Friday Photography - Lakeside Silhouette

Last weekend, I went to a birthday party with many friends I went to college with, many of whom I hadn't seen in years. The event was held at a friend's house near a lake, and I brought my husky puppy Calvin with me in an attempt to help get him acclimated to large groups of people he doesn't know. I wasn't quite sure what to expect when he found the lake, because he had never really seen one before. Also, our other dog Spirit hated the water when we first adopted her and it was years before she learned how to enjoy it.

I didn't need to worry. He disappeared over the bank and when I caught up to him, he was splashing and bounding through the water like an antelope. I snapped a few pictures in a rare moment of him not in motion and I thought they turned out pretty good. Now that I know just how much he loves the water, I'm excited about swimming and boating with him this summer!

I guess if you really wanted to see a bunch of my friends, whom you may or may not know depending on who is reading this, the rest of the Bulls Bash photos are also posted.

More Friday Photography: You can learn about and see the Gold Medal Flour Mill at Barker & Hedges. It looks like there isn't a Friday photo for My Green Side this week. Maybe next week!

Friday Photography - Two Baby Spruce Trees

Photography has been a hobby of mine off and on for more than 10 years. Gardening has not. It is something I've started within the last three years, and so far I seem to be pretty bad at it. But I'm determined to learn how to keep some potted plants alive.


These two tiny baby spruce trees are one of my experiments. I bought two "Grow Your Own" spruce trees at Target for $1 each. I planted one on April 27 and the other on May 3, 2009. This picture was taken on May 15, 2009, and shows two very early stages of what a spruce tree looks like. You can see the April Spruce on the right, which has been growing for one week longer than the May Spruce on the left.


This was the first day the seed husk fell off of the April Spruce. I thought the shape the needles form is visually interesting and I wanted to capture the look before it grows out of this stage.

We'll see how this experiment goes. It's got to be pretty hard to kill a tree, even a baby. I see small trees growing between cracks in cement sometimes! See the full set of Baby Spruce Trees pics.

More Friday Photography: You can learn about and see the Washburn "A" Mill at Barker & Hedges. Additionally, My Green Side has a Friday photography theme, too.

Haiku News - May 10 2009

Let it be now known:
On my death, lay me to rest
in an eco-plot.

Two ducklings rescued
from a storm drain, mother duck
made national news.

What do racehorses,
cyclists, and ball players have
in common? Doping.

Friday Photography - Moon Halos

I was doing so good. I was on a roll. I had 15 whole blog posts in April and had been building up steam. Now I've just been distracted for almost two weeks. My concentration is low and my "staring off into space" is at an all-time high. As long as my melancholy is still prominent and until I can get my concentration under control (and maybe after my inspiration for new ideas has returned), my True to Words blog posts may be a little weak. They'll also be on the backburner as I make sure I satisfy my clients' needs first. But as long as I'm posting, then the creative fires are still burning and I will be back at 100% eventually.

On March 11, 2009, I was awake at the obscene hour of four o'clock in the morning. Normally this is something I would grumble about, but it gave me the opportunity to capture a rare site in picture-form: A moon halo. Now granted, these aren't the best pictures of a moon halo. Look closely at the edges of the picture and you will see a faint light that was reflecting through ice crystals. That's how moon halos form. It was COLD.

My camera isn't all that great, so I don't have the right settings to take really stellar night-time photographs. But I was so excited to have the opportunity to get these pictures and so proud that I had my camera handy to snap a photo, it makes up for all of my perceived shortcomings.

Also in my inexperience, I uploaded the moon halo photos to Blogspot and they looked terrible. That's why I'm reposting them this week. I wanted the chance to show them again and have them look decent, uploaded to my Flickr account instead of uploaded directly to Blogger.

See the rest of the moon halo pictures.

Yes, this post is still partly in memoriam to my friend Ian. Not only did he inspire me to pick up the camera again, he taught me about Flickr. I owe the existance of my Friday Photography installments to him.

Friday Photography - Urban Decay

Inspired by my friend Ian Talty and his crazy ability to capture the most beautiful photographs of things and scenes others might have overlooked as junk, I took some pictures of a bridge in Minneapolis that was not only eroding away, but growing stalactites on its concrete. I was excited to show them to him and get his feedback, but I put it off and now that's not going to happen. I wish that I would have shared them with him. So now I've posted them to my Flickr account and I'm highlighting them for today, the day of his memorial service.


Rain, time, sand and salt have worn down the concrete on this bridge and given it a stream of white mineral deposits. I'm sure Ian would interject here with an inappropriate comment about my description, but that's what it is! I'll leave it up to your imagination on what he might say.



This photo was actually an emulation of a style of photography Ian employed. My favorite was The Corrosion Islands. My picture doesn't quite have the vibrant color, but I still like the texture.

There's my attempt. See the rest of the Urban Decay set at Flickr here and see Ian's Flickrstreat, The Joy of the Mundane. Now I'm going to be with my friends.