365 Photo Challenge - August

Much like the February Fabric challenge, I didn't need to leave the house to find plenty of subject matter for Ceramic. In truth, I probably could do an entire 365 of ceramic without leaving my house. As a serial collector I was able to do my month without even unpacking the balance of my miniature shoe, or salt shaker, or little English cottage, or reamer collections.

Aside from my various collections, I have a fondness for small bowls. Where else am I going to put all those bits and bobs I can't seem to part with.

A few of my brass bits in one of my collection of Scott MacDowell pieces

It did give me a nice opportunity to add to my Squircle Flickr Group. What the heck is a Squircle you ask? It's a squared circle...and I promise more on Squircles at a later date. If you can't wait check out my Flickr Squircle album.

Squircles from the August challenge

Ceramics need dusting, and they break, but even broken they are lovely things.

365 Photo Challenge - July

July...picnics, farmer's markets, fruit and vegetables literally ripening all around you. What could make for an easier or more enjoyable subject. Very few of the foods I photographed were on my health-limited diet but with the artsy-fartsy excuse of a 365 photo challenge I was able to at least have a few bites of such blessings as Kathy's lighter than air scones with clotted cream & jam...chips with my 'full English' at the Three Lions...a cheese danish at Starbucks.  All in the name of art of course.

I now understand why such a thing as a 'food stylist' exists. More than once I found myself in front of a plate with heavenly aromas - but muddy colors and woeful design. I did manage to get my grapes to glisten and for color you can't go wrong in a farmer's market.

It was a little embarrassing pulling out my camera in a restaurant, but it was fun watching the look of alarm when I did it at a friend's house.

Special thanks to the Yakima Market in Bothell for being my fall-back location.

And gratitude to the Duffy Girls for the joy of a Champagne Tea in the sunshine.

All things considered, this was probably my least successful subject so far, but I sure enjoyed working on it!

365 Photo Challenge - May

May was a piece of cake! The Pacific Northwest was in bloom and my choice of 'Floral' as a subject might just as well have been 'Rhody'. The conditions this year made for a brilliant spring bloom for all the fruit trees, dogwoods, hawthornes, labernums, and the like, but the rhododendrons were exquisite. The bushes were loaded with blooms and there was no rain damage. As a result, I found myself searching for variety and although I left quite a few rhody shots on the cutting room floor, the trees got me though - along with a few 'flowers' we tend to ignore.

Some of the rhody's left out:

See what I mean?

With this embarrassment of riches, I took time to play with a few of my favorite shots.

Bearded Iris

I met a man once who hybridized lilies. When asked how he choose lilies to work with he told us that his first love was iris, but the iris blossoms were so delicate and faded so fast it continually broke his heart so he switched to lilies. They are one of my favorite flowers and I see his point completely.

Chives

We have so many amazing and enormous alliums in our flower beds now, we must take a minute to appreciate their less spectacular relatives.

Sometimes we have to look for the flower, especially with grasses and trees...but they are always there.

I have chosen 'Sky' for June, which will certainly be more difficult than 'Floral'. The good news is that I will be heading for Montana near the end of the month so I can look forward to Big Sky Country. Like this...

Great Falls, Montana - 2010

365 Photo Challenge - April

In April, I had what will likely be the easiest of my monthly challenges - Foliage. Unless one lives in a desert, we all have an ample supply of foliage to zero in on. But in the Pacific Northwest we are sometimes overwhelmed by foliage. Gardeners here spend as much time figuring out how to stop things from growing in their yards as they do actually encouraging plants to grow. In April, you can see the landscape greening right before your eyes on a daily basis.

So I was spoiled for choice. I found however, that like the omnipresent grey rockery variety of rock I encountered in March, unless you got very close, green foliage was very much of a muchness. So I tried to get close, and I went for what caught my eye.

Maples caught my eye more often than anything else, I left a lot of maples on the cutting room floor. What surprised me most was how much red there is in spring growth - one of those things I think I knew but had never really considered. Much of the red remains in stems but you must catch some red leaves quickly before they turn.

New rose growth

Another group of surprises came when I was at my computer looking more closely at some of the tree leaves I had shot. Quite a few of them turned out to be very much in bloom, something I tried to remind myself of when shooting the May Florals.

Just because it's green, doesn't make it foliage

When one is planning, whether it be a flower bed or a much larger landscape, your color palette is supremely important. I have always been drawn to the blue-grey and the chartreuse foliage for that defining 'pop'. Had I done foliage later in the year I think I would have found more of the blues and greys.

One of the many grasses now being cultivated

I suspect I could have done an entire year of foliage photos - and I might do that one year, if only to catch the autumn leaves turning. Until then, here is one from 2010 taken from my deck.

365 Photo Challenge - February

February's subject was Fabric and like January, there was no shortage of subjects in my own home. No accident this, the weather was as cold and wet as expected. The only challenge was to find as wide a variety of fabric as possible.

In the end, I made quite a few sentimental choices:

My favorite necktie (remember when women were wearing men's vests and neckties?)

My football scarf

My needlework

My March subject is Stone, which is going along quite nicely. But I must admit I am looking forward to April and Foliage as spring in the Northwest will give me loads of opportunities....outside.