Weekly Photo Challenge: Saturated

This week, show us a photo of whatever you’d like, but make sure it’s saturated. It can be black and white, a single color, a few hues, or a complete rainbow riot; just make sure it’s rich and powerful. Let’s turn the comments into an instant mood-booster!

Sunrise

The same sunrise

When I think of sunrise, I remember this early 70s song from the British rock group  Yes, “Heart of the Sunrise.” Check out the other entries here.

Weekly Photo Challenge: From Lines to Patterns

This week I am offering a second entry. Please visit the other entries here.

Top of outdoor display at Writing on Stone Park

Top of World’s Tallest Teepee

When I think of Patterns, I also remember this song by Simon and Garfunkel.

Weekly Photo Challenge: From Lines to Patterns

From lines to patterns. We see lines and patterns in the world around us, in nature and things man-made. Sometimes we don’t realize they’re there: on the street, across the walls, up in the sky, and along the ground on which we walk.

Pattern Collage: Chair, Ties, Pot Heating Pad, Close-Peg Cross, Floor Tiles

This is my first go at a collage, which I made with the help of  Picasa 3.

Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.

Margaret Mead

Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character.

Stephen Covey

The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns.

Marshall McLuhan

Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go.

Fred Rogers

I think it’s harder for people than it should be. But as more and more of us become carbon neutral and change the patterns in our lives to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem, we are now beginning to see the changes in policy that are needed.

Al Gore

Patterns are the fingerprints of God’s creative activity in the universe, which create a sense of awe, wonder and order.  Dim Lamp

Be sure to check out this week’s other entries here.

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside

Michelle Weber writes: “This week, share what you see on the inside. It could be something literally inside, like these birds in the rebar or the inside of your home or favorite hideaway. If you’d like, go in a personal direction — share a photo of your best friend laughing, showing how she feels on the inside, or an arresting shot of your son’s blue eyes (windows to the soul, dontcha know). This is also a great opportunity to put what you learned in Jeff Sinon’s guest post on composition into practice.”

My entry this week consists of three shots I recently took on a trip to The Canadian Historic Windmill Centre, at Etzikom, Alberta. At one time the Canadian prairies were dotted with hundreds, perhaps even thousands of windmills to pump the much needed water from wells. Visit the other entries here.

English style windmill

Notice the pole in the middle of the stairway, extending downwards to the ground. It was used to turn the whole windmill in order to catch the wind from every direction.

Poster with history of first windmills in North America

Inside shot of the windmill, I like the contrast background wood, from which the poster is displayed.

Inside the windmill

When I think of windmills, I also think of the song by Dusty Springfield:

The Windmills of Your Mind

Round
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning
Running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes of it’s face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of it’s own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half-forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes of it’s face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly? 
Was it something that you said? 
Lovers walk along a shore
And leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand? 
Pictures hanging in a hallway
And the fragment of a song
Half-remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong? 
When you knew that it was over
You were suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the colour of her hair

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Weekly Photo Challenge: An Unusual POV

Unusual. In this week’s Photography 101 post on point of view, Lynn Wohlers offers great advice on how to show your own unique way of looking at the world:

Challenge yourself to rethink your ideas about what subjects are appropriate, and then challenge yourself again to find an unusual perspective on your subject.

For this challenge, let’s keep Lynn’s advice in mind. Go out and take photos and share a shot that reveals a new and different POV. You can take a picture of a familiar subject in a fresh way, as I did of the iconic London Eye in the image above. Instead of a more traditional shot — placing the structure in the middle of the frame and taking it from a more straightforward angle — I focused on the paper art plastered on a red telephone booth along the embankment, further away, and placed the London Eye in the left of the frame, seemingly insignificant.

You can consider other approaches, too:

• Use something natural (window, tree, wall of a building, etc.) to frame your shot.
• Get low on the ground to take a picture from a very different angle.
• Focus on a specific part of a person, object, or structure (instead of all of it) — or intentionally cut off a part of your subject or scene.
• Place something in between you and your subject/scene to offer a distinct perspective

Sunrise

This past week, I took this photo at sunrise from my back yard. What’s “unusual” in this photo is part of one of our trees in the left bottom foreground. I’ve edited the photo a bit with Picasa to increase the contrast of colours between earth and sky.  Please check out the other entries here.

Sunrise and Playground

This shot was taken a few minutes later, and is more of a close-up of the children’s playground.