Snow Monochrome
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photography
Hawthorn Berries and Thorns
By the time I had a chance to photograph the hawthorn berries this year, they were a bit past their prime. You can see some of my photos of the hawthorn tree from last year.
My main goal for this year was to get a shot of the thorns. Do you see the sharp thorns?
For more nature notes or signs of the season, visit Rambling Woods:
Thursday Challenge: Dreidels
Thursday Challenge theme is TOYS (Cars, Dolls, Video Games, Puzzles, Balls, Board Games,…).
Playing with Fire
Each night of Chanukah we light one more candle, until by the eighth night we have eight candles lit. This is to remember the miracle that happened in the Temple a long time ago, when one little container of oil that should have lasted for only one day lasted for eight. In the photo are four orange candles for the fourth night, and the purple one called the “shamash.” The shamash is an extra one, the helper; the shamash lights the other candles. One can choose any colors; my daughter picked these colors. My sons and husband use an oil chanukiah (menorah), as the one in the Temple used oil.
I’ve been taking many photos of the lights, or as the title of this post declares, I’ve been “playing with fire.” Here’s the photo of the candles on a jar, using the warp tool in Photoshop as instructed in this tutorial on the warp tool effect.
Ruby Tuesday Visits My Kitchen
This was my kitchen way back in July. See the tomatoes on the window sill? Must have been a bountiful week. The tomatoes are gone, but the clutter is still there.
This was in my kitchen last Friday: doughnuts for Chanukah (we have a custom of eating foods fried in oil to remember the oil that miraculously lasted for 8 days) and challah for Shabbat (the commandment or mitzvah is to eat two loaves of bread with each Shabbat meal – a rich egg bread has developed as the tradition to uphold the mitzvah). Yes, both are homemade. Little red in this photo, but it does keep with the theme of my kitchen!
And here are some red strawberries that got gobbled up last night, along with the doughnuts (sufganiyot) and latkes (potato pancakes). I also made Mimi’s fish soup and a cubed pressed salad of cucumbers and carrots that I seasoned with fresh-squeezed lemon juice, orange juice, and chopped fresh ginger root.
For more photos with red, visit Ruby Tuesday:
Candle Lighting – SOOC
For more shots SOOC – Straight Out of the Camera, visit:
Shadow Shot of Hand
Took this last week in my backyard. The plan was to photograph the strawberry leaves, as some are now bright red, but I ended up playing hand shadows against the fence. Visit Hey Harriet for more Shadow Shots.
Yellow Fading Snapdragons
We had our first snow fall last night (really a sprinkling), and now my snapdragons are really fading.
Goodbye, colorful yellow and pink flowers that look like little bubbles. Come back in the spring. And bring the rudbeckia with you.
For more yellow photos, visit Mellow Yellow Monday:
Weekly Review with Iris
I decided to head this post with an iris from spring, because everything outside is brown or gray. Though my parsley is still bright green.
On My Blog
A quiet week on my blog: I plan to publish on Sunday a post on illustrators, some famous, some you can access now via blog, Twitter, website or Flickr.
Elsewhere in the Blogosphere
- Jewish Blog Carnivals: Batya has reported that Blog Carnival isn’t forwarding links. To participate in Haveil Haveilim, send links to shilohmuse at gmail dot com (today only). If you have a recipe for Kosher Cooking Carnival, send links to shira at seymourpr dot com. If you are a Jewish photo blogger, please send links to jpixcarnival at gmail dot com (you have until December 24).
- Jew Wishes is back to writing book reviews. Here’s one: Letters to My Father, by William Styron – letters written by Styron to his father, William C. Styron, Sr.
- Record Numbers of Turkish Jews Moving to Israel
- G6 asks some interesting questions about blogging and writing to your audience.
- I wrote a post on how to make fancy colored boxes in CSS – feel free to ask questions on my tech blog.
Doors and Windows of Allaire
We visited Allaire State Park back in early November. Here are some of the doors and windows of that pretty park. The above building in the historical village was closed, but many were open.
Strictly speaking, this is not a door or a window, but it is OPEN – so it’s like a gateway to the bakery. I enhanced the saturation of the colors in Photoshop.
We were able to visit the original home of the Allaire family. As I said on a previous post, we were not allowed to photograph inside, but here’s the doorway to that interesting home. It was said to still be inhabited by a descendant of the original Allaire founder in the 1950’s, and that 1950’s owner kept a horse in his kitchen. Eccentric.
This was a vertical photo, so I increased the canvas size to make it horizontal, and then I used the clone stamp tool and the blur tool to get the main part of the photo to extend a bit into the side areas.
What is that white board that looks like a door but is curiously up too high to be a door? Where there once steps there? I didn’t notice this until today, when I was looking through these photos. Does that happen to you; do you find mysteries in your photos that you didn’t recognize when you were on the scene?
These are windows in the train of the Pine Creek Railroad, which is next to the Historical Village. The train ride just goes around in circles, but we did get to see some deer as we circled about.
For more windows and doors, visit Window Views (hosted by Mary the Teach):
