Work and Play.

And from the archives: selections from a roll of film I processed February 16th, 2003, featuring a study session and a girls’ night. Oh college.

InstaFriday: #JanPhotoADay Part 2

As January comes to an end, so does #janphotoaday. Here are the photos from the rest of the month (the first half are found here):

From top left down: 16) Morning; 17) Water; 18) Something You Bought; 19) Sweet; 20) Someone You Love; 21) Reflection; 22) Your Shoes; 23) Something Old; 24) Guilty Pleasure; 25) Something You Made; 26) Color; 27) Lunch; 28) Light; 29) Inside Your Fridge; 30) Nature; 31) You, Again.

You will notice I have presented these pictures in a much more visually stimulating way than before. That is thanks to the Sweet 16 Storyboard template, available for download from The CoffeeShop Blog. Be sure to visit the site and make a donation so that we can keep getting such handy tools–I know I will be doing so next payday!

There is also a #febphotoaday challenge now going on. Join in!

Color Me: Blades of Grass

The word “palette” is in my blog title, yet this is the first palette I have created.

I heard about a new challenge today and I just had to try, as I have never made my own palette before. Sure, I’ve used the eyedropper tool to select complimentary colors based on colors found in a photo, but I’ve never displayed it before.

If you want to give it a try, join the challenge at leavesnbloom. I heard about this through deb duty photography and used a template found at the coffeeshop blog (seriously–so many useful templates and tools there!).

While I won’t participate every week, it was definitely fun to do something different.

As Simple as Silence

Yesterday I found myself faced with a two-hour window of time between obligations and a recently burned “Best of 2011” mix CD that just had to be listened to. And so I just drove, enjoying the music and the silence of being alone.

I stopped my car at the Iowa Veterans’ Cemetery and drove around a lap before stopping to give a grieving widow her chance to be alone without my interruption.

There, I enjoyed the silence and the reflection on what these men and women have contributed. As far as cemeteries go, it isn’t the most beautiful or charming (yes, I just used those words to describe cemeteries) but its reason for being makes it such a special place.

Sometimes it’s just nice to go somewhere, completely alone, and just reflect or think about nothing at all. Think of things outside of you. Every so often, I just need to drive. I need country roads and hills and signs of life outside of my immediate vision. And I usually end up at cemeteries, not out of morbid fascination but out of the quiet. It had been an interesting twelve hours and I needed that.

* * *

Those flowers found alone in the first picture? The note attached read “Happy Birthday Daddy.” And then my heart just shattered.

Sundays and Soul.

Sleeping in, soul, and sundays. About as simple as it can get.