Week 36 - 2014 in Images

Day 246

One of the down sides of doing the 365 day challenge is knowing just how fast the year is going past. Soon it will be fall and I will be out seeking aspen photos. The upside to have a whole year of your best photos packed away in weekly folders is you know where to begin to look for last year's aspen pictures and therefore know when to plan this year's photo treks.

And in my third year, or is it fourth, I am able to make comparisons between the years. The big one this year has been rain. That is reflected even in the photo below of my butterfly bath. It was so dry last summer I did not even think of doing one. Living off a well in a drought you begin to conserve water. I wish Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix would think like that. But this some the rain water has kept the butterfly and bee bath full on most days. And I have been rewarded with a plethora of bees and butterflies and flowers like the Borage blossom floating among the marbles the insects rest upon to drink.

Day 247

Another boon from the rains have been the fields and the water flowers. Last year the owner of the field behind me did not graze his horses there because it was too overgrazed from the year before and he would have had to haul water for them. This year the stream is running and the grasses and wild flowers are lush.

Day 248

Love taking photos of the hoofed lawn ornaments behind my house. And next week I believe you will get one or two more photographs because a new variety of wild flower has sprung up and the field is a riot of lilac and lavender colors. The dappled grey looks particularly wonderful amid them.

Day 249

I did photograph other things this week. I was into still life compositions again. Not ones I arranged, other than picking my angles, but those I found around like the butterfly and bee bath above or the glass vase of pears below. Or the drum in the closing photo.

Day 250

It had been a dry week and so I dug back to the week before to rework the photo below of the two inch rain we had. Seems to have worked because it is raining even this morning as I compose this blog.

I often paint water into my desert mixed media compositions for the same reason. It is like calling up a return to a wetter time.

Day 251

The drum below is a tourist thing. An object of art as opposed to the spirit. Most drums were painted with symbols which when the drum was beaten were to invoke the spirits portrayed and call up the rain or the buffalo or the harvest. We have only the ruins left by the Anasazi to prove it did not always work. But it must have worked enough to establish a belief system around it.

Day 252