Calling all zombies!

This photo has nothing to do with the subject of my post, but.... cute kitty!

So!

A couple of friends on FB have been lamenting the demise of our blogs. We all seem to mostly agree that, coupled with life changes or varying degrees of laziness/lack of interest, the popularity and ease of Facebook put the final nail in the coffin of what was a very happy time in our lives. All the writing. All the sharing. All the feels.

;-)

We miss blogging and we miss our blogging community. Some still blog regularly, some occasionally, some never do - but a couple of us have decided to give it a go again and see if we can't get back some of the magic that we used to share here, in this way. Isn't that exciting?!?

Wonderful sweet Jayne suggested that prompts might be helpful to get our writing juices flowing again, if need be. I like the idea of prompts, so long as they're not too restrictive, or too predictable. So in thinking about it and considering how much we all seem ready to write / talk / make excuses (?) for why we STOPPED blogging, it occurred to me that an interesting prompt might be to think and write about why we STARTED blogging. Others of you may have already addressed this at some point in your blogging career, but I don't think I ever have...

So what do y'all say? Can this prompt lead you somewhere interesting? Will you join us as we try to resurrect our dead or dying blogs? Zombie Bloggers Unite!

:-)

Comment here if you're in!  We'll promise to read and give feedback; that has to be part of the bargain if we're to feel like a community again.

Many, many thanks... I've missed you!

Packing up

I finally took the plunge and moved my blog to Wordpress!

Please follow me there at:

Somewhere in NJ

622 miles closer to the perfect summer job

Today's sunset at the north end of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel

So I guess I finally have enough of my ducks in a row to tell you all about my plans for this summer...

I'm going home to NJ!

The perfect summer job landed in my lap... I'll be working for NJ Fish and Wildlife to monitor and protect beach-nesting birds.

Piping Plovers!

Least Terns!

American Oystercatchers!

Please don't anyone pinch me... I don't want to wake up if this is a dream!

: )

I set out early this morning with my bunny and my African violets and after 12+ hours in the car, we're all feeling pretty bedraggled.  I took the shortcut across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel to spend the night on the Delmarva Peninsula and will meet the ferry to Cape May in the morning. It's beautiful here (and there's still "sweet tea" available!) and I was treated to Brown Pelicans and frolicking dolphins this evening when I stopped at the scenic overlook on the bridge to stretch my legs. Plus, I can smell the sea again... But it's cold! I started the day with the AC running in the car and ended it with the heat blasting.

Some Piping Plovers and American Oystercatchers are already on eggs... I'm hoping to arrive on the beach with the Least Terns. I'm so excited! I can't wait to get started and share this adventure with you...

Heggie's Rock

Heggie's Rock Preserve is owned and managed by The Nature Conservancy and is yet another example of a granite outcrop community, much like Arabia Mountain. I was curious to see it because it's said to be the most pristine of Georgia's flat rock outcrops.

So last Saturday, I went along on a special guided tour meant for "serious" photographers. I was concerned with not being "serious" enough, of course, but no one checked my credentials.

: )

Granite outcrops are difficult places for the plants that try to make a life there. The temperatures are extreme and there's not much soil. In fact, the plants arrange themselves into zones according to soil depth. The hot, dry conditions foster plant life that dramatically differs from that of the surrounding forest... many are perennials that grow very slowly; others are winter annuals that survive the desert-like summer months as seeds.

Many of the winter annuals have adaptations like whitish hairs to reflect sunlight and smallish leaves that reduce surface-area water loss; others, like the Elf's Orpine (pictured here and above) are succulents that store water in swollen leaves and stems.

This environment was a first for many in our small group of "serious" photographers; this lady earned innumerable points in my book for forgoing the tripod and getting down on her belly in the dirt to make her photos!

(Instant friend.)

Mosses and lichen dry out and darken (or turn silver like this one!) but immediately turn green with moisture. We tested this out with our water bottles; the response was almost immediate.

Unfortunately, there was no "serious" plant person in our group to tell me the name of this one.

There's something in the experience of an outcrop that's very difficult to convey in a photograph; a wide-angle view mutes the beauty somehow, but the color contrasts feel lost without the context of the whole expanse. I dunno... I love the contrasts of texture and color in this pic. That's enough, I guess!

Occasionally, there's a brighter view where the soil is deep enough to support it. Just ahead of the woody shrubs, the yellow blooms are Rabbit's Ear, I think.

The Elf's Orpine is the star of the show, of course. The environment here is very, very dry but the blooming things still manage to arrange themselves artfully among the lichen-covered rocks.

Pretty, no?

I'd really like to know what this stuff is... any guesses?

Another artful arrangement... especially interesting because you can "see" the soil depth based on the plants that are growing... the unnamed plant in the deepest part of the solution pool, leading to the Elf's Orpine blooming in the dry sand on the right, and the lichen covering the bare granite.

Pretty.

Pretty with pinecones.

: )

I love the weird moonscape of granite outcrops here in GA; I love how stark they are and I especially love how surprising the color and beauty can be when you get down on your belly to find it. I love The Nature Conservancy for putting this place behind a fence to protect it for all of us "serious" folks to enjoy.

Heggie's Rock is open to the public on a limited basis... check here.

Please go; it's beautiful!

A counting

There's 92 species of birds on the list for the year already; some favorites are American Pipit, Loggerhead Shrike and Wilson's Plover. I've never kept a year list before. I don't generally "do" lists, but thought it might be entertaining for a while. I'm wondering what a reasonable expectation for the year might be... 200? 250? Any additional birds will accumulate slowly until Spring, unless of course there's travel involved.

2013 was a good year for new birds for me and I took a couple nice trips that added to my (only in my head) life list.

In February, we went to Sanibel Island, Ding Darling NWR, Cape Coral and Ft. DeSoto. The weather was crappy and the drive was interminable, but I hope to get back to that area sometime. Lots of neat birds...

Common Ground Dove - easily overlooked, but striking when they show their rusty wings.

Monk Parakeets feeding in the same field we found this Burrowing Owl; hard to say which felt more unlikely to this Jersey Girl.

: )

We also saw Nanday Parakeets and a Long-billed Curlew on that trip. Talk about impossible to imagine birds!

This Vermillion Flycatcher was probably the least expected bird I added to my nonexistent life list last year - just gorgeous! A friend of a friend on FB gave me directions to a town just west of Tallahassee and I found it in the exact tree where he said it would be - imagine!

I've no idea what new birds 2014 holds for me...

10/100

We went wandering over to Apalachicola this afternoon to look at the shrimp boats there and found this gentleman first. He came over to tell us about the bald eagle he sees around the marina. I thought maybe he was the watchman, but no, he said he's camping out there beneath the maritime museum building until they give him a job. He told us he's worked on fishing boats in Alaska too, so I figure he can handle the Florida cold.

This photo is #10 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at Flickr 100 Strangers or www.100Strangers.com

Ghost signs

I'm happy to finally have a name for these faded advertisements that I like to photograph. I find them painted on falling-down buildings along rural roads and in the old parts of sleepy Southern towns.

Wikipedia, my source for everything that I didn't know had a name, says they were most common before the Great Depression and that the artists who painted them were known as "wall dogs."

In some places, there's an effort to preserve or restore them. Oftentimes, they just fade away like so much history.

I'm not even sure, myself, where I took these couple photos, but for the last one. On the way to somewhere else is all I remember.

This one is a favorite, simply because I get to see it most often. It's on the way to Tallahassee and, despite many tries, I've yet to get a photo that I like.

Apparently, other people like to photograph these old signs, too. And if you're so inclined and have some favorites, you might consider adding them to the Ghost Sign Project so other people can find them, too.

Sunday in the Park

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows they're being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks.

- Richard Avedon

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks.

Richard Avedon

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/richardave531391.html#m1zZipxLsc3qOGGX.99

A couple weeks ago I went to Sunday in the Park at Oakland Cemetery here in Atlanta. It's billed as a Victorian street festival and includes music, food, and an artist's market. I went mainly for the picture-taking opportunities, expecting to want to photograph inside some of the spectacular mausoleums (opened up just for this event), but instead and as usual, got sidetracked with people photos. The folks in "period garb" were fun, but I especially liked the steampunk couple!

Art seen (in progress)

The Living Walls conference is back in Atlanta and we spent the afternoon the other day wandering around the city trying to see all the murals. Many of them are in out-of-the-way-for-us neighborhoods and some of them we pass by almost every day. Getting out to see them and appreciate each for its distinct style was a fun project for a steamy summer afternoon.

Of particular interest were the murals that are being painted in the Summerhill neighborhood that surrounds Turner Field. We're there quite often for Braves' games and, like the CNN article implies, it's a pretty sketchy place. It'll be nice to have these sad-looking abandoned buildings transformed with color. Stay tuned...

Is this a look or what?

I think the ribbons on her ears are a nice touch.

Sadie's embarrassed by them.

I like them and think she looks adorable.

Jay, the good sport who walks her in the park, thinks they're ridiculous.

He was ready with a story should anyone ask:

"They're antennas; she's actually a robot."

I like that, too.

9/100

It's been forever since I posted a stranger photo, hasn't it?

; )

Back at the beginning of March I stumbled across a Civil War re-enactment that was happening in north Florida.

That's an interesting sub-culture, let me tell ya.

I wandered around for a pleasant couple of hours watching these men and women while they waited for the rain to stop so they could have their battle. I still can't get straight which color uniform belongs to which side. But I know who won the war!

Such a Yankee...

This man had one of those faces that the camera loves; I only wish he weren't so shy and would've looked at me...

This photo is #9 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at Flickr 100 Strangers or www.100Strangers.com

A caveat*

Photographing terns on a nude beach requires careful cropping.

 ; )

So my dilemma was this: resist the opportunity to photograph the royal terns, laughing gulls, willets and black-bellied plovers loafing together in the sunshine at Playalinda Beach on the Cape Canaveral National Seashore or bare (tee hee!) with the discomfort of using a camera amid a bunch of naked people.

I chose the assumption that those folks wouldn't mind the long-as-my-arm telephoto lens so long as I didn't ever point it directly at them. I never figured on them to walk purposefully, almost, and repeatedly through my frame. Or to approach me, full-frontal(!), to talk camera gear.

What was I thinking!!!

Never again, never again.

Lesson learned.

*parts of this photo have been excessively blurred in deference to the comfort of readers.

Tres leches

Today's science experiment

Something about baking, as opposed to cooking, makes it much less intimidating to me. And making cupcakes, well... they're just plain fun!

While out and about yesterday (truthfully, I was lost at the time) I stumbled across a little bake shop that had tres leches (Spanish for three milk) cupcakes as their special of the day. I'd always wanted to try this Latin American specialty, so I forked over the $5.00 for two of them.

They were yummy enough (addictive, honestly) that I decided to try making them myself today. I followed the recipe I found here and... oh my goodness, these are so delicious! According to my taste tester, they're even better than the ones I bought yesterday!

Tres leches is traditionally a cake, but it's so super rich that I almost think it's better suited to cupcake form... you know, just a couple bites. These aren't your traditional cupcakes, either, because if they're made right and drenched in milk, you'll want a spoon for all the sweet goodness at the bottom.

: )

1/365

New coffee pot, new camera, new life... why not a new photo project, too?!?

I'm trying out the 365 Days Project to take a photo a day for the next year. Sounds pretty easy for someone as camera addicted as me, right? I figure it'll be a sweet way to chronicle this first year in a new place. I also have a new camera - the new iPhone 4S - and it combined with Hipstamatic is the perfect toy!

I'm not sure how often I'll share pics from the project here, but considering the difficulty I'm having with writing regular posts to this blog, if nothing else, a photo a day will at least give me something to blog about. The truth is, I have plenty to blog about, but the difficulty lies in how much to share and what to keep close to my heart. I imagine I'll work that out with time and practice. For now it still feels like too much, as if too many people are reading over my shoulder...

Anyway, about the new coffee pot...

; )

The cheapo Mr. Coffee died yesterday when I was just desperate for a cup...

Coffee this way reminds me of my dad and of camping. I love the smell of it cooking on the stove. It's especially yummy this way, I think, but it takes forever to be ready. So today I snapped a pic while I waited.

Anyone else out there prefer perked coffee over drip-brewed? Any hints for getting the basket contraption out of the pot without burning my fingers or should I go to the garage for that camping tool?

: )

8/100

Late in the week at New River, Beth G. and I had separated ourselves for an hour or so from the "serious birders" in order to photograph the Glade Creek Mill at Babcock State Park. It's a very pretty setting and deserved some time of its own.

So Beth set up her tripod and we scrambled around on the rocks in the middle of the creek for a perfect view of the mill... of course I was distracted the whole time by the fishermen who station themselves along the way. I'm always on the prowl for interesting strangers to photograph, but more often than not, my shyness gets in the way of asking for a photo.

So this guy approached us, once we had given up on photography and decided to go back to birding, to ask us what we were doing there that day and where we were from, etc.

We told him we were there to look at birds and his response was, "The birds are all dead."

Huh?

And he told us about, how, as a kid up at dawn, there used to be a deafening sound of song from birds. He doesn't hear that anymore. Doesn't hear birds singing, at all. So they're all dead.

Huh?

Mind you, his accent was pretty thick, so maybe I misheard him.

; )

In my devilishly charming sort of way I suggested that maybe his hearing was just going... that birds were still singing, but his ears were just too old to hear them, maybe.

; )

This was the moment when I asked for his photo. It's one of my favorites.

This photo is #8 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at Flickr 100 Strangers or www.100Strangers.com

A Picturesque view of Olana

This photo is mostly about the clouds for me...

(god, I love a wide-angle lens!)

But there's the whole Persian mansion thing at Olana and finding a more complete view of it was very difficult. Frederic Church designed it that way; he wanted the landscape to be experienced in *glimpses* or a particular, planned sequence of views...

The other photographers at Camp that weekend approached their work very seriously and with tripods, lining up to take (presumably) the same photo as the person before and behind.

(blech!)

I wandered around and in Gorilla-photographer mode ran down this hill with arms extended... briefly considered a child-like roll, even...

(but for the camera equipment and the embarrassment of being caught in the act!)

I turned around and found the mansion perched beside a maple tree afire...

: )

A Ming vase can be well-designed and well-made and is beautiful for that reason alone. I don't think this can be true for photography. Unless there is something a little incomplete and a little strange, it will simply look like a copy of something pretty. ~John Loengard, "Pictures Under Discussion"

25

I pick the prettiest part of the sky and I melt into the wing and then into the air, till I'm just soul on a sunbeam. ~Richard Bach

Yes, I'm still checking off items from last year's list...

: )

Kite flying has always looked like such fun to me and a little boy at the beach on Labor Day weekend with a stunt kite inspired me to get my own. A stunt kite has two lines for control and is not anything one can put up into the sky and tie off to a beach chair to be forgotten while you sunbathe.

You have to manage this thing and boy, is it fun! A gentle (or not so much) tug on either the right-handed or left-handed line will set the kite diving in whichever direction... the wind plays its hand and the kite is making loop the loops in a dangerous spiral towards someone's umbrella...

Crash!!

There was much giggling and some cheering, even... a brisk wind and the sun low on the beach at Cape May... the lighthouse behind us... the curiosity of an Amish family out for a seaside afternoon...

I hadn't felt so lighthearted in a long while.

And next I want to learn how to do tricks!

: )

25 in last year's 39 by 40.

Blackberry

It's hard to appreciate in this photo, but when the sun hits it just right...

: )

So long as it gets me to work and back I'm happy, but a new car is kind of an occasion...

and this one makes me laugh when I see it...

IT'S PURPLE!!

and it reminds me not to take myself too seriously...

(important!)

I christened it properly this evening with a trip to the beach and a gallon of sand.

4 (redo)

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.

~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

So earlier this evening I sat on my little patio wiggling my freshly-painted toes in a roasting pan filled with sand and seashells and water from the Pacific Ocean.

I smiled and giggled and hoped my neighbors couldn't see what I was doing.

The sand and seawater and roasting pan were presented to me a while back in a cardboard box with instructions on how to affect the above photo.

The seashells were mine, collected on a trip last year along my familiar eastern coast, but added for the sake of realism.

;-)

Can anyone, by the way, explain to me why NJ beaches are devoid of proper seashells?

Anyway so... it's not exactly what I had in mind for #4, but it'll do for now and I learned a couple things:

sand from that other coast is very pebbly and must feel nice underfoot

the sea is just as salty-tasting on the other side of the country

of course I tasted it!

(that wasn't in the instructions, tho)

it's good to have friends who travel to far-flung places and are as nutty as you

(or maybe more so)

if you're going to do anything as silly as this, it's best to save it for that moment when the mood strikes you at the end of a very long Terrible Tuesday when you're sick of being the mean-social-worker-lady.

(silliness is an excellent challenge to meanness)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Another attempt at 4 in last year's 39 by 40. I haven't quite perfected the new list just yet.

Yesterday

A visit to NYC...

(which felt kinda counterintuitive on Memorial Day Weekend, considering the horrendous traffic heading OUT of the city)

but I live at the beach

(lucky me, I know)

;-)

I saw Strawberry Fields, finally, and was reminded of my best friend growing up and her total adoration of all things John Lennon...

I wandered around The Ramble in Central Park looking for photographic opportunities and good birds...

and loving the fun edge-aberrations of MevetS' wide-angle lens.

I was prowling for stranger pics and found many...

NYC is especially good for that!

A happy bride on a beautiful day...

Somewhere along those wooded paths, by a bridge, we came upon a drumming group... but this one had singers!

My sense was that they were Cuban and this old guy...

;-)

He totally stole my heart and my imagination and reminded me, somehow, of a long-dead uncle who I wish had lived long enough to share his stories with me..

I very nearly got run over by a bus to take this shot on 42nd street...

NYC is madness!!

death by bus or yellow cab, I wondered, as my short life flashed before my eyes

It's Fleet Week and Steve forced me to talk to lots of handsome sailors...

;-)

Who insist they HAVE TO wear the uniform and don't do it just to pick up girls...

(Right.)

The real reason for this crazy goose-chase across NYC was Manhattanhendge, which we somehow missed...

??

At the end of the day, in Times Square, I felt very much like a country-bumpkin, out of my element, distracted with the bright lights and the madness of city life... and very glad for the little patch of sand waiting for me at home by the sea.

: )