Category Archives: Photography

First Day Of October!

I have to say that October is probably my favorite month of the year.  Why?  I’m so glad you asked!

First, October is the heart of fall.  And fall is my favorite season.  The leaves turn, the air is crisp, and the weather is cool.  It’s the perfect time of year in my opinion.

Second, Halloween.  My favorite holiday.  I’m not talking the costumes and candy Halloween that corporations created to gain profits, but the pagan holiday at the root of it all.  Samhain.  If you don’t know what that is, I invite you to go on a little journey and research it.  Learning is fun!

And third, my birthday.  That’s right.  October holds the anniversary of the day I was born.  I’ll be 29 this year.  Wow.  I’m getting old!  [-_^]

Anyway, this week I intend to seek out some vibrantly colored fall leaves to photograph.  Over the past few years, the leaves around here have either fallen before they got a chance to change, or the colors weren’t very bright.  I’ll let you know how my search turns out, next week.

Here’s to hoping this year will have brighter fall foliage!

Until next time…

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~A.M.

Shoot For The Eyes!

No, I’m not talking about surviving a zombie outbreak, and no, I’m not talking about getting one up on a sibling during a clash.  I’m talking about photography!

When photographing a person or animal, the one point of the face that you should focus your lens on is….you guessed it….the eyes.

There’s a reason for the popular idiom “The eyes are the windows to the soul.“  Eyes are incredibly expressive.  Not just human eyes, but animal eyes as well.

I recently photographed my new kitten while my mother and I took her for a little car ride.  We want her to get used to her carrier and not associate it with just going to the vet like my other cats do.  While my mother ran into the grocery store for a few things, I sat in the car with the kitten.  She kept peeking at me through the side of the carrier, so all I could see where here eyes.  It was so cute that I couldn’t help but take a few pictures.

I’m still in the process of “kitten-proofing” the house.  Our new little friend is getting tired of being confined in the basement.  We let her have run of the whole basement during the day, but at night we confine her to one room.  On Saturday night, we heard a thump and then heard her meowing.  Come to find out, she figured out how to climb over the six-foot tall partition and escape her “bedroom”.  That same evening, I put her back in the basement room and sat on the basement stairs to watch her.  She jumped from a low table to the top of the partition and over.  I thought we had adopted a kitten, but with that little maneuver, it seems she might be part monkey.  She can jump and climb much higher than I thought she could!

Now, I’m rethinking the entire layout of the house.  If she can get over a six-foot tall partition and escape the basement room we had her in, then what could she climb and jump onto once we let her upstairs?  [-_-]

Looks like there’s much more cleaning/kitten-proofing to do.  Wish me luck.

Until next time…

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~A.M.

Rescued Kitten

A while ago, I told everyone about a family of stray cats that moved into my yard.  Well, I managed to win over the affections of one of the two kittens.  That kitten ended up adopting us and started living on my porch.  My mother and I set up a little shelter for her, made out of a plastic bin, a tarp, and an old cat bed.

After a while, and as it started to get cold, my mother and I caved and brought the kitten inside.  We‘re still hoping to find the mother and second kitten a home as, sadly, we can‘t afford to rescue all of them ourselves and our local shelter is full (they have over 70 cats! [-_-]).

At the moment, as we de-flea and de-worm our new little friend, we have her secluded in a room in our basement away from our two older cats.  Once she’s clear of any harmful parasites, we can introduce her to our other cats.  I hope they all get along.  Wish us luck on that!

Pets can be a difficult subject to photograph (I think I mentioned this in a previous post “Unruly Subjects), especially a hyper active kitten!  I had a bit of a hard time getting a decent photograph of our new kitten at first, but after she started to wind down from a little catnip encounter, I was able to get a few images.  [^_^]

My next step (while our new little friend is still in the basement room) is to “kitten-proof” the house.  Wish me luck!

Until next time…

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~A.M.

Heart In A…Litter Box?

That’s right, folks.  This post has toilet humor…Cat style!

Well, it’s more like seeing something funny in the litter box.

Those of you that have cats may have come across something in the litter box that doesn’t belong.  Maybe it’s a cat toy.  Maybe even a dead mouse (thanks for giving the mouse proper burial after killing it, Fifi).  Mine don’t leave toys in the litter box and they’ve never caught any mice, but one of them (I haven’t figured out which one yet) loves me so much, that every once in a while they leave me something interesting in the litter box.

That’s right, my cat pees hearts.  What can yours do? [-_^]

Anyway…

Until next time…

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~A.M.

Blue Moon

 

Don’t ask me to sing the song to you.  One, I don’t know all the words, and two, I can’t sing.

 

Everyone’s heard the expression “every once in a blue moon”.  But some people don’t know exactly what a blue moon is.  Shocking, I know!

 

No, the moon isn’t actually blue in color when we talk about a “blue moon.”  What it means is, according to Wikipedia, “the third full moon in a season that has four full moons, instead of the usual three.” (they say the definition of a “blue moon” as the second full moon in a single month is a mistake.  But, it kind of works out that way from what I’ve seen over the years).  I guess an easy way to remember that would be to say it’s an extra full moon in a year.

 

For those of you that didn’t know that…Huzzah!  You’ve learned something new.  For those of you that DID know that…Huzzah!  I’ve educated you on the obvious!

 

Anyway, on August 31st, 2012, there was a blue moon.  Now, I make it a point to take photos of every full moon, especially every blue moon, if I can.  Usually my luck works out that it ends up being cloudy the night of the full moon.  But sometimes the heavens open up and let the lunar light shine.

 

The 31st started out cloudy and I was pretty bummed.  But a little later in the evening the clouds thinned and the moon came out.  YAY

 

 

Until next time…

 

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~A.M.