30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 25

Yesterday's photo challenge assignment was a photo of something I ate. Cousin Shmanderz suggested I do "before" & "after" photos, so what follows is my before & after soup series.

Photo taken with the Canon PowerShot A520

Photo taken with the Canon PowerShot A520

Photo taken with the Canon PowerShot A520

Mmmm. Gotta love soup season. I made a huge pot of it, most of which is now frozen. The original batch wasn't very flavourful, but the soup that sat in the fridge for several days gathered a lot of flavour from the spices & whatnot and is sooo yummy! Potatoes, carrots, sautéed onions & mushrooms, peas, lots of garlic, chicken sausage, and organic chicken broth.

30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 24

My assignment for yesterday was a photo of anything I wanted. Honestly, the next time I do a photo challenge like this I will probably weed out assignments like yesterday's that aren't really much of a challenge. Anyway, this is a pumpkin's-eye-view from our front door at 300 East.

Photo taken with the Canon PowerShot A520

"Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate,

The first one said, 'Oh, my, it's getting late!'

The second one said, 'There are witches in the air!'

The third one said, 'But I don't care.'

The fourth one said, 'I'm ready for some fun!'

The fifth one said, 'Let's run, and run, and run.'

'Wooooooo!' went the wind.

And OUT went the light!

And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight."

30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 8

For Day 7's challenge, a photo of me with a friend, I actually have two pictures!
Today I went to the Carolina Claymatters Fall Pottery Festival where my friends Elaine & John had a tent set up to sell their fabulous pottery. It was a gorgeous day to be outside...75F & sunny all day, and a good time was had by all!
Here Elaine & I are in the tent:

Photo taken with my Traveler XS 40 digital camera

 And our cowboy boots were just begging to be photographed!:

Photo taken with my Traveler XS 40 digital camera

Since I brought my Canon AE-1 Program with me, I was mainly focused on photographing with it, therefore I won't have many more pottery festival photos until I get that film developed (soon I hope!). The festival, which happens each fall & spring, takes place on the grounds of an old dairy barn. At the site there is a really cool old barn & silos which have been condemned. I got a couple photos of them, but I am planning to go back soon to get some better pictures of them when they aren't surrounded by tents & cars & such.

I do have one more digital photo to share from today, of the work of my friend Gary, whom I hadn't seen in several years. It's always great to run into old friends at an event like that! The way the vases, shadows, & trees were all arranged, combined with the lighting, seemed really cool to me:

Photo taken with my Traveler XS 40 digital camera

All of my photos from this evening at Petra's Piano Bar were taken with the Canon film camera, so I have none to share (yet), but hearing Ethan & the Romanian young man he is hosting play piano was a lot of fun. It will be interesting to see how my photos came out, as the lighting in Petra's was extremely dim and I had forgotten to bring my flash. In any case, I can't wait to get all my film from today developed, especially since the first roll I shot had about 12 mystery photos on it - whatever could they be?!

Día de los Muertos Cakes

Earlier tonight as I was perusing Tumblr, I decided to do a search for Día de los Muertos/Day of the Dead, hoping to find some of José Guadalupe Posada's artwork. He was a Mexican cartoonist, illustrator, lithographer, & printmaker whose work is frequently associated with Day of the Dead.

"Gran Fandango y Francachela de todas las Calaveras" by José Guadalupe Posada

What I found instead were Day of the Dead cakes! How did I not know these existed before? They are awesome and I want one! My uncle's birthday is the day before mine, so our family usually celebrates them together, and our birthday is coming up. The other day he & Shmanderz & I were discussing what sort of cake we want for our birthday; Shmanderz said she would like to make a rainbow cake for us, but now I am thinking how fantastic it would be to have a Día de los Muertos cake! Even if we don't have a Día de los Muertos birthday cake, I am determined to have a Día de los Muertos cake by the time Day of the Dead rolls around.

Here are some photos of Día de los Muertos cakes from around the internet. Aren't they cool?:

It looks like all of these cakes were made with fondant. I believe with some icing, fondant, sugar skulls, and a little creativity we could create a pretty cool cake! Would anyone like to join me for a Día de los Muertos cake decorating party?

My Fave Photos from 20 Sept. to 5 Oct.

All photos taken with my Traveler XS 40 digital camera.

When I burned this blue candle, it ended up with this really cool lace pattern at the top of the candle. Photographing the lace pattern turned out to be quite challenging, and on top of that my camera kept wanting to make everything look very yellow. For some reason in low light it tends to make everything look yellow-orange-red, and in brighter light everything ends up blindingly white. I've tried playing around with all the settings and have yet to find ones that reliably provide a desirable white balance. Does anyone have any suggestions? It's basically a point & shoot camera, so there aren't that many settings to change (I suspect that is actually part of the problem)... Anyway, this is my favourite from the candle photo shoot.

I actually like how the white balance pretty much wiped out everything but my harmonica & its shadow in this picture.

Duke Energy Center, the second tallest building in Charlotte.

Approaching The Green, with St. Peter's Catholic Church visible, on my way to visit the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art.

Pumpkin Season is here, and this is the light up pumpkin who is living on our front stoop until November.

On top of  my car, just hanging out, getting a slightly different perspective on things.

Sitting on the back deck, reading, chatting with my Cousins & friends.  :)

I took a lot of shoe pictures today. Well, my blue Levi's are one of my favourite pairs of shoes!

Buddha medallion hanging from my mala (Tibetan/Nepalese prayer beads).

Optimistic About October

October means all things Fall; cardigans, beautiful displays of changing leaf colours, migrating birds & butterflies, cool breezes, new knitting projects, apple cider, preparing & decorating for Halloween & Día de los Muertos, more hours of my favourite natural lighting for photos, long car rides, picnics, evenings reading by candlelight, that earthy way the air smells, a hot meal at the end of a chilly day, & bonfires. I think Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, "Autumn Fires" captures my feelings about the season quite nicely.

In the other gardens

And all up the vale,

From the autumn bonfires

See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over

And all the summer flowers,

The red fire blazes,

The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!

Something bright in all!

Flowers in the summer,

Fires in the fall!

Autumn is my favourite season, and am feeling optimistic about what can be accomplished this October. On my list of plans for the month is a 30 day photo challenge. Each day will have a specific assignment such as a photo of something red, an object from my childhood, or my favourite body part (what??). I hope to get really creative with this challenge, rather than just snapping whatever photo would be easiest to fulfil the day's assignment.

Why else am I so excited & optimistic about this month, you may ask?

October is the start of Charlotte Chamber Music's season of Living Room Concerts & Free First Tuesday Concerts. This Tuesday is the first of the Free First Tuesday Concerts, & I will be one of the volunteers for both concert times! (12:10pm & 5:30pm at First Presbyterian Church of Charlotte on W. Trade St) This particular concert is titled "Carolina Shout, Celebration of Romare Bearden" and will be a musical tribute in honour of the centennial of the Charlotte-born artist's birth. I'm looking forward to excellent music, interesting people, and hopefully some great photo opportunities!

Fall is when I tend to be my most creative. I'm finally able to shake of the lethargy of hot summer days, get outside, and get out of my own head. Sure, my imagination can be a fun place to hang out, but after months of lying around not wanting to leave the cool spot in front of the fan I can start to get cabin fever in there. So when the days start to get cooler, I feel less lazy and can get some much needed outside input & inspiration. With the cooler weather, my energy reserves grow exponentially and I am able to actually accomplish what I set out to do. What a relief!

October also means camping season. So far I haven't got any trips planned, but I think it would be nice to go camping mid-October near Graveyard Fields in the Pisgah Ranger District, south of Asheville on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Graveyard Fields is so named for the tree trunks (from trees toppled by wind hundreds of years ago) that used to make the area look like a graveyard until destroyed by a fire in the 1920s. Mid-October is usually the perfect time to see fall colours at their peak at Graveyard Fields.

Graveyard Fields Overlook Marker - photo from groovyadventures.com

Graveyard Field Trail in Autumn - photo from romanticasheville.com

Two more reasons to be excited are that many excellent art festivals take place in the fall, and my birthday is in a couple weeks! I will be turning 24, while my alter ego will be turning 44. I think my other alter ego will be 92, but I'm not entirely sure since she claims to not remember which year she was born...

What do you look forward to about the fall? Does this time of year revitalise you, or do you find yourself winding down with the cooler weather? Have you got anything exciting planned for the coming month?