Well, we have reached the end of week six. It’s been a month and a half. This week was significant and busy. The snow has stayed with us until today, and I spent much of the week preparing for our Travel Club Annual banquet, which took place last Thursday. Today, we went to Olympia for our grandson’s 14th birthday. And yet, here’s this week’s album. Enjoy. Don’t forget: if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. Alternatively, you can return every day to see them on the page labels 365 above in the menu bar.
We drove to Olympia today to celebrate our grandson’s 14th birthday. The family has a pond behind their house, and today, a striking blue heron graced the pond. I took some posed photos, but I wish I had captured the heron in flight. I did get some shots of it in flight, but they weren’t as good as I would have liked, so you get this one instead.
I used to play chess all the time when I was in high school and college, but I haven’t played much since then. I tried teaching my grandson, but chess can’t compete with Fortnite. It’s just not exciting or fast-paced enough. However, I still have the board, and I thought it might make a nice capture for my macro 60mm.
In downtown Redmond, I found these chairs. They looked so sad yet so colorful. Colorful because they are, but sad because no one is sitting in them with all those colors. The reason? It’s freakin’ cold. The snow is finally melting, but it’s a different kind of cold. It’s a damp and foggy cold that I hate.
Tonight was our annual Trilogy Travel Club banquet. We had a fantastic time, and at the end of the night, we played an exciting game of Trilogy Travel Trivia. There were 25 fairly challenging questions, plus a couple of tie-breakers. I took some photos while the answers were being read, and this was a good friend (and my predecessor as club president) who looked perplexed by one of the answers.
We rarely see decent sunsets where we live. There are too many trees, and we aren’t up high. But tonight’s sunset was beautiful, especially the clouds. My best buddy in Canada always teases me because I love taking pictures of clouds, while he prefers a perfectly clear sky. I believe clouds add character to the sky. I wish this one had more pink, but I still like it, especially with the silhouette of the trees at the bottom.
When I looked back at last week’s photos, I realized I hadn’t posted one of Keeley. So here, tonight, is our favorite dog, who we’ve had for more than a month. She is settling in so well. We actually had guests on Sunday, and she handled it very well. Now, if we can get her to be friends with other dogs in a confined space, we’ll be all set.
One type of photo that I take a lot of is panoramas. I love capturing something that I can see, but my camera needs assistance to do so. I never take them with my iPhone, and this one is no exception. This photo was created using 12 individual images, which were then stitched together in Photoshop. I’ve been doing this kind of photography for years and one of my other panos I consider to be the second-best photo I’ve ever taken. This specific one was taken about a mile from our house on a golf course blanketed in snow. The sun was out, it was thirty degrees Fahrenheit, and it was just a glorious, albeit very cold, day.
When a moment in front of me appears to be particularly special, whether it be by beauty or experience, I capture it. I usually find a reason to justify taking that photo – symmetry, or color, or contrast – and it’s my hope that my photography sheds light onto what I see and do on a daily basis. —Connor Franta
