Weekly Header Challenge - Right Place, Right Time

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 ~ Right Place, Right Time

Chosen by Tom.

I panicked this morning, because I totally forgot that it was Headbanger Day!!  Then I checked my Lightroom catalog, and realized--I had already designed a header for this week, and uploaded all my photos!  Everything was ready to go.  So here I am, barely on time once again.  Here is my header, full image style:

These football pictures are definitely a matter of being in the right place at the right time.  Fortunately, I was the team photographer, and I was allowed on the sidelines.  Right place, check.  I have tons of great images, because of a little luck called the right time.  Many plays were way across the field, or my lens didn't zoom enough, or...  But I have a good number of images where the play happened close enough to me, at the right angle, to make the images great.

Many Right Place, Right Time images are a matter of finding your spot, anticipating what's going to happen, then waiting.  With a little luck, you'll get that shot at just the right time.  Here are the rest of my images; some have been featured as header images in the past, simply because they were taken in the right place and at the right time.  Enjoy!

The below shot was pure luck--we were at Andy's (frozen custard shop) with another family, good friends of ours who were moving.  We were there for one last ice cream together (we had introduced them to Andy's frozen custard after we met them).  I had brought my camera to snap some pictures when we heard the whomp-whomp-whomp of military helicopters landing at our local airstrip a mere three blocks away.  Shot between the trees, right after dusk, silhouetted against the sky--sweet.

Cubs win!

Sneaking the camera out for a restaurant shot.

Butterfly landing on purple coneflower.

Boat tour going under the Thousand Islands Bridge.

Girl water-skiing on Lake Bonaparte.

Now I kinda want it to be summer again.  Hope you have a super day!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

Visit my website
Stop by my family blog
Like me on Facebook

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

Visit my website
Stop by my family blog
Like me on Facebook

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

Visit my website
Stop by my family blog
Like me on Facebook

Winter Stroll

Knoch Knolls Park.  I've visited there before (see here and here).  Now, on a warm Sunday afternoon at the beginning of December, Fernando and I decided to take a stroll down some of the paths here.  The scenery did not disappoint, even at the beginning of winter.

Looking across the bridge

I spied a fisherman fly-fishing in the river!

I think the below image is worthy of a card.  I may just have some printed.

I'm not a big fan of shooting into the sun, although some photographer achieve great results using this effect.  I must say, though, that the below image turned out beautifully!

I took several shots of the sun as it set.  I just couldn't choose one; the colors were so pretty on this winter day, and the trees stood as stark spindly shadows against the light spread across the sky.

We headed a little farther along the path, then turned around and retraced our steps.

In one clearing, there were picnic tables and a chiminea backing to the woods.

We came to the wooden footbridge across the river, and it presented a pretty scene.

At the middle of the footbridge, the view was sweet and peaceful.

Looking in the other direction, the other bridge stood out against the colors of the setting sun.

I think that I've collected several images which will be turned into cards.  *happy smile*


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

Visit my website
Stop by my family blog
Like me on Facebook