Ok, so I have been a bad student, which is quite embarrassing for someone who has been teaching for 20+ years! I will now play the role of many of my former students and offer the following lame excuses. I have been focusing on exercise and spending a lot of time in the rock climbing gym and yoga studio, my son had two of his wisdom teeth removed which took a little time, my daughter took the GRE on Friday and we went to celebrate the good returns, and I attended a women’s workshop with a friend and learned some great new tips for blogging. All excuses are valid and true so now I need to catch up!

I am double dipping on some of these shots as they fit a couple different assignment criteria. The first missed assignment was titled “Bliss”, but did not specify who’s bliss was to be recorded. I went with our cat Monti who’s entire life appears to be one big vacation!

See what I mean? Life’s rough! This is just one of her favorite nap sites in the house.

The next assignment was to interpret the theme of “connections”. I grabbed my camera and a lot of layers, since it was 26°F, and headed to one of my favorite running paths.

Bridges are a symbol of connecting and these two are ones I pass as I am running along the slough. I also feel connected to nature in this area, even when it is cold and most intelligent life forms are looking for shelter.

This picture reflects the cold, barren feeling of the day

But I was not alone for long-these ducks are accustomed to humans feeding them at all times of the day and came running! 

This is where I start cheating (sort of). One assignment challenged us to zoom in on subjects to work on close ups, and the ducks where cooperative that day so I took a number of different shots for this purpose while I was documenting connections.

Not too far from this area is a small park with several sculptures. I decided to try my luck with the assignment that covered perspective and the concept of “point of view”. I am short so I often feel like I am looking up at everything. So, I began experimenting with upward angle shots.

This is a large glass sculpture outside of our city hall building

This view is from beneath one of the spires

A close up shot of one of the segments of the sculpture with the building in the background

The view from beneath that same segment

Just to the left of the city hall building is a smaller sculpture and I lay down on the very cold ground (people walking their dogs must have thought I was crazy) to take these images.

 A tree branch against the winter sky

The view through this cylindrical sculpture

Now that stage two hypothermia had set in I decided to head home and warm up! The next morning I was up early and saw the moon setting over our neighborhood. I used this opportunity to take a photo of something “big” and “lonely” which both define the  moon.

So now I am only a couple days behind with this course! More pictures to post soon and the final wrap up of the class.