pauses&clicks

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Focus Conundrums

Posted by pausesandclicks on 06/21/2017
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: concentration, grandchildren, storytime, sunflowers, weekly photo challenge: focus. 2 Comments

I’ve worn glasses since I was seven and feel as if most of my life has been a battle to keep the world in focus. As a result, although I appreciate other photographer’s out-of-focus images, I just can’t accept a lack of clarity in mine.

I don’t have as much of a problem with a background that isn’t clear, it’s a fuzzy foreground that presents an optical conundrum for me.

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In the end, all three of my grandchildren are at my home this week, so THEY are my focus! And I must say, although they are capable of great concentration when they’re doing something they enjoy, it’s often hard to get them to sit still long enough to focus a camera on them.  That, however, doesn’t stop me from trying.  And really, doesn’t motion in a picture of kids simply prove they’re doing what kids do best?

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Hoping your week is proving to be as fun as mine is.  What I’ve discovered is that in the twenty-five years since I’ve had a three-year-old, I’d forgotten how deeply satisfying after nap snuggles are, especially when they occur during a thunderstorm.

No picture needed, either in, or out, of focus.  The memory is revived.

 

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This Thing I Do Every Day

Posted by pausesandclicks on 06/14/2017
Posted in: Why I Make Pictures. Tagged: a picture a day, daily habit, dedication, flowers, Instagrams, six years of pictures, weekly photo challenge: order. 3 Comments

The older I get the more I like order in my life.

The clothes in my closet are grouped according to what they are. I eat the exact same breakfast every morning. When I make my bed the pillows are always arranged the same way.  I say the same series of prayers daily. I write this blog every week.

And I post an Instagram every single day.

What started out as an exercise that forced me to be more aware of the world around me and the art that’s always present in it, has become so much more than that.  Six years after I posted my first Instagram on June 11, 2011 the process is ingrained and second nature to who I am.  It has become part of the order of my life.

Today I share with you some of my favorite images from among the 2300+ photos I’ve posted, grouped, of course, in a sort of order.

First up, the green theme:

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The DNA We Share

Posted by pausesandclicks on 06/07/2017
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: cousins, family memories, weekly photo challenge: friend. 3 Comments

I grew up surrounded by cousins.  Jane was one of my best friends throughout grade school and high school and although our adult lives have separated us we’ll always have a bond that’s different than most because of that family dimension and the countless hours we spent together as our personalities took shape.

I love seeing my grandchildren having the same experience.

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This Captured Moment

Posted by pausesandclicks on 05/31/2017
Posted in: Why I Make Pictures. Tagged: a toast, autumn nights, moments, seconds, weekly photo challenge: evanescent. 7 Comments

Our lives are made up of millions of evanescent seconds, most of them going by unnoticed in the flurry of our days.

Every now and then one of those seconds, one of those moments in time, stays with us, perhaps due to the weight of it’s significance but perhaps simply because of the joy it contained.

This is one of those seconds, captured in a photo.

An autumn night, a fire pit on the driveway, good wine, good friends, carved pumpkins and bowls of candy, trick-or-treaters roaming the streets, eager to see what their efforts will produce.

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A moment of time captured in an image that conveys a perfect night, made even more special due to a sense of time passing and the knowledge that moving vans within a year will rob us of being neighbors.

This is why I pursue a photo every day:

To capture one second from among the many.

To commit it to memory in a way that defies it’s evanescence.

To elevate one seemingly ordinary moment.

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“History Makes You Smart, Heritage Makes You Proud”

Posted by pausesandclicks on 05/24/2017
Posted in: Military Life. Tagged: Army Air Corps, letters home, military service, military uniform, shadowbox, weekly photo challenge: heritage, WWII. 3 Comments

Growing up, I heard very little about my father’s participation in World War II but once I became a teenager and started learning about his life through the reading of the letters he and my mom exchanged through their courtship and through his time in the Army Air Corps, his pride in being a Veteran became apparent.

Click here to read an earlier post about those letters.

Little by little, through the years, I discovered tangible evidence of how important those years were to him and how he was shaped by them, resulting in a very evident patriotism which he passed down to his children.

When he died my brother mentioned in his eulogy that Dad was a collector of paper, discovered after we found box after box of letters, newspaper articles, and memorabilia in the form of not just those letters but programs, tickets, cards, photographs and yes, just about every cancelled check he ever wrote.

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Reflections On Change

Posted by pausesandclicks on 05/17/2017
Posted in: Military Life. Tagged: AWACS, life's intersections, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, Tinker Air Force Base, weekly photo challenge: reflection. 2 Comments

My thought process has gone down several rabbit holes as I’ve ruminated about refections this past week so bear with me.  It’s a bit of a winding road!

The word reflection immediately took me back to this photograph….the one and only time I’ve used Photoshop to add a reflection to a picture, to alter the reality of what was in front of me.

Which took my memories back to the phone call that put us in motion towards this particular airplane at Tinker Air Force Base.

I was painting a wall at the time. It was the very last wall in the very last room of a home that we had bought in Virginia in 2004. After more than 25 years of marriage in which we had never been homeowners Jim had been assigned to the Pentagon for the fourth time and we were tired of paying other people’s mortgages so we had jumped into the market.  Real estate was crazy back then. Jim was already there and working while I stayed behind in South Dakota until the school year ended. Homes were snatched up in a matter of days.  I only saw the one we ended up with in photographs. When I finally arrived in Virginia I found it to be a house in a gorgeous neighborhood but it certainly needed some TLC…mainly in the form of stripping wallpaper and painting every single inch of the interior.

So I set to work.

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Warning Sign

Posted by pausesandclicks on 05/10/2017
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: flood pump, Super Photo App, weekly photo challenge: danger. Leave a comment

My life is in a rather safe place right now.

I’m thankful, feeling blessed, and always aware that things can change in a second.

As a result I don’t go looking for danger but I suppose there are always warning signs around us, keeping us aware and safe.  I spied this one in Metarie, Louisiana this past weekend.  It’s especially significant in an area that was once flooded by Katrina, a storm that dramatically changed the lives of so many.

The photo isn’t very artistic so I had fun this morning playing with a favorite app…Super Photo.  Sometimes ya’ just gotta have fun and work with what you have.

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Even when danger could be waiting nearby.

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Close to Home

Posted by pausesandclicks on 05/03/2017
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: beautiful light, big windows, moving, new home, weekly photo challenge: wanderlust. 4 Comments

No wanderlust here these days.

After a nine month process of putting our home in Virginia on the market, selling it, moving, buying a house and unpacking, I’m finally finished with the process.

With views like this in my new home and with my favorite things and people around me (that’s my sister in the dining room, visiting from Wisconsin), I simply have no desire to go anywhere else.

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For the moment anyway!

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Dirt Under My Nails

Posted by pausesandclicks on 04/26/2017
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: flowers, gardening, perennials, plants, weekly photo challenge: earth. 3 Comments

For all of my adult life I’ve moved frequently so my gardening has been done in containers and pots. I’ve seldom witnessed planting perennials in the ground and seeing them emerge from the dirt and flower in subsequent years. I’ve enjoyed the bulbs and seeds that others have planted in the yards of houses I’ve lived in and the bulbs and seeds I’ve planted over the years are hopefully still flowering long after I’ve gone for the pleasure of others but I’ve not had the opportunity to plan and nurture garden beds over a length of time.

For the past several years I’ve not even planted in pots due to a move two summers ago and putting our home on the market last year.

However, this year is different….this year I’m settling into a home that I plan to be in for a while.

This year I got my hands into the dirt and came away with the earth under my fingernails.

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A Spring Surprise

Posted by pausesandclicks on 04/18/2017
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: Queen Anne's Lace, spring flowers, weekly photo challenge: surprise. 2 Comments

I’ve been admiring a proliferation of Queen Anne’s Lace along the roads near my home in Louisiana.

Today I stopped to get a closer look and was surprised to find this particular flower, not quite open, tinged with pink…..

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