An Awesome View of Life

My Shadow and I? For a split second I was worried someone would be offended by these photos but realized they couldn't be offended by their own thoughts. Right? What was I thinking if I was worried these could be offensive ?  (: I tried very hard to capture my own reflection in these cherries to make it a triple cherry!  ha!  My warped sense of creativity WILL come back to haunt me some day.  At least I hope it does.  (: These were just for fun photos.  I'm working on some photo ideas but need to finish up a couple more business projects and then look out. The photo below would be captioned Black(&White) Cherry.   It was a good day today!  

Reflecting on Victoria... Today we went to the Minneapolis Uptown Food Truck Fair.  Wow!  The amount of food and people were unreal.  It was hot and crowded so I don't have many good shots from the fair. This one could have been better but not everyone in my family stops when I'm taking photos and I always  feel like I need to rush - which I don't  but... ):  This is the one and only shot.  If the car hadn't been in the reflection it would have been much better, it just takes up too much of the reflection.   Can you see it is a Victoria's Secret window front?  (: 

Favorite color... Sunset is one of my favorite colors.  (:  After a series of heavy downpours today this is the sunset we were blessed with. This was taken with my HTC One X.  For some reason I left the house without my camera???

Black, white and a bit of green

Light at the end... of the fabric tube.  (:   Today was a day from hell.  I had two suits that had to be blinged so they would be ready to ship tomorrow.  From the get go the first suit was a disaster.  What could be done wrong WAS done wrong.  Ugh!  But I stuck with it and made everything work out.  With these two suits done the light at the end of the fabric tube is visible.  ha! To take this photo I placed one end of the 5' cardboard tube on the back of a chair and the other end had a light bulb shoved into it. The focus point is about half way down the tube.  There are other photos with different focus points but this was the one.   

You Light up my Life... or at least our dinner table tonight.  (:  This light is actually two tones of blue but these are the colors my camera saw no matter what I did.  Hmmm...

Different look... This is the same old bush I've been taking pictures of for the last few months only with a bit of a different look.   Once again, I am messing around with settings and options on my camera.  The easiest thing to do is to sit in my rocker on the front "porch" and just shoot from there. Lazy?  Maybe.  Not sure what I was trying to learn here but it's pretty cool looking.  ha!  It did take forever to focus on just this one little branch and not anything in the background. 

A Small Red Green Moment This is actually what I saw with my eyes.  So thrilled with how this turned out.  (:  Best viewed in full size.  

Irony A bit of graffiti on an old Schmidt Brewery building.  A glimpse of the outside and a peek at the inside.  Below is a shot of the whole outside wall.  The irony is the main buildings of the brewery are being renovated into artist lofts and art galleries, the buildings that won't survive the renovation - have a great form of art on them.

FIVE SENSES... Can you smell them?  Hear them sizzling?  Can you taste them? Can feel the warmth of them on a bun with a bit of mustard and a bunch of sauerkraut? And it's pretty obvious  you can see them. We spent a couple of hours at Germanfest MN at the old Schmidt Brewery in St. Paul today.   The Black Forest Inn  was serving bratwurst, weisswurst, sauerkraut and German potato salad.  We had the weisswurst with a bit of sauerkraut and the German potato and it was well worth the wait in line.    Hometown  Schell's Brewery  was serving beer and hosting their own beer tent.   There was also a Strongman Competition.  I'll post photos of that separately later today.   We didn't stay for long but ate some good food and listened to some polka music.  I think a good time was had by all.  

Everything. Even though I got eaten alive once again by the mosquitoes (I'm just so sweet and wonderful) I LOVE everything about this photo. All the textures -- the rough sidewalk, the soft moss, the crunchy leaves and the pebbled step.  All the colors are perfect. And the light and shadows add depth.  The focus point is exactly where I wanted it which adds to the love of this photo.  (:   Now maybe I can get that dang suit designed??  

Her view in reverse? Another totally non-creative day.  Today I'm okay with it.  It is what it is and it will all fall together if I let go of all the bullshit I have going on in my head.  (: This was taken on Father's Day at the lake.  The lens of my daughter Mandi's sunglasses with a wisp of her hair and a wonderful reflection of the deck. Pictures were taken today but I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes and didn't get what I wanted.  But oh well.  (:

Black and White

Depth of Field Battling the wind while taking these photos was a challenge all in it's own.  But I finally got what I wanted in the photo. 

Leading Line... Just a photo lesson being learned.  I like the affect in this photo but not sure I accomplished what I should have?

"Fly"ing together... The fly wasn't noticed until I uploaded photos.  Just a bit funny to me.  I like the colors in the background and love the "lost" wing tip on the hummingbird.  Fun to get to the lake today for Father's Day.  

Rainy Rearview View Rain, stoplights and more rain in the rearview mirror.

Wine-y Self Portrait This would have been a better photo if there was white wine in the glass but...  ha!  

Illuminated Red Green Moment This one was fun.  It is super windy tonight and I just kept clicking away hoping for something like this.  I think the red spots are just light reflecting off dust spots on my camera lens but I'm not sure.  

Freak of Nature? This can be seen from the window.  At first I thought it was something crawling up the tree.  I grabbed my camera and stood in the middle of the yard and zoomed in as much as I could.  Turns out it is just some kind of fungus?  (:  If anyone knows what this is please let me know.  

They've got high hopes... It's not a rubber tree but it was still hard work.  ha! So mad -- I wanted to get a picture of the caterpillar part way into the ant hill but the phone rang. And when I got back outside everything was already gone!  Dang!   The ant on the right seemed to be the boss of everything.  At least he kept running from one side to the other acting all bossy.   If you click on the above photo it will enlarge it and you can see the details of the ants as well as the caterpillar.  Pretty awesome.

Sunlight.Shadows.Spiderwebs. Yes, I'm a little obsessed with this bush in my front yard.  It's just that I keep seeing something different about it every day.  Today, I actually spent a bit of time sitting in my wicker rocker with camera in hand.  The bush is RIGHT there so... Another tough day with no end in sight.  I feel like I'm wearing too many hats and I'm not doing any of them justice.  Too many things to do and none of them seem to be what I really would like to be doing.  (:   And I ALWAYS feel this way about this time of the season. It's short-lived.  But, I did get to spend most of the day with my crabby grandbaby.  And I got to sit in my rocker without any demands from anyone for almost an hour!!  So life is good?  

Green Canopy The thing I hate more than working on Saturday is working on Sunday.  Today's project was my class reunion stuff (that's not what I was calling it earlier).  So instead of getting to go on a fun adventure to take photos I worked for about 7 hours stuffing envelopes.   While dinner was on the grill I did take time to sit on the patio with my hubby and a nice glass of wine.  Oh and my camera.  We have this wonderful maple tree that shades our patio almost all day long.  This is just a bit of that tree.

Yellow Beauty Today I put in an 8 hour day.  I HATE working on Saturdays.  I had so many other things I wanted to do this weekend but...  This beauty is in my front yard.  I didn't wander too far to take photos tonight.  Maybe tomorrow I can get away and do something fun and exciting?

Sunlit Simplicity

Untitled Crazy day today.  A bit of "jet lag" from vacation.  Oh wait, we drove.  But I am suffering from some kind of "lag".  (:  So no new photos.  At least none worth posting.  So one more photo from Wisconsin. Here I was trying to learn what changing the shutter speed will do to my photos.  This one was the best one of the dozens I took.

The hills are alive... Another wonderful time in Wisconsin.  This time with my daughters.  Since researching my family history Wisconsin has become a part of me.  I always leave with a bit of a heavy heart.   Plans are being made to head back this fall.  New friends were made today and we promised to come back for a visit this fall.

Smallest Antique Shop Mr. Haney's Antiques and Collectibles  is the cutest little store.  Guinness World Book of Records has contacted him about the possibility of being the smallest antique store in the world!!  Mr. Haney is just waiting for them to be in the area to check out his store. This cute little store is located in Portage, WI - an extremely interesting historic town.

What nightmares are made of? This shot turned out much better than I thought it would.  I had a tough time getting the focus point correct.  I still think it is a bit off but...  This is a spider web dripping with rain drops.   But the real question is what made this web?  Do you think it was this guy?  There is also a black and white version of this "cutie" below.  (:  I'm pretty sure I will have nightmares tonight.

Pitter Patter... Just a bit of rain again today.  A 3 1/2 hour drive to Wisconsin Dells in the rain only to have our third thunderstorm come through since arriving.  These are the raindrops on the top of my car.   I've been learning to not always have my camera set on "auto".  The last couple of days I have been messing with the shutter speed.  Yesterday it was a bit too dark outside.  Today was better.  And tomorrow will be better yet.  (: