Ordinary. Extraordinary. Everyday. Last Five Days!

Valentine's week edition. 

Sally Russick gave us a gift this month...fifteen days of photography prompts. The nice thing about Sally's photo challenges...they take a bit of thought as well as just choosing a nice picture. 

Here are our last five prompts:

11. Macro

12. Temptation

13. Sweetness

14. Love

15. Togetherness

11. Tiny signs of spring (okay, they're in a flowerpot in my kitchen....)

12. These little treats are kitty crack. Very tempting to our three cats.

13. Fresh baked chocolate chip cookies.

14. Themed Valentine's Presents: Spicy food and a Sweet movie.

15. Jim and Bebop, two of my favorites, Together!

Lots of love Folks!

An InLinkz Link-up

Focus on Life:Moment of Focus

Exploring a Shallow Depth of Field.

When Sally Russick set our April Moment of Focus photo prompt, a chance to explore using our cameras to capture a picture with shallow depth of field, I warmed to the task of doing something a bit more technical with my camera, which has manual as well as automatic settings. I read Sally's hints, I even read my camera

 manual. I was set.

But, as with other times that I have tried to "go manual" with the camera's settings,   I found that what that camera is best at is doing things on automatic. With an infinite depth of field. Above is the closest I could come with some of the options on the camera.  So I got going in the Picmonkey editing site, and came up with these reasonable facsimiles of altered depth of field. Sally made a video about using Pixlr's photo editing to blur the background, but my computer does not seem to like to play those videos. And frankly, using Pixlr is beyond my capabilities. 

Focal Pixelate

Spotlight

Zoom Blur

Maybe some day I will get the hang of using depth of field to improve my photography. I kind of like that last one. And did you notice what the subject is? Daffodil buds! Spring!!

An InLinkz Link-up

Focus on Life: Checking Out - The Beauty All Around Us!

Um, No, not really....

Yeah. Had a hard time with this week's prompt "Beauty All Around." If you have been following my Focus on Life posts for the past 14 or so months, you might have noticed that I usually have no trouble finding beauty. But for this week, I wanted to capture some natural beauty in my environment. 

But you know that time between full on winter, and balmy spring? We call it Mud Season. Some years it would be over by now. Not this year. I refuse to illustrate Mud Season. 

But I did get out there and searched for beauty. It was not easy. 

I got scratches. I had to look down. I had to walk in mud. And snow, and muddy snow. But near a small brook that drains off a natural spring, which sends up liquid water all winter...I found some rather fragile beauty.  

The very beginnings of pussywillows

Would you believe - skunk cabbage?

And some more skunk cabbage

Mossy rock in the water

Tiny ferns growing out of the moss

Let's see what beauty other people have found.

An InLinkz Link-up

Focus On: Endless Possibilities

 Looking at someone else's work with fresh eyes

This week, Sally Russick, of The Studio Sublime has challenged us to portray "The Possibilities are Endless" in our photography. So I went out and took some pictures of the tiniest hints of spring around my neighborhood. You can see them here: Hopeful Signs. Maybe I jumped the gun, maybe I just couldn't keep these Hopeful Signs to myself.

So I looked around for another subject. And here is what I found. 

A necklace and earrings from Jeannie Dukic's past!

This month I signed up for the 5th Do Over Challenge, sponsored by Jeannie Dukic of Jeannie's Blog. I just received a piece of jewelry that Jeannie made when she was starting out, which she had no intention of offering for sale at this stage in her design career. Rather than take apart these pieces, she offers them to us to "do over!"

As you can see, the piece is made of components with a lot of potential. One might say, "Endless Possibilities!"  There are a ton of Swarovski crystals, and some cute butterflies. Check back on April 21 to see what I have come up with. 

Click here to see what others came up with.

Hopeful Signs!

Lest anyone think that we are sitting here covered in snow, March has worked its magic and here are some pictures I took two days after my last Focus on Life post.

Ice still on the ponds, but it's going fast...

Maples starting to bloom.

Willows turning yellow, next stop, green.

Crow on the offensive against......

Cooper's hawk sitting on a nest!

Cress fed by a bubbling spring.

Okay, these are in my kitchen, and came from the store, but ain't they pretty?