Inspired by Sara who is documenting the gulch behind her home, I decided last January to take a photo of the neighbor’s pond on the first Saturday of each month.  I’ve posted January through April, and then May through August.  Yesterday was the first Saturday in December, so this morning I took the last photo.  I’d been hoping for snow so that the December photo would look different from the November photo, but I won’t complain about the 50 degree weather we’re enjoying.

So here is the pond as it looked on the first Saturday all year long.  Remember to click on any photo to see more details.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

I went out on a cold rainy grey November day to find something for Scott’s color composition challenge.  The day before had been warm and sunny but I didn’t venture out with the camera.  Too obvious and too sensible.

One of the articles Scott provided for reference talked about the meaning of color, how you can sometimes use color to set a mood for a photo.  I guess I’ve been feeling kind of sad that the summer has ended and winter is right around the corner, because every bit of color I found that day was blue.   I’m not saying that the blue in each photo set the mood for the photo…just that it was what I noticed on this day.  (Click on the picture to see the details.)

My first stop was at a historic church.  I pass this church every Tuesday on my to and from band rehearsal and I’ve never noticed it.  At our last rehearsal I saw with shock that someone had painted the front door and knew I had to come back with a camera.

The color composition challenge was a perfect excuse to stop and get  that shot. I started out focusing on the door itself, then tried to get the steeple and the door in the frame.  But as I walked back to the car I looked back and knew the whole church needed to be included – because the transformation of the door only worked when it was shown against the disrepair of the entire building.  I placed the door near the intersection of the rule of thirds lines.

Historic Presbyterian Church gets a small facelift.

Continuing on with my errands I passed an old schoolhouse that has been painted many many times.  Long after the last schoolchild left it was run as a restaurant and catering business, but that closed years ago and now it sits empty.  Through the rain I noticed the bell tower with it’s multiple layers of paint showing a bit of it’s history.  Again the blue caught my eye, and I tried to have it take up 2/3rds of the image.

Years of schoolhouse colors.

And as I made my way home I noticed the local ski hill.  No snow yet, but there was more blue.  I had to climb down a muddy hill and ruined a pair of shoes to get this.  But I really enjoyed the way the blue ski lift moves from the lower left and climbs up to the upper right of the shot, reflecting the angle of the hill.

Ready for the ski season.

Yep, it was a blue kind of day.  But I can’t say that was all due to fall moving into winter.  After all I found this blue last spring at my local nursery.

Blue pots