Let There Be Light Photography Competition

If you've been visiting my blog for a while, you know that I absolutely love photography! When I'm out and about and having fun, I can never resist saving a bit of the experience through taking a photo.

Recently, I found out about the Urban Cottage Industries #LetThereBeLight photography competition. It's a chance for bloggers to share some of their fave photos that they've taken. To enter, bloggers must share two photos -- one taken in natural light and the other taken in artificial light. I've been going through my collection of photos over the last several days as I've been deciding which ones to enter. I've finally decided to enter these two that I took in Paris a while back.

This is my entry for natural light. The light is the most natural light of all...the sun. The sun was flooding into the Louvre as I took this picture.

And this is my artificial light entry. This was taken inside Notre-Dame Cathedral. There were candles everywhere and they created such a beautiful ambience inside that beautiful space.

Fingers crossed for the competition  :)

Sunday Photos

Happy Sunday!

I hope that things are well where you are. I'm doing great, especially since I'm able to get here again. I love blogging! :) As I mentioned in my last post, things have become a bit more hectic, but hopefully I'm getting a handle on things once again, so I'll be able to come here and share more of my photos and thoughts. I appreciate everyone who continues to visit me here even when I can't get here as often as I'd like. Thank you so much for sticking with me :)

As usual, I've been snapping a few photos here and there with my phone. These days mostly everyone does this too though, right? Lol. Anyway, I try to capture a bit of what I see daily...some things turn out great and sometimes the idea or intention doesn't come through in the end product. Lol. Still, I love photography, so I hope you'll keep visiting me to see what I see!

Here are a couple of photos that I took recently when we were out for a walk on a beautiful day here in Wiltshire. We were up on the edge of a slope, looking out across the fields and into the distance. It was an absolutely BREATHTAKING view! I couldn't capture it well enough to do it justice, but at least I hope that you can see some of what I saw :)

I'll be back with more photos in a few days.

Have a great week!

Things That Light the Way

This past weekend I embraced two things that I love...taking pictures and sketching. If you have visited me here before, you'll know that I love sharing photos from my Wiltshire adventures and from anywhere else that I find myself roaming :) However, I don't usually share sketches or anything I've created. Never really thought to do so. Maybe I should share more of my creative hits and misses since creative expression is a big part of who I am. Hmmm. Watch this space.

Anyway, back to my point :) So, I had my trusty phone camera out on Saturday as hubby and I drove through the countryside as we did our errands. My camera on my phone isn't the best, but it's good enough to give the general idea of what I saw. Lol.

Here's a photo that I took of a tree along the roadside. A friend on Instagram remarked that the tree looks like a deer with his back turned to the road while he reads a book. I cracked up when I read her words because I immediately saw what she meant :) His antlers and head are so clear. I just think it's wild that I snapped this picture at exactly that moment as we drove by and it looks so much like a deer. And I'm in awe of her picture interpretation skills. Who knew that huge reading deer sit along the edges of Wiltshire roads? :)

As for my sketching, well before yesterday morning it had been a LONG time since I've sketched anything. I used to draw all of the time years ago, but that interest seems to have dried up, or maybe the urge to draw got pushed to the side due to everything else taking so much time. Well, this past week's stress shifted something within me and out of the blue I just picked up my sketch pad on Sunday morning and I let my pencil do what it wanted.

Below is the result.

I don't know exactly who this is, maybe it's kind of a self-portrait, maybe it's not. I'm jealous of her hair though. Lol. I have very curly hair, but I can never get it to look like this...perhaps this is a spiritual intention road map to how I want my hair to be in the future :) Or maybe it's not about me at all and this is just a character that sprung out of my mind and came through my pencil and her name is.....ummm, Ruby...yeah let's call her Ruby  ;-)  

Rediscovering my love of sketching was therapeutic and I'll definitely be keeping my pencil close by as I go forward. I'm going to make time for sketching here and there even if it's only for a few minutes. It never hurts to have more than a few things that bring you happiness. I'm grateful that I have photography and sketching to light the way!

Hey, maybe I'll draw some friends for Ruby....hmmm...maybe I will :)

Have a wonderful day!

Beginning 2017

Hello :)

It's a few days into 2017 and I haven't posted since New Year's Day...please forgive me, I've been under the weather. I've been fighting one of those colds that just doesn't want to go away. Hubby is sick too, so we've been getting through it all together around the Yellow House. It's like a duet or something. He'll cough and then I'll cough or vice versa. It's like we're doing some kind of call and response musical performance. I'll be glad when the cough and all that goes with it, leaves us alone.

In the meantime, I've been back at my job search. I'm doing my best to have an optimistic attitude about it all. Something will come through and hopefully it's just in the knick of time.

I've been doing a bit of thinking and planning about what I want to get up to in 2017. My main goal is to get back to writing my book. I must admit, the job search had all but pushed my novel off a cliff, but I managed to rescue it and I'm holding on tight and not letting go. I've put too much of my heart into my book to let it go now. I know that it's VERY important for me to find a job, but as I've mentioned before, balance is important. Therefore, I'm getting on with my book. I'll write more about my book soon.

The other thing that I've been doing is taking pictures, mostly stuff to put up on Instagram. From time to time I'm going to grab some pics off there and publish them here. They're not extraordinary or anything, but I like to share what I see. Here's one from over the weekend.

It's fuzzy because I took it out the window as I was on the passenger side of the moving car and also it was a quite foggy Saturday morning. But I like how it turned out. It's very moody and looks like it could've been taken many decades ago.

I hope that you're having a good start to 2017 :)

Until next time...

Mars at Opposition This Weekend

I'm a bit of a stargazer, so I love taking a look at the heavens on the nights when we have a clear view here in the UK. I've been like this since I was a little girl. I've always been intrigued by the beauty and the majesty of the night sky. When I look up I feel small next the the vastness, but I also feel something great within because I know that the corner of the night sky that I can see is a part of something greater.

I get extra excited when there are events happening in the night sky and this weekend, in the early morning hours of Sunday, May 22nd, the planet Mars reaches opposition in the constellation Scorpius. This is a great time for osbservation. The magnificent red planet will be visible on the southern horizon. It'll reach its highest point in the sky at around midnight BST, but it'll be visible for much of the night. I don't know how clear the view will be here on Sunday morning, but I'm going to give it a go and see what I can see.

Ian Savage, Head of the Jessops Training Academy has said, “For those wanting to get a clearer view, this is the ideal occasion to look up into the sky and delve into the curiosity of our universe. With the right kit, you’ll be amazed at what you can see.”

I'm always interested in learning more about the night sky and I'm increasingly interested in learning what I can about capturing what I see on camera.

Here are some tips for capturing Mars from the Jessops Training Academy:

• Mars will be visible for much of the night, reaching its highest point in the sky at around midnight in the UK. However, make sure you are positioned somewhere where the air is clear to ensure better visibility. Travelling out to a country location will be of a huge benefit as you’ll have less light pollution ruining your view.

• Once night falls, give your eyes a chance to adjust to the darkened environment. It takes around an hour for your eyes to get adjusted to seeing in the dark, and letting them adjust will give you the best views through the telescope.

• Shooting Mars will be different to capturing a regular night sky. First of all, you’ll want to use a longer lens. As you’re capturing a specific part of the night sky, not the whole thing, this will allow you to hone in on the planet. A lens with a minimum focal length of at least 200mm is ideal, if not then a decent optical zoom will suffice.

• Lens-wise you want to follow two simple rules – wide angle and fast aperture. A wide angle will allow you to capture an expansive view of the sky, while a fast maximum aperture will allow your camera to gather in as much light as possible. You can think of a telescope as a funnel to collect lots of light and concentrate it into a tiny beam that will fit inside your eye, this means you will be able to see objects fainter than your eye alone can detect.

• Deciding which telescope to choose amongst the multitude of different options is a challenge even for the experienced observer. For the newcomer, there are some great, affordable options such as the Skywatcher Capricorn 70 TQ1 Telescope. The 900mm focal length on this telescope, combined with the sub-£100 price makes it a good choice for starter users to get their bearings. It also comes equipped with an equatorial mount, a feature you’ll see on all high-end telescopes that allows it to track objects as they traverse the night sky.

• If you find that you are getting an obscured view through the telescope you might want to check the collimation – or alignment – of the optics. Reflecting telescopes are the most susceptible to this so you will need to refer to the instruction manual for details of how to collimate your particular telescope.

• Once you start to spend a little more money you start to see the real jump in quality. Celestron’s computerised telescope is a more serious tool, with which you’ll be able to glimpse the rings of Saturn or the surface of Jupiter. Take it somewhere darker and you’ll be able to see distant galaxies, and its database of celestial objects will make this easy for you. It’s an incredibly lightweight and transportable piece of kit.

• If you’re really committed to night photography and think it’s going to heavily contribute to your portfolio then you may want to look at a camera that specialises in low light. Investigate mirrorless systems as there are some great, low-light mirrorless cameras out there that are multi-purpose, such as the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II. 

These are great tips! I'll be referring back to these as I step further into photographing the night sky. Hopefully one day I'll be able to share something wonderful here. Until then I'll be out there this weekend hoping to get a glimpse of beautiful Mars. Happy Weekend!

*Disclosure: I was not compensated in any way. I just thought that I'd share these tips.

Recharging

So this is another one of my Friday Photoshop things. It's a good way to unwind at the end of the week and this week especially with all of the harsh news from back home, we all need a little bit of this. No, we don't all need Photoshop in our lives, but we need something to give our minds a rest just for a minute. Everyone has their way of choice...one of mine is Photoshop.

This photo above kind of sums up what I plan on doing this weekend for the most part. I love trees and even in the colder months when they're bare they still are beautiful to me. It's like they're taking a break and recharging until they sprout out with new leaves again in the springtime.

I won't be recharging and hibernating all the way until spring...nope, I have things to do, mainly to finish writing my book and to keep blogging here along with many other things :-)  But for this weekend I plan on being quieter and more inward so that I can recharge and be ready to go forward with what needs to be done.

Back to this photo...it's a view of the tree behind my house. And as usual, I played around with the different effects on Photoshop and this is what emerged from my play.

I hope that everyone has a great weekend. Have a great time and be safe!

Spooky and Blurry Photos

Today is another photo day. As you know if you've been here before, I love snapping a pic from time to time. I used to mostly take photos on my point and shoot, but lately because of the convenience, I've been taking photos on the fly with my phone. I'm kinda retro in some ways so I held out on having a smart phone for a while. My camera on my "vintage" cell phone was a joke and everything and everybody came out looking kinda strange. It wasn't my questionable photo skills....ha ha...in that instance it was the phone. I still take some blurry photos...don't we all. Lol. But sometimes they come out pretty good.

The photo above is from my Instagram account. One of my new favorite hobbies is to lift photos off of my Instagram account and share them here after I've played with them a bit. I didn't do much with the one above though except add a retro frame to it like I remember from back in the 70's as a kid.

This photo is one that I took a few days ago as it was getting darker and darker. It gets dark really early here in the colder months. It's like somebody drops a big shade on things at 4:30 pm. Anyway, I was looking out and I wondered if I could snap a photo of the bottle on the windowsill in the dark. The bottle is actually blue, but because I took the photo with the bottle lined up with the street light, it turned this golden brown color. It glowed. The photo is kinda blurry, but in this case I think it adds to the picture. A friend told me that she liked it because it looked spooky. Ha ha! I'll take a compliment any way that I can get one ;-)

I hope that you enjoy looking at my retro-esque, spooky photo. Have a good day!

Really-Random-Playing With Photoshop-Badly-Friday

Hello :-)

So this is my really-random-playing with Photoshop badly-Friday photo ;-)

I've been working on my book a lot lately so I decided to take a break and let my mind wander and man did it wander. LOL. This is a picture that I took a few days ago. It turned out quite blurry and it was originally a black and white photo. Since it was blurry already I decided to play around with it a bit. I think it kinda looks like the world turned blue and you're looking through a screen door or a window screen. When I was growing up we had screens on the windows and screen doors that kept the bugs out but let the breeze in. So this is giving me a kinda trippy nostalgic memory of my childhood years of peering out the screens...and this time I'm looking out at a blue world ;-)

It's weird and I know it's not anything brilliant, but sometimes I just like to play. Play is good.

This visit into my Friday wandering mind is brought to you by me.....LOL!

Happy Friday!!!

Straight From My Heart

Hello all!

I'm still scanning through my pictures from the walk that Brit Boy and I took at the nature reserve, so please bear with me. I didn't realize that I had taken so many pictures until I loaded them onto my computer. The nature reserve was an amazing place and I just kept taking more and more and more pictures. I love taking pictures so my camera is never far away from me :)

I'll be sharing some of the photos in the next couple of days, so please come back for that. It will be more like my posts from the old days of this blog and that's something that I want to get back to. As I've mentioned in a previous post, I've been taking loads of pictures all during the time when I was studying for school and unable to get here to blog. Now I can share them. Some are quite random and some are picturesque. My collection is a regular hodgepodge, but I've always thought that that was the strength of my blog before...the focus on a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Kind of like my philosophy on life :)  It will be nice to get back to what I love again!

So today I will share one of my random pictures. It's a potato that I found in our cupboard the other day. I thought it looked like a heart. What do you think? Of course if you look at it another way it could look like someone's backside. LOL.

I vote for the heart though. What do you see?

 

From my heart to yours...have a wonderful day! :)

The Colors of Nature

I was going through some of my photographs this morning and I came across this one that I like a lot. I took it last summer while Brit Boy and I were out around Wiltshire. I took it from the car as I am fond of doing when we are out and about :-) It's rather blurry, but I love the colors of nature and it was just a beautiful day that day. Seeing this photo again instantly takes me back to that day and how I felt as Brit Boy drove along. I look forward to getting some more photos like this hopefully this summer, and if I do, you know that I will share them here! :-)

Have a wonderful Thursday!

Yellow Roses at the Yellow House

Hello everybody! I'm a bit behind with my blogging again, but things have been crazy around here lately. I won't bore you with the details, but I'll just mention one thing of many...maintenance issues...LOL. There's a history of this issue around the Yellow House and our landlord is slow about fixing things...but anyway onward and upward :) All is well for now...

So I've gotten behind on posting here and I have some things that I've wanted to blog about from cooking to upcoming trips. Therefore, I'll do my best to get caught up over the next several days with a good old-fashioned blogging/purging exercise! Some of what I post may be garbage and some may be more interesting, but I just love to share no matter what...so here goes ;-)

In my last post I shared some pics that I took of our backyard and I really liked how those turned out. Well...just as I will do with my cooking posts in the future sometimes, I will share the good and not so good. lol. In a future post I'm going to share my kitchen shenanigans with melting chocolate and it coming out smelling a bit smoky...LOL. I saved it in the end though and made a tasty chocolate cake. Anyway, back to my current post of my mishaps. lol. This mishap isn't of the cooking variety, it's a photo mishap that isn't terrible, but isn't fantastic either. However I'm really embracing the whole releasing perfection a lot these days, so this is good for me. I don't know...I have this thing about admiring my bad photos. As I've said before, I'm easily amused and honoring imperfection is so fun :-)

So here are a couple of photos that I took a few days ago of the yellow roses in our front yard...yellow roses at the Yellow House ;-) I love yellow roses and I love taking photos through the frame of this window. It has a cottage feeling to the view, so I like to fool around with capturing the world framed through that window. I'm rambling. LOL. One day I may share several of my photos through that window in color and black and white. Okay, anyway, this one is a bit fuzzy, but I like that it's kinda dark. I'm no pro, but I love fooling around with my camera.



This other one is less fuzzy and you can see the roses better.


Well, that's my share for today...it's sort of like the show and tell that we used to do when I was in elementary school many moons ago :-) I hope you've enjoyed a peek at my photos and now that things are quieting down a bit I'll be posting more. We have another trip to London coming up in a couple of weeks and I'll give you a hint...people will be wearing white and carrying tennis rackets. It won't be me though...because I'd pass out from exhaustion. LOL.

Until next time...have a great day!

Photographing Rainbows and Inspiration

Yesterday, in the late afternoon, I was working on some writing upstairs and Brit Boy was downstairs watching television and doing his Brit Boy thang ;-) Even though in reality it’s simply our bedroom, I often call this space my ‘garret’. LOL. That name really means an attic of some sort, but I’m cuckoo like that and like to imagine that it’s an attic. When I was growing up, I always wished we had an attic. So I let my fantasy side come raging out and it's an attic. LOL. Anyway…it’s my space :-)

So back to my story…I was up here yesterday alternating between working on some writing and playing games on Facebook ;-) I looked out of the window and noticed these beautiful pink and orange clouds against a turquoise-colored sky. It was breathtaking!

I got up out of my chair and stood at the window and then hung out to see as far as I could down either end of the street. It was just one of those simple pleasures, but it made me feel so good. Sometimes you just have to pause and take a look around, you know :-) After a few minutes I started to wonder what it looked like out back, so I went downstairs and saw that it was even more beautiful in that direction because of the setting sun.

Then I glanced to my left and there it was…a rainbow! What is it about rainbows? :-) They always have the power to inspire awe. All other thoughts just go away as you gaze at them. I also think that some of the magic of rainbows is that they show up when you least expect them. We hadn’t had any rain, so it was a great surprise.

Here are some photos that I took. I was snapping very quickly so they look very similar, but I wanted to capture every bit of this beauty so that I could remember it. And now I want to share them with you. Please forgive the semi-duplicates, but I figure that lots of rainbow action is always a good thing :-) The whole rainbow wasn't visible, but hey, a big chunk was right there to enjoy...so I was thrilled. The light in the sky was amazing and there was just an ethereal atmosphere all around. It was so calming. I hope you enjoy taking a look!







An extra piece of good news…that rainbow showed up on a great day for me. I am currently featured on the People You Need To Know website. It’s a great place that celebrates and highlights women from a variety of fields. I have always admired this website for the way it presents people who are doing so many interesting things and succeeding. So I was VERY honored and surprised to get the invite to be featured. Being in such great company is inspiring to me and will definitely push me to do more and more with my life!

Photos of Wiltshire and Watching Meteors

So last night I watched the meteor shower and it was fabulous. Did any of you watch it? Usually we miss a lot of what goes on up there, because it never fails that we have a cloudy sky on the night when something is happening :-)

Earlier in the evening, they were kind of giving a 50/50 chance of the sky being clear enough. I figured that I’d just show up and see what happens, so I set up my spot to watch ;-) I was gonna go outside to watch, but then I realized that I could see just as good out of our back window. It’s a big glass window that stretches over most of the back of the house and this side of the house is away from the street light, and it would be a better view. So I turned off all of the lights and lay down right up next to the window and gazed out at that awesome sky! I was in luck and got to see several streaks of light go across the sky. It was a great show and a perfect ending to the day!

To rewind a bit, earlier in the afternoon, Brit Boy and I went for a walk. I took a few photos that I’d like to share. In these photos you can get an idea of just how windswept it can be around here sometimes. The landscape in some areas of Wiltshire is very wide open. I thought that I'd share a bit of what some of the landscape looks like around where we live. The weather was quite breezy and cool yesterday and today too. I guess that autumn is on its way here soon. It certainly felt like it. :-) Anyway here are my pics that I took along our walk out in the fields of Wiltshire.






Above: Here's a cuckoo pic that I took of my reflection in a mud puddle ;-)

Above: And a bit of green along the way...






I hope that you enjoyed seeing a tiny bit of Wiltshire. Have a great weekend!

Pictures From Our Paris Trip

Since I wrote such a wordy post in my last entry, I decided to spare you all today :-) So I thought that I’d share a few photographs that I took before I started blogging. I’ve always liked taking pictures, so I have bits of this and that which I can share here from time to time.

The photos that I’m going to share today, were taken inside Notre Dame Cathedral. Brit Boy and I visited Paris in 2007 for our anniversary. The city was gorgeous and the weather was very cooperative. We had a ball! :-) Notre Dame was truly breathtaking. It was such a serene space. I hope you enjoy taking a look at a few of my pics! I will share more from time to time. Have a great weekend! :-)

Quaintness, The Moon, and Rocking

Today I want to share more photos and thoughts about my trip back home to Georgia. This post is gonna be kind of random and photo blog-ish, but since it’s hard to remember things day by day, I figure this is the best way to share a bit of my trip with you all :-) I hope you enjoy taking a look.

I took some photos as we were driving along like I often do when I’m here in England. I love catching things on the fly even when they come out blurry ;-) I enjoy that for some reason. Anyway, on one of our road trips, I snapped a picture of this shed/barn. I just thought it looked really quaint and rural :-)



Here’s dinner from one day. You all know how I love taking pictures of food ;-) Funnily enough though, this is the only food picture that I took the whole time…I’m slipping. LOL. Anyway, my sister prepared this meal for me one day. It was really tasty.



One evening I went outside as the sun was going down just so I could enjoy it all. I love this magical time of the day :-) I was greeted by this pretty sky with a bit of the moon there to set it off. It was so beautiful to experience the peacefulness of it all. I loved the color of the clouds as the sun bounced its light off of them.

I took these pictures one morning as I stood on my sister’s carport. The light in her yard in the mornings was amazing. I loved the peace of it all.






I love rocking chairs because there’s nothing like sitting in one on a front porch and just letting the motion take you off on a trip of pure relaxation :-) The morning light loved the rockers too!



Thanks for coming along with me as I show you back home. Next time I’ll share more pictures from my journey!

Nature and Life and Going Home

My trip home to Georgia was wonderful. It was just what I needed. I got a chance to be outside and to retrace the paths that I walked as a child. It was very therapeutic and satisfied something within me. I hadn’t realized how much I needed that trip home. It’s a trip that I’m glad that I took (smile).

One thing that stuck out about this trip was how green everything was. For the past few summers, Georgia has had its share of drought-stricken weather. But this year, there has been more rain and it shows. As my sister drove me from the airport I kept thinking to myself how much all of the green reminded me of when I was growing up.

On one of my Saturday mornings there, one of my sisters and I decided to take an early morning walk for the exercise and also to enjoy the quiet of the morning. Right before I left the house, on my way to meet her, I thought that I should take along my camera and I’m glad that I did.

The sun was coming up and I caught a glimpse of it peeking through the dense green growth. The trees and bushes just looked so alive.





Here are a few of my sister’s flowers. I had to snap a few photos of them.



Here are some roadside flowers that I caught sight of too. I don’t know what they are, but they were so dainty and pretty.




Here are a few photos that I captured during our walk. I was snapping pictures of everything. LOL.




I loved looking over at the woods as we walked back towards home. I spent many days of my childhood running around those woods and God certainly had me protected because I was never snake-bitten or harmed (smile).



As I reminisced in my mind, I relished the simple life that I led as a child. It wasn’t always wonderful, but whose life is, you know (smile). Looking back, I’m just thankful for all of those experiences growing up…the good and the bad, because they molded me into who I am now. Life is such a blessing.

While I was home, one of my childhood friends passed away from cancer. She had had such a hard time. When I was on that walk, I thought about her and how we would walk from my house to hers back when we were girls. We lived in the same community, went to the same schools and church, and her family has known my family for years. Our paths had run parallel for a season of our lives. We hadn’t seen each other in quite a while, but when I heard about her passing, it hit my heart in a place potent with memories. And I will have those memories forever.