Week 154 Photo Challenge: Crowds

The new photo challenge cards have been a bit more involved then the previous two packs.  It's been taking all of us a bit longer to come up with photos. My Guy and I spend most of our time in a small town, which can limit our photo opportunities. My Girl lives in the big city, but she now has a full time job, with a commute. So she doesn't have as much time as when she was a college student. Consequently, we seemed to have shifted to a monthly schedule on our photographs. We're just going to roll with that.  

That last photo challenge was:

Living in a small town, crowds are a relative thing.  The only crowds around here are things like the high school sports, graduation, and the art festival.  We don't have a kid in school anymore, so we aren't tied into those activities anymore.  The art festival isn't till June. So I went with the only place we routinely see more than 10 people.  

Kate: The Church Crowd

 
We usually attend the vigil Mass on Saturday night, that church crowd is mostly the more senior members of the parish. Our church is a bit plain for a Catholic Church, but that's because the founders of this parish were more focused on works then on the building.  When we started here more than 30 years ago, it had the reputation for being the rebel parish in the diocese. They've since combined our parish with the more conversative parish downtown, not so much because the parish is troublesome, more so because of the dwindling numbers of priests.  

My Guy went a completely different route, literally. He spends most of his time out on long walks or long bike rides these days, so he sees a completely different type of crowd.  

My Guy: The Wind Sweeping Down the Plains Crowd

He's more likely to find cows or horses out on the back roads he rides on. I'm not sure where exactly he took this photo, but it really shows just how flat it is here and how much sky you can see.  Our spring weather this year has been stormy, which does make for some dramatic skies. Those clouds do wonderful things to the light this time of year.  

My Girl took advantage of her big city location to find her photo. 

My Girl: This Picture Cost Me $100

She was able to find last minute, discounted tickets for a Raye concert last weekend.  The advantage of living in Houston is there are lots of concerts. If not in Houston, Dallas is only 4 hours away. Still concert tickets have gotten expensive. She is selective about which ones she attends.  

Of the three, it's a toss up between My Guy's and My Girl's photos for my favorite. Both are very different, but both are interesting photos.  

My Guy and I probably have an advantage with the new photo challenge. 

The summer wildflowers are just getting going here.  So we should have a good opportunity to get some new photos. Since My Girl lives in town, it may be harder for her to get a shot.  

Photo Play: March 2026

March was cool and dry. We had fires south of town that were really scary. Thankfully those were pretty quickly contained.  But there were a lot of days when the smoke on the air just made being outside miserable. By mid month the temperatures had warmed up enough so that you could see a few things blooming here and there. There was enough going on that my camera came out of the bag a bit more frequently.     

Unless otherwise noted, all photos taken with a Canon 70D DSLR with a Tamron 18-400 mm telephoto lens.  

There was one rainy day early in March. It wasn't nearly enough to take the edge of what had been a very dry winter.  But it did make for some interesting through the window photography. 

You can see the tree is just starting to get its leaves, but the berries haven't fallen off just yet.  It reminds me of a very soft focus oil painting.  

We needed to run some errands one day mid March, something My Guy isn't fond of.  So I bribed him with a walk along Pathfinder and lunch after the errands. That was a productive day on the photography front.  

Fallen Tree

Red Buds

More Redbuds

Toothwort

Virginia Creeper

Winter's Left Overs

Winter's Left Overs II

The spring flower are always fun to see and they are one of my favorite things to photograph. They are easy targets. It's harder to photograph a landscape that is still mostly brown. But the bright red mixed with the deep green of the Virginia Creeper against that textured tree surface is pretty eye catching. That's probably my favorite photo from the walk.  For the downed tree and the brown leaves, it's all about capturing the textures.   

I don't normally include photos from my sewing room. Those are usually pretty focused on showing what the project looks like.  Every once in a while I do take one that is just a bit different from my typical.  

Taken with my old Sony Cyber-Shot DSC 9V, this close up is more about the textures and colors than it is about showing progress on the project.  

So March wasn't a bad month, I did actually use my camera. We were on vacation in April, so the camera came out of the bag more then normal.  I should have at least a couple of shots to post from our wanderings in Texas.  

Photo Play: January and February 2026

My quilting efforts this year have been pretty good. Not so my photography efforts.  One of my goals for 2026 was to take at least one photo per week.  Hasn't happened.  So there aren't a lot of photos from the first couple of months in the year. Though looking back, I did try more in January than I did in February.  But in the end, only 2 photos from each month made the cut for this post.  

All photos taken with a Canon 70D DSLR with a Tamron18-400 mm telephoto lens.  

It was incredibly cold in January, so being outside was just not fun. Both January photos show something warm. 

My Guy likes to bake when it's too cold to be out and about outside. These were a new recipe, brown butter cookies.  They were very yummy and didn't last very long as they were wonderful with coffee or hot tea. I thought this photo would look just right in a cookbook. 

I was reading a photography book in January, "Extraordinary Everyday Photography" by Jed Manwaring. The book is about capturing the details of everyday life, the stuff you see all the time. I snapped this shot at lunch one day. 

 

My Guy spends most of the winter in very lived in flannel shirts.  You can just barely see his glasses peaking out of the top of that pocket. I'm not sure it's a great shot technically, but it makes me smile.  It's so easy to take those weekend lunch times, with him in his slightly frayed flannel shirts sitting across from me for granted. So maybe there something to capturing those every day details we just don't consciously think of?    

February was more cold, cloudy days. Everything was still mostly brown. I did brave a walk one day early in the month and took some interesting shots. 

Any guesses?  Both photos are of a frozen lake.  The first one reminds me of sand, rather than ice.  

That's it for the first two months of the year. With spring making an appearance about mid March, I did get out with the camera a bit more that month. We were on vacation in April and the camera was out when we were hiking. I've not taken much since.  I haven't finished reading the photography book either. I'm going to need to change my game a bit if I want to do more on the photography front.  

Week 153 Photo Challenge: Skate Park

It's been almost a month since the last post on our photo challenge. This new deck of cards we started late last year has some challenging subjects, such as this one:

My Guy and I were going to go photograph at our local skate park.  He got there first and took this photo. 

All that remains of the skate park is the sign and a slab.  The skate park was opened in 2020 and was really nice.  I've searched our local news sources, but don't find any info on why it was removed.  

We decided to end the challenge with just My Guy's photo.  One of the problems with trying to photograph a skate park, is having a camera around kids when you don't have a kid there. That can be  unsettling to a lot of people and none of us wanted to have a run in with an upset parent or the local police.  

I'm not sure the next challenge card is any easier.  

It will be interesting to see what we all come up with. I have a couple of ideas.  Fingers crossed they aren't the same ones My Guy has.  

Week 152 Photo Challenge: Flowers in Bloom

The photo challenge card for week 152 was perfect for this time of year.  Maybe not easy, but definitely doable.  

All three of us were able to get photos this week without having to fudge on the parameters.  

Kate: Redbud Blooms

The cold temps early in the week pretty much killed the blooms on the Bradford Pear trees, but the Redbuds were still blooming.  Maybe the freeze didn't affect them as much as many of the trees didn't have full blooms. You can see from my photo there are still lots of buds that haven't bloomed yet. 

My Guy took his photo before the late weekend freeze.  

My Guy: Pathfinder Plum

   

He caught these plum blooms at just the right time in the day.  It's hard not to love that soft lighting.  The hard freeze pretty much killed the plum flowers too, so he timed his photo just right.  

Being a working girl has made it harder for My Girl to get photos most weeks.  She did make it work this week. 

My Girl: This is Why I Can't Have Real Flowers

If you could see the very edges of this Lego bouquet, you'd see tiny little bite marks. Queenie, her cat, enjoys flowers. Mostly to eat, not to look at. My Girl learned pretty early on, no fresh flowers in the apartment.  So she makes do with the Lego variety.  

We all enjoyed this week's challenge card as it was one of the easy ones. Next week's photo card is going to be a challenge.  

We actually have a skate park here in town. I'm sure there is one somewhere close to My Girl.  The problem is taking photos of people, particularly children, that don't know you. It makes people very uncomfortable.  So not sure where we'll each go with this. This challenge make take a few weeks.    

Week 151 Photo Challenge: Water Splashes

It's been over 2 months since my last photo challenge post.  The new deck of photo prompts we are using are a lot more challenging then the previous two decks.  On the one hand, it's fun to have the challenge. On the other, some of them require specific conditions and very special set ups to capture.  That just takes more time and effort. Even My Guy struggled to get good shots for the last challenge card. 

I really tried the experimental approach and just didn't get anything photo worthy at all.  So as we often do in these challenges, I went with a different interpretation.  

Kate: Splash Initiator

Capturing the splash was very elusive, but after our big snow storm back in January, I did capture a drop just starting to separate from one of the ice cycles on the tree outside the office window. A splash starts with a water drop, so I just photographed a different part of the sequence.   

My Guy's photo is from about the same time period.  

My Guy: Snow Melt Splashes

This was taken in one of the local creeks just after the snow fall back in January.  Definitely a nice splash, but not one created from an experiment.

I kept hoping to get a better shot. I did try to capture some splashes during our last big rain storm, but those didn't really work out either. Grad Girl just didn't have the time to play with splashes. Since she's not working in a lab these days, but is still working a full time job with a commute in Houston traffic, subjects and time for photography have been a bit narrow for her.  So she really struggled with the last two challenges.  When I sent her the next challenge card, she was happy to see something she could do.  

  

With the spring flowers just starting to bloom, we should all be able to get photos sooner, rather than later.  

Photo Play: 2025 Summary, 2026 Ambitions

My blog is mostly about the quilty stuff that goes on in my sewing room. If you are here for that, I won't be offended if you skip this post. 

Since I've retired, my goal has been to do more photography and learn to do it better. I've been retired a little over 3 years at this point and I'm not sure there has been much improvement in the more or the better aspirations.  Looking at how I did on my 2025 goals says a lot. 

1. Take more pictures.  Nope that didn't happen.  I only had 79 photos I felt that were worthy of posting, versus 112 from last year.  

2. Take more walks, go more places:  The more walks didn't happen, nor did I go more places. But I do think I used my cell phone more this year to take photos while we were out and about.  

3. Continue to learn my camera functions: Major fail, no effort at all on this point.

4. Keep studying photography via books/videos: Another major fail, I didn't read any books on photography in 2025. 

Before writing up this year's ambitions, I reviewed the last 3 year's photos, with My Guy's help and picked one that stood out for each year. Maybe not the best technical photo of the year, but that the one that elicited a response from both of us.  

2023

Canon 70D w/Tamron 18-400 mm lens

2024

Canon 70D w/Tamron 18-400 mm lens

2025

Canon 70D w/Tamron 18-400 mm lens

None of these three are my typical subjects. The Tamron lens is probably my most versatile, so it's the one in use most of the time.  What else did my review show?  My shots from 2024 included a lot of, "what if I tried this". There was almost none of that last year. Photos of flowers and butterflies were more than 90% of my photos Those are my favorite subjects. They aren't bad subjects, but maybe not the most interesting. 

So what's the plan for 2026?  

1. Take a photo every week. Hopefully that will encourage me to look harder for interesting subjects. 

2. Study both photography techniques and my camera operation.  One photography book a month, a chapter on my reference books on the cameras.  

I'm going to leave it at just two for this year.  Hopefully both will get me taking more and better photos. 

Photo Play: November and December 2025

November was busy and December was too. I had a hard time getting into the holiday season last year, so just didn't get my camera out like I normally do.  Since there weren't very many photos, it seemed best to just combine the two months.

Compared to all the I Phone shots from October, all the November photos were shot with the Canon 70D with the Tamron 80-400 mm telephoto lens.  All the photos come from an early November walk along the local walking trail. We don't see peak fall colors here till early to mid November. The trees change just as the autumn winds pick up. Our fall colors don't last long. 

The days were still pretty warm in early November. A few butterflies, like this Common Buckeye were still out and about. 

The only interesting photo from December was the one I took with the I Phone 12 of our small Christmas Tree.

I didn't use a special filter (at least I don't think I did, the I Phone sometimes does it's own thing).  I like the colored streaks from some of the lights.  

That's the last of my best of photos from 2025.  I'll take a look back and see how what made the cut fits with the photography goals for 2025.  I know I didn't do as much as I had hoped, but there some nice shots from last year.  That's enough.  

Photo Play: October 2025

It's been a while since my last Photo Play post.  I need to catch up on what last year's photography looked like before I decide my photographic direction for 2026. The plan is to review and wrap up last year's efforts before the end of this month. 

Life was busy in November and December last year. After spending the last week of October in Houston with My Girl, we were back down there the last week of Thanksgiving.  Which meant I was really busy catching up at home and didn't take much time to look over my photographs.  I wasn't sure there would be anything to post, I couldn't remember if I'd taken much of anything. But looking back, we took a trip to Eureka Springs, AR early in the month.  I didn't use my big camera much, but the I-Phone got a work out.  

Fountain in Downtown Eureka Springs

Arkansas had the same warm autumn we did, things were still really green and blooming the first week of October.  

Leaf Detail

Wingstem Seed Head

Asters

Blue Asters

Some leaves were changing colors, you could find a few on the ground here and there.  

Autumn Color of a Virginia Creeper leaf

While we were in Arkansas, we took a trip over to War Eagle Mill. It's a working mill and they grind their own flour. During Covid when bread making took off, the only place we could find bread flour was to order it directly from this mill.  My Guy stocked up while we were there and we took a walk around the grounds. The mill wheel is driven by War Eagle Creek. Around one side of the mill, I found this poor fella. (Taken with a Canon 70D/Tamron 18-400 mm telephoto lens).  Makes you take that warning sign just a bit more seriously doesn't it?  

Prisoner or Victim?

We also took a day to hike the Leatherwood Lake Trial.  (Canon 70D/Tamron 18-400 mm telephoto lens)

First of the Autumn Leaves?

Lake Fauna

My Guy normally carves a couple of pumpkins before Halloween.  They were sitting in the entry way for a couple of days.  Have you every looked up close at the texture of a pumpkin?  (Canon 70D/Sigma 105 mm macro lens)

Just to show how wacky the weather was in Oklahoma this fall, the following picture was taken in late October. The roses were still blooming and the Monarchs hadn't made it all the way south just yet. Taken with my I-Phone 12. 

My photos from October look more like spring than autumn. That's just how it was this year. If I have a favorite, its the last photo. But not a bad effort for the month.  The I Phone camera works pretty well.  There wouldn't be so many nice photos, if my only camera was the DSLR.