Photography | Change Is Hard

April 20, 2014
by dawnkinster 21 Comments

WordPress photo challenge

For quite awhile I’ve been getting photo challenge prompts from WordPress on Friday afternoons. They have been so much fun; I looked forward to them eagerly as Friday mornings went by and I’d check while I was still at work, eager to find out what the current week’s challenge would be. Then I’d think about it on the long commute and generally by the time I made our driveway I’d have an idea.

I haven’t received a photo prompt in two weeks, and it looks like maybe there haven’t been any. I’ve always wondered who comes up with the challenges and where they got their ideas and how long they could keep it up. But, still, it makes me very sad to think there will be no more ideas coming. Especially since I couldn’t find what I was looking for on the last challenge “threshold.”

I never did post the photo I thought I might use for that challenge. It’s a stretch, but here you go.

I think of the sky between the old building and the new building as the threshold between time.

This was on the University of Michigan campus, I was wandering around and happened to glance over my shoulder and saw the two eras standing in the bright sunshine.

So there you have it…..’threshold.’ Sort of.

I’m going to miss the photo prompts. I hope they come back. In the meantime if anyone has a challenge for me…well…I’m up for it.

April 19, 2014
by dawnkinster 2 Comments

Picture a photo

I’ve been enjoying the photography of Heather in her blog for a long time; she captures life in the north so beautifully. Her photography website showcases her art and if you take a moment to stop and peruse, you can enjoy all four seasons of the beautiful north country in just a few minutes. This winter she had the opportunity to take amazing photos of the ice caves along Lake Michigan, who knows if we’ll ever have another chance to see something like this, so go take a look!

I especially enjoy her photos of the Point Betsie Lighthoue, both because it’s beautiful, and because it’s where my folks went on their honeymoon in 1953. I’ve been there a couple of times myself and have my own photographs, but I’ve never been in winter so I was especially taken by this shot:

I know, I know, it’s a bad photograph of a great photograph! It was hard for me to decide which Point Betsie lighthouse photo to purchase but I eventually chose this one because it was different and because I loved the shapes of the ice in front of the lighthouse. I plan to hang it in my folk’s house down in Alabama, a modern twist on their love of northern Michigan.

Thank you Heather! For taking wonderful photographs that remind me of my trips to the north, and for making them available on your website! I can’t wait to see what you discover next!

April 9, 2014
by dawnkinster 11 Comments

Wordless Wednesday – swan fight (click on photos for details)

April 8, 2014
by dawnkinster 8 Comments

Birds at the park

Sunday afternoon I went to a park without Katie. Don’t tell her, she’ll never forgive me. I needed some time to myself and I wanted to walk on some nature trails where they don’t allow dogs.

At this park there is a heron rookery, and the herons were all paired up on their nests high in the oak trees out in the middle of a shallow lake. (Click on the pictures to see more detail.)

There’s a boardwalk built through the lily pads and cattails where you can sit and watch the herons, and later in the season the egrets on their nests. The most exciting time is when the youngsters begin to explore and test their wings.

But right now it looks like the nests are all occupied by pairs of herons, I don’t know if there are eggs in the nests yet, but certainly there are a number of pairs getting ready to be parents.

As I was watching from the boardwalk there arose a screeching to the left – sandhill cranes make such distinctive sounds. A pair of them flew right toward us on the boardwalk, then across in front of us and on into the marsh to the right. This is where I got the hugely cropped photo that’s currently my blog header. In the photo below you can see the legs of the bird as he/she descends into the cattails. It was so cool!

THEN…on the way home I saw a pair of sandhill cranes feeding in a field near the road. I turned around and went back. They accommodated me and posed for quite awhile.

Aren’t they beautiful!

I had a great day on my own. Katie had a great day with her Dad.

Win win.

🙂

April 7, 2014
by dawnkinster 16 Comments

Searching for threshold

This weeks WordPress photo challenge is ‘threshold.’ That’s an intriguing idea. I checked the definition and found:

“A strip of wood, metal, or stone forming the bottom of a doorway and crossed in entering a house or room.”

And:

“The magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested.”

Huh. How exciting can a strip of wood, metal or stone at the bottom of a doorway be? And how do you photograph intensity exceeded?

I also found:

“Any place or point of entering or beginning”

This seemed more workable. Sunday morning I headed down to Ann Arbor because I remembered a plaque on the steps of the Student Union commemorating the spot that John F Kennedy stood when he announced the beginning of the Peace Corp. I thought that it would be a fitting interpretation of the beginning of something significant.

As I drove past the main university campus I noted that the roads ahead, in front of the union, were closed. So I found a parking spot and walked the few blocks. I soon found why the roads were blocked as there was a road race going on, right past the Student Union!

Once I was able to get across the road I eagerly climbed the steps and searched. The plaque was gone! It has been there for years and years and years and I thought I must just be missing it…but after a through search I had to admit it was gone. And so was my idea to represent the concept.

So I wandered back across the street and through the law library with it’s Gothic doors…

and courtyard…

…and towers.

It’s beautiful, but really…not thresholds. This is the best I could find, down two levels in the basement of the law library building.

Not very interesting. But the prettiest threshold I could find. So I gave up and drove cross country on pretty back roads to my favorite park where I enjoyed sunshine, lots of birds, blue water and a good book.

But that’s another blog.

Will I have anything at all for this week’s photo challenge?

I don’t know. There’s one shot I’m thinking about, but it would be a stretch. I’ll decide later in the week. Maybe I’ll keep looking, but I don’t have much spare time this week, and I have no inspiration.

Stay tuned.

March 30, 2014
by dawnkinster 27 Comments

Weekly Photo Challenge: Street Life

This week’s WordPress photo challenge is “Street Life.” I went down to Detroit this morning and parked near Greektown, hoping for something. But the light wasn’t great in Greektown itself, so I was wandering back to my car when I saw the towers of General Motors combined with the People Mover track overhead, the red brick factories converted to shops and lofts, and the tourists walking below.

I liked it, so I stood in the middle of the empty street and shot it.

Also on the way back to the car I saw a man, maybe Niki himself, standing outside a Greek pizza parlor…

…and unfortunately, a couple of homeless people sleeping near a grate.

Combined, these images show a version of the streets in the city of Detroit. There’s much more, of course, to this city – – much that is less photogenic. I saw some of that too but was not comfortable enough to stop. It reminded me that those of us out in the suburbs, in the country, driving our big SUVs, mowing our lawns, shopping in our trendy stores, have no idea what life is really like just a few miles down the road.

So that’s my street life submission. You can see a few of my favorites here, here and here. What does the street life in your part of the world look like? I’d be interested, and there’s plenty of time. You can post your images till next Friday at the WordPress site here.

I love how these challenges take us all over the world.

Enjoy!

March 16, 2014
by dawnkinster 20 Comments

Weekly photo challenge: Inside

WordPress has challenged us with finding a photo that represents inside. I think we’ve had that challenge before. I remember seeing flowers inside my kitchen window last fall. So all the ‘inside’ ideas I thought of this weekend involving windows I chucked. And of course some of you have seen a photo just like this when I posted about my sister’s visit here last summer. But I don’t have access to my archives at the moment, so Katie and I went out to the driveway and recreated her version of inside…outside.

Love my tunnel! Got a treat?

Of course this involved me setting her up in a ‘wait’ and then casually walking down to the other end, lying on the cold hard asphalt and yelling ‘COME!” A couple of times. And this was the best we could get. It makes me smile, so that works.

She’s a very good girl.

Here and here and here and here you can find a few of my favorite versions of ‘inside’ from the WordPress blog. Or go there yourself and see even more!

March 9, 2014
by dawnkinster 20 Comments

Weekly photo challenge: Perspective

The photo challenge this week from WordPress is to show perspective. As usual my mind pulled me this and that way when I considered what to do with that concept. I think I know what the photo challenge developers are getting at with the assignment. But I think, this week, I have to go in another direction.

Because, you see, I’ve been thinking about truck safety stuff more lately. My family was permanently upended in December of 2004 because of a truck, but that doesn’t mean I eat and breath trucking issues every day. I slip into complacency just like anyone might. But this week a letter was published in the New York Times from Joan Claybrook, who once headed NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), the Joan Claybrook who helped get seat belts mandated, the Joan Claybrook who fights the good fight for all of us on highway safety issues still today. You can read her short letter here. So this week my thoughts on perspective are slightly skewed toward safety and trucks.

I see some awful stupid stuff on my long commute to and from work. In our hurry to get where we’re going some of us driving the cars are making moves that aren’t worth the risk. Let me plead with you. Please, never cut in front of a semi. Never careen crazily around a slower truck. Never shift lanes without warning to gain an extra 100 yards in stopped traffic. Never tail gate behind that big rig. Put down your phone. Pay attention. Stay away from the trucks. Stay as far away as you can get. Because when you look at the big picture, when you see in perspective how small you are next to them, well, it’s obvious who will be the loser in any truck/car altercation.

No matter whose fault it is, if you tangle with a semi truck you and your family are going to lose.

The trucking industry is still lobbying hard to get bigger and heavier trucks on the roads. The roads they share with you and me. Despite overwhelmingly public disapproval for larger or heavier trucks, they are still trying; in just about every major bill before Congress there is an attempt to override states law size and weight limitations.

You can help by calling your Senators and Representatives and telling them you don’t want bigger or heavier trucks on the roads you and your families drive. People are already dying. People are already living with life long injuries. Bigger and heavier trucks will not make the numbers of deaths (approximately 4,000 a year) or injuries (approximately 100,000 a year) go down.

Let’s keep trucks in perspective. Let’s stop bigger trucks. Visit the Truck Safety Coalition’s website for more information.

Please.

March 2, 2014
by dawnkinster 31 Comments

Weekly photo challenge : Abandoned

This week’s WordPress photo challenge is show ‘abandoned.’ Lots of things ran though my mind immediately. There’s an old rusted truck out by the main road and I thought I might do that. And I will someday. But as I thought more about the word abandoned I began to feel the city of Detroit pulling me. Some of you probably know the city is in bankruptcy, the biggest city in the United States to head down that road. There’s been a lot of abandoning that has happened in the city in the past many years, but hopefully the path is becoming clearer for the emergence of a new, brighter city.

There’s one building that stands, for me, to represent the abandonment of Detroit by so many. I’ve always wanted to go downtown and photograph it, but it’s a little daunting. Scary too. So I haven’t. This weekend I decided to drive down before our weather gets worse and just see what might be possible. Turns out there were lots of people out and about right there, going to some event down the street. So, though I wasn’t able to get really close as they have it all fenced off I was able to get a few shots of the abandoned Detroit Train Station.

What a magnificent building this was in its day and what a shame that it has come to this. You can see photos of the inside here and imagine what it once was. It’s totally gutted now. When you’re further away from the building you can see daylight all the way through it, from one empty window through to the empty window on the other side. This year they hung giant lit snowflakes in some of the windows. I hear it was pretty at night.

Then I turned around and saw an old hotel, probably the place people landed when they arrived in Detroit and first stepped off the train. It’s been abandoned too, though not by the graffiti artists.

And next door to the hotel was an abandoned house, you can still see the good bones of it hidden under the boarded up windows.

Around the side of the house was this, which epitomizes abandonment to me…the abandonment of hope.

Someone had dreams here.

There’s so much more abandonment in this city; I saw it everywhere as I scurried into downtown and back out to the illusion of safety in the suburbs. It needs a braver person than me to document the pain there, and to document the return to life of what was once a great city. I’d love to do it, but it’s just too darn scary.

You can find more photos by creative people that represent “abandoned” to them, up at the first link at the top of the post….or here and here and here are a few of my favorites.

February 24, 2014
by dawnkinster 15 Comments

Weekly Photo Challenge: Threes

This week the WordPress photo challenge is “threes” as in three photos that tell a story…or a photo with three of something in it…or three angles of the same object…or, and this is what I did, three photos starting from the broad topic and moving to the detail. There are endless possibilities for great shots that include something of threes. Design uses the rule of three all the time and you probably use it unconsciously when you’re out taking photos, or designing that kitchen or painting that next masterpiece or just redecorating the living room.

I thought about showing you more of the immediate world around me. But that would involve snow and I know you’re all tired of snow. I certainly am. I wanted something brighter, happier, colorful. Where to go to find that? I was thinking about this conundrum during my morning commute which passes, by happenstance, the local nursery. As in summertime hopes, heat, flowers. Flowers. I wonder what’s inside this time of year?

Want to see? Well, here you go!

A bit of joyful pink to brighten your day! At the nursery I could pretend, for a few short minutes, at the end of a long harsh winter that spring was just around the corner. I’m sure it is…

…isn’t it?

Here and here and here are some of my favorite ‘threes’ from others who posted their own creativity for this photo challenge.

Another three

Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: Photography