~ Wordless Wednesday + Cee’s FOTD ~ Here’s What’s Blooming in My Gardens ~

Posted on May 18, 2023 by Lindy Le Coq

On your walk with life, please honor our earth, encourage dignity and share kindness. 🐾

Posted in Cee's Flower Of The Day, flowers, Gardening, landscape gardening, nature, nature photography, pacific northwest, photography, plants, Wordless Wednesday | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

~ Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #248: Mood ~

Posted on May 10, 2023 by Lindy Le Coq

Sophia Alves encourages us to showcase photos that “convey and create an emotional reaction” this week. As I selected the gallery below, song lyrics that expressed a tone or attitude similar to what I felt when looking at the photos popped into my head, and here they are.

“Softly as in a morning sunrise, the light of love comes stealing into a newborn day.” Abbey Lincoln

‘Twas a sunny day, all the birdies in the trees, and the radio’s singing song, all the favorite melodies.” Paul Simon

“Rows and flows of angel hair, and ice cream castles in the air, and feather canyons everywhere.” Joni Mitchell

“You ain’t been blue; no, no, no. You ain’t been blue till you’ve had that mood indigo, that feelin’ goes stealin’ down to my shoes, while I sit and sigh, go ‘long blues.” Duke Ellington

“Grab your coat and get your hat, leave your worry on the doorstep, just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street. Can’t you hear a pitter-pat, and that happy tune is your step, life can be so sweet on a sunny side of the street.” Dorothy Fields

On your walk with life, please honor our earth, encourage dignity and share kindness. 🐾

Lens-Artists Challenge – Mood
Posted in Lens-Artists, Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, nature, nature photography, pacific northwest, photography | Tagged , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

~ Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #247: Backlit ~

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Lindy Le Coq

This week Ann-Christine invites us to feature our “dramatic, stunning and eye-catching” photos that are a result of backlighting. In my first photo I wanted to capture the action of a strong easterly wind when it lifted spray from the top of incoming waves as the sun was setting.

Below is a subtle, overcast sunset with the breaker’s tops again being caught-up in the wind. The Gull seems not to notice a thing!

Tree branches upon the sky, be it gray or bright blue, always attract my attention. Birds migrating through in autumn drew me to the photo on the left, and the chartreuse leaves of spring on the right charmed me.

Dune rye-grass bending in a strong northerly wind are backlit by the sun reflecting upon the ocean. Although the shot on the right looks black and white, it is an unfiltered photo of a scene where the natural light and color tones of sky and clouds create what I call “natural sepia”.

The sun was rising through a thick fog, as this mature Bald Eagle surveyed the ocean from its perch.

Most photographers love the light of ‘the golden hour’, whether it’s sunrise or sunset. Watching these two young people frisk along the shoreline at sundown was pure delight!

On your walk with life, please honor our earth, encourage dignity and share kindness. 🐾

Thanks again to Ann-Christine for this opportunity to present some favorite, dramatic, backlit images!

Lens-Artists Challenge #247 – Backlit
Posted in birds, Lens-Artists, Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, nature, nature photography, outdoors, pacific northwest, pacific ocean, photography, trees, weekly photo challenge | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

~ Wordless Wednesday ~ Beltane Sunset ~

Posted on May 4, 2023 by Lindy Le Coq

On your walk with life, please honor our earth, encourage dignity and share kindness. 🐾

Posted in nature, nature photography, pacific northwest, pacific ocean, photography, Report from the Edge of a Continent | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

~ Lens-Artists Photo Challenge # 246: Still Life (Talking)* ~

Posted on April 27, 2023 by Lindy Le Coq

Patti challenges us to focus on still life images this week. In addition to traditional composed arrangements of inanimate objects, she encourages us to use a variety of sources including “found” still life scenes. Oh, Patti, this will be fun!

This post is on a trail to the beach and often is ornamented with found items. I especially enjoyed this composition of the post wrapped in orange nylon rope with a turquoise forelock waving in the wind.

It’s fresh Dungeness Crab season again. I took this series of photos a couple years ago illustrating the ingredients for a composed crab salad.

This driftwood arrangement, embellished with sculpted metal salmon beside a bench with native grasses and ferns in a Long Beach neighbors yard, is emblematic of found art on the peninsula.

My girlfriend Jocelyn placed these flowers (left over from a wedding she’d attended), in jars outside on the picnic table at her Priest Lake, ID cabin. I love the contrast of the bright flowers against the old wood and the forest background.

I’ll close with this photo of Creighton’s Gibson B-25, a lovely 6 string acoustic guitar that he purchased in 1963. Here it is the centerpiece of a still life including my piano and part of our CD collection.

*Still Life (Talking) is an album by the Pat Metheny Group. It was released in 1987 on Geffen Records. It won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance and was certified gold by the RIAA on July 2, 1992.

On your walk with life, please honor our earth, encourage dignity and share kindness. 🐾

Thanks again to Patti for this adventure into still life!

Lens-Artists #246: Still Life
Posted in Art, flowers, food, Lens-Artists, Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Musical Instruments, nature, nature photography, outdoors, pacific northwest, photography, travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

~ Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #245: Environments ~

Posted on April 20, 2023 by Lindy Le Coq

Every day when the weather has cleared between showers and hail, I have been in my gardens cleaning out the detritus that has collected since autumn: branches, twigs, fir cones and leaves. So far I have removed about 900 lb (408 kg) to be recycled, and I am not yet finished. My 1/4 acre (.10 hectare) lot hosts 12 evergreen trees, 7 deciduous trees, a large stand of holly, at least 85 various shrubs (evergreen, flowering & deciduous) and innumerable ground cover and flowering plants.

This has been a labor of love for the 34 years since we had the house built. My landscape goals have been to create bird friendly grounds with perennial plants that provide a variety of textures and colors. With 8 fir trees in the back yard, I’ve learned all about shade plants! Below are two beauties in bloom right now.

In Lens-Artists post #241, I featured My Messy Garden, that looked like the view above. Here’s how it looks this morning, raindrop on the lens and all!

Spring cleanup is when I assess the health of various plants and determine what needs to be removed, transplanted and where I may want to add a bit of color or light. When that’s complete, I’ll add bark mulch, refresh the pea-gravel paths, pull out the stored outdoor furniture and relax!

Thanks to Tina at Travels and Trifles for an invitation to share our environments this week. Anyone who follows my blog knows I’m a born and raised country girl. Whenever I have “yard work” to do, I think to myself, “oh goodie – I get to play outside!”

On your walk with life, please honor our earth, encourage dignity and share kindness. 🐾

Lens-Artists Challenge #245 – Environments

Posted in flowers, Gardening, landscape gardening, Lens-Artists, Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, nature, nature photography, pacific northwest, photography, trees | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

~ Cee’s Black & White PC: Crooked, Squiggly & Curved Lines ~

Posted on April 16, 2023 by Lindy Le Coq

On your walk with life, please honor our earth, encourage dignity and share kindness. 🐾

Posted in Black and White Photos, Cee's Black & White Photo Challenge, nature, nature photography, outdoors, pacific northwest, photography | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

~ Lens-Artists Photo Challenge # 244: Glowing Moments ~

Posted on April 11, 2023 by Lindy Le Coq

Welcome to Siobhan Sullivan of Bend Branches, this week’s LAPC guest host, who throws the doors wide open with the theme Glowing Moments. While selecting photos, I realized that there were some images for which I had previously written haiku. Since I am currently writing haiku (5-7-5), prompted by The Academy of American Poets challenge to create a Poem A Day during the month of April, I decided to combine the two challenges in this post.

wild woodland flower
sacred soother of women
fragile tri-lily

curer of madness
hellebore the lenten rose
behold her power

glowing at sunrise
golden spikes of dune rye grass
as hunters moon sets

envoy from the gods
bringer of spiritual peace
restorer of hope

whirling through the sky
clouds draw a veil at sundown
brilliant with pastels

On your walk with life, please honor our earth, encourage dignity and share kindness. 🐾

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #244-Glowing moments
Posted in flowers, haiku, Lens-Artists, Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, nature, nature photography, outdoors, pacific northwest, pacific ocean, photography, Poetry, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

~ Lens-Artists Photo Challenge # 243: It’s Tricky! ~

Posted on April 7, 2023 by Lindy Le Coq

I’m not much of a trickster when it comes to photography, however I do enjoy “thinking outside the box,” as in the shot below of a Brown Garden Snail taken at ground level.

Another example, is this ‘Dune Rune’. Alloniscus is a seaside wood louse that burrows just under the sand surface at night leaving images I call Dune Runes. To see other examples of this tricky critters writing and design skills, click on the Dune Runes link at the top of my blog.

Also, I find it fun to photograph objects that others have repurposed in unconventional and creative ways, like the Sedum-filled case below…

…and this human-sized bird nest with an invitation for passersby to curl up in it, take a nap, take a selfie or just reflect upon life .

I’ll close with another favorite perspective. Donna has an example of this technique in her introduction of this week’s challenge. Below we see a sandy beach leading to the ocean shore and cloudy sky above framed by a large driftwood tree stump. I am so looking forward to taking shots like this with my new camera! I’m sure the photos will be much sharper focused. Maybe I’ll do a compare/contrast for a Wordless Wednesday – stay tuned!

On your walk with life, please honor our earth, encourage dignity and share kindness. 🐾

Thank you to Donna of Wind Kisses for encouraging us to explore photography with “outside the box” perspectives! Her examples are wonderful and you can see them by clicking the link below.

Lens-Artists Challenge #243 – It’s Tricky!
Posted in bugs & critters, Lens-Artists, Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, nature, nature photography, outdoors, pacific northwest, pacific ocean, photography | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

~ Wordless Wednesday + Cee’s FOTD ~

Posted on April 5, 2023 by Lindy Le Coq

On your walk with life, please honor our earth, encourage dignity and share kindness. 🐾

Posted in birds, Cee's Flower Of The Day, flowers, nature, nature photography, pacific northwest, photography, Wordless Wednesday | Tagged , , , , , , , | 9 Comments