Photo Non-Contest #177- Favorites

So this week, Written Inc. has requested our favorite photos we've taken this year.  This would have to be mine:

This was taken early last summer at Old Deseret Village, a living history museum in Salt Lake.  It's a row of replica handcarts used every year in the 24th of July Pioneer Day parade.  
Personally, I've always thought it was stupid that Utah chronically glamorizes the handcarts, as they were the stupidest thing every dreamed up for crossing the Plains, and many, many lives were lost because of their encouraged use (my ancestors came in covered wagons, thank you very much).  But that doesn't stop me from thinking these make a pretty cool snapshot.

Photo Non-Contest #175 -- The One

"One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do......"

This is my lonely rock at Oswald State Park in Oregon for Written Inc's weekly theme.

Photo Non-Contest #172 -- Muted

Click on Written Inc to see this week's photo theme.

I've used most of my really good overcast sky photos before, but here's a new one wherein the tree's autumn leaves have their colors muted by the covering of snow.  (This was taken last year in an early storm.)

If you click on the pic to enlarge it, you can see the interesting patterns of the twigs beneath the snow.  That's my favorite part of the picture.

Photo Non-Contest #171 -- Classic

Written Inc's theme this week is "classic."
I was trying to think of something that did not involve cars or books, and I ran across this photo.

Yeah, it's waxed paper, and it's so old it doesn't have a bar code on it anywhere.
Last summer my nephews were over for a picnic, and I opened a drawer to get out some plastic wrap for leftover food and found this instead.  It seems Mom had just found it on a shelf in the storeroom, left over from when we cleaned out Grandma's house after she passed away -- in 1976.  No doubt, Grandma had had it on the shelf awhile, too, as you never know when you're going to need waxed paper, and it doesn't exactly spoil.  Yup, my family's like that.  (I have a squeeze bottle of Bactine spray for cuts and scrapes marked 39¢ from a pharmacy that's been out of business for nearly 4 decades.  I used it some of the spray on an insect bite just a few weeks ago.  Worked great.)

Photo Non-Contest #169 -- Brick and Mortar

Okay, it's sandstone, not brick.  But it's functioning like brick.  And there is mortar in there.
I took this a few weeks ago because I liked the color of the sandstone against the sky (no color altering took place here).

Written Inc's theme this week is brick and mortar.  This is the closest I have for that.

Halloween: A Little Tour Of A Cemetery

This weekend, to take a break from grading papers, I went for a walk in a cemetery I'd never visited before.  I'd passed it numerous times, and even glancing through the fence I could tell it wasn't your usual Utah cemetery with all-flat gravemarkers that make life easier for lawnmowing crews.  No, this cemetery was filled with the less-usual.
Some markers looked rather European in style:

(Note: I have not tampered with the color on any of these; the sky really looks like this in October in Utah.)

And lots of the markers had Greek names on them, but I took far too many photos to post all of them.
A few of the markers were clearly NOT European:

There were many huge, pretentious markers, some that were decorated to the point where there appeared to be no sense of dignity left for the dead, and one that I found mystifyingly tacky:

So, some guy who really, really likes athletic lettering styles buried his two wives (this is Utah, so they might be simultaneous wives and not merely successive wives) under a four-foot granite letter?  Okaaaay, then.  Wow.  I wonder how the folks at the gravestone company kept straight faces while discussing this order.

This cemetery even had crypts!  (Not common at all in Utah.)

And while I was photographing several crypts, my eye caught a twitch of movement beyond one of them.  Yes, I was being watched.  In a graveyard.
But it wasn't anything spooky; it was a couple of mule deer.

We stood and stared at each other for a couple of minutes, and then the deer casually walked away.  But as I went up the hill, I found they had a few friends over:

(Look in the background by the fence.)
There must've been about 35 does and half-grown fawns grazing rather unconcernedly in the cemetery.  (I didn't see any antlers, so I'm assuming no bucks were present.  Maybe this was girls' night out or something.)
Anyway, it was an interesting little tour, and I took about 100 shots in all.  (Max would've taken at least 700 in the same place, I'm sure.)

Photo Non-Contest #167 -- Edible

Last week's post got quite a few comments on a photo of an old spinning wheel in a living history museum of a farm in Orkney (north of Scotland).
This week, Written Inc's theme is "edible," but I've posted so many of my food photos before that I didn't think I could find anything original to use.  Then I remembered the Orkney photos.
The light was so unreal that day, and the subject material so different from anything I usually take.  So let me now share with you a couple of photos of farm food in the prep stages -- at least from an Orcadian farm of a century ago.

Fish drying by the fire (oh yes, they were real fish, dripping oil all over the stone hearth and smelling to high heaven).

I love this photo; it's almost surreal.


And here's a chicken pecking at the flour made with a quernstone.

There you go.  The stuff's edible (even the chicken), and here's hoping it'll be a different take on the theme than what most people do.
Remember to click on the pics to see them full-sized.

Photo Non-Contest #166 -- Triangular

Check out Written Inc's theme for this week: triangles.

I apparently prefer round shapes -- because that's mostly what I found in my photos.  However, I did find a few triangles.

Here are some snow triangles in a chainlink fence:

And here's one I don't think I've posted before -- a spinning wheel in a living history museum in Orkney.  (The triangles are made by the spokes.)

And finally, one I have posted before -- Max and I are looking at our shadows in a river outside of Moab, Utah.  The bridge had some nice triangles in the railings.

Photo Non-Contest #165 -- Welcome, Autumn

Written Inc's theme this week is one I think I anticipated when I took a break from grading papers over the weekend and went with Mom and Dad up a local canyon to see the leaves.  (Unfortunately, half of Salt Lake City also went, and it was crowded as all get out and not very relaxing at all.  Still, I got a few good shots.)
Sometimes I get tired of being reminded by people that the fall colors are "much prettier back East."  Okay, I'm willing to give in that the climate on the east coast is probably more conducive to variety in leaf colors than is our desert.  But it's hard for me to believe that "back East" is always prettier than the contrast we get with aspen and pine against rugged granite mountains.  Try some of these looks on for size:

Here's Silver Lake at Brighton Ski Resort (and about a million people around it):

(We're at the top of the resort here.)

And here's a shot from Moose Meadow Lane on the way up.  (Yeah, that's Dad taking a photo at the near the parking lot there.)

And here's one that's a bit blurry because I took it out of the window of a moving vehicle, but I love the contrast anyway.

(Again, the mountains don't look high here because we're nearly at the summit.)

Remember to click on the photos to see them full-sized.
Happy autumn.

Photo Non-Contest #164 -- It's In The Details

Written Inc's theme for the week is about details.  Most of my new photos aren't really about details, but I did snap this one the last time I visited Max's house.

It's part of his front door.  (Max has plenty of spiffy antiques in his house.)
Remember to click on it to see it full-sized.

Photo Non-Contest #163 -- Eat Your Veggies

Fortunately, I like to photograph food -- because veggies are Written Inc's theme for this week.

Here we go with a veggie tray made by Dad:

And here are some grilled veggies: fajitas at a great little Mexican restaurant in Moab, Utah:

And a hotter-than-Hades jalapeño burger at Old Desert Village in Salt Lake City, Utah:

Yeah, there were about 4 really hot peppers under that chees and salsa.

And here's where I start cheating a little.  These are some funky flavors of potato crisps I bought in Cambridge, England.  We certainly don't have these flavors in the US.

And this is Keenan, my friend's baby, eating his veggies.  Or at least a popcorn/rice cake, anyway.  (Hey, a child will count popcorn as a veggie.)

And my favorite veggie photo:

Yeah, click and enlarge the photo.  You'll see that those are naked baby carrot jockeys riding around that cake.  If you're a fan of cakewrecks.com, you'll understand immediately.  I snapped this shot at a booksigning a year ago.

Photo Non-Contest #162 -- Playing With Light.

Carmi's theme this week is "Playing With Light," which is a bit tough for someone like me who only has a point-and-shoot camera.
Thus, this is my best idea for the theme:

Click to enlarge the photo, and you'll see it's not fog; it's confetti.
I took this right at the end of the Paul McCartney concert in Salt Lake City in 2010.  I like the way the light catches only the edges of the heads in the crowd and the way it makes the paper seem to shimmer in the air.

Photo Non-Contest #161 -- White Part 2

More white.

A wedding in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The original monument to commemorate the arrival of settlers in the Great Salt Lake Valley -- white against an October sky (unretouched colors).

Even though Max already did the Salt Flats, I'm adding in a couple.  This is salt foam accumulating on basalt rocks at the Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake.  The water has a pinkish tint because of a strange, salt-loving critter that lives in it.  (The GSL is the second-saltiest body of water in the world, right after the Dead Sea.  It has up to 5 times as much salt as average ocean water.)

Max called these "saltbergs" since they look like mini icebergs from a distance.  This is salt foam hardened into crusts around the basalt rocks in the shallow water of the lake.

Photo Non-Contest #161 -- White

So, Max got to my idea of the Salt Flats first.  Sigh.  This is what happens when we live in the same city and like to photograph the same things.
So, I'll try a different subject for Written Inc's theme of white.  And it has to be brief today, since I don't have any more time this morning to hunt down not-Salt Flats white pics.

So, here's a painfully ugly dog stinking up a beautiful antique white bedspread in a shop in Midway, Utah. (Yup, how to keep customers from buying that particular object, for sure.)
But it is white.  Mostly.

Remember to click to see this thing in full view.

Another Trip To Red Butte Gardens

The weather has finally cooled off!  And I celebrated by taking a brief visit to Red Butte Gardens on Saturday.

I wasn't the only one celebrating.  There were plenty of children playing in the rattlesnake fountain in the children's garden.  I caught this little girl in mid-flight from her sister who was flipping her with water.

I love the shadow and how it almost touches her toe.  :)

The bumble bees seemed to be celebrating as well.

And possibly even the gnomes were celebrating.

I walked about a bit, taking snaps of big red flowers

and cactus.

Then I walked up the creek under the shade of the scrub oak.

It was a good way to spend an hour of my afternoon.

Remember to click on the photos if you want to see them full-sized.

Fresh From The Garden

My raspberry bushes are overflowing, and the lighting was just right in the kitchen.

And, of course, I had to play with the pic on picnik.com, so I got this inversion:

So, raspberries and..... blueberries?

Photo Non-Contest #160 -- Shopping (All My Ducks In A Row)

I'm not really a big fan of going shopping.  I hate battling for parking places.  I hate malls.  I hate being pushed and shoved in crowds.  I hate lines.  I hate big box stores.
Really, the only kind of shopping I like is the sort at craft fairs or farmers' markets, where there are little booths.
Oh, and bookstores.  I love small, independent bookstores.
Hence, I don't really have many shopping photos for Written Inc's theme this week, which is "shopping."  But, oddly enough, of the dozen or so that I have, two of them involved ducks.

From a little shop in Astoria, Oregon, we get a terrible, through-the-glass shot of a Jack Sparrow rubber ducky -- because everyone needs one of those.  Right?

And then here's one from a local feed and garden shop, taken last spring when Dad wanted to see the baby animals for sale:

Ah, little fuzzy ducky butts..... Cute.

And thus endeth my duck shopping tail tale.  :)

Photo Non-Contest #159 - Vibrant

Written Inc's new theme is "vibrant."
I'm not feeling very vibrant after the first day of school; I'm feeling a bit more toward the "exhausted" end of things.  So here are a few perky pictures in case you're feeling like I am.

This is totally the wrong season, but the egg dye here was pretty vibrant, I'd say.

This is one of my dad's fruit salads.

This is from the children's garden in Red Butte Gardens in Salt Lake City.  If you look in the background, you'll see a bed frame; it's a flower bed.  ;)

And this is a coffee shop in Midway, Utah, where Max and I took a few snaps last spring.  I think the sign against the sky is vibrant.  (No, I didn't tamper with the colors in any way -- not on any of these, actually.)

Photo Non-Contest #156 -- Red

The theme at Written Inc. this week is "red."  Easy enough.

Engine 119, one of the two original engines (now restored) that met for the driving of the Golden Spike on May 10, 1869, joining the first transcontinental railroad.  Taken at Promontory Point, Utah.

The Samurai: a potentially nausea-inducing ride at Lagoon amusement park in Farmington, Utah.