Yellow from Jude this week! Who can resist it?
Life in Colour – Yellow
Challenge
Life in Colour Photo Challenge 2021 – Brown
Jude has started a colour challenge for 2021 – who can resist colours? She starts out with the colour Brown.
Lens-Artists Challenge #128 – And Here Comes the Holiday Season…
A strange, surreal Holiday Season. For many of us, it will be very different from earlier years.
I know many creative plans are being made to make these celebrations work – somehow and anyway. This last LAPC challenge, of the strange year 2020, is all about your Holiday Season. So what will your holidays look like? What are your plans and/or memories? Will you create new traditions or will you just ”survive” this one, looking forward to a ”normalized” celebrating next year?
For me, the holidays are all about Christmas – memories of Christmases gone by and what Christmas really, essentially means to me. What traditions can still be kept this year, and what will I have to let go of…
Well, let us begin… be my guest!
”So this is Christmas…” – John Lennon and Yoko Ono – is always present when we are decorating the Christmas tree. In Sweden we celebrate Christmas, even though not many of us are truly religious. But the message is much the same – Imagine… Wishes for Peace and Harmony. Caring for family and each other – Love for everything living. Gratitude.
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To me, Christmas also means discussing, listening to music and playing games together. Happy music, classical music, religious music…
Candle light was made for these the darkest days of winter. Lights in our windows are glowing the whole day – to chase the darkness away. Today’s sunrise was 8.34 AM – and sunset 15.35 PM. No complaining when I compare to my daughter Emma’s situation in Umeå: 9.27 AM and 13.45 PM. (But where I live, the sun has not shown its face for the last two months.)
Adding – just listening to the news it seems people are decorating their houses double up this year – I too bought new lights for the path up to our door…75 meters!
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. – Buddha
So far, these holidays look much the same as every year. But, Imagine Covid19 was over and gone …. then more of the happy celebrating would come alive – Going to Denmark for delicious food, coffee and cake, attending Christmas markets, traveling to beautiful places, finding snow again – at least for the Christmas card photos… and having the youngsters back for baking, laughing and pottering!
Luckily we Will have three youngsters here with us this holiday season – which makes me truly happy. Corona safe, no hugging or kissing. I know many families with mixed generations have booked barbecue places to eat outdoors in recreation areas. A very good idea.
The greatest differences will be the lack of hugs and kisses. And, our mother and grandmother will not be here with us to celebrate. Her photo is standing where she used to sit at the table, with a candle lit by her side. Maybe she Is watching us somehow, from somewhere. I’d like to think she is.
The much longed for light will slowly return, starting with the Winter Solstice, December 21. This year has made it crystal clear just how much we have to be grateful for – and how little we can take for granted.
Please include a link to my post and use the Lens-Artists tag so that everyone can find your post in the WP Reader. We look very much forward to seeing your creative work!
Special thanks to Amy for her beautiful “Precious Moments.” And thank You for sharing with us so many positive and loving moments! Smiles and tears in a beautiful mix.
Finally we send our deepest and most grateful Thank You to you all for being an endless inspirational resource this special year, 2020. Hopefully we have helped each other stay reasonably sane in a crazy world. I want to close with John Lennon’s words in:
Happy Xmas (War is Over)
………………………………………..
A very Merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear
……………………………………….
– someday soon we hope this invisible enemy, Corona and Covid19, will be defeated too –
Have you seen these:
KFBuchsbaum posted a Christmas card treasure
Big and small moments with Mei-Mei of Jedi by Night
Get starstruck at David M’s Photoblog
Announcement: We’ll be on break until January 2nd at which point our theme will be Favorite Photos of 2020.
Short Note: There have been issues with WP pingbacks not working. If you don’t receive a reply or a comment from us, please let us know.
I’m a big bath person – or
Thursday’s Special: Pick a Word
Time to join Paula again – if you haven’t tried this challenge before, give it a chance!
LUNAR – Galapagos Islands
VOLTE FACE – Stettin in the opener
SOARING – Iceland
REPOSING – Italy somewhere…
and
IMPREGNABLE – Spain
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge # 114 – Negative Space
This week, Amy is our host, and she wants us to show the importance of negative space in our photography. Negative space is the area around the main subject of your photograph. (Which means that your main subject is the positive space) Check out her post, see brilliant examples and learn more about this!
Positive and negative space are two important tools for us to give an enhanced emotional feel to our images, which is essential in photography. Looking forward to seeing your choices!
Our special thanks to Rusha Sams for hosting last week’s Labor of Love. We had so many positive and uplifting experiences of genuine love and care!
Be sure to check out Tina’s Travels and Trifles post next week as she hosts Challenge #115.
And, as always – may you stay safe and well. Our thoughts these days go especially to all of you out there fighting the wild fires.
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #113 – A Labor of Love
First of all – thank you for so many inventive, creative and fun interpretations of last week’s challenge – Pick a Word! Fabulous!
Rusha Sams of Oh the Places We See is our host this week, and she has chosen to highlight all those people who work for a better society and a better world. A Labor of Love.
As so many of us do these days, I think of the health care workers, police and firefighters – all those brave people helping us in this unruly world. But my thoughts also go to all those who work for a sustainable world and helping vulnerable species to survive – because biodiversity is essential to us all. Without biodiversity we will all perish and our planet is lost. Even if we are living in a pandemic now, we know that other problems will not go away – we have to fight them all, simultaneously. Tough. But, the pandemic is also a result of how humans have abused and misused Nature and our only home, planet Earth.
In the header, the dotterel beach in Coromandel.
She worked mostly with inventory of traps and keeping the forest open. All voluntary work is of course unpaid (monetarily…) work – A Labour of Love for the planet.
A big threat to all endemic animals, maybe especially the NZ flightless birds (the kiwi is only one of them) are the invasive possums. Emma brought home several skulls and bones from roadkills.
In 2016 we went to Ecuador, the Amazon Basin and the Galapagos Islands. Threatened already then by the oil industry and new settlers burning down the rainforest, but little did we know of the many fires that would arrive through mismanagement and the pandemic.
A vast piece of jungle was once bought by a man from the Netherlands who wanted to save it from getting destroyed. We stayed at his eco-lodge with local people guiding and lecturing about herb medicine and Amazon plants and animals. These people were born and raised here, lived here and knew the jungle like the back of their hand.
”We hope you’ll join us in sharing your interpretations of “A Labor of Love” whether you showcase a person or a group or an object notable for the labor or laborer involved.” Publish your post and add your link to the Comments section at the bottom of Rusha’s post. Please don’t forget to add the tag Lens-Artists so you can be found in the Reader.
Next week we will be back on schedule, and Amy will be our host for challenge #114. Until then – stay well and be kind. To yourself as well.
Happy Hiking – Waffle House is Open!
THURSDAY’S SPECIAL – Pick a Word – 2020 – 1st ed.
Paula is back with her monthly challenge Pick a Word! If you haven’t seen it or participated before – have a look at her lovely blog Lost in Translation. Excellent photography and simple rules for the challenge.
ESTIVAL in the header
CUISINE
RIFT
INSTRUCTIVE
SPAN
About the images:
Estival – The last of my Bougainvillea against a hot summer wall
Cuisine – The biggest Sami market in Sweden – with lots of tasty food
Rift – Thingvellir, Iceland, lies in a rift valley that marks the crest of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates.
Instructive – New Zealand sheep shearing champion on how to do it fast and effective
Span – Valle Verzasca, Switzerland, with its fantastic Roman bridge
The Changing Seasons – My August 2020
I decided to join in The Changing Seasons at Su’s place, where each month, you should post 5-20 photos in a gallery that you feel represent your month.
Use only new shots. I think this is a brilliant idea. Fun and good for my memory.
Tag your posts with #MonthlyPhotoChallenge and #TheChangingSeasons so that others can find them.
Thank you, Su, for making this possible!
