How does the photograph really capture life? Can the imitation of art also be artistic? Should the art that is being imitated be something created by somebody else?
In the first part of my response I have series of pictures of nature that in general look like paintings to me. Since paintings are works of art by definition (may not be good art, but art nonetheless!), I think these could fall into the category of life imitating art.
I believe this last picture is more in tune with the theme imagined by the author of the challenge.
For more pictures submitted for this week’s challenge visit this site.
Time is an integral part of almost everything that we experience in our lives today. Almost everything that we do takes into consideration the time factor, whether it be the time taken to accomplish the task, or the time at which the task is expected to begin, or where it should end. The modern world also has an insatiable need to be as efficient as possible with regards to how time is spent. We always seem to be in a hurry.
Perhaps it is useful to understand/recognize that the pervasiveness of the “time-factor” in human experience is something that has changed over history, and that time was not this important in times past. (Some of you may already know the interesting story of the role played by the railroads in establishing time zones.) These days the concept of time has been taken to its limits, with even fractions of seconds becoming significant in our experiences. Athletic events are judged and winners determined by time differences that lie in the order of 100ths of seconds. The timing of signals in the electronics that we all use today is at the nanosecond level.
But if we step back and and look at time from a more philosophical perspective, we can go in so many different directions with the theme! Time may sometimes be defined by a state of mind.
The atmosphere in the pictures below gives me a feeling of time slowing down.
The pictures below make me think about the impact of the passage of time on the lives of people. What happened to these people? Why did they abandon these homes and did they go to a better place?
The pictures below remind me of the damage caused by humans to the planet over time.
Finally, time is topic covered in a lot of music. Here is an oldie that I still enjoy listening to.
Vibrancy in the image domain seems to come from the presence of a variety of colors enhanced by good lighting. Unfortunately, my pictures of the outdoors do not include a great variety of colors in each of them, but I have sometimes been able to get myself in a good position at the right time to bring something out in the objects being photographed because of lighting.
I had to find the right position to get this vibrant effect in the picture of a tree.
The skies at sunset.
I think there is vibrancy in pictures of flowers in the sunlight.
Autumn is always a good time to try to get pictures of leaves in a vibrant setting.
Other pictures in the vibrant theme can be seen here.
We just got through a major blizzard in our area that I have blogged about. Woke up this morning to this sight in front of the house early in the morning. It lasted only a few seconds.
Today is the first day after the day on which the roads to our neighborhood were cleared. Our driveway is also completely free of snow and ice. We have not been away from the house for four days. We will be venturing out into the still recovering neighborhood in a few minutes. And I will be carrying my camera. I feel optimistic!
I had to dig back in time to find a couple of themes that could perhaps be suitable for this challenge. It is possible that they may be missing the mark regarding the objective of the challenge.
The C&O canal has had a history of problems dealing with the forces of nature even in its heyday. The park that remains today where this canal once operated is particularly vulnerable even to this day, especially since there is little money available to the National Park Service (NPS) to maintain its 184.5 mile stretch along the Potomac river. The aqueducts have suffered damage regularly, and the ones that are still standing are there primarily due to the efforts of volunteer organizations working with the NPS to preserve some of these historic structures.
In 2010 there was a massive snowstorm that hit the Washington DC area and the east coast of the United States called Snowmageddon! Over the next few weeks the melting snow in the mountains caused massive flooding in the Potomac river and a disaster in the C&O canal park. Here are a few pictures showing some of the problems caused by the weather. I am happy to observe that the particular oops! seen below have been addressed over a period of time since that time.
In 2012 we visited West Africa and the country of the Republic of Guinea. We did a lot of traveling while we were there. It was an adventure of sorts considering the conditions of the roads and the vehicles in use. In fact the highway that we took from Guinea to Senegal was essentially a dirt track winding through the mountains. The vehicles on the road were in many cases several decades old, kept running by the ingenuity of the locals. There was really no public transportation available, which led to amazing scenes of people and material stacked in and on decrepit vehicles traveling on the bad roads. In any case, the circumstances were ideal for us to witness many oops! moments. Thankfully we were ourselves not involved in any serious incidents.
A few months ago I posted a blog that was perfectly suited for this subject called “Here’s Lookin’ at You“. (I think I was prescient.;‑))
What follows is a fairly straightforward interpretation of the theme.
The first series of pictures is of Dodger, my brother’s dog. The first couple of the pictures were cute, and then I think he began to get ticked off! He refused to look directly at me, instead spying at me out of the corner of his eyes.
Here are a couple of pictures where I was taken off-guard when I noticed somebody looking back at me. In the first one, the person does not look too happy. The second one shown here actually made me nervous since I was in a place where things could go wrong in a hurry. As you can see, I was not actually focusing on the guy, but I got him in the picture anyway.
These last two pictures were taken from a wedding. In the second one I unexpectedly found the groom looking back at me.
Maybe it is a curse that I tend to take the subject matter of the WPCs very literally. I am not good at getting into a poetic frame of mind and coming up with something that may be a little more thoughtful and abstract. So here I go again..
Hiking, as opposed to walking on a flat trail, can require a lot of care depending on the terrain you are on. In spite of the care I take, I have had my share of minor incidents. Just yesterday, while hiking the trails and enjoying the Fall colors at the Catoctin Mountain Park in the northern section of Maryland, my shoe got stuck on a pointy vertical protrusion from a root in the middle of the trail. The front of the top of my trail running shoe literally got stuck and the shoe began to tear before I was able to stop my forward motion. Fortunately I was not going too fast. This happened soon after I had stepped on a rock that was deceptively slippery because of a light cover of moss. I managed to get a grip to stop a downward slid, while the camera which was hanging from my neck took a hit on to the rock. Fortunately nothing happened to the camera. I am still feeling the aftereffects of a fall that happened a few weeks ago while running on the trail in the park nearby. But that is life….
After some thought, this week’s challenge took me back to our Spring vacation in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. The trails were quite challenging when compared to the ones closer to home. We also had some unexpected encounters with snow and ice on the trail during this trip. And then there were some folks who chose to take the path less traveled. One had to be careful!
Splattered Brains 