WW: Learning To See the Ordinary

"It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer.... in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary." 

~David Bailey

(Recent shots I took while bike riding with a camera strapped to my back.)

After seeing these photos a friend shared Romans 1:20-

"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities- his eternal power and divine nature- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

Linked to: Project Alicia , Live and Love Out Loud, Mom Tried It, Deb Duty Photography

God's Great Alphabet

The trees are God's great alphabet: 

With them He writes in shining green

Across the world His thoughts serene. 

~Leonoara Speyer

Linked to: Leap Into Spring Photo Challenge

(Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday: Resurrection

This year our Easter was spent together as a family remembering my grandfather who passed away one week before Easter Sunday. It was also spent rejoicing for the new life he now has because of what he believed about what Christ did at the cross for us.

"Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, 

but in every leaf in spring-time."  

~Martin Luther

"I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die, and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

John 11: 25-26

Linked to: Project Alicia , Deb Duty Photography, Leap Into Spring Photo Challenge

(Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday: Delight

"Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them."
Psalm 111:2

Linked to: Live and Love Out Loud, Project Alicia , Kent Weakley Photography, Deb Duty Photography

(Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday: Gentle Warnings

A few final winter photos as spring quickly approaches.

"Your time has come, now hasten little snowflakes,

To vanish quite away;

The spring-tide hours are sounding gentle warnings

Forbidding you to stay."

~M.E. Hathaway

Linked to: Project Alicia , Live and Love Out Loud

(Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday: February Snow on Snow

This has been such a crazy winter in Chicago. No sooner do we get some snow and it melts within a day. The storm we got last Thursday proved to be no different. During the late afternoon snowflakes 4-inches round began falling. By the morning, we woke up to a beautiful white world of 'snow on snow'. I knew we had a choice: do our homeschooling as usual or get outside and go hiking before all the snow melted again. We opted for choice number two. (Please note, all of these photos are in color. It was an amazing day of 'black and white'.) 

In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan, 

Earth stood hard as iron, 

Water like a stone; 

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, 

Snow on snow, 

In the bleak midwinter, 

Long ago.

~Christina Rossetti

Linked to: Live and Love Out Loud, Project Alicia, Deb Duty Photography

(Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday: Shrouded in Sables

"Every winter,

When the great sun has turned his face away, 

The earth goes down into a vale of grief,

And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,

Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay-

Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses."

Quote by Chahrles Kinsley

Linked to: Deb Duty Photography, Poetic Winter Photo Challenge

(Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday: The Space Between

"These trees are magnificent, 

but even more magnificent is the sublime and moving space between them,

as though with their growth is too increased." 

 ~Gaston Bachelard 

The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places

Linked to: Deb Duty Photography, Poetic Winter Photo Challenge, Kent Weakley Photography

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(Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday: Winter Sunset, Painted Sky

Another winter evening, another beautiful painted sky (through my eyes).

~

"The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.
By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet.
There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see."
~Annie Dillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

"The sky is the daily bread of the eyes." 

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday: Follow It Down

"Push it. Examine all things intensely and relentlessly. 

Do not leave it, do not course over it, as if it were understood, 

but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength." 

~Annie Dilliard The Writing Life

Linked to: Project Alicia, Live and Love Out Loud, Deb Duty Photography

(Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday: Winter Ducks

We've had an unusually warm winter in Chicago this year. On a recent hike in January we found some ducks enjoying a swim. Though the pond was almost 3/4s of the way frozen, they made use of every available unfrozen space they could.

"Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven; the brightest oriole fades into leaves. Those disappearances stun me into stillness and concentration; they say of nature that it conceals with a grand nonchalance...

... and they say of vision that it is a deliberate gift, the revelation of a dancer who for my eyes only flings away her seven veils.  For nature does reveal as well as conceal..."  ~Annie Dillard

Linked to: Kent Weakley Photography, Live and Love Out Loud, Project Alicia, Poetic Winter Photo Challenge