Weekly Photo Challenge: Silhouette (Flowers in the Window)

I realize that the background in my photo for the Weekly Photo Challenge: Silhouette might be distracting but I like its ethereal quality and the way that it mimics that same quality in the silhouetted flowers in the foreground.

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North Dakota – The Audubon National Wildlife Refuge

I have been in North Dakota for the last 2 weeks and have been so busy traveling and taking photos to post anything.

I know this is no excuse, but I hope what I will be posting over the next few weeks will make up for some of my negligence.

I took this photo last week at the Audubon National Wildlife Refuge, which is north of Bismarck and south of Minot off of Highway 83. There is an 8 mile long gravel road along the south shoreline of Lake Audubon. Remarkably, during the day I was there ((admittedly a weekday), I met only one other person on the road and as a result I was able to park my car and sit and just see what was going on and wait for photo opportunities. When I was moving, it was often at one or two miles per hour.

While I was at the refuge I saw eagles, owls, egrets, antelopes, numerous birds that a birder could identify but I could just photograph and admire, as well as some spectacular scenery. Here is an example of what you might see (the bird in the distance is an owl carrying a recent catch).

 

The Surviving Magnolias

 

In my previous post I mentioned that very heavy rains had decimated the flowers in our Magnolia Tree … except for two … one of which is fully mature and the other of which is just blooming. In the interest of completing this story, here are the two survivors.

In Memoriam – Magnolia Blossom

We have had several really heavy rainfalls over the last day or so and they have hit the blossoms on our Magnolia tree hard. Only one of the flowers in full bloom survived as did one of the flowers just blooming. As for the remainder of the Magnolia blossoms, this picture sums up their fate.

Misty Magnolia

I got up quite early the other morning in order to let the dogs out. It was just past dawn and still quite dark, outside darker than I expected it would be. It turned out that it was very foggy. As soon as I knew about the fog I started getting my camera ready for the time when I would have a reasonable amount of light to get some photos of the Magnolia tree in the backyard. I had been photographing the Magnolia for about a month while the tree first budded and eventually – after a long delay – bloomed. Here is one of the blossoms  that I photographed on that very misty/foggy morning.

 

Ese’ s Weekly Shoot & Quote Challenge – Inspiration (Creation)

The reason I like your shoot and quote challenges is that they often offer me an opportunity to think outside of the box. The challenge asks for the sources of our inspiration. There are plenty of answers to that question — everything from beauty, to grace, to patterns, to symmetry, to humor, to pathos, to joy, to the unexpected juxtaposition and on and on and on. It is pretty easy for me to find things to photograph.

One of my many sources of inspiration is the one demonstrated here — it is the ability that the digital darkroom offers me to take a photograph and use it as the beginning of a flight of fantasy with more than a dollop of whimsy. Thus it is both the photo and the power of the software tools at hand that together make one of the sources of inspiration for my photography and my contribution to Ese’ s Weekly Shoot & Quote Challenge – Inspiration.

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.

~ Augustus Hare

Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge – The Color(s) Purple

Purple is one of those colors that I have often had a hard time with. By this I mean that a color that I might think of as purple other’s might think of as a blue or a pink. In the interest of presenting evidence of my honest confusion, here are four photos of flowers (one with considerable whimsy) in “The Color(s) Purple” for Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge. The first photo is from a neighbors’ garden; the next three are from our garden (all taken in Maple Bluff, Wisconsin where we still await a true warm spell).