Weeks 24-28

As you can tell, I have been a little preoccupied with other things besides blogging the last few weeks.  As you can also tell, I have been taking plenty of pictures during that time!  I am still doing the photography challenge and now I can give you the ones that I missed!

Week 24 - Enchanted

Week 25 - Light

Week 26 - Forgotten

Week 27 - Journey

Week 28 - Take Flight

Week 23 - Colors

Isn't it easy to find beauty in the mountains!  These are some pictures I took this weekend while I was home...more will follow soon!

Week 22 - Separate

I want to share a lesson with you today.  It's a simple one: Floss!  Everyday.  Even when you're camping or tired or drunk.

A while back one of my teeth chipped and when I was home last, I went to the dentist and ended up needing not one, but TWO root canals!

Well, Thursday I finally got my crowns put on and let me tell you, it feels so good to have something that resembles a real tooth back there :)

Now that we've had our lesson, I will share my week 22 picture picture with you.  My new DC dentist gave me the mold that my crowns came on, which was definitely the best part of this monthlong process and yes, I do have very pointy, vampire teeth.  Thanks for noticing ;)

Looking In

Week 21's theme was "looking in" or "person/people - no faces" so I guess this picture fits either theme.  Technically I didn't take this picture as you can tell since I'm the one in the picture, but my mom did while she was visiting us.

And for the observant reader, you will notice that I skipped week 20 (theme was self-portrait).  I'll get to it I'm sure.

Weeks 18 and 19

When I went home, I basically forgot about my "Paint the Moon; Let's do 52 Challenge."  I was still taking pictures the whole time, they just weren't exactly directed at the themes.  Anyway, here are two of the weeks that I missed.  I am still a week behind but I'll get there :)

                  Week 18 - Mother/Story                                                   Week 19 - A Slice of Everyday Life

Week 17 - "In Motion"

Week 16 - Refreshing

Week 14 - Chaos

Here is a "two-fer" post for you.  A little preview of our weekend while Austin's family is in town and my photography challenge photo.  The theme was chaos and we went to the Japanese street festival on Saturday...in a word: chaotic.  

But I'll explain more of that later.  For now, you just get to see for yourself!

Week 13 - Connect

I got a little behind with my photography assignment this week but here it is!  The theme for the week was "connect" and this picture was taken in front of some government building (as if every building in this city isn't a government building) near Chinatown.  Enjoy!

Week 12 - Blur

This week's "Paint the Moon; Let's do 52 Challenge" theme was either blur or something else that I forgot.  I obviously chose blur!

This photo was taken through one of those screens that they put on store windows to block some of the sun.  This particular window belongs to the Dunkin' Donuts in the Eastern Market area.

Week 11/52 "Up"

For this week's theme, I got lucky and took a picture over the weekend up at the farm that happened to fit perfectly.  So this picture is taken looking up the silo of my grandpa's barn.  This is a silo that I have avoided since the day I was allowed into the barn--most likely because my Poppop (aka Grandpa) told me and all the other grandkids that someone was hanged in there and his ghost still haunts the silo!  Luckily the ghost in the barn is not as creepy as the ghost in the orange room closet though!

Fear

The theme for this week's Paint the Moon; Let's do 52 challenge was "Fear" or the alternate theme of "Feet."  I chose to go with the former and struggled coming up with something that fit for me personally.  I'm not one of those people who has a particular phobia that is easy to name (i.e. spiders, flying, etc.), but when I got to really thinking about it I realized that I have an irrational fear that the people that I love will be taken away from me too soon.  Every time someone that I care about gets on a plane, train, or even into a car, I have horrible dreams about everything that could go wrong.  I went to Arlington Cemetery today to take some pictures to represent this fear of death and when I saw the two women walking through the graves, I felt like this was closer to my actual fear: the fear of having to visit the grave of someone I love.

9/52 Theme: Round or Play

So, like I said a few days ago, I am really going to make an effort to get better with my camera so although I am a little late, I decided to start in on the "Paint the Moon; Let's do 52" challenge and take at least one picture a week and try to make it one that I'm not too embarrassed to post on the group's Flickr page.Week 9's themes were "Play" and "Round." Because I didn't want to get arrested by taking pictures of little kids at a park, I took the latter theme that was easier to do without being seen as a pedophile! Below is my photo that I took this week of a chair that Austin made out of recycled tennis balls. Clearly, I did a lot of adjusting with Gimp. I still don't really know what I'm doing with it, but it's fun to play anyway.

P.S. I did spend too many hours reading tutorials on Gimp today and all I have to show for it is the watermark on the bottom right corner of this photo. However, I found one really good site where the author is generous enough to give step-by-step directions on how to create different effects in Gimp with screen shots to go along so hopefully I will get more creative with my pictures relatively soon.