April Showers

"April showers bring May flowers"

             (old saying)

Markings

Photography Challenge week 17: Markings

The image that came to my mind when I saw this week's topic was the tattoos of the Maori people of New Zealand.  I find them fascinating.  But I found no Maori people on the Canadian prairie today, so I've settled for the way we use markings in our daily lives.

Markings on the side of the rain gauge measuring yesterday's rainfall: Just over an inch.

Marking high water after a severe flood.

Leaving one's mark.

"I would rather miss the mark acting well than win the day acting basely."  (Sophocles)

Chain Bridge / Budapest

The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn.

David Russell

Formless

Photography Challenge week 16:  Formless

For this week's challenge I knew right away I wanted to photograph the wind, mostly because it seems to blow here all the time.  Many times the wind has forced me and my camera indoors.  Photographing the wind seemed like embracing it, or at the very least, making peace with it for a little while.

The pessimist complains about the wind;
The optimists expects it to change;

The realist adjusts the sails.
William Arthur Ward

Danube evening

It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went.

Henry David Thoreau

Danube morning

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought into sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

Marcus Aurelius

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone.

Classic

Photography Challenge Week 15: Classic

My favourite classic Easter hymn, which we will hopefully sing this Sunday, Jesus Christ is Risen Today.  The hymn book in this photo is also a classic, and no longer in use.

My favourite classic Canadian novel is W. O. Mitchell's Who Has Seen the Wind.














Who Has Seen the Wind is set in Saskatchewan, but I have always felt that it speaks to anyone who knows the beauty of the prairie:
"Here was the least common denominator of nature, the skeleton requirements simply, of land and sky - Saskatchewan prairie."

first line of Who has Seen the Wind

Peephole

Photography challenge week 14: Peephole

This week's theme was all about framing.  This resulted in a few interesting "tourist" photos.

Wagon on the roof in Szentendre

Fishermen's Bastion, Budapest

I think this is the most beautiful example of public art I have ever seen.

Ship through the window of the Passau Castle

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

Henry David Thoreau

Delicate

Photography Challenge Week 13: Delicate

I was in Prague when I learned of the week's theme.  We often think of delicate as something soft and small.  However, all around me in the architecture were examples of "delicate" on a grand scale.

The light streaming through the stained glass window casts a delicate glow over the statue at St. Giles Cathedral.

The stone tracery of the window.

This decorative masonry wall at Prague Castle.

"True strength is delicate."  Louise Berliawsky Nevehon

Budapest morning

I have been on holiday, but have come back with memory cards full of wonderful images.  Here is the first.

Early morning in Budapest

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson