Time to catch up with some summer news. August just started, and I know that I am looking at at least 2 more months of warm weather. I just need to plan for this and enjoy time inside as well as outside. I was spoiled by the wonderful, cool start of May and June. July would prove to be another story.
My son and family visited in May. We had breakfast at Mimosa House Restaurant. I had a Tropical Breeze Mimosa if I remember correctly. Well maybe not after my breakfast drink.
For my birthday in June, David, Moxie, and I took a ride up to Nevada City. We were looking for a quiet place to socialize Moxie to being calm on a leash with traffic passing. This is not the place to do this. All cars, trucks, and motorcycles travel down Main Street. I was surprised that Moxie behaved perfectly when I went shopping. I bought some fun socks for the winter.
Enjoyed a refreshment in Nevada City
On Mother’s Day, my granddaughter announced I would become a Great Grandmother at the beginning of next year. Well I’ll have some time to get used to this new title of Great Grandmother.
Got to celebrate my birthday with my granddaughter @ Leatherby’s Family Creamery
My photo friends got out early and visited the town of Placerville. Always something new or old to find to take photographs.
The retired librarian in me liked this metalwork.
Couldn’t help visiting this old-fashioned toy store. I practiced some environmental portraits while I bought Butterscotch Lifesavers as an homage to my father-in-law. Quick story. When Jerry was hospitalized for a heart attack I visited him in the hospital, and all he wanted me to bring him was Butterscotch Lifesavers. End of story.
So, for this week, Sofia challenges me to think of mood, and how to convey and create an emotional reaction to my shot. That can be accomplished by capturing situations or occasions, photography styles, or people and their feelings. Never forgetting how moods can be perceived in different ways by different people.
Loving
Silhouette at McKinley Park
On the dock in Old Sacramento
Helping
Can you please give me directions?
Comforting
Helping his son.
Teaching
Docent at the Sacramento Zoo
Docent at the Sacramento Railroad Museum
Learning out in nature
Alone
Local carnival
A bench in Berkeley
Encouraging
At a swim meet
Tired and Broken
Attitude
Not happy to have his photo taken.
Renaissance Faire in Fair Oaks, Ca.
Scary
Animal Moods
Smiling after a spa dayLaughing faceDinner yet? Hopeful
My Moxie’s sweet eyes.
This iguana was out for a walk with its owner. Looks happy!
What’s going on?
I imagined a story by watching these gulls on the beach.
Wolf’s Guenon shows affection, protection, and care.
I’ll end here with the hope that everyone’s mood is positive, polite, and caring.
Anne-Christine tells me that “backlighting is a great way to create stunning, eye-catching effects. Here are a handful of specific images you can make with backlighting: Street and portrait silhouettes, bird-in-flight silhouettes, portraits, and macros with beautiful background bokeh, landscape silhouettes, and sunset/sunrise landscapes.”
Glass
I always enjoy looking at glass objects. I found some of these images in stores, in windows, and in displays.
I first saw an example of Chihuly glass at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. The first and third photographs are examples displayed at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.
Black puppies are particularly hard to photograph. Lighting is key. Libby was an English Black Labrador Retriever and my very first dog. I waited 40 years for her! It has been 4 years ago this month that we parted.
This is Liberty Love at 8 weeks.
Here is Moxie! Backlit.
Lots of images benefit from backlit lighting. I hope that you may be inspired to look at the world from a new perspective. Positive, beautiful and peaceful.
Ann-Christine and Lens-Artists are looking forward to seeing my, “Alone Time” posts. What are my thoughts, and what do I use my alone time for?
Alone time does bring about challenges for me. So today this blog will be more than a photo blog. I will take this time to do some reflection on my life.
By nature, I believe I am more of an introvert and like my time alone. I have many things to keep me happily occupied. My photography is sometimes used to get me out of my shell, and ready to explore. But I can easily enjoy quietly looking back at my library, reviewing, cataloging, and creating my photo blog.
A lone leaf
Sometimes, I enjoy being an observer of people all around me. I am thinking about their solitude.
Catching up on his computerWaitng in New York CityDeep in thoughtNapping in the Rose Garden
I like to take walks. My neighborhood has 4 courts, and a private road so there is little traffic and some up-and-down elevations. At first, Moxie, my Golden Retriever, had no trouble being my companion. Once a noisy garbage truck stopped next to us and wanted to meet her. This frightened her, and it has been a bit of a struggle to walk past our court ever since. I have tried to get her used to truck sounds. So, like my last dog, if I want to walk I need to first drive to a park trail. Not as spontaneous. Maybe as Moxie turns 2 she will grow out of these fears. She is also trying to contain her excitement when we walk. She pulls ahead then realizes that I have stopped and comes to a heal position. So our walks are more training than solitude until we take our nap together.
In this recliner Moxie and I take our nap in the afternoon!
Walking alone on the shore
As a retired librarian I love to read.
I often find the subject matter ties into my family history. I am a child of two Holocaust survivors, and I am always reading historical fiction, memoirs, and non-fiction. I just started the last book of a trilogy entitled, The Tree of Life by Holocaust survivor Chava Rosenfarb. I am well-read on the subject, but these 3 remarkable books describe life in the Lodz Ghetto, and more than that they make me think about the meaning of life itself. I highly recommend these books to everyone. It is a tough subject, but there is a sweetness and clarity to each written paragraph.
This coincides with another passion – genealogy. Again this is both an alone project, which sometimes surprisingly connects me to my extended family. Next week I will be visiting New York City. Through Ancestry.com, I will be meeting a first cousin once removed who is coming all the way from New Hampshire to meet me for dinner. Last year, I met another first cousin once removed from Israel. Children of my first cousins. It is special to have a family connection. While in NYC I will also visit the Yivo reading room where I will see items from my Great Uncle Lazar Kahan and Great Aunt Rose Shoshana Kahan. I never had any grandparents, and my parents didn’t discuss their past often. I have my parents’ testimonies from the United States Shoah Foundation. My grandparents’ generation had large families (16 children), so it is easy to see how much the Holocaust impacted my family. On only my father’s paternalside, from 15 siblings and families 30-35 were murdered. On my mother’s maternal side, my grandmother had 8 siblings with families of their own, and only one survived. I haven’t counted all the losses. It is hard to take in. Watching the news today weighs heavy on me. I believe that there are no winners in war. Sorry, I got carried away with these heavy thoughts. But that is what happens when I have some alone time.
To lighter thoughts, I have not taken on any knitting or crocheting projects lately. I needed to give my hands a rest. I started to do some quilting, but training my puppy has replaced this for the time being. Looking forward to starting some new projects.
My mother’s sewing machine
So there are plenty of ways I like to spend my time. As you can tell, all but walking and napping with Moxie, need the use of my eyes. And they are starting to fail me. I have macular degeneration and the ophthalmologist is trying to help save the sight in one eye. So far the injection has not changed anything, and my vision is quite distorted. So far the left eye is better, and the dry macular has no treatment but progresses slower. Luckily I use my left eye for my camera eye-piece, and my camera is set for autofocus. I can type ok, but reading back this post is tiring. The book I mentioned may be the last one I read in a paper version. From now on I will use my iPad.
So what do you do with your alone time? Deep contemplation, restful time floating in a pool, or getting lost in a book?
A Photo's Worth 