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Posts Tagged ‘weekly photo challenge’

Posted in Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , on January 14, 2012| 4 Comments »

 Weekly Photo Challenge: Peaceful

Mother Nature's art stirs my soul and makes my mind peaceful. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God’s dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnakes and the screech-owl amuse your reverie, may the great sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night.” – Edward Abbey

Southern Utah Canyonlands

I’ve long been an Edward Abby fan and I was delighted when I came across the above quote in a newsy annual Christmas letter from an old boyfriend. He and I, while we split from a romantic relationship, promised to be forever friends. I really like that. It’s the “peaceful” way to live.

While I find most of Abby’s writing anything but peaceful, I do find a sense of calmness in the places he writes about with such passion, especially the places in Southern Utah where I’ve spent a lot of time.

So that’s where I’m taking you today.

Who could not agree with Abbey, that lands like these need no human meddling. -- Photo by Pat Bean

P.S. My canine traveling companion, Maggie, and I had a fantastic day yesterday driving and hiking in Texas’ Hill Country. The drive continues today. I’ll tell you all about it soon.

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Weekly Photo Challenge

Posted in Nature, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , on December 18, 2011| 6 Comments »

“Looking back, you realize that a very special person passed briefly through your life, and that person was you.  It is not too late to become that person again.”   ~Robert Brault

Self Portrait

As I frequently point out, I’m a writer not a photographer. It’s a conscious decision to prioritize my life, which is already too full of the many things I do.  I’ve always wanted it all, but finally had to accept that each thing I do takes a chunk away from something else. 

Since writing is at the top of my important list,  I spend more time with a notepad than a camera.  To assure that I continue doing this, my only camera is a small pocket point-and-shoot. It’s a Canon PowerShot with a decent zoom and image stabilizer that is almost alwaays with me. It has no straps and I carry no tripod so it fits quite nicely in the right-hand pocket of my cargo pants.

Without any extra equipment, however, I was a little perturbed at this week’s photo challenge. I wasn’t sure I could take a decent  self-portrait. 

The problem must have been fermenting in my brain when I visited Brazos Bend State Park yesterday.  While I was standing on a pier that jutted into the water, taking photos of common moorhens and a big old alligator watching them from his tiny island outpost, the solution suddenly appeared below me.

Can you see me?

Self-Portrait -- Photo by Pat Bean

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Breakfast

Posted in African Safari, Nature, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , on November 22, 2011| 2 Comments »

“Expect problems and eat them for breakfast.” — Alfred A. Montapert

This is the setting where my friend, Kim, and I, ate our last breakfast in Africa. The setting is Little Governor's Tent Lodge in Kenya. We were up early to take our last game ride through Masai Mara National Park. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Our breakfast table this morning looked out on herons feeding in the swamp that surrounded our tent lodging. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Wonder

Posted in Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , on November 13, 2011| 4 Comments »

 “From wonder into wonder existence opens.” – Lao Tzu

Thanksgiving Square Chapel, Downtown Dallas -- Photo by Pat Bean

“Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge.” – Abraham Heschel

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” – Greek Proverb

Wondering is healthy. Broadens the mind. Opens you up to all sorts of stray thoughts and possibilities.” – Charles de Lint.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Opportunity

Posted in Nature, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , on October 23, 2011| 4 Comments »

 

The magic of a moonlit sky makes anything seem possible. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour.  I dripped it carelessly, Ah!  I didn’t know, I held opportunity.”  ~Hazel Lee

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Possibilities

Posted in Art, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , , on October 16, 2011| 6 Comments »

My shadow and Maggie become part of the basket ball court art. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 “ Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso

Travels With Maggie

The park across the street from my son’s home in Lake Jackson has a basketball court, but I’ve never seen it used for that purpose.

 

The big green snake with big teeth -- Photo by Pat Bean

Perhaps that is why some young artists – I suspects students from the school next door to the park – decided to brighten it up a bit. While I was away for the summer, they dabbed the rough cement court with color.

The bright images include a river running across the court, a few houses and trees, a hop scotch layout and a couple of gigantic snakes, the kinds of things young artists have been doodling on paper since they could hold a crayon.

I found it enchanting – and so in tune with the week’s photo challenges about possibilities.

 

Grackles join the cacophony of color -- Photo by Pat Bean

“A picture of many colors proclaims images of many thoughts.” – Donna Favors

 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Comfort

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 10, 2011| 3 Comments »

“You may have a dog that won’t sit up, roll over or even cook breakfast, not because she’s too stupid to learn how but because she’s too smart to bother.” — Rick Horowitz

Travels With Maggie

Maggie lives a most comfortable life -- and she gives me comfort. And this was the most comforting think I could thing of to illustrate this week's photo challenge. -- Photo by Pat Bean

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Flowers

Posted in Weekly Photo Challenge, Wildflowers, tagged , , , , on August 24, 2011| 4 Comments »

“Just living is not enough,” said the butterfly, “one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.”  ~Hans Christian Anderson

What's a flower without a butterfly? -- Photo by Pat Bean

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Numbers

Posted in Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , , on June 5, 2011| 5 Comments »

“Originality exists in every individual because each of us differs from the others. We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves.” – Jean Guitton

J.K Rowling added a new number to the world with her Track 9 3/4 to Hogwarts. It's a number Harry Potter fans are not likely to forget. Union Station in St. Louis, Missouri, has a wall depicting the fictional track. I wonder how many people have tried walking through the wall. Just for fun, of course. -- Photo by Pat Bean

By the Numbers

Some numbers stick in our brains.

Your birth date for one. December 25 for another, which as a kid takes way too long to come around, but which comes around faster each year once you’re an adult.

Perhaps you believe, because your grandmother said it was so, that seven is lucky and 13 is not.

Telephone numbers used to be important things that clogged up my brain, but cell phones remember them for me these days. I barely can recall my own number.

But I haven’t forgotten the times table I learned in school, all the way up to 12 times 12. Kids these days use calculators instead of brain space to do the math. I guess it’s necessary because of how much more they have to learn.

The exact number of bird species I’ve seen is stored in my little gray cells, while others keep track, to the penny, of the amount they have in their bank accounts. I’m satisfied with a $10 difference in what I think I have and what the bank says I have.

I check the numbers almost daily, however, to make sure my accounts have not been hacked, and to decide if the bottom line number is large enough for another tank of gas for the road.

The most important number currently in my brain, however, is the number of days before my son comes home from Afghanistan. It’s finally down to about 30.

Whats your number?

“A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” – Plato

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Clouds

Posted in Nature, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , , on June 3, 2011| 9 Comments »

“At the entrance, my bare feet on the dirt floor, here, gusts of heat; at my back, white clouds. I stare and stare. It seems I was called for this: to glorify things just because they are.” – Czeslaw Milosz

 

There could be no better place than Canyonlands National Park's Island in the Sky for cloud watching. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I love taking landscape photos with my Canon digital  pocket camera And I find that sometimes the focus of my photos have more to do with the clouds above than the land below. Here are two photos, taken during visit to Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, Island in the Sky that fit this category. Wouldn’t you agree. 

 

A sky full of clouds above Whale Rock in Canyonlands National Park. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 “Nature is a mutable cloud that is always and never the same.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

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