The Week 45 prompt is Where People Gather.
A few hot spots in Seattle’s Georgetown. First stop, coffee:
All fired up, one can shop till you drop at the Trailer Park Mall:
You may want to get some groovy tunes:
Just beware the narwhal:
Apparently I missed the deadline, but I’m still going to post here. Last week’s them runs the green gamut. Here are a few from the archives, plus one I snapped while at my writing retreat in the rainforest last week.
Dreamy Dahlia
Green Path
Green Caterpillar
And a little bit of a cheat, Marigold Melange from the shop “Marigold and Mint”:
This week’s prompt, in honor of Valentine’s Day, was hearts. I collected quite a few in a Flickr Gallery, but I’m going to show you a few of my favorites here.
I left my heart in San Francisco:
Temple bells, heart clappers. I took this picture in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It was quite common to see bells with the hearts hanging from them, like this:
A string of bleeding hearts, which always remind me of our neighbor Esther, from when I was a child. Esther had a Hummel collection, and she told us if we touched the dolls, our fingerprints would stain them. She also had bleeding hearts in her garden.
Hearts (and bones) loteria at the little Mexican shop on Broadway, on Capitol Hill:
And this coração on a wall in Lisbon, Portugal:
I have to admit, I was having a little trouble with the prompt this week. And then I started looking at my pictures from Yellowstone that I took last summer.
I LOVE this one of the wavy orange bacterial mats in the Grand Prismatic Spring disappearing into the fog:
Here’s the same spring from a higher (and clearer) vantage point:
This pinecone, with its zigs and zags:
And finally, these burnt snags, pointing into infinity, but not straight away:
Yesterday I returned from my week-long and now annual trip to Colorado to ski with my family. Last year I flew home with a bunch of guys who were returning from a motorcycle rally. Apparently their rally is the same time as my family’s annual ski trip. I had mentioned to my parents that this happened last year, and sure enough, when I got to my gate, there was a group of guys returning from their rally.
I am notoriously shy about taking pictures of strangers. I always like to ask permission, which I usually don’t screw up my courage to do. I was standing behind this man while waiting to board the plane. He had a freshly shaved scalp with an elaborate tattoo, a long, grey beard and this particular shirt on. I was admiring the design and asked him if I could take a picture of it. He gave me his permission.
As I pulled out my iPod to take the picture, though, the giant young man behind me gruffly said, “Don’t do that.” Before I could react, the man in front said, “I told her it was okay. It’s just my back.”
My subject didn’t make it easy for me to take the picture, so this was the best I could manage. After I snapped it, I apologized to the man behind him, telling him I didn’t mean to offend him. He waved me off, telling me there was no need.
The men, and they were all men, wore some variation of this Bandidos shirt. They marked themselves publicly, dressed up to signify their membership in this group. The second man’s behavior added weight to my impression of their cohesiveness. They had one another’s backs, literally and figuratively.
Here’s how other people interpreted All Dressed Up this week.
This week’s prompt was My Reflection
I took this a year and a half ago, when my little sister came out to visit the west coast and flirt with the idea of moving out here. I loved that this was the mirror on the outside of the photo booth, and the reminder that you are beautiful was etched into it.
We stayed at the Ace
just down the street from Powell’s in downtown Portland.
We did not heed the advice to “call your mother.”
In other words, we had the time of our lives.
I loved it when they painted the Space Needle “galaxy gold” in honor of the 50th anniversary of the World’s Fair. This is the view I have one block from my apartment. And while I do enjoy a good glimpse of the Needle, it’s always the Olympic mountain range behind it that takes my breath away.
One summer day we overheard two bikers as they passed this view – on a day when the mountains were particularly stunning and the Needle was its usual white. One said to the other: “Wow! Look at the … Space Needle.” We’ve added that to our repertoire of inside jokes!
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And a couple of other “wide open spaces”:
I’ve been thinking a lot about Thailand, because it’s been three years now since I visited. This picture was taken in Ayuttaya, out in the countryside:
And this is Mt. Blanc, taken in France:
This week’s prompt from 52 Photos: Something really small.
I poked around the house and talked with my sweetie. She offered up a few items, and I came up with a few things on my own.
Here are mine:
And here are hers:
And here is the combination:
This week’s prompt was “First Day. The only requirement was that the photo had to be taken on New Year’s Day.
Sometimes a picture speaks for itself, and sometimes there really are no words. Let me just say that this is the front door of an establishment in my neighborhood that styles itself a tavern. A tiny, tiny tavern.
Happy blog birthday to me. I’ve posted 53 times in the last year, averaging once a week. I started this last year with the intention of it helping me find my voice. I wasn’t sure where it would go. It still feels very nascent, and I’m fine with that. There’s lots of room for me to go where I want. A lot of my focus has been on the 52 Photos Project, which has been really fun – combining my love of photography with my love of language and words.
Today I just wanted to share this photo I took on Christmas Eve (above). The light felt so thick, as if it had heft, and I had no idea when I pointed my camera in this direction that it would capture that honeyed sky.
You can get the idea here:
And here:
Thanks for coming along with me on this ride. I’m looking forward to what 2014 will bring!