4th of July!

Yes, this post is late, but that is because when I took the photos I was in the midst of the July Scavenger Hunt and many of these photos were contenders for my submissions! But now, here they are!

Pretty flowers in the garden

Pretty flowers in the garden

Scavenger Hunt: Spring!!

Again with the Chrysta Rae Scavenger Hunt! As I said in the last post, Chrysta Rae gave us 10 prompts that we had to hunt for and photograph. I revealed my balloon picture yesterday, as well as the process I went though to take it.

Today I will reveal SPRING!

My submission for SPRING!

This one was difficult for me. I had SO many ideas! Unfortunately, I was unable to DO most of my ideas. Ideally I wanted to take a picture of someone jumping (springing) by a freshwater spring with pretty flowers and a slinky. Every type of spring I could think of. I was unable to get to a spring. This made me sad. I thought of taking a picture of a flower, or a flower with a pencil spring or slinky but I thought that there would be a lot of those kind of pictures. I couldn't think of anything interesting to do with just a slinky, my creativity was failing me. I was completely at a loss of what to do.

Now, I am a teacher, and I am almost always after school with extra help, a club, or just grading or planning. One day there was a group of students staying after, some of our more outgoing and energetic students. They were playing catch while waiting for extra help to start and getting pretty rambunctious. Then I got the idea to make THEM jump for me!

I got a group of them out in the hall and told them they would get extra credit if they helped me out with my project! They were excited to help me out, until I made them jump up and down for a minute straight! I was testing out different settings on my camera and experimenting. The kids weren't too upset, they were getting extra credit after all, and they got to see me sprawl out on the floor in the hall of the school in my pretty work clothes. They thought I was nuts.

OVEREXPOSED! There are really 6 kids in this picture... jumping for a minute straight.

I changed a few of the settings and tried again.

I decided that I hated the lighting and there was nothing I could do to fix it.

I knew I was going to re-take the picture, but I had to figure out when and who I could con into doing it this time. My chance came when I had a pair of kids for extra help a few weeks later. Again, I promised some extra credit if they would jump for me. Again they thought I was nuts for sprawling on the floor (this time in a long flowy skirt!) 

Photo Detour!

On my way home from work today I took an unplanned detour.

In other words, I got lost. Well, not LOST lost, just wrong turn lost. I knew where I was, I had just never been where I was before...

You see, on my way home from picking up some takeout for dinner I got blocked in by traffic and was forced to miss my turn. This then forced me to drive over a bridge.

I hate bridges. Like, really. They freak me out. I get visions of earthquakes (unlikely but not impossible for Massachusetts!) that destroy the bridge and send me and my car plummeting into the water below. Being on a bridge without a car is slightly better, depending on the height of the bridge, but I still prefer to be on the banks and beaches of any body of water.

Anyway, getting off topic! I was forced to drive over a bridge! And, to make it worse, the traffic continued onto the bridge so I had to stay on it for longer than strictly necessary.

When I made it to the other side safe and sound I breathed a sigh of relief and looked around. It was so pretty! There was a little park off to the side, so I pulled off of the road and walked around a bit with my camera. My dinner was not completely forgotten, I grabbed a piece of cornbread to munch on while I wandered.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a large number of ducks floating along in the river!

The bridge I was forced to traverse and many ducks!

More duckies!

My next goal was to take pictures of these little quackers!

It took me a while to get all my ducks in a row... (ah hahaha, I am SO funny, right? ...right? ::sigh::)

The ducks are almost in a row... but not quite!

One, two, three! Three ducks in a row ah-ah-ah!

I was able to get pretty close to one little girl duck. Her beak was messed up. I felt bad for her, I don't think it was impacting her much though. After I got a few pictures of her she flew off back to the group.

There was something wrong with her beak

There were other birds around as well. There were many pigeons, a couple seagulls, and a few other birds here and there.

Seagull flying overhead

One little boy, all dressed up like a hunter- complete with a plastic gun in his belt and a foam sword, ran around chasing pigeons. I think he was intending to slay them. It was pretty adorable.