Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside
As usual, I’m busier than a bee. But, I do want to post a picture of this week’s photo challenge. The word is “Inside.”
Weekly Photo Challenge: Dreaming!
The weekly photo challenge for this week is “Dreaming.”
Although I have missed the last 3 photo challenges due to my hectic work schedule (that’s another story for another day – a great story), I want to take a quick moment to provide my interpretation of the word Dreaming!
So, here it is with words by the great dreamer, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“MLK and the Yellow Moon” can also be seen here: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/mlk-and-a-yellow-moon-andrea-oconnell.html
MLK and the Yellow Moon, by Andrea O’Connell, 2012
Weekly Photo Challenge: Close
This week the photo challenge word is close. I’ve chosen to use “close” as in close-up, or macro photography. I shot this last week:
This is my cat, Beau. I love his eyes! He’s jet-black with white whiskers! When I can get him to sit still or wake up, he’s a good subject:
Photo by Andrea O’Connell, 2012
Weekly Photo Challenge One Week Late: Friendship
I just realized I used the Macaws for another photo challenge! Here’s the one I was going to use originally, anyway: My niece and her friend seeing how their friendship necklace fits together:
The weekly photo challenge from two weeks ago was to post a photo that speaks about friendship. I chose these two Macaws. They are big buddies and have such fun together…. Such lovely birds, too.
I’m still here!
I know, I know…. It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve popped in to blog – I even missed the last two Weekly Photo Challenges…. Horrors! I plan to do those momentarily.
I’m having this battle with myself about taking time to blog. I feel guilty taking the time when I have so much work to do…. I’m working from home now – doing Instructional Design consulting. Yeap. I took the plunge to work for myself!
I’m working on a website and two business blogs right now – it’s a huge task. I have them all set to go as far as how they look and feel, but still developing the content, which is the major task.
I haven’t been following the Casey Anthony goings-on, but have heard that a movie, based on Jeff Ashton’s book, is in the works. Good for him! I’m glad he’s doing so well.
I heard through the grapevine that Jose Baez has a book out, or has one coming out – I’m not sure which it is. I’d venture to say few people will want to read it. What can Jose Baez say other than “I told ya’ so!” (Which no one in their right mind believed was possible at the time.)
It still floors me. We all thought, no way can such an inexperienced trial lawyer win that case! Hah! He did it. We all wore eggs on our face after that, big time.
I’m amazed that the Casey Anthony story continues to generate news! It’s so crazy! I get Google-Alerts on the topic of Casey Anthony and it never fails that EVERY day, somewhere – someone is talking about something related to that trial. It seems to be a foregone conclusion that little Miss Beautiful Life is going to have a perpetual OJ Simpson-like reputation for life.
Well, life goes on, doesn’t it? It doesn’t change much, but it goes on!
Here’s a little gift from me:
Weekly Photo Challenge: Today
The weekly photo challenge word is was “today.”
Lately my “today’s” have been sans camera in favor of the computer and work-projects.
I shot these photos on a today that happened last month!
There’s a “today” certainty and strength in nature, especially in the sea…. it flows through every today …. the waves, so much like music…
Anyway, I love a today with ocean in it.
Click on an image to enlarge it.
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- A Wave Crashing. Photo by Andrea O’Connell 2012
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- Waves on Shore. Photo by Andrea O’Connell
weekly photo challenge: Summer
The weekly photo challenge word is “Summer”.
Holding the string, at the other end of this kite are a couple of boys and their Dad. The kids were thrilled when the kite caught the wind and really took off. It was a beautiful sight; and seemed the epitome of summer.
(Click to enlarge.)
Photo by Andrea O’Connell
Weekly Photo Challenge: Hands
The word this week is: Hands.
This is one of my favorite photos. I captured this at Butterfly World, in Coconut Creek, Florida. The butterflies fly all around you and sometimes, if you’re really really lucky, they’ll land on you. A docent once told me they are attracted to perfumes and to people who stand very still while donning a flowery outfit.
Basically, if you want a better chance to attract a butterfly, smell and dress like a rose!
This butterfly lighted on this little hand and I was delighted to be in the right place at the right time to capture it!
A Butterfly Holds A Child’s Hand. Photo by Andrea O’Connell
Weekly Photo Challenge: Blue
I know, I know…. The “Blue” challenge was last week… suffice it to say, that blue week was a busy one for me – though not at all blue. On the contrary, it was a lovely week because half of it I spent soaking in the sights and sounds of the blue sea.
I met this woman in blue on the beach. She was staying in the same hotel I was in.
(I don’t know how to spell her name, but it sounds like Iah.)
She’s from Somalia and was so friendly, with a great smile even though I didn’t capture it fully in this photo, unfortunately.
Anyway, she saw me taking photographs and asked if I’d come across a key she’d lost – her hotel key. I hadn’t but I offered to help her look for it until I saw how she was looking – picking up the seaweed, shaking it and shuffling the sand that the seaweed had been sitting on.
I’ve seen too many creatures in the seaweed to get too close. So, I found a stick and helped.
We never found her key, but we chatted a bit. She asked me to take a picture of her with a handful of seaweed. I said sure (later I captured more photos of her scooping through the weeds that I was too wimpy to touch).
She asked if she could have copies of the picture and so I gave her my email address to contact me,. but she never has. Maybe she’ll see this post…
A Friend in Blue. Photo by Andrea O’Connell
Man-Oh-Man-Oh-Man-O-War. Photo by Andrea O’Connell
Somewhere In There is a Lost Hotel Key. Photo by Andrea O’Connell
So Blue and Inviting! Photo by Andrea O’Connell
Weekly Photo Challenge: Unfocused
The word for this week’s Photo Challenge is “unfocused.” Certainly an easy one for me as I have many photos that fall into that unsightly category. 
I’m like a photography hoarder, I keep the even the blurry and goofy pictures!
This pretty fella, the bright Peacock, moved just as I clicked.
The second photo is the effect of theatrical lighting on aluminum scaffolding. Not only is it blurry, it’s also distorted! Two features for the price of one with that photo!
Weekly Photo Challenge: Together
Last week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge was to post something that says “together.”
Well, I’m a bit late with this – haven’t had my act together!
Here are two colorful Macaws who are having such fun together. These kids are hilarious when they’re together! They seem to love each other, but they fight like cats and dogs, too!
Here are two lovely butterflies doing what butterflies do when they’re together.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Sun
The challenge this week is to capture the sun! I usually battle with the sun when developing images…. When there’s too much sun-glare it can wreak havoc on an image. So, it’s nice, for a change, to have an occasion to relish the sun!
A Roseate Spoonbill sun dance:
Sun Dancing. Photo by Andrea O’Connell
Clouds chasing the sun:
Clouds Chasing the Sun. Photo by Andrea O’Connell
An orange flower drinks in the sun:
Drinking in the Sun. Photo by Andrea O’Connell
Weekly Photo Challenge: Two Subjects…
The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge asks us to illustrate two subjects in a photo.
This was the first photo I thought of…. I really love that this image is so unexpected! It’s such an odd thing to see as you drive the turnpike in Miami.
I captured this through the window of a car – about three weeks ago. I was a passenger in the car and happened to have my camera in my lap when I saw this out of nowhere! I nearly missed it, too. Fortunately I got the shot on the first try.
And, the sky that day was really that blue!
In a sense, there are three subjects in this photo: The artwork, the building, and the bluer-than-blue sky.
I don’t know why this whimsical piece of art is on this apartment building, which is about 15 stories high, but it’s clearly been put there purposely. Maybe a tenant placed it there?
I don’t know if it’s even still hanging on the building.
I think it resembles the work of artist Romero Brito, the Brazilian pop-artist, who makes Miami his home. But, he generally signs his work.
So, it’s a mystery – a whimsical and beautiful mystery!
Somewhere in Miami this colorful artwork is happily hanging on the side of an apartment building! Photo by Andrea O’Connell, 2012
Weekly Photo Challenge: Journey
The photo challenge this week asks us to illustrate the word “journey.” (And what a great word it is, too!)
Lewis Carroll wrote,
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.
There’s certainly truth in that, both positive and negative; we don’t always know where we’re going, and the road that takes us there may be paved with whatever is next – the good, bad or indifferent.
I like what Ursula K. LeGuin wrote about journeying:
It’s good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
I captured the photo below – downtown Miami – through a car window during a recent journey.
The building in the center of the photo – the one shaded in yellow – is the Miami Freedom Tower. It once was a haven for Cuban immigrants who journeyed to freedom.
Photo by Andrea O'Connell
The journeys that this beautiful Red Shouldered hawk once enjoyed are a part of the past now.
This Florida beauty is held at the Flamingo Gardens, in Davie Florida. a wildlife sanctuary for injured and/or endangered animals.
This lovely fellow can no longer fly as a result of a serious injury. (If he were not cared for at Flamingo Gardens there would be little chance for his survival.)
He’s well taken care of, as are all the animals in the Flamingo Gardens Wildlife Sanctuary.
The juxtaposition of the bird and the fence is striking. This is a bird whose journeys were no doubt expansive, reaching far and wide.
It’s so sad to see this bird fenced in like this. His journeys are in the past, now – only a dream.
Photo by Andrea O'Connell
