Posts Tagged ‘#photo’

Flowers For Mother’s Day

Posted: May 7, 2016 in Opinions and Observations
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On this Mother’s Day, I would like to give you flowers.  Well, pictures of them anyway!  Each year our local Zoo and Botanical Garden has a tulip display that is quite beautiful.  The varieties and colors are just dazzling and the background landscape of the Cincinnati Zoo is hard to beat.  We go almost every year and as usual I bring my camera.  It is difficult to say if one flower is prettier than the other so I will let you pick your own.

So for Mother’s Day, have a few flowers from me, and enjoy your day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Place for the Living – A Home for the Dead

Posted: May 3, 2016 in Opinions and Observations
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In many cities and small towns throughout the globe, there are places where the living take comfort by visiting the dead.  Cemeteries provide a common burial place for relatives, ancestors and the unknown traveler.  Many believe these to be sacred grounds, spaces to reconnect and remember those before us.  For some a look ahead to our own mortality.  The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band had a line I often think of from one of their songs called “Buy for Me the Rain”.  It looks at this from a slightly different angle; “Gravestones cheer the living, dear, they’re no use to the dead“.  All are valid thoughts and should be respected regardless of your personal views.   

 In my town there is a beautiful cemetery.  My wife and I have gone there for years to walk, watch spring take back the landscape and follow the seasons as winter inevitably returns. I often bring my camera as I cannot deny the beauty. People come there to paint, jog, stroll, get married and seek a type of peace hard to capture in the surrounding city.  The trees, surrounding lakes and flowers keep demanding our return.  Over the years I have taken many pictures and I would like to share a small sample with you.  This is where my mother and younger brother had their ashes placed, so it is a special place for me in so many ways.  While not intending to capture gravestones or monuments, they are a big part of its beauty.  Tourist attractions often include Spring Grove Cemetery for travelers and those not familiar with the city.  Fall is gorgeous there.  Peace can be felt there.  I hope some of these pictures will give you an idea why it draws so many people again and again. 

 

Perfect Pumpkins and Screaming Contests

Posted: April 18, 2016 in Opinions and Observations, Uncategorized
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I make music and take pictures, but my wife is the creative half of the team.  She does it all.  I have threatened to list her abilities here before but none of us have that much time!  She loves to carve pumpkins during the Halloween season and would other times if pumpkins were around.  We would have the kids and grand kids come over and carve pumpkins in the back yard.  It was so much fun and the kids really loved it too.  She made the mistake of telling a few friends and the next year they invited themselves.  We all had a blast.  I am not great in the carving department so I would gut them for the little kids, make sure music was playing and everyone had a hot drink and a perfect pumpkin to work on.  It was a great family event and each year we looked forward to pumpkin carving time.

It seemed like a harmless mistake.  Friends told other friends.  Each year we had more and more people coming over.  We provided the pumpkins and you could take yours home after showing them off to everyone.  The carving tools got more elaborate.  The patterns and artwork more challenging and the carved pumpkins were AWESOME.  I served more hot drinks, gutted more pumpkins than I could count.

Soon we had more events; we had a screaming contest to see who had the most blood-curdling ear-piercing screams (the little kids were unbeatable!).  We had walnut trees and as a result a walnut throwing contest.  Haunted trails through the woods.

Then came the hay rides!  Not to be outdone, we had a haunted house the next year using lights, fog machines and other equipment from the bands I played in.  People started bringing soup and chili to share so we had contests for the best dish.  We started buying pumpkins by the skid!   It now took almost a month to plan the events and get masks, haunted house, hay rides and everything else ready for the big day.

My wife and I were so busy entertaining that she could no longer take the time to carve pumpkins!  This is why the whole thing started and now she could not carve any of her own.  WE were exhausted by the end of the day and even though we had a great time and everyone loved the event, we looked around and decided not to do it next year.  Or the year after.

Fortunately, friends of ours started their own carving events and we went over to theirs to carve pumpkins for a few years until they moved out of state!

With that in mind, here are just a few of the pictures.  Maybe one day close to Halloween I will post the winners of the screaming contest!

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Simple Fascination

Posted: March 21, 2016 in family, Opinions and Observations, Uncategorized
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Below you will see what are probably my favorite pictures that I have ever taken.  For complete disclosure, you will want to know the subjects of the picture are my eldest daughter, Teneca, and her eldest daughter, Mary Jane, so I am admittedly and undeniably influenced.  These pictures were taken a few years ago in a local wooded area that leads to a small and well-hidden city park.  During our walk, they stopped to look at the amazing beauty of nature.  Teaching, sharing, and appreciating the fall paradise.  These wonderful times are available for those willing to look and listening to sounds of creatures all but hidden in plain site.

Seeing the smile, the simple fascination and pleasure of life all around, mixed with love and the comfort of family makes me feel young; glad to be a part of a continuing story.  To have played my part earlier and to watch it played out again.  Nothing but awesome.  I believe we can influence the future of our children’s lives in positive ways when we take the time at an early age.  You just can’t accomplish this in schools or on-line.

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Everything Has It’s Place

Posted: December 14, 2015 in Photography, Poetry
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The moon is high

The river is wide

The feeling is right

Everything has its place.

 

Gorgeous colors

From Spring to Fall

Changes year to year

Each at their own pace.

The sky is blue

The sun is hidden

The grass is growing

Everything has its place.

 

We miss so much

Turning in circles

Looking for fortune

Everyone makes mistakes.

It’s easy to do, I’ve done it too.

Everyone makes mistakes

It’s easy to do, so will you,

Everyone makes mistakes.

 

 

Tsunami of White

Posted: November 30, 2015 in Photography
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There is a park on a hill overlooking the river and the bustle of downtown.  The fog was rolling in waves from hill side to hill side as it simultaneously engulfed the valley.  The sun light hitting the fog on the hill side I had chosen was finally blocked by the isolated tree. I hope you enjoy a second of calm as you step back and look at life from a distant perch.

As you follow the river the fog thickens and becomes a wall of clouds that constantly shifts as it surrounds different sections of the city.   Above it all you can see the shifts of blinding fog to sunlight-pierced clarity.  Each scene lasting for brief moments and then carried away, re-shaped – as more city blocks are swallowed in a tsunami of white.  Inside the fog the sunlight is reflected all around you; every where you look is toward a bright light…. what us novices might think of as ‘snow blind’.  Thicker fog will darken and then block off the sun with a moving illusion of unknown forms appearing and disappearing, melting and rising with the breeze.

My First And Only Selfie!

Posted: November 12, 2015 in Photography
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Back before it was the thing to do, my wife and I took this picture.  Literally.  One of us aimed it and the other one snapped the photo.  But this was a special occasion.  This is one of the few photos of our wedding.  We got married in the winter in a local park overlooking the city.  It was an extremely small wedding, but we did have a few uninvited guests.  There were a couple of reporters looking for something to write about on a day when there is nothing to write about.  They saw my wife and myself, with our daughter Alisa in hand, as we were reading the wedding vows that we had written to each other and  exchanging roses. We were standing under the small gazebo in the freezing cold; as calm as you please.

They came up and started a conversation, I figure they thought we were just a couple of crazy people that wanted to know what the heck we were doing.  When they realized it was a wedding ceremony, they decided this was something to write about!  They took our pictures – the only others taken of our wedding – and wrote an article that ended up on the 1st page of the People – Events section.  The article was warm and friendly and captured the humor that you can see in our selfie.  If it is true that the bigger and fancier the wedding, the shorter the marriage will be…. we got it made!

Would You Sit Down and Talk to Me?

Posted: October 30, 2015 in Opinions and Observations
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In frequent conversations with my family we talk about articles and posts from fellow bloggers and how glad we are that we have met an amazing group of talented people. Many of us have challenges to deal with and we use creativity to describe and/or deal with those challenges.  You never fail to amaze and inspire me.  From articles that are so funny I can’t stop laughing to personal experiences that are so moving I try not to cry, I look forward to your blog posts and comments.  There are those in this community I will keep learning from.  The more we learn of each other, the more natural it would seem if we could actually meet.

That is when our conversation shifts to what would you do if you won the lottery or big inheritance (the latter is not possible for me – but still more likely than winning the lottery!!)?  We discussed that it would be really cool if we could arrange a common time and place on the globe where we could all meet.  Or travel the globe and meet you each one at a time.  It would be amazing for me to compare my internal images of fellow bloggers and compare them to actually meeting you.  I feel like I know many of you already and I do not think that I would be very surprised by the ‘person’ you are.  But I’ll bet in spite of my internal images, I would not recognize any of you if I met you on the street!  I would love to record and document the entire meeting.  Interview everyone, even have you sing on a few of my songs if you are up for it.  Create a community blog of the event.  Give promised hugs to a number of you.  To see the eyes behind the words.  To hear you laugh.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love the blog and the openness we can achieve by that same separation. I don’t want a bunch of you knocking on my door at all hours – though I might want to knock on yours!!

Gotta go now and buy my lottery ticket!

Lightning Strikes and Water Gun Geysers

Posted: October 27, 2015 in Photography
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I would like to post another set of pictures from a Maui trip years ago.  It reminds me again of the power and force nature puts behind everything on this planet.  As an observer, viewer or bystander, we sometimes miss the true impact.  But when you are in its presence the impressions can be astounding.  My wife and are were standing on our porch a few nights ago watching a lightning storm pass over our house.   Heavy rain at times kept us close to the house. We watched the storm move – pointing out lightning strikes and the strength of related thunder We noted of their distance.  I had just said something about bolts traveling a good distance before going to ground as the last distant thunder receded.

As we looked in the direction of the storm, we were both immediately jettisoned into hyper-awareness as a bright ball flared and jumped between the rain clouds and a huge oak tree in our yard.  We were frozen by a sound I cannot describe and the combined impact of thunder and electricity so close to us.  It looked like the massive trunk of the tree pulsed or absorbed the bolt. The next day we saw long strips of bark blasted out in front of the tree, which otherwise continues to appear as if it was not affected at all.  I wish I had my camera at the time but the odds are poor and it would not describe the event.  Our ears were ringing for a along time.

These pictures also try to show you the force behind the waves hitting the rough coast line. Caves and then chimneys are created over the eons as water blasts against the walls of the cave and the resulting giant water gun looks like a geyser spouting out of the rock.  From above, I thought the water was inviting and almost gentle.  As I stood on the top of the cave next to the chimney spout, it was calm and peaceful and I let my guard down.  Every rock and terrace suddenly underwater created a wide pool, with a huge drain in the middle!  Difficult to show in pictures or describe here, but when a strong wave hit inside those cave walls It forced a small lake of water up in the air directly above me.  As it returned to earth with me in its path, it rose from a stream to a tidal wave and I barely had time to crouch down and get a good solid stance. It almost toppled me over and for all I know could have washed me back into the blow hole or over a wall that might as well have been to oblivion!

Pictures can only remind us of that power.  Predictable and gentle events are mild and you can prepare for them, and learn.

From Chicago, With Love

Posted: September 23, 2015 in Photography
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Recently traveling for business I took pictures of the Navy Pier and the Windy City for my daughter, Teneca, as a reminder of her time there in the Navy.  I wanted to share a couple with you.

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