December Yellow

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

YELLOW IN DECEMBER

On the Diamond in Ligonier, PA

‘Tis the season…SAD (seasonal affect disorder) initiated by dark, drab days and depression brought on by unfulfilled holiday expectations, stress, and bad memories.

The WordPress photo challenge for December 19, 2014, is yellow: Away with the colors of Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. Show us what “yellow” means to you.

Yellow. The color of sunshine, what many people not joyous in the season crave. Sunshine—its cheerfulness, warmth, happiness and energy. It evokes pleasant feelings.

I leafed through my recent photographs and discovered yellow in clothing, nature, art, and signs.

Start with a yellow hat…

Add a yellow shirt…

End with yellow pants.

People Gather in Love and Celebration

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

PHOTOS OF PEOPLE (and more)

GATHERING

IN LOVE AND CELEBRATION

Throughout the year people gather in love and celebration—for holidays, for family events, for fun.

Photos are visual spaces where shapes and lines, objects, and people (and creatures) come together. The November 28, 2014, WordPress photo challenge asked us to explore the ways…people; lines and shapes can converge in interesting ways through photography.

A gathering of musicians celebrating Ligonier Days in Ligionier, PA

A gathering of motorcyclists at Gravity Hill Road in New Paris, PA (Bedford County)

A gathering of friends at an Amish wheel making shop

WordPress Photo Challenge 11/28/2014: Things That Converge

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

PHOTOS OF THINGS THAT CONVERGE

 Photos are visual spaces where shapes and lines, objects, and people come together. The November 28, 2014, WordPress photo challenge asked us to explore the ways lines and shapes can converge in interesting ways through photography.

My first photo, taken in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, aptly speaks to art—which here is converged with an unlikely object, a parking meter:

My second photos converge in more than one way. They represent a convergence of two towns, which were for a time sister cities—Ligonier, Pennsylvania and Ligonier, Indiana. A second convergence is of art and structures.

The third convergence is of the lights and walls in the Squirrel Hill Tunnel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Photo taken from our moving car.

My next photo was taken at Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. It shows water converging with the sand

Photographing Angular: wp photo challenge 11/21/2014

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

PHOTOGRAPHING ANGULAR

The November 21, 2014, WordPress photo challenge is angular:  show us what “angular” means to you.

Unfortunately, the best photograph I found is an archive photo taken of, not by, me. Still, I share it because it strikes me as the best photograph representing angular.

Jamestown (PA) Fair 1995

The following photographs were shot by me.

Volant, PA

 

Ligonier Township, PA

More Minimalist Photographs

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

MORE MINIMALIST PHOTOGRAPHS

In April 2014 I attended a Westmoreland Photography Society (Pennsylvania) meeting. The topic for the night’s photo critique was Minimalist Photography . Wanting to know what photographs to take or cull from my archives I looked up minimalism in photography on the Internet…

The WordPress weekly photo challenge for November 7, 2014, is minimalist photos: An artfully executed minimalist photograph is anything but mundane. It illustrates a moment in time, or an artistic perspective, with simplicity and grace.

I had just completed reviewing some of my 2003 New England photos when I checked out the week’s photo subject. Thus, I decided to use some of them for the minimalist photo challenge.  The scenes are mostly those of The Isles of Shoals: Beauty, Mystery, Intrigue . The isles are a group of islands 8-10 miles off the Maine/New Hampshire shoreline. We took a boat ride to the islands and spent a day there on our 2008 visit to New England.

Some of the photographs were taken on the island, while others were taken from Wallis Sands Beach in Rye, New Hampshire.

Marriage Can Endure…

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

MARRIAGE CAN ENDURE…

In 1999 a magazine approached me with a request: would I do a piece for them on a couple celebrating their 70^th anniversary? You can read about their life together on a previous post, on CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS:  SEVENTY YEARS OF LOVE . While doing the interview for the article I snapped the following picture:

Seventy years of marriage. Anyone marrying that long ago would expect to be married until death—that the marriage vows that state as long as you live, ‘til death you do part are serious business. Marriages would endure.

It is unlikely that my husband Monte and I will celebrate 70 years of marriage. However, our marriage has lasted longer than most—we celebrated 40 years on September 3 in this year of 2014, by having An Apple Cider Adventure . We look forward to our 50^th in two years.

My grandparents, Albert and Mable (May Isabelle) married in 1920, and separated by my grandmother’s death 35 years later. The gloves she wore in her wedding were laid over my daughters Bible when she was married in 2008. The gloves, to me, represent marital stability. They endured for 88 years and remain in good condition.

In the box with the gloves was a

Endurance Illustrated Photographically

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

ENDURANCE ILLUSTRATED PHOTOGRAPHICALLY

The WordPress weekly photo challenge for September 19, 2014, is endurance—to show what endurance means to me. I can best do this by photographing examples of others who demonstrate what endurance is.

The hands of my late elderly aunt, Nyllis Gardner (Cape Cod, Massachusetts), were so crippled by arthritis I wondered how she could hold a spoon to eat. Yet she endured pain, struggling to hand-stitch many Barbie doll clothes that were sold at her church bazaar. She allowed me to photograph her hands during one of my visits.

Nature, too, can endure. It may be mid-September but some blooms refuse to accept that their season is done. There are yellow blooms on a forsythia bush near my local post office, and four crocus are blooming under my apple tree. And my morning glories produced their first blooms on September 14.

 

Snapshots of Humanity

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

 SNAPSHOTS OF HUMANITY AROUND THE WORLD

The more I see the world, the more I realize that humanity is a common trait that runs through different cultures. Although people are different, they are very much the same—even though we speak different languages, have different cultures, religions, values, and physical traits, we share common hopes and dreams of love, family, and survival. Whether I’m in their country or someone from another country is sitting on my front porch.

Below are some pictures of a variety of humanity taken when the other world visited my front porch or I visited their homeland.

Singapore meets America on my front porch

 

Whether from Singapore or America, we all experience joy

A musical experience in New England