Category Archives: photography

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Finish line

I did manage to cross the finish line for the Blogging from A to Z.

It was a bit tricky because I had a last minute trip. I got the tickets last Sunday and flew on Tuesday. I flew back on Friday and got home on Saturday. I traveled super light: no laptop, no big camera, only phone and a small day pack and one change of clothes, so I washed some by hand daily. I am proud that I still got the A to Z done!

I feel more like a finisher than a winner. It does feel good to share so much of my mother’s artwork. Helen Burling Ottaway died at age 61 in 2000, so her artwork did not have much of an internet presence. She is present in the Lake Matinenda Cottage Owners Association here. She and my uncle and other family and friends worked on a Matinenda flora of the wildflowers and plants. There have been two more since.

Hooray for everyone who contributed to or supported or read the Blogging from A to Z this month and hmmm, what should I do next year?

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Colorful

It has been horrible to have the zombies take over cities, but the surprise has been color. The zombies love color and it mesmerizes them. We all carried paints and spray paint and brushes for the zombies at first. Hand a zombie any paint and they won’t bite you! People quickly realized that the more brightly we color everything, the less chance of being bitten. Now our clothes are rainbows of riotous color, black suits gone forever. There are now well known zombie artists, hired to brighten and decorate nearly anything.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: zombie.

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Local lions

Our local lions are sea lions! I don’t think of sea lions as being good tempered, with the movies of them chasing prey. But out of the water in the sun off of Marrowstone Island, they seem pretty calm and I did not see displays of bad temper.

Sea lions can dive more deeply than seems reasonable because they slow their heart rates, to use less oxygen, and slow digestion. When they arrive back on the surface, they can get oxygen quickly but getting rid of the CO2 is slower. They have to sit around on the surface and the head back posture helps. I’ll bet they can beat any high school or college student in a burping contest. And as you can see, some of these are just huge. We wondered how they got on the rock. Do they have to at low tide or do they just jump?

I do like to hear them roar. Hooray for our local lions.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: temper.

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Daily Evil: U is for Unlikely

Unlikely isn’t evil. Well, I am tired of evil, so U is for Unlikely because I am tossing in a monkey wrench. U for unexpected, too.

Back to etchings: U is for Unicorn. This is titled “The Virgin and the Unicorn II”, number 10/75, 1986, H. Ottaway. The etching is 7 inches by 8 inches and the paper is 11 inches by 15 inches. She would often frame them mounted but not matted, in frames that have a slot to hold the glass away from the picture. She did her own framing and especially disliked cutting glass. I knew when a show was close because she would be framing and grumpy.

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Rock surfaces

Happy Earth Day!

I walked North Beach twice this week and Marrowstone Island once so far this week. This is from North Beach yesterday. This rock makes me a little anxious because I think it will come down. It’s well above my head and is probably 5 feet by 5 feet. Bits of the cliffs fall and I do not want to be under them.

There is another, a little smaller, a bit further along. Those are not small trees on the top of the cliffs, so the scale becomes clearer.

Another of the huge rocks has been on the beach for a while. Look who is living on the surface, while the tides roll in and out. An amazing surface, right?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: surface.