End of the year - one day at a time

These clocks are the symbolic completion of my one year challenge to take a picture a day. Thanks Judy for getting me motivated again, if only for awhile.  During the year, I was pushed to learned several new photography technicals and was challenged to always be on the look out for possible photos that I could post. It has opened up my eyes and vision and gotten me away from photographing mostly landscapes.  It also made me try harder to achieve taking an interesting and better photos.

With this post, my shinny spoon is back again the other two images are from Hobby Lobby.

I enjoyed doing the blog, but also found it time consuming and labor intensive at times. I am ready for a break from this task and have not ruled out picking it up again in a different format. I will let you know if I start posting again. For now... catch ya down the road and thanks for viewing.

Some left over photos

My first post for this year long challenge was on Dec. 30, 2015 and I have posted 351 times through out the year. Missed a few days while I was camping in awesome mountains. I have kept a file of "post ready" photos to pull from and these are from that file that I did not get around to using. The above is a Utah image.

 My favorite tree is again.

Remember the horse tails from an earlier post? Well this is the front end and he is looking at me with an attitude.."what ya doing lady!"

This is a bison from Grand Tetons having lunch.

And another view of the beautiful Aspens this fall.

Cherries, not apples

After photographing the Rainier cherries I realized that they could also look like apples. I took the messy looking stems off and sprayed them with water. While photographing them (3 pm) my nice sun coming through the window went away and on looking up I notice the sun had gone behind a 3 story pine tree  - okay maybe 2 story. Cherries were gone by the next day, so didn't re-photograph them. Yum.

And is life a bowl of cherries? Hmm or like a box of chocolates as Forrest Gump said.

Gears in a clock

More reflections in a spoon.

Zagged zig zags

Distorted zig zags through the water glass. While at Hobby Lobby a couple of weeks ago I found some new back ground paper to experiment with.

Water and notes

Playing with water and light.  Shooting through the water distorts the background and these were shot in my sunroom while I blocked the direct sun with paper.

Picnic anyone?

It will be a few months before the snow is off this table. Warmer weather would also be nice.

Boxes, boxes, boxes

Christmas boxes ready for your gift treasures. Lots of boxes at Hobby Lobby. Merry Christmas.

Mallards in a row

Open water! Lions Lake is frozen and these ducks found some open water in the Peanut Pond. Weather was decent yesterday with no wind and warmer temperature so took the bike for a ride around the park.

Wyoming Territorial Prison

View of Wyoming Territorial Prison from the parking lot which is located in Laramie.

YEA HAW

Oh joyful day, it's Winter's Solstice. Even though it is officially the first day of Winter, it is also when the sun starts back north making the daylight time longer each day. In increments of  one minute/s, one day towards summer and warmer weather. We are moving towards summer, not away.

Hobby Lobby color

The artificial flower section is also colorful with lots of choices for your creativity.

Pottery for sale... Creative displays.

Shopping in Hobby Lobby can be very time consuming as I get side tracked with all their creative displays of merchandise. These are from a display for black and white pottery to decorate your home.

The middle photo was from the top shelf and I didn't think they would like me pulling up a ladder to get a photograph without  the neon lights on the ceiling. I did a little creative photo-shopping to eliminate them ending up with a funky photo. I know, I am out of control.

Careful what you leave at my house

Bailey's violin was left at my house one day to keep it out of the extreme cold and Gma just had to take it out and photograph it.

Cold and snowy again

What a beautiful fall we had, but are paying for it now. This was taken with the previous  4 degrees group and today it is now it -5 with a wind chill of -20 and the sun is shining. Last night it was -11. Now where is Spring? Guess we need to get through Winter first.

Brushes

Paint brushes, watercolor brushes, and they are dusty from lack of use.

Just safety pins

Yes, these are just safety pins. I am not making a statement, I am not a buttercup, it's just a photo of safety pins. Like yesterday's post, they are used to keep our clothes together and for me they do not  have any other meaning.  And yes, our world is getting really strange.

Buttons

This is my stash of odds and end buttons saved over the years. If you have been to the craft fairs you probably have noticed the different items made with buttons. But try to buy them in a bag instead of the little cards ($)... to create something, hmm - not happening. So if you are at an estate sale and see some, grab them since they are a hot item.

View from the top

Colored pencils just colored pencils.

Shiny spoon is back

This is an inside job! No laying on the ground outside to capture pretty flowers, or weeds in the snow like yesterday's post. After finishing the two photos I decided I liked to polka dots the best.

More snow

Another weed and it's shadow. Or maybe this was an awesome wild flower last summer.

Stripes

The stripes on Zebras are always interesting. This one was taken at Denver Zoo.

Rock climbers path

Rock climbers like to climb up the left side of this rock grouping, actually they use all sides. I have seen them descend and hang from the top of Potato Chip. The other iconic rock is Dogbone which stands alone in front of the evergreen trees on the left. This is from the photos taken on Wed. when the temperature was 4 degrees.

Potato Chip rock

 This is Vedauwoo's snow covered Potato Chip rock in Medicine Bow National Forest.  I made a quick stop yesterday while returning from Laramie as the temperature was 4 degrees with a light breeze. Road in only had two inches of snow on them so far.

Wagon wheel

Close up of the wagon wheel that is at Frontier Town in the Park this fall. I like photographing old wooden wheels, old buildings or cabins, old wagons and all stuff old.

Capitol Reef National Park

This is the barn and farm equipment at from Capitol Reef National Park in Utah. This park is harder to get and I found it less crowed than some of the National Parks that I have visited.

Monument Valley

I believe the above rock is named the Thumb but to me it is the talking man with his open mouth.
The lower is a saddle at the horse stables also on the 17 Mile drive at Monument Valley. It's a great one way road with lots of stops and hard to get to Artist Point with and still have good morning light.

Door after door, after door...

This is the 900 year old Aztec pueblo ruins just north of Farmington, NM. I have visited a lot of ruins in the southwest and this one is one of the better ruins and one I really enjoyed.  You can actually walk into some of the rooms.. With my years of visiting ruins, some of them are no more than a single row of rocks which I am not impressed with. The door photo took a tripod and a long exposure to capture it. And there weren't too many visitors so I could get some photos without people. Some of the rooms had plain glass over the window opening to let in light.

Dancing Indian

I have photographed many Indians over the years at the Indian Village during Frontier Days and always enjoy them. Looking at this photo from a couple of years ago, I am amazed that there are no tourists in the back ground. From what I remember, it wasn't the best weather that day.

Transportation

Steam power and peddle power. Not sure old Sadie could still run if put on tracks again. And the yellow bike is great exercise but our weather has turned COLD and she is sitting in the garage. This was taken a  week ago in late November. And in my basket - pine cones that I use for fire starters in the wood stove.

Today it's Dec 2 and the count down is near to the end of my year long challenge and experiment of posting a photo a day. It has gotten harder to take photos in 2016, but I still have lots to draw from my collection.

Utah

Great light on cliffs in Utah.