Life: Through the Lens

Nothing Can Stop Me Now Oshkosh,Wisconsin Husband and wife team, Amanda and Kyle Franklin In a tragic aside, both were recently injured in an airshow in Texas when their engine caught fire and the plane crashed. Both survived, but were burned . Last night was the St. Johns Camera Club " Transportation " competition. Here are some of the top point scorers; there were so many outstanding images it was very difficult to judge. Yes, I was asked to vote this competition, so when my own photos came up I had to enter a "0." There is a formula to compute a fair score. Market Day in Ghana This is the Life Heritage Flight Legends and Mustangs airshow Columbus,OH Fishing Canoes, Ghana It was so much fun trying to pull together creative images for this competition. We had a total of 12 entries and each did well. I will be contacting those wonderful people who helped us collect ideas for this competition, as my folder is very full of images we gathered before making our fi...

And so, after a few weeks of collecting ideas, sorting photos, and taking new ones, the competition is almost upon us. We got some great ideas from some of you - thank you! Of course, until the competition itself, which is Tuesday, March 29, we can't reveal which images we've decided to use. There are some members of our photography group "lurking" on Facebook and visiting the blog and we sure wouldn't want to give them our great ideas! Thank you we blog artists , Meri , georgia b , Char , Jeanie , Dagmar , and Marion (a Facebook friend) for your wonderful suggestions and well wishes. Stay tuned for our decisions, and your thank you gifts. I'll email for addresses to send the selections to:). It promises to be a busy work week, but I also have some wonderful hints of spring to share. Stop back in the next few days, as I hope to pick up my pace and spend more time doing what I love to do best...sharing nature, photography and stories with other creative souls....

As you may have read in my last post, Camera Club competitions happen throughout the school year. "Motion" was last month's theme, and it was a lot of fun looking for potential images. This month, however, is leaving me a bit mystified. "Transportation" is the theme, and it's wide open. We have a lot of aviation photographs, which club members will anticipate us entering. We also have a lot of boating photographs, which may garner one or two for us to choose from. However, we want something different. U n i q u e . Show-stopper , would be nice. Please leave us some suggestions for potential images we should take for this competition. If we choose your ideas we will be glad to send each winner a copy of the entered image. There could be a lot of winners, as we enter three themed images each . We need to shoot soon, so the window for this give-away is small. Please post suggestions by Friday, March 11 . Yes, that's right. Only a little over a week away. ...

As I've mentioned before, we belong to a camera club . Monthly meetings 9 months of the year bring us together to have workshops on various photography topics and skills, as well as to have themed competitions. February's competition , Motion, was great fun. Members can enter either digital or print images; slides have gone by the wayside, I'm afraid. But this makes the set-up very easy and the meetings run smoothly between the two venues. Three judges enter scores for the entries and the results are averaged. If someone enters photos and is also judging, this person enters a "0" when their photo is displayed, and the other scores are averaged. It works. The highest score you can get is an 18, which means you've earned a "6" from each judge. Fortunately, neither of us is fiercely competitive, so though our photos compete against each other we haven't had a major meltdown yet:) Here's a perfect example, from this month's competition. Thi...

And he's home.! Photo ops were numerous, to say the least. So many excited children and tearful husbands and wives. And my sister and her husband, and the rest of the family, were among those shedding tears of joy. Justin looks great, and was SO excited to get himself settled in an apartment off base and begin life States-side. It sounds as if there's a decent system in place for helping our soldiers re-enter a more "normal" life. And Justin has people to talk to. This will help. At least three days this week there were flights arriving from overseas 2-3 times a day. And at least three days this week, more groups were departing. God bless those home, and those now so far away.

I'm trying to live one day at a time. Really. We left on Saturday morning for our drive to Clarksville, TN, to see my nephew return from Afghanistan. The further south we drove the nicer the weather got (well, after a couple of hours of the dicey stuff in southern Michigan and northern Indiana). But then the clouds lifted, the sun came out, and milder temperature reigned! It was wonderful. Even our arrival on Sunday was greeted with mild temperatures and sunshine. Then Monday arrived, starting with rain....and moving quickly to snow and cold. Tonight we will sit in a hanger waiting for a midnight arrival...bundled and expectant. A "little bird" revealed the forcast for our journey home. Lovely. But our mission will have been accomplished and a wonderful event will take place before that journey. Welcome home to a group of very deserving soldiers!

A good old-fashioned blizzard, the kind we haven't seen in years. Swirling fingers of snow dancing across the landscape, and up into the air. And then calm settles in, and the sun shines upon us. It's hard to appreciate nature's gifts when the cold has settled deep into your bones, but the view was mesmerizing, and the coffee was piping hot!