and there’s more of a learning curve to using it than I thought there would be. It’s interesting to not be able to zoom in or out. It’s going to take me a while to adjust to the distance I need to be from whatever I’m shooting.

Have you ever tried to draw a hand? It’s not easy because when you look a hand in different positions, the proportions and shapes can be odd. But because we know what a hand looks like, we know what it is. Our eye corrects for the distortions that are right in front of us. In the photo above, if you didn’t know what a hand looks like, you might think that it was mostly big fingers.

I used my new prime lens for that photo, and the next one. This lens has a fixed focal length. You don’t zoom in and out with the camera, you ‘zoom with your feet’. As near as I can tell the optimal distance from me to my subject needs to be about 3 feet. There’s more of a learning curve to using this lens than I thought there would be but I’m determined to master it.

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That’s Bear. He’s hard to catch because he won’t stay still.

I travel to Georgia tomorrow to visit the Chattahoochee Evening Stars for a workshop on Sunday and a lecture Monday night. Maybe I’ll see you there! I’ll do my best to post some pictures on Instagram :-).

Autumn photo challenge…

My friend, Catherine, and I are both taking Ricky’s 52 Week Photo Challenge. This week the challenge is ‘autumn’. What a great excuse to go to the Dallas Arboretum! Let me just say, they have the most amazing array of pumpkins, gourds, and autumn flowers on display. Every year, it gets better.

Catherine took this photo of me :-).

Catherine took this photo of me :-).

For me, the photography challenge was to choose the correct aperture and to manually focus. I had to cull many photos, but there were a surprising number of good ones in the group. We also learned some new editing tricks in Lightroom this week that I am very happy to know.

Of the 209 photos I took, I think these are my best choices. Of these, I have several favorites. I’d love it if you let me know which photo you think says ‘Autumn’ AND is also a good photo—in focus, framed well, overall just a nice composition. I thank you in advance the time you spend doing this :-).

FYI: Click on the photo galleries to see bigger photos. Look for the right and left arrows to scroll through the gallery.

I took a lot of street-scene-with-pumpkin photos. We went on mother and baby/little kid day. The children were decked out to be photographed with the pumpkins and adults were snapping away like crazy. There were also a lot of adults without children in tow (like us) who were there to soak up a beautiful day.

This is a yearly display at the Arboretum. Right now the pumpkins are firm and looking good. As they sit out in the sun, and later, after we begin to get overnight freezes, they get soft and tired. The display ends at Thanksgiving, but by then they are well past their prime. If you are nearby, now is definitely the time to go!

From Princeville to Lihue…

Last night we walked to an overlook. It was pretty!

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I took pictures of what we saw on my phone and instagrammed them. With my big camera I took pictures of Amanda and Steve. The other didn’t really turn out.

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Today we drove to Lihue and stopped at the Kiluea Lighthouse—it was closed! FYI: don’t go on Monday.

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We could still see the lighthouse, and maybe it’s better from this angle. The guys looked at birds… the red-footed booby if I remember correctly. There were a lot of them.

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I noticed this little flower. It has a very nice design, one that would be good for applique.

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We stopped at the Na Aina Kai botanic garden which was also closed, except for the gift shop. But I did get to visit this stand of trees. I was taken on a tour of this garden before and I loved these same trees then.

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We stopped at Larry’s Music in Kapa’a where Amanda had a quick ukulele lesson from Sam. I took pictures.

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And it’s possible that I have my photo lesson for the week. The assignment is ‘silhouette’. I love them both for their simple yet expressive lines.

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Tomorrow we are hiking the Alakai Swamp trail. Should be fun!

 

Kahekili Beach, Maui…

We sat on the beach today. We read—I’m reading The Martian and it is a terrific beach read! We swam and/or snorkeled. We sat and looked at the waves and the people. It was a really nice day!

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I’m working on this week’s Photo Challenge which is to take a photo that tells a story. Here are some of the one’s I have accumulated… What do you see?

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