This is Bobby the woolly bear caterpillar! My sister and I found him when we were at the beach last week and he was just so cute and fluffy looking that we had to take a bunch of pictures of him (and name him Bobby). He is actually pretty pissed in this picture. I think he didn’t like the flash… Sorry Bobby… But you were moving too much for me to take the picture without a flash! :-/
Anyway, it turns out that many people think you can predict what your winter will be like by looking at the stripes on a woolly bear caterpillar! Apparently, the fatter the brown stripe, the milder the winter will be. In fact, there are many woolly bear festivals across the eastern US where people celebrate the coming of winter with these little guys (Here’s a link to one of the bigger festivals). In North Carolina, they even have a caterpillar race. The caterpillar that wins the race is then used to predict the winter weather. Looks like Bobby’s predicting a fairly mild winter…
Author: iampotassium
Portrait: Why Do You Wake Me Up?!
So my winter break at home was awesome in a lot of ways but it was also very sad. This is a picture of my cat Blackberry, the matriarch cat of my group of kitties. She is 18 years old and is dying of cancer. So this was the last time that I got to see her and spend time with her. I spent a huge chunk of my break strictly sitting next to her on the couch, watching over her as she slept, making sure at least one part of me was touching her at all times, feeding her tons of cat treats, taking millions of pictures of her, etc. She is a good sport though, still as spunky and crazy as ever. Even when you could tell she wasn’t feeling super well, she still demanded her usual affections. It was special and heartwarming to be able to take care of her so much because she is such a wonderful cat. It was also heartbreaking to see her so sick and to know when I left that it was the last time I would get pet her and hug her. I’m really happy that I at least got to go home again and see her before anything happened. I’ll miss you Blackberry…
Happy New Year!
Before I say anything about this picture, I just want to apologize for not posting on Friday! Cobalt and I had a hell of a time trying to get back to Colorado on Thursday because of all the crazy snow and we didn’t end up actually getting home until about 2:30am Friday morning. So I thought sleeping on Friday would be a better idea than doing anything else – such as posting on here! I thought I would make up for it by posting a picture today!
Because of all the snow and the crazy cold temperatures and the threat of wind chill up to -25 degrees F, we decided to stay in and have our own New Years Party instead of attempting to get to one. So here are me and Cobalt all curled up on the couch ready to wish everyone a happy new year! This picture is neat because it is taken with my mom’s old 28 mm lens (so about 50 mm lens for my DSLR) from her old film SLR. She bought it in the 70’s so it doesn’t have an autofocus motor and you actually have to set the aperture on the lens instead of on the camera. Fun times. Anyway, all this gibberish boils down to the fact that you can’t autofocus with this lens. So yes, this is a self portrait taken with manual focus. That means I have to guess how far away I am going to hold the camera from our faces and focus the camera on something equally as far away. Ooooo the challenges! :D Anyway, happy new year everyone!
Now I’m Ready to Start
(title from the Arcade Fire song “Ready to Start”)
Oooo… I love this picture too. It looks like my wee is about to embark on a perilous but amazing adventure. The other day, my wee and I drove out to the beach and I brought my DSLR camera. We had tons of fun frolicking on the beach and taking pictures. We also had tons of fun trying to figure out how to cross this random giant stream that had appeared across the beach probably thanks to all the rain we’ve been getting here (I’ll give you a hint: we got wet… not the camera though, phew). Anyway, we were making our way back to the car when we noticed how marvelous the sunset was as the sun said goodbye through those little holes in the clouds. We were admiring the colors of the ocean beneath the sunset and my wee walked over to get a closer look. That’s when I took this picture. Looks awesome….
Black and White: Time for a Tea Party?
Ooooo I love this pic. I love it when I am going about my day and something pops up already perfectly composed for me to take its picture. That’s how I felt about this shot. Basically, I’ve been going for little runs/walks around my neighborhood and every time I passed this sight (it’s what it looks like, benches under a tree in the middle of an abandoned horse pasture), I was so enchanted by it. I kept picturing one of those paintings you see of fairies having a tea party under a tree in the middle of some valley. Okay, maybe I am reading too much young adult fiction but that’s what I thought of every time. So one day after my run, I got the DSLR and walked back down there to try to capture the image I saw in my head. It was a fun exercise to try to get everything to match what I had envisioned. Do you see it? If not, what do you see? :-/
Mmmm… Moon Cookie
I apologize because my eclipse pictures are a week late! You’re probably wondering if there was another eclipse and you just missed it! Nope. I am just slow at posting my pictures… Anyway, here is my representative eclipse picture! Taking eclipse pictures was really fun because I had my DSLR on my dad’s super sturdy tripod (my wimpy tripod from Target just wasn’t cutting it… :p) and I finally got an excuse to use my new shutter release cable that I got for my birthday. SO fun. I set up the camera, took some pictures, left it chillin’ (quite literally) outside for a bit, came back, snapped a few pictures, etc. Hilarious. It was also tricky because it was quite cloudy here the whole night so I had to keep waiting for the clouds to go away so I could take another picture. Finally, it was super fun because I got to play with all sorts of shutter speeds. I took some really long exposures to overexpose the uncovered moon slice while perfectly exposing the red covered moon, and then some shorter exposures to show little moon fingernails in the sky. Awesome. Good times.
Portrait: Christmas Card
Welcome back for another week! I am so excited about this week. I have some great pictures lined up for you! So look forward for awesomeness this week. Let’s start with portrait Monday!
For today’s portrait, I have this picture of my gorgeous sister from Christmas eve! We had just finished taking our annual family pictures (my job this year! It was intense… ;)) when my sister, I like to call her my wee, asked me if I could take some pretty portraits of her. I said of course and we were off! This is one of my favorites from her photo shoot. I love the Christmas tree in the background and that she is off center just a little. And of course, she looks amazing! :D Man… I am getting a lot of practice taking portraits inside… Love it!
Cell Phone Picture: A shark, a shark, high up in the sky
with a tail as big as a kite…
Today’s picture is the top of our family Christmas tree – topped with who else but Poncho! You should recognize him from a few Fridays ago when he was hanging out with Ed the skeleton in Cobalt’s car. Anyway yes, I thought I would do a festive picture for today seeing as the holidays are… well… right now!
The winter holidays are a busy time for me. First of all, I was raised Christian so I have a lot of Christmas traditions I like to follow. Many include seeing family and friends and catching up on each other’s lives. Many others include a lot of singing. On top of that, I love love love giving presents to help people in need. Buy a book or a cuddly stuffed animal for a child in need’s Christmas present? Um… yes. Give a large tip to a waitress or waiter in a random restaurant somewhere on a random evening? Exciting! Donate 25 lbs of food to feed a family for the holidays? Sign me up. It just gives me so much joy to think about the looks on people’s faces when they see my gifts to them. I love playing a part in cheering up the world. As much as I love cheering up the world, I think it is important to think about those who have lost loved ones during the holiday season. So I also spend this time remembering and honoring those who have died and offering the gifts of love and compassion to those who need it.
Happy Holidays!
Love, Potassium
Snow Beast Attack!
I love this picture. It cracks me up. This picture pretty much gives you a good idea of what it’s like to hang out with my cats. First, let’s take a step back. Remember Tuesday’s picture? With that fluffy white cat that I said we called the “snow beast” because she gets all puffy in the winter? Well that’s her in the background, wanting to know what is going on with me and Smokey, the kitty in the foreground. I’ll tell you what was going on. I had gone outside in the cold muddiness to try to find Smokey and take some good pictures of her. I took a nice portrait of her too so look forward to seeing that if you’re sad you can’t see her face in this picture.
Anyway, so here’s the thing about the snow beast. She loves getting attention. In fact, she’s bitten my butt before because I was petting one of our other two cats and ignoring her. No joke. So as soon as she sees that she’s not the center of attention, she comes running, just as she is in this picture. I love how Smokey is turning to look at her as if she is thinking “Ohhhhh man… here we go…”
One more thing – I just wanted to point out how green everything is in this picture. Amazing… It’s from all the crazy rain we’ve been getting! :-/
Black and White: Pokey Flower
For those of you who don’t know, I love taking pictures of pokey things. I don’t know why. I guess I just really like the effect of something coming out at you while everything else is a blur in the background. So generally, if Cobalt and I go on a walk with my camera, I will take at least one pokey picture on our journey. Actually, that is pretty much the story of this picture.
Potassium Photography 