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Tag Archives: Award

YAY!!! I Got “Freshly Pressed” Today!

The astute editors at WordPress selected one of my recent posts–“Defying Gravity” from August 10, 2012–to be one of today’s “Freshly Pressed” posts.  Thank  you Cheri and the rest of the WordPress staff.  This is indeed an honor, and I’m very proud to have been selected from a field of so many eloquent and creative bloggers (and talented photographers too).

For those of you non-Wordpress bloggers who are reading this and wondering what the heck I’m talking about, today’s 20 Freshly Pressed posts are “The best of 465,513 bloggers,1,185,909 new posts, 1,399,798comments, & 297,464,084 words posted today on WordPress.com.”

So while not as rare as winning the lotto or getting struck by lightning, the odds of getting Freshly Pressed are still high enough that I’ve been glowing all day.  Kindof like the backlit sunflower I picked for today’s image.  (We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.)

One of the neatest things about today has been all the great comments and compliments I’ve received from old and new readers alike. It’s been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, and I’m checking out EACH of your blogs (and subscribing to a great many of them) before I answer your comments.  I’m going chronologically, so if I haven’t gotten to yours yet, don’t fret.  My dreams of going viral are still just that–dreams–so I can still find out who each of you brilliant and discerning folks are.

The “Defying Gravity” post featured images of the Skeen School in the Palouse region of Washington state.  I had hoped to be able to write more about it, and thought there would be plenty of information online, but when I went to research it, I found precious little.  If anyone reading this knows more, please leave a comment.

The Skeen School is on most serious photographers’ Bucket List of Palouse images.  Like wheat-covered hills, dilapidated barns, grazing cows, and harvesting machinery, it’s an iconic image of this beautiful and unique region.  Which makes it all the more astonishing to me that there isn’t more information about it readily available.

One thing that surprised me as I was reading the comments on that post is that some people thought I had either played a trick with lenses and/or image editing software to deliberately create the leaning “look” of the building.  It honestly never occurred to me that people would think that, but I guess we’re all getting used to seeing manipulated images all around us and are taking it for granted that trippy-looking buildings aren’t real.

Folks, I assure you that the Skeen School is indeed twisting and leaning as depicted.  In fact, it twists and leans a bit more every year, which will unfortunately lead to its eventual collapse.  I did make what I consider to be “minor” adjustments to the images in that post, specifically things like color-correction and contrast, which I make to almost all my images since I shoot exclusively in RAW format.  But the distortion of the building is real.  That’s why the post is titled “Defying Gravity.”

One final comment about the comments.  It seems like there’s a disproportionate number of “grammar geeks” that liked that post.  I’ll take that as a compliment on the writing as well as the photography.  I’m also a grammar geek, so the term is NOT a put-down.  Grammar geeks of the world, I love you!  And I love reading your blogs.  Y’all writes real good!

Versatile Blogger Award

This is the third and final entry of three blog award nominations over three days.  (Tomorrow we will return to our regular programming!)  Today I am celebrating receiving The Versatile Blogger Award.  I was nominated by Mary Ann Blinkhorn:  http://mypenandme.wordpress.com

Mary Ann is a poet, prose writer, doodler and photographer.  (Did I get them right, Mary Ann?) Being a writer, Mary Ann knows better than to call her blog “My Pen And I.”  This proves she’s legit.  So check out her blog “My Pen and Me” when you get a chance.  (I especially like her doodles!)

There are only three rules for The Versatile Blogger Award, and they are exactly the same as the three rules for The Lovely Blog Award, which was featured in yesterday’s post.  This is good, since I’m not a great rule follower.  No, not even “The Rule of Thirds.”  In my mind, rules are made to be broken (or at least stretched) so here we go…  As the great Yogi Berra once said “This is like deja vu all over again!”

Who read yesterday’s post and remembers rule #1?  Class?   Anyone?  Bueller?

That’s right, it’s thank the nominator, which I haven’t done yet, though I gave her a nice plug in the first two paragraphs of this post. So, thank you, Mary Ann, your nomination is much appreciated.  You have exquisite taste in blogs, bloggers, photography and writing, not necessarily in that order.

Rule #2 is to nominate 15 other bloggers.  (This is actually the third rule, but I’m taking them out of order (again) because I feel #3 is more important than #2.)  As with yesterday’s 15 nominees, a difficult choice, and without duplicating any of yesterday’s sites, here are 15 more for your viewing and reading enjoyment:

The third and final rule is to post seven things about myself.  Seven more, really?  Again, I think my images are more interesting than I am, but here you go:

  • My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic that I “liberated” from my mother.  Most of our family pictures were taken with that camera.  The camera’s long gone, but I still have many of the pictures.
  • My first “real” (35 mm) camera was a Mamiya Secor rangefinder that one of my brothers-in-law gave me when I was still in high school.
  • I only took one photography class in college, and I hated it.  Hated having to shoot only black & white, hated having to be trapped in a claustrophobic darkroom breathing noxious fumes, and hated waiting…waiting…waiting.
  • The top five states in which I love to shoot are Maine, Alaska, Hawai’i, Arizona and Washington.
  • The last five countries I shot in (not counting the US) are Canada, Mexico, Australia, Peru and China.
  • Five types of aircraft I have flown in, and photographed from, include a glider, a biplane, a blimp, a hot air balloon, and a DC-3.
  • My favorite photographic subjects that I have ready access to are my cats.
Finally, since I never put up a post that doesn’t include at least one of my images, here’s another preview of an upcoming series on “Barns of the Palouse.”  In honor of the award, the green of the grass, the black of the trunks, and the white of the barn echo the Versatile Blogger logo colors.

One Lovely Blog Award

Today I am graciously accepting the “One Lovely Blog Award.”  I was nominated by B&W Bears, to whom I would like to extend hearty thanks.  B&W Bears posts images and writes about photography and food, which are two of my main four topics (the other two being art in general, and travel), so of course it’s a favorite blog of mine.  Check it out at:  http://bwbears.wordpress.com

There are only three rules for the Lovely Blog Award, and they are as follows:

First, thank the nominator, which I did right off the bat (see paragraph one, above).

Second, nominate 15 other bloggers.  (This is actually the third rule, but I’m taking them out of order because I feel #3 is more important than #2.)  As with yesterday’s five nominees, a difficult choice, and without duplicating any of yesterday’s sites, here are 15 more for your viewing and reading enjoyment:

The third and final rule is to post seven things about myself.  Evidently, anything goes.  There seem to be no guidelines.  Personally, I think my images are more interesting than I am, but here you go:

  • My dream job (which doesn’t exist any  longer, evidently) would be Lighthouse Keeper.
  • The top five places on my Bucket List (as of today) are Namibia, Antarctica, Madagascar, The Galapagos and Cuba.
  • If I win the lottery, my first purchase will be an 800 mm lens ($14K).
  • The animals I would most like to photograph in the wild include African elephants, emporer penguins, polar bears, snow leopards and jaguars.
  • The scariest thing I have done to date was skydiving.  (But it was REALLY fun!)
  • One thing that feeds my soul is inspiring ordinary people take extraordinary images.  Or at least to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.  (I hope this blog, in some small way, helps that happen.)
  • Before I die, I would love to be able to photograph the earth from outer space.

And finally, since I never put up a post that doesn’t include at least one of my images, here’s a rose I saw during a visit to a botanical garden in Seattle a couple of weeks ago.  In honor of the award, the pink of the rose echos the One Lovely Blog logo color.

Liebster Award

One of my favorite bloggers, nz, nominated me for a Liebster Award.  Thank you, nz.  Since I was on vacation at the time of the nomination, I am just getting around to following up on it.  That and the fact that I just got nominated for two more awards in the last couple of days made me realize that I need to get busy about “paying it forward”  without further adieu.

The adage “it never rains but if pours” springs to mind.  As Sally Field so famously said:  “You like me, right now, you like me!”  I’ll put the other two awards into separate posts, so for now, back to the Liebster.

The first rule of the award is to thank the awarder, which I just did.  (Really, do we need to be reminded?)  Thank you again, nz!  🙂

The second rule is to link back to the blogger that nominated you.  That would be:  http://orbitaldecay.wordpress.com

Check it out!  Way cool images, don’t know how they’re made, and don’t think I could explain it well if I did (something to do with fractals, whatever those are!) so you just have to see for yourself.

The third rule is to nominate five blogs with fewer than 200 followers.  Very hard to pick, believe me, and not sure how many followers each of them has, but my nominations are:

The fourth rule is to let the nominees know by leaving a comment on their sites (which I will do shortly)…
And the fifth (and final) rule is to add the award image to your site (at the top of this post).  Done!
So if you enjoy this blog (and if you don’t you’re probably not reading this any longer anyway) please check out the links to the other five blogs I listed above.  In addition to being talented photographers and/or writers and/or poets, they are all kindred spirits.
Finally, since I never put up a post that doesn’t include at least one of my images, here’s a preview of an upcoming series on “Barns of the Palouse.”  In honor of the award, the red and white of the barn echo the Liebster logo colors.