Spring in Minnesota

Last weekend I went home to Minnesota to be with my family right after my grandma passed away. It was so nice being home with family, and Minnesota in the spring is one of my favorite places on earth. My parents’ yard is amazing; I am so incredibly lucky to be able to call this my home, and to have grown up there.

It had been a while since I was home during this time of the year, and it was interesting to see the difference in seasons between Kansas and Minnesota. In Minnesota everything had just started to bloom, and the leaves were just starting to get full on the trees. Spring in Kansas was long gone though; the tulips and lilacs had been done blooming for weeks, and the leaves had already started to become the dark green of summer.

At the funeral for my grandma the pastor mentioned that she had told him that after the incredibly harsh winter Minnesota had this year, she really wanted to live long enough to see the leaves on the trees and hot weather again. So as I sat on the back patio looking at the trees in the backyard, the leaves and the bright green of my surroundings meant even more to me.

 

Colorado in October

I am so very behind on sharing things here. My old computer was struggling to edit photographs and share them as well. It was a pain to do and so I just avoided it. But, I recently purchased a beautiful new laptop, one that is powerful and fast, and so I am getting back on track with all my images finally.

In October, Scott and I went to Colorado to hear one of our climbing idols speak. We also made some time for climbing and camping in the mountains. It was a quick trip, but we had wonderful weather and were able to see some beautiful things.

Our first day was spent climbing in the Clear Creak Canyon, near Golden, Colorado. It was a stunning area, maybe even one of my favorites that we have climbed in. That night we camped in Guanella Pass, which is just past Georgetown, Colorado. We were the only ones camping out there (that we saw), and were able to find a stunningly beautiful and quite campsite in the subalpine forest. Our campsite was around 11,000 feet in elevation, which I felt the effects of when we woke up the next morning. There was snow on the ground, and the creek near by had lots of ice formed over it. It was a cold night for camping, but one of the most memorable ones for me.

 

The next day we woke up and tried to keep warm with tea and eggs and sausage. We had plans to try to hike Mt. Bierstadt (a 14,000 foot peak just up the pass) but when we woke up I was feeling the effects of the elevation (loss of appetite, headache), and we decided we just didn’t have the time or the provisions to do so. We ended up driving to the parking lot for the trail to the peak and explored some of the shorter trails from the same parking lot. After taking some photographs we went back to pack up our campsite, and I wandered around shooting some more in the frosty, late-morning light.

Scott, excited about being in the alpine air. Mt. Bierstadt is behind him.

Scott grabbed this one of me; I think it sums up my personality pretty well 🙂

The double exposure series of my feet continues.

357/366 – Anonymous

This afternoon I spontaneously decided to go shoot since it was so warm out. I had no ideas really, I just knew roughly where I was going. I wasn’t even planning on shooting a self-portrait, and then this happened.  It took more than a few hours to edit (by far the most I have spent editing in ages) and is around 6 images combined.

It also sparked an idea for a new series that I am pretty excited about. Hopefully I will be able to get shooting for that soonish.

282/366 – Fall Confusion

I ordered a Holga lens for my Nikon last week, and got it in the mail yesterday. I went out shooting with it for the first time for my grad work this afternoon and decided to try out a double exposure with it. This is pretty much SOOC, just a bit of a contrast boost.

For those of you who may not know, a Holga is a cheap, plastic film camera. They have a plastic lens, and are known for their soft focus and heavy vignette. They now make lenses like this that can attach to DSLR cameras. Since my grad work is about Alzheimer’s I thought it would make more sense to be shooting with a lens that distorts and disturbs the images like this instead of getting “perfect” photographs.

On another note…I am finally all caught up.

276/366 – House

*Thursday, October 18
My grad work right now is about the sense of place that is lost with Alzheimer’s. Thursday I went out and shot quite a few houses, which I will then weave together.

275/366

*Wednesday, October 17
I missed 2 days while I was trying to get caught up and unpacked from my trip. Then I went out to shoot for my grad work, and this was about all I ended up with on Wednesday.

270/366 – Empty

270/366 – Empty
This past week has been a blur, and a bit of an emotional roller coaster. I am finally going to try to get caught up, though I didn’t take a photograph every day so I will have to make up for it at some point I guess.

*Thursday, October 11
Thursday I was in Lexington waiting for my fiance to finish school so we could head up to Cincinnati for SPE. It was beautiful out so I decided to venture to the place that I used as my little sanctuary and retreat while I lived there.

This isn’t very typical me, but I was drawn to it (after editing it over the course of 3 days). I am still sort of torn on if I like it or not though.

254/366

208/366

208/366
Yikes. I am very behind. I just moved from Minnesota to Kansas, so things have been busy and life was more important than uploading or shooting. Details of each day will be posted with the pictures. Here we go…

*Wednesday, August 1
Wednesday was a busy, long day of work and packing. I figured I should take advantage of my last few days living at my parents’ with the beautiful backyard.

202/366

202/366, a photo by aithom2 on Flickr.

My parent’s backyard is so wonderful.