“On the Move” is the theme for this week’s photo challenge from dailypost.wordpress.com. Continue reading
Photos
Weekly Photo Challenge: Letters
The challenge this week from dailypost.wordpress.com is to share a post with letters. I knew what I wanted to capture, but it took a few days for the weather to cooperate.
For as long as I can remember, most likely my entire life, I’ve seen the Public Service Company power plant lit up at night, as you see above. Perched alongside the Arkansas River in the middle of the city, it’s hard to miss. Continue reading
Why Our Flag Is Blue
The sky really is that blue some days.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Monument – Creek Council Oak
I have a thing for monuments, which is the theme for this week’s photo challenge from dailypost.wordpress.com. Continue reading
Blood Moon
Blood Moon over Tulsa, OK
4/15/2014
Bluebirds
This may seem a bit weird, but I guess I’ve turned into an amateur birder of sorts. While working up at my family’s lake cabin today, I caught site of several new birds flitting from tree to tree. Continue reading
Weekly Photo Challenge: Threshold
This week’s photo challenge from dailypost.wordpress.com is “Threshold.” The description they give is:
A threshold is a point of entering; that point just before a new beginning — that split-second moment in time, full of anticipation. All the hard work is over; relief is palpable.
I really didn’t know what to do with this challenge. My current day-to-day routine doesn’t really lend itself to much photographic creativity, so I pondered it until Sunday evening when I attended Mass at my parish. I sat in a different place than I usually do, so the procession to receive Holy Communion took me on a different path, past the Church’s hand carved Stations of the Cross, along the western wall of the Church.
It was a rare opportunity to see the Stations up close and to have a few seconds of contemplation with each. The 14th station, depicted above, of Christ being laid in the Tomb really speaks to me. It’s emotional and raw and in a way that I hope meets the definition of “threshold” given above.
An evangelical church that I pass each day on my drive to work currently has this on its marquee:
“What began with a tree ended with a tree.”
The phrase has bugged me all week because it is NOT the whole story. It’s not even the end of the story. The marquee recalls on one hand the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, source of the “apple” which caused man’s descent into sin, and, on the other hand, it brings forth the image of the tree from which Christ’s crucifix was made.
It over simplifies the enormity of Christ’s life and death and overlooks the critical need for His Resurrection. Christ removed from the cross and laid in the Tomb, as recounted in the 14th Station, is in this instant of reflection, a threshold for what had to happen after the Crucifixion to finish Christ’s mission on earth – proving that death is not the end for Him or us.
I took photos of all the Stations after Mass that evening. Not the best photos to be sure, but not bad for a little meditation.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflection
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- Clouds on the Hood
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- Madonna Reflection
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- Monastery Window
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- Moon Over St. Fidelis, Papua New Guinea
This week’s photo challenge from dailypost.wordpress.com is “Reflection,” an interesting topic to be sure:
Reflect: to consider where we’ve been in life, where we are now, and where we’re going.
It was a busy week, so I don’t feel like I did this topic much credit, but here are a few shots that I’ve taken in the last 6 months or so. I find them ‘reflective’ in the sense of an inner conversation that the bring to me, but that may not be obvious to you.
The most recent of the photos is this one:
This caught my attention the other morning. At Christmas I was collecting some pretty Christmas cards that I intend to frame someday. This one of the Madonna and Child has been sitting on my breakfast table for months when I noticed it’s reflection in my camera’s display. I thought it was interesting as a reflected image ON the camera, rather than one taken THROUGH the camera. What do you think?
Here’s another one that I like. It’s taken over the bay adjacent to St. Fidelis Seminary on the north coast of Papua New Guinea, where I taught. I did my best to capture the beauty and mystery of the clouded full moon over the water, but I lacked a proper tripod to really do it justice. Still, it’s an image that I can lose myself in, both with memories of the past and questions of the future.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Abandoned
I’m getting this week’s photo challenge from dailypost.wordpress.com in just under the wire, I think.
The challenge this week is to show “abandoned.” I’ve been pondering it all week and though I knew I didn’t want to show something like an abandoned car or house or something like that, I couldn’t put my finger on something new to photo.
Instead, I decided to show you this photo that I took a couple of years ago. I think it’s interesting for a number of reason.
First, this is graffiti that I photographed from the wall of a building just outside Vatican City in Rome. I was there with Fr. Roderick Vonhogen for the Beatification of Pope John Paul II. I saw this as we were walking along a side street and nearly didn’t stop to shoot it.
Second, it grabbed my attention, and I use it now, because it expresses a hopelessness of the future, an “abandonment,” if you will that seemed so out of place in Rome.
I often wonder about the person who sprayed this on the wall and hope that he or she found answers for their angst. I think this feeling of abandonment, which we all feel from time to time, is a good thing to ponder during this season of Lent.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Threes
I may have to try this one a couple of times. It’s an intriguing assignment! This week’s photo challenge from dailypost.wordpress.com is called “Threes”.
“IN A NEW POST PUBLISHED SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE ‘THREE.’
If you want to try a three-picture story, great! If not, try three images of the same subject taken from different perspectives, three images of the same thing at different times, […]”
For this post, I’ve chosen one of Tulsa’s most iconic symbols, “The Golden Driller”, a large statue at the Tulsa County Fairgrounds (aka Expo Square) which recounts the city’s storied past as the “Oil Capital of the World.” The three photos above show the Driller from different perspectives. It doesn’t exactly tell a story, but he’s pretty stoic and taciturn, so you get what you get.
Tulsa Street Art
This is a whimsical post, for the most part. This morning after church, some street art in downtown Tulsa caught my eye, so I decided to wander the area and see what other pieces of art I could find.
I don’t know if “street art” is the right term for this, but I’m referring to original art that is clearly not graffiti, gang-related, or any type of vandalism. This is the stuff that I think is decorative or purposeful – for a business perhaps.
Anyway, there’s more of this type of art around than I would have thought. These photos were all taken close to downtown Tulsa and are pretty imaginative. I won’t say that I particularly like some of these styles, but I do find it interesting. If you’re wondering about all of the “skeleton” depictions, I think these were part of a “dia de los muertos” celebration a couple of years ago.
I’ll have to keep an eye out for more as time goes by. What do you think? Does this type of art add or detract from a city’s ambiance?
Weekly Photo Challenge: Selfie
This week’s photo challenge from dailypost.wordpress.com is all about the “selfie.”
I’m really not sure what I think about this photo or “selfie’s” in general. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of rampant vanity, I think, if you become enamored with taking photos of just yourself.
I took this shot with my iphone 4, backlit from a stark winter view outside. Not very imaginative, I know, but I really dislike photos of myself.
All this winter weather has me grumpy. I’ll keep thinking about this and see if I can come up with something more interesting.
Got any ideas? Maybe a different take on what “self” means. Hmm…
Weekly Photo Challenge: Window
There’s a great old building in the town of Adair, Oklahoma that I pass often on the way to the lake. I was thinking about this week’s photo challenge from dailypost.wordpress.com when I decided to take a closer look at what this building has to offer. Continue reading
Weekly Photo Challenge: One
A lone tree on the banks of the Arkansas River at sunset.
The holidays have really put a damper on my blogging activities, but I’m back with this week’s photo challenge from the folks at dailypost.wordpress.com. Here’s this week’s assignment:
This week, we want to see photos that focus on one thing. Maybe you’ve got a stark photo of a single tree silhouetted against the setting sun, […]
OK, we’ll stop right there … single tree, setting sun, right up my alley. I’ll throw in a river and a hill too for this shot.
A lone tree on the banks of the Arkansas River in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Turkey Mountain in the background. I think it’s an OK shot, not bad for a cold afternoon as winter sinks its claws into the midst of America.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Unexpected
I’m back with another entry in the Weekly Photo Challenge from dailypost.wordpress.com . This week it’s all about the “unexpected” things that we encounter as we’re out and about in the world.
The photo above was taken in the small vestibule of Chuy’s Mexican Restaurant, a new place on Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza. The small entry to the restaurant, a transition zone between the outer and inner doors of the restaurant, was decorated with hundreds of old cameras. Mostly Kodak Instamatic cameras from the 70’s, it was completely unexpected, not to mention just a little bit spooky.
Stepping inside from the frigid air of a cold November morning, I’m suddenly faced by all these silent witnesses of times past. I thought it a fitting entry for this week’s challenge.
Moreover, it gave me pause. Like the abandoned toys from a “Toy Story” movie, these old gadgets could certainly tell stories of their former lives as recorders of events from decades ago.
Alas, there’s no way to recover the glory or the usefulness of their former time, relegated now to curious decorations, hardly noticed except by one caught in the lens of the unexpected.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Eerie
This week’s photo challenge from The Daily Post @ WordPress.com is all about being “eerie.” Obviously, this is in keeping with the now-passed Halloween holiday.
This weekend I was visiting the Raleigh/Durham area of North Carolina for a wedding. The railroad crossing from which this photo was taken is very close to the hotel in which I was staying. North Carolina is resplendent in its fall colors, but this shot converted to black and white, becomes particularly eerie.
What I like is that the far distance of the shot leaves a lot to the imagination. Just what is it that is seemingly coming towards you from the shadows?
I’ll give you a hint – it’s not the Waffle House restaurant that is just to my left as I take this shot!
Eerie tracks in the middle of Durham, NC
Weekly Photo Challenge: Horizon
This week’s photo challenge is right in my bailiwick. I just love to take photos of the sky, especially when you can see all the way to the horizon.
In keeping with my goal to shoot new photos for the current challenge, rather than use something that I took previously, I was happy to take this shot today.
This is an over-the-wing view of the cloud deck, somewhere over the US between DFW and RDU airports.
An infinite world of possibilities. (And I’m a bit proud that I actually found a way to use the word bailiwick.)
DFW – RDU
You say bison, I say buffalo
Oklahoma is blessed to have the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, part of the Nature Conservancy. It’s located northwest of Tulsa, and its southern border is just north of the town of Pawhuska, in Osage County. Continue reading
Weekly Photo Challenge: Infinite – Under A Western Sky
The latest photo challenge from the folks at dailypost.wordpress.com is right up my alley.
You see, I have a problem. There’s not much else that will cause me to stop whatever I’m doing and pull out my camera than an awesome sky. I’ve spent most of my life somewhere on the Central Plains of the US and if I spent too much time away, I feel claustrophobic. Views like this one take me away from the daily grind to the contemplation of infinite possibilities.
There a peacefulness I find in the infinite vistas of the open prairie. A freedom that comes from seeing to the horizon in every direction.
When I was living on the coast of Papua New Guinea, there were times when I had to flee to from the school grounds where I worked, surrounded by the immense beauty of the tropics, to a place where I could see the open sea – just so I could see enough of the open sky.
I recently spent a week in New Mexico, north of Santa Fe, where I took this shot of this open, cloud-filled sky, keeping company with one lonely tree. When I saw this, I had to pull my car over on a muddy forest road. Tramping up an incline to clear a power line, it was worth the mess I made of my floor mats to capture it.
The Monarchs Are Here
The Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) have arrived once again in Tulsa. They are on their annual migration south to Mexico for the winter.
I discovered these in Tulsa’s River Parks this morning. They were reluctant to pose for photos, intent on the nectar found on these wildflowers (goldenrod?).
Buen viaje a Mexico! Nos vemos en la primavera!
