With winter still in full swing in the northern hemisphere, Terri from Sunday Stills wanted to challenge us all to look at and photograph objects that are the color white. If you live in or around snow, then show us your snowy scenes. If not, the color white is all around us.
Grandma was a stickler for bright white laundry. I remember her adding bluing to her wash when all sheets and towels were white and men wore white shirts. Using bleach alone turned her whites increasingly yellow.
Where I could, I found pictures with blue the skies to brighter the whites. Did it work?
SNOW
It must descend, as the dew, upon the tender herb, or like melting flakes of snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
Jeremiah Seed
Prescott snow is almost completely gone.
WHITE FLIGHT IN AUSTRALIA
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
C. S. Lewis
PUPPY gIRL gLISTENING WHITE
“Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them, and filling the emptiness we didn’t ever know we had”
Leya/Anne Christine invites us to “Have a strong mind and a soft heart.” – Anthony J. D’Angelo
She considers being soft a virtue and an asset. Maybe not always…but almost always! So many things are Soft…to look at, to touch, to listen to… we even have software for our technical devices. This challenge is all about how you want to interpret Soft – we are looking forward to seeing your choices! Please link to Anne Christine’s post and add the Lens-Artists tag.
Relax and enjoy some soft music while you read.
NUTTER BUTTER, SCARDY BOY AND A SOFT BLANKET
“Cats are connoisseurs of comfort. … I have felt cats rubbing their faces against mine and touching my cheek with claws carefully sheathed. These things, to me, are expressions of love.”
James Herriot
“Yes, Nutters, I know you love me.”
SOFT LIGHTING AND BREEZE IN APRIL
“Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring?”
Neltje Blanchan
silky soft evening encases walkers around Bravo Lake
SOFT COTTON
I was influenced a lot by those around me – there was a lot of singing that went on in the cotton fields.
Willie Nelson
softest cotton grows in Central CA
Soft Highlights from Woodlake Kiwanis July 3rd Blast
What could be louder than an event built around a celebration of explosives? And yet, in the midst of the it all, there were many moments of softness if you looked around. Join me as I introduce you to the softness of Woodlake, CA.
SOFT BABY SLEEPS ON MAMA’S SOFT LAP
“This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven.”
Rick Bragg
baby soft skin
THIS PRINCESS SOFTENS GRANDPA’S HEART
“I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.”
Charles Dickens
“The children we bring into the world are small replicas of ourselves and our husbands; the pride and joy of grandfathers and grandmothers. We dream of being mothers, and for most of us that dreams are realized naturally. For this is the Miracle of Life.”
Azelene Williams
Happy Fourth of July
SHADE SOFTENS THE SUN’S HARSH BLAST
To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
Jane Austen
sitting under a shade tent protects from harsh sun
SOLVE THIS PUZZLE: A SOFT DOG’S SOFT LIFE
“Free food, free lodging, free entertainment; Who said dogs aren’t intelligent”
Steve Reider
Answer – “Feed me and feed me now!”
SOFT SKIN, SOFT TOUCH TATTOO
I’m just delighted to be living, to be able to have a simple conversation, to feel a ray of sunlight on my skin and listen to the breeze move through the leaves of a tree.
Ryuichi Sakamoto
A TOWEL SOFTENS THE HARD GROUND
When using a public campground, a tuba placed on your picnic table (or towel) will keep the campsites on either side vacant.
Welcome to Cee’s Midweek Madness Challenge (CMMC). The topic is Words with 2 Letts A’s. For example, bazaar, applesauce, afar, alphabet, dahlia, alarm, mama, animal, etc. Here is a website if you want more words to choose from.
It took me until the weekend to post this, Cee, but here I am with my double A words. What fun!
UNNATURAL
Wax Museum, Newport, ORI love the natural look with crooked lower teeth!
NAUSEA
My poor brother got deathly ill on a simple tourist boat.
ALWAYS (Write)
There is so much going on in the world around us, we can “Always Write.”
CANVA
Finished product imported into WP. Next you will add an alt text, caption and description in WP.
KAYAK
My neighbor and her daughter treated me to one of the greatest days of adventure.
FAUNA
herd of elk on the road near Klamath, OR
ALOHA
Aloha from Ka’anapali Beach Maui, Hawaii
ABANDONED
Bob’s barn, abandoned for years finally torn down a week after this picture.
AFFABLE
It’s easy to be affable at the Avila Barn.
AFFORDABLE
Garage sale items – all affordable
MARSHA
Marsha wearing the scarf that blogger, Carol, the Eternal Traveler, crocheted. This scarf is huge and perfect for Prescott winters.
Thanks for sharing these double A words with me.
Coming Up
New Story Chat, “Wanda-Lust” written by A. Kid (AKA D. Avery) coming Tuesday, March 2nd.
Don’t wait for next week’s Writer’s Quotes Wednesdays’ topic: Citizenship. Comment or participate today about Fairness.
Terri Webster Schrandt has a photographic memory and can remember when and where she took a picture. Most of us are not like that. I can remember a picture that would be perfect for a post but I can’t find it. I get a lot of requests from friends for pictures for projects or funerals, if I’ve been close to someone. I’m always shocked at how few pictures I can find and how long it takes me. Like Terri, I can remember the picture, but have no idea of time or where I took it.
Photo by Lisa Coleman
Hugh Roberts organizes photos for his blog so that others can find them including SEO trolls. Janis creates files with broad categories, (Travel, Family and Friends, Local Fun) so she can find what she needs. Sarah was a librarian, so organization is part of her make-up. Carol and I are teachers, so we file photos to teach and share what we know.
But there are some more efficient ways to organize your mounds of photos than my simplistic file folders, but like cleaning the refrigerator, they take some time.
Introduction to Lisa Coleman
Lisa Coleman started blogging in 2019 but has been a photographer and graphic artist for twenty years and has accumulated up to 200,000 photos. We started talking about this topic several weeks ago, and decided it was worth a zoom meeting to explore the topic more.
Photo by Lisa Coleman
Lisa has a lot of storage space spread out over 3 external drives, 2 laptops, a Mac, iPad, 6 iPhones, 10 memory sticks and 9 camera cards. She just purchased a 5 TB hard drive for storage. Like most of us, she organizes them by subject and date.
“I do a little every week. The main goal is to have ALL my photos organized on the new hard drive while keeping all the other cards and drives as an additional backup. Once you get organized, it wouldn’t hurt to put all this data on the cloud somewhere as a different backup. I have a 1 TB external drive that is my working drive like a server for my Etsy Shop and Blog photos.”
Lisa Coleman
When Lisa started blogging, she was interested in birds.
Photo by Lisa Coleman
“There used to be a Bird of the Day Challenge, but it disappeared, so I started the Bird Weekly Photo Challenge.”
Hugh said, “delete those photos you know you’ll never use.”
Jason said, “Hugh, decluttering photos is vastly underrated! It helps with productivity, creativity, and staying organized.”
too many distractions
Fixed in Photoshop
Ruined by finger
Fixed in Photoshop
too many distractions
Fixed in Photoshop
Fixed in Photoshop
Fixed in Photoshop
I adore Hugh, but I panicked. How do I know now which photos I’ll never use? I am a hoarder and my being rebels when I have to throw something away, Tina Schell from the Lens Artists challenges us to repurpose our photos and turn forgotten to favorite. It’s amazing what you can do with ugly photos.
I asked Lisa how she decides what to delete.
“I delete the blurry ones. You can never use them. I take a lot of bursts with a variety of exposures. I pick three or four of the best of those and delete the rest. I also make copies of photos and keep them in different folders. The most important things is that you don’t delete the originals.”
Lisa Coleman
In spite of myself I deleted so many pictures that Microsoft asked me if I had lost my mind. I pulled some of them back out and put them in a separate folder to make sure my mind was still in tact.
So instead of culling, Lisa actually adds photos. Other photographers were more interested in how and where to store and label photos for easier retrieval. Storage is relatively inexpensive. Terri gets Dropbox for $120 per year. Apple costs me $2.99 a month, One Drive comes with Microsoft, Google Photos is free if you have a gmail account. I have several for different purposes. Hard drives range in price depending on their storage capacity.
Erica/Erika asked, “Are two copies on separate hard drives placed in a home safe a good way to preserve photos?” Lisa nodded affirmatively
If you have taken pictures for years and have them stored in different places, the next question is how to label and file the photos.
Tagging or Folders?
The thinking behind what to name files differs from person to person and what they need.
Carol says, “As I download photos, I put them into named folders within folders for each year and place we visit. ”
Susan G says, “At the start of each year I set up a new catalog. Folders and sub folders in the catalog are named by subject. For example, I have a folder called “Nature Photos” and a sub-folder inside of it called “Flowers”. I also tag the photos within each folder so a flower might be tagged “red rose”. When I export my folders out of LR to an external hard drive I generally export them to “same folder as original folder” so the stay organized as set up in LR.”
Erica says, “ I know the approximate date/year/event and go from there. I often immediately categorize into A/B/C depending on how much I like a photo. A super basic A, B, C, helps me when I go back to the photos for more sorting.”
Anne says, “I follow the rules of directories and subdirectories, year, theme, place. Have a Best category within some categories. Use iCloud on PC and phone and Camera. Major Agro is a pictures app on PC. It doesn’t sync pictures. I edit/delete on the phone.”
Lisa and I have two or more sets of files of the same photos. I process for WordPress using Photoshop Elements 15, then store them in an Always Write folder under the name of the challenge. Unlike Lightroom, I can’t organize by tags in Photoshop Elements, but I can make the changes I want to make to the copy like cropping, adding a border, changing the brightness, adding a filter or changing the look completely. Then it is an easy step to process multiple files quickly and reduce the file size for the web, name the files, add my signature, and put them into a folder.
Finished product imported into WP. Next you will add an alt text, caption and description in WP.
Until we talked about this all of my larger sized files, which I use to make puzzles or other gifts, are labeled IMG 9602 or something as difficult to find in my Camera Roll by month and year. Except the millions that I took out to make a mega file that I could sort easier. It turned out that I couldn’t sort them at all.
All of us used files, but only Hugh was big on adding tags. My question was how to do that without spending any more money. Lisa was going to try Susan’s idea and use LightRoom because she already paid for all the programs.
Lisa and I talked through all your comments and then spent a good part of an hour experimenting with the File Folders that come free with our computer.
How to Organize Photos using Microsoft Files
Together we opened a file. Lisa took me directly to “View+ in the menu. I always choose “Extra-large Icons” because my vision is blurry, and like Hugh, I’m a bit dyslectic. She took me instead to “Details.”
Detail show up in the View tab of the file folder
“You can look at the size of your photos here so you don’t delete your original picture when you are cleaning and organizing. Once you have the pictures sorted by detail, you can change back to “Extra-large Icons.” They will be in the same order as you sorted them.
After our conversation, I tried to figure out how to change a tag faster than one at tag at a time. I also discovered that you could rename your files with just a right click on the any of the selected photos to bring up “Rename” on the main menu. Once you renamed and pressed enter, all the selected photos emerged with the new file name and a number.
Using file folders to organize photos
Properties Tab brings up another menu.
Click the Details Tab to pull up the “Tag” button
That was so cool, I tried it with tags. It was trickier, but remembering what Lisa said about “Details,” I selected a group of photos, right clicked to bring up the main menu then clicked on “Properties” which is at the bottom of my menu. A screen appears with a menu across the top. Click “Details” on the menu at the top of the box, and select tabs. Click and a box appears to fill in your tabs.
This is wonderful, but like Susan said about Light Room, “I tag my photos right in LR. Unfortunately the tags don’t follow when you export, so I have to tag again on my drive.”
This is not the only time you have to label your photo files. When you export photos to Photoshop Elements 15 (other Photoshop products are different) to be multi-processed, the title disappears but the tag stays. When you export them again to WordPress, the tag is gone again. We will talk more about adding the alt text and all the details in WordPress in another post.
Conclusion
Lisa and I talked about many photo-related topics during our Zoom conversation. We are going to do it again. It was so much fun. I didn’t get to ask her much about her Challenge. So that will be another post as well.
I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope it helps you as much as it helped me. My photos have undergone some radical changes. It’s nice to get on the phone and talk to a real person when you have an issue.
What’s your issue with photography or blogging? There are tons of amazing bloggers out here. I love it when we put our heads together.
Would you be interested in having a copy of all the comments, questions in a Word Document? If so, I’ll polish it up over the next couple of weeks and have it available by download.
This week’s topic for Writer’s Quotes Wednesdays is fairness, equal, eqitable, just or the counter point “Unfair!”
Merriam Webster defines fairness three ways: impartial and just treatment or behavior without favoritism or discrimination, having light-colored hair or a pale complexion, and beauty.
To participate in Writer’s Quotes Wednesdays, feel free to use any of the definitions. Don’t forget the quote!
How to Create a #WQWWC Post
My brother and I used to argue that our portions of food were not fair if one of us got an extra French fry or a bigger serving of cake. Fair meant equal at our house.
Only humans can choose to be fair. The wild animal world is ruled by survival of the fittest. And Tina Schell had a quote in her Lens-Artist post this week that illustrated that point well.
“It’s a cruel and random world, but the chaos is all so beautiful.”
Hiromu Arakawa
I have taught my dog to wait and not be grabby when she and the cat get treats together. Does she understand the concept of fairness I am teaching her? I’m not sure, but she doesn’t grab the treat, which is much smaller than hers until the cat walks away and/or I say, “Okay.”
Would she do that on her own?
Equity v Equality Which is Fair?
In the teaching setting it took some unlearning for me to learn equity and equality were not the same. Life is not fair. We don’t all start out with the same opportunities. Humans have the ability to learn that some people need more because they have less and that by giving more to those people we act fairly, though not equally.
“Fairness is man’s ability to rise above his prejudices.”
Wes Fessler
When I worked for Migrant Education we had programs for only the migrant students because they moved often and did not have the same educational advantages as students who were stable and had the opportunity to attend the same school every day.
One summer as a Migrant Education supervisor I visited migrant students in their homes with our recruiters. The migrant camp was poorer that most of the poorest I’d seen. One 60 foot by 12 foot trailer was divided into five equal sections and housed 4 families and had one bathroom for all the families. In the first one was one bed for a family of five or six, and no other furniture. We sat on the edge of the bed and the mother and children sat on the floor. The mother wasn’t allowed to eat in the camp because she was disabled and couldn’t work. So they had a two burner cook top stove someone had given them that sat on the floor off to one side. Books were a rarity, and we handed out a book per child that day. The mother was so grateful they gave each of us oranges. It was hard to accept them, but it was important to the mother that we did.
Some district administrators fought with Migrant Education, a federally funded program, for not being fair and not giving the Migrant benefits equally to all the students in the district. It was hard for them to explain to children and parents who were not classified as migrant that migrant students did not have the same advantages even thought they might also be poor. Migrant students did not attend the same school all year and often missed studying the same subjects as they bounced from school to school. They did not have equal opportunities. Migrant Education attempted to level the playing field to make things fair for migrant students.
COVID-19 Restrictions for All
One thing we all share fairly is COVID 19 restrictions. Never in my lifetime has anything been so widespread and pervasive for so long. Is it going to even the playing field? What are your thoughts?
Some of my blogging friends have taken the bull by the horns to keep from feeling defeated and powerless by the pandemic.
“One of the challenges my friends have been having recently is what I call “hitting the wall” but other labels are boredom and COVID Fatigue. I recently listened to a documentary on the radio about Boredom, and one of my key take-aways was the lack of agency we all have during quarantine. That is… we lack the ability to make things happen. Some people have been able to find a niche that gives them some feeling of agency or accomplishment: blogging, writing, art, weaving, home repairs, decorating, walking, virtual travelling: the Conqueror Challenge, reading, book clubs, language learning,on-line yoga, e-cycling, grandparenting, online courses, cooking, photography, kayaking, zooming and #Sundaystills.”
Hi friends, As you can see the participant rate for this challenge, Writer’s Quotes Wednesdays Writing Challenge, is low. It seems that this challenge is not working for you. Are the prompts or topics okay? Is using quotes difficult or boring? I was going to give it a year, but if it is not working for you, then it doesn’t work for me either. Talk to me.
