Owning the Dream
I began taking photography seriously about six years ago, when I purchased my first Canon Rebel…. Read more
A National Wildlife Refuge: NOT!
I recently took part in a protest involving the decision to allow – for the first time – hunting in a National Wildlife Refuge, in Loxahatchee, west of Palm Beach County, Florida.
There’s something very wrong with a culture that says it protects animals but allows them to be slaughtered – poached – on the very same sacrosanct part of the earth dedicated to protect them.
To view the photographs and read the story, click here (opens a new window to my photography website): http://andrea-oconnellphotography.com/2014/08/16/a-national-wildlife-refuge-not/
So, are you wondering where the heck I’ve been? I’m still here and thriving but not writing as much as I used to.
I’m following another dream of mine: Photography. Been working really hard at it, too.
I hope you’ll check out my work here:
http://andrea-oconnellphotography.com/
And here:
http://www.andrea-oconnellphotography.net/
The United States Fish & Wildlife Service, along with the State of Florida, is allowing, for the first time ever, sport hunting of alligators. The Wildlife Service “awarded” eleven licenses to alligator sport hunters, allowing each hunter to kill two alligators each.
The hunt kicked off last night, August 15th, 2014, and runs until the end of October, 2014
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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.” Read more
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.
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: 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
only dreamin' 