Weekly Header Challenge - Bridges

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew
Tom W 

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Bridges

Chosen by Lew.

Every week, when I delve into my archives to look for images to portray the current theme, I'm amazed that I actually have images that work.  This week was no exception--I've taken lots of pictures of bridges.

I thought I'd use this fun image of a bridge from a unique perspective--through the front window of our moving car.  (No, I was not driving.)  You get to see exactly what I saw as we followed our friends (the H. family, in that car ahead of us) toward our destination:  a beach cottage at Vero Beach, Florida.  The H's had invited us to spend the week with them in their time share in May 2011, so we did!  They told us about this bridge just five minutes from the resort, but experiencing it was truly amazing.  It really did seem as if we'd drive off the edge of the road!  You also get to see all those lovely smears of love bugs, which infest the Florida coast for about a week each spring!

Keeping to the perspective of from the car, below is another shot of us crossing the Louisville Bridge over the Ohio River, crossing from Kentucky into Indiana, on our way home from visiting friends in Georgia last year.

One final shot of a from the car image.  This was during the rains and flooding of April 20, 2013, and we were on our way to a friend's house to help them empty their basement and save as much as possible from the encroaching waters.  (Their back yard was completely flooded but the rising tide stopped just short of their basement windows!)  This below is a footbridge at a golf course, and a raging torrent of what normally is a little brook babbling way below.

Speaking of floods, here is another closed bridge from the same storm system.  This one is just a few blocks from home!  That car almost dead center got stuck and was abandoned, and there is a tree limb wedged on the side of the car.  This bridge was closed for several days until the water subsided.

On to a much prettier bridge!  I thought I'd toss in just one image of a Paris bridge; if you want to see lots, I have an entire blog post dedicated to the bridges along the Seine River in Paris.

Pont au Double, Paris, France.

Back to some bridges closer to home.  Knoch Knolls Park in Naperville has some beautiful walking and biking paths, and I frequently go there to capture images of the river, bridges, and a sunset or two.  Here is the one main walking and biking bridge from this past winter.

Here's a view of the bridge from the winter before.

This below is my favorite shot of this bridge, taken this past January.

Same bridge, autumn:

The other bridge at Knoch Knolls Park is strictly a footbrige; here's the entrance up:

It's the prettiest bridge in autumn!

Below is the bridge from the other side, on a winter afternoon:

One little footbridge at a forest preserve close to home looks like this in the winter:

And this in autumn:

One final little footbridge, at Seager Park in Naperville in the spring.

I started out with the biggest bridge, and ended with the littlest!  I can't wait to see all the bridges my fellow headbangers have posted!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge - Diptych

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew 

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Diptych

Kathy picked the theme for this week:  Diptych.  Basically, this is a composition of two images which are related to each other in some way, and which can tell a story.  Here are my diptychs, starting with my header image:

Moser Tower and Millenium Carillon, Naperville, Illinois.

Personally, I think the tower is a monstrosity--our family calls it the Tower of Sauron (for you Lord of the Rings aficionados)--but it houses a carillon that plays at scheduled times throughout the day, and you can also climb to the top.  The views are phenomenal, which is the main reason I do like the tower.  Read about it here.

I chose this set of images because I love the lines that are created within the images--first vertical then horizontal and curved.  I also love that the colors blend so well between the images, and that there's a balance between the vertical first image, and the horizontal orientation of the second.  And there you have my reasons.  :)

On to the rest, with simple captions because hopefully the images tell their own stories!

From my garden.

Peachtree City, Georgia.

Climbing wall.

Shooting range.

January wedding.

State math competition.

Moving the computer desk.

Yardwork.

Wisconsin farm.

Josh's honors convocation.

Dancin' music.

I was going to use two of the below images in a diptych, but since I couldn't decide which two to use, I created a triptych instead!

Rural Illinois farm.

I think the three images go perfectly together to create a "big picture" of the farm.  Thanks for letting me cheat a little on this week's theme!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge - Anything Goes

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew 

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Group Theme ~ Anything Goes!

Anything Goes = I Get to Choose My Theme. Which is:

The Color of Winter

Since we've been entrenched (literally and figuratively) in winter, in this seemingly interminable January, I figured I'd make the most of it.  So, here is my header, full-shot mode:

Since there's no way I'd go out in minus-11-degree weather to snag some winter weather images, I'm sharing images from a winter walk that Fernando and I went on earlier in January.  The above header image is actually the last shot I took on our walk.  As we crossed the footbridge on our way to the parking lot, I looked to my left and saw the rocks wearing their hats of snow as the brook emptied its not-quite-frozen contents into the river beyond.  I took the shot kneeling way down to get between the floor of the bridge and the lowest rail.  The perspective was beautiful.

I love those white-capped stones, and the starkness of the trees.  I almost converted the image to black and white, but there was something about those two splashes of gold from the dormant grass that adds an extra warmth and beauty to this scene.  It was a perfect image to end our walk on.

Here are my favorite images from our visit.

At the start of our path.

I edited most of these in black and white mode, which I felt lent itself to the starkness of the season.  Both black (all colors) and white (the absence of color) work together to create beauty of their own, and help me to see that winter is also about shapes and mood.

I love the shape and contrast of winter trees.

Winter prairie scene.

The next image below lent itself to sepia tones.  Although I love the same image in black and white, the sepia adds a little more warmth to the scene.

On the bridge at the river.

In case you wondered, below is the same shot taken a few Octobers ago, with the same tree branch framing the shot (I knew I liked that frame!!).

I vaguely recall that we're supposed to include an image featured in a past header, so here's my header image from January 2:

Toldja we've been entrenched in winter all month!!

Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Summer Evening Walk

July began with early June weather, and Fernando and I took advantage of the beautiful temperatures by taking an evening walk at one of my favorite portrait session sites.

This bridge is located right at the parking lot, so it's a logical place to start.  There's also lots of park to the left (of this image), with fallen logs and really cool-looking trees.

Of course we stopped along the bridge to capture the river scenes.

Looking west along the DuPage River.

 Looking east along the DuPage River.

Then there's a little paved path to walk along, accompanied by bicyclists, joggers, and other walkers.

 

Without a tripod, it was a little tricky shooting in the darker interior of the woods.  I managed to get a great shot of the sun peeking through.  You can see the bridge we crossed in the extreme right of the image.

I love shooting up into trees!  It's a super cool thing to do in the winter, when there are no leaves to block the view, and the image becomes about lines and shadows against the sky.  But in summer, there are some really neat lines and shapes with branches and leaves, and the below tree was the perfect candidate for my camera lens.

We walked a ways down the path, then cut over into the field to see if we were in time to catch the sun setting.  We were.

I pretty much brought only my kit lens, which isn't the best, so I had to really work to get a good shot in the lowering light as the sun set.  Fernando was a sweetie and posed for me, too.

This one below is my favorite, since I was able to capture the sun, some rays, and some lens flare in the fields.  It looks like a nice prairie sunset!

Once the sun set, there were still opportunities for some great shots, and clouds always help make things beautiful.  They give the sky shape and form, and they do a lovely job reflecting the colors of the sun as it goes down for the night.  The below is my standard shot when the sky is really pretty like this.  I like to put the horizon low in the image to capture more of the beauty of the sky.

Note--if the sky is plain blue (which is also beautiful!), I usually put the horizon smack-dab in the middle, which isn't something you'd normally do, rule of thirds and all.  But with a plain blue sky, it can make for a very symmetrical, and therefore peaceful, image.

To change things up a bit and capture some of the foreground in my sunset image (below), I got down low to shoot.  This way, I was able to capture some of the grasses sticking up into the sky, silhouetted against the beautiful orange of the sun.  Love this shot!

Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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The Millenium Carillon

May 3.

Although I had been to the Millenium Carillon last year with Jacob's college music class, I got to go again this year with Danny's music class.  How fun!

The Riverwalk in Naperville is truly a beautiful place to wander around!

The view from partway up.

One of the carillon bells.

Looking west along the river.

Our guide played the carillon for us.

The view from the top.

Tree on the lawn below.

A misty, dreamy landscape.

Downtown Naperville.

 Sts. Peter & Paul Church.

Martin Mitchell Museum at Naper Settlement.

The smaller bells.

Riverwalk and the (empty) Centennial Beach.

Last year, some Canada geese obligingly let me take their photo.  This year, it was a squirrel.  It absolutely did not care that I kept getting closer and closer, finally about three feet away.  It was concentrating on its dinner.

Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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