old school

I am happy today. Really happy today. Not sure why. I apparently like short sentences today too. Interesting. I had a good day at work, and a sweet gift when I got home. So I decided to share probably the happiest day in any girl's life. Her first horse, which in my case was Yellow. This is ME on Yellow. I think I was 5. I scanned a bunch of old school pictures while in TN. This one has always been a personal favorite.

Fall Creek Falls

While visiting TN, I traveled to Fall Creek Falls, and Rock Island State Park. Fall Creek Falls is the longest waterfall east of the Rockies. I was very excited to see it, however there has been a drought in the area and very little water in the falls. As you can see from the first photo, the pool the water fell into was very sparse. So I mostly took leaf photos and some landscape photos of the mountains. The second photo is Twin Falls located on the outskirts of Rock Island State Park, I wanted to go downstream on the trail, but had to head home to be able to feed horses in the light. Maybe next time I will be able to explore a bit more.

Rate my Photo

I entered a photo contest at picture.com. Vote for my photo here to help me win stuff. I encourage all of you to enter photos on this site for a very slim chance of winning money. They try to sell you their collection books with your photo in it and they can get annoying with all the emails. However, any chance to win 10,000 for your photo is pretty cool in my book. Plus, I do not have an ipod, so I am using my blog for propaganda purposes. I know, I know, I am a sell out. This is the only time, I swear. If you are already on the site, send me your link and I will rate your photo! There also tend to be some pretty cool shots on the site and I have enjoyed looking at other peoples shots.

Unique angles

Having so many animals to photograph, I get bored with all the "normal" shots. So I try to find a unique angle that is more for fun rather than to show people, and sometimes I really like the results. I was laying on the ground to get the first photo, looking down at a mini for the second while he was looking up to try to steal grain in the bucket too high for him, and the third, I was just a bit lower than the horse. It added just a tad more interesting perspective as it was not a straight on shot.

can you guess what it is?

Remember those magazines they made you read in science class? On the back there were always three photos, and you had to guess what they were. They were usually macro photos of some common object. This is a macro photo of something that fell off a common object, can anyone guess what it is? This is also my attempt at abstract art.

Leaf mania

While in a state park recently I had the opportunity to get some interesting leaf shots. The best thing about my camera is that when you point it at the sun, you automatically get that great starburst effect, add in some colorful leaves and a unique angle and you get the first photo. The sunlight totally makes the second photo, you get the light streaming through the leaf, but also the shadows of other leaves not seen. It was a total fluke that it turned out.

The sun must come out

My first couple of days here in Little Lot were plagued with rainy overcast cloudy dreariness. I cannot complain because there has been a serious drought in the area, and was happy to see it rain. It messed up some of my travel plans for the week, but I still managed to get to a few places. You will have to wait for future blogs to see where I went. Speaking of which I got completely lost in middle Tennessee. A bit scary to say the least. On Thursday, I was outside feeding the critters when I saw the sun trying to break through the clouds right before sunset. It was causing light to stream across the sky in a most pretty fashion. I always try to capture streaming light like this and it never quite translates to photos the way I want. However, this time it work quite nicely. I added a few tree branches for framing and got a photo I am pretty pleased with.

greetings from TN

I am currently in TN for the week. Drove down Sunday after work, here are a few of the first images of the trip, with many more to come I hope.

This is the logo on my steering wheel, I was stuck in traffic outside Knoxville. Imagine that! I was sitting there for a few minutes, and decided to play with my camera. So the Jeep logo was right there and interesting. You can see how badly I need to clean my steering wheel.

My house is just a few miles from the Natchez Trace, this is a view from one of the overlooks. The power lines are particularly attractive, and just what I want to look up and see while eating my lunch on that picnic table.

Introducing Lady, the newest member of the family. She is a lab adopted from the humane society. She was here last time I visited in July, but didn't like me enough to let me photograph her. Now that I am the only person here to feed her and pay attention to her, she lets me take her photo and even poses for me...sometimes. I have a ton of animal subjects here on the farm, so get ready, I am charging batteries now.

arty?

So I have walked by this bucket of old rasps and shoes a million times. On this particular day, I decided it looked "artistic" and snapped a photo. I do not know if I still consider it artistic or if random, but its unique.

creepy cicadas

Nothing creeps me out like the empty shells of the cicadas that show up every 17 years. Ugh! They reared up a few years ago and left empty carcass shells all over the place. I remember I was driving to work one day in my Jeep, which did not have AC, so I had the windows open. These guys were flying across the Jeep and in the window, I had a few hit me in the face. Ugh! The red eyes also creep me out. I did however get close enough to get some decent photos. Imagine one of these guys landing on your face.

my pound puppy

There are a few favorite photos of my Panda. She was a pound puppy that was a Christmas present given to me by my mother. She was a stinky little critter when she first arrived home, but with a bath and brushing, she turned out to be the best dog ever. She was super smart and learned really quickly. My brother taught her to bark at words which included, "beer, pretzel, and squirrel". He even taught her to bark loud and softly depending on his voice tone. She knew several phrases like, "wanna go for a ride", and "who's out there" and "wanna to to the barn". Panda used to get angry at me when she saw me packing things up to go to college. She often would not be around to see me off, and when I came home after long periods of time away, I would have to bribe her to come so I could pet her, often offering her a ride in the car. It is pathetic when you have to take your dog for a ride so she will stop ignoring you. She also loved to destroy balloons learning quickly to pull them down with a string to pop them. Oh, and she was the best puppy raiser too, with the seeing eye pups she was freaked at first but quickly learned how to play with them and not hurt them. They of course loved it. She was around for the litter of pups that came much later in her life, she did pretty well with them, even though she was old and arthritic. Best present ever, hands down!

holy terrors

These little guys wreaked holy terror on our house. Our black lab and a golden retriever produced ten of the cutest weapons of mass destruction you have ever seen. Here are just a few extra cute photos of them as pups. You have seen them as full grown dogs, but before they could destroy anything on the coffee table with tails, we could hold them in one hand.

Sometimes the shoes have to come off

While stalking birds and walking around shoe-less at a stop along the gulf coast line, the tide came rolling in. Our shoes were pretty far away, but as you can see, the tide caught them. Luckily for me, mine were on top and stayed dry. I honestly do not remember whose idea it was to put mine on top of the flip flops....but I am pretty sure I thanked them afterwards.

lazy

It is 5:50 am, I am tired, I worked two long very crazy and at times horrid days, and now am up this early to attend a GI conference. I am sore, cranky, bruised, and most of all do not want to leave the warm perfectly stamped bed it took all night to to perfect. Besides all of that, I also woke up a bit early, due to urgent need to empty the old bladder. So with a bit of free time, I decided to post a blog. I chose these elephant seals for my post because the do not want to get up and move either. They are content in the sand, not moving, and groaning the day away. Today I wish I could do that, alas, maybe tomorrow.