Tankar

Mother – Forever in My Heart

/ Leya / 144 kommentarer

Early this morning, my mother unexpectedly passed away. This is the last photo, from August when we celebrated Emma turning 30. In the header, June this summer, Mother turned 85. Always a beauty, always shining, always funny, always – Always Mum.

Thank you for Everything. You chose such a beautiful day to leave us, warm and sunny, I believe the last day of summer. A day of no wind, of stillness and the yellow garden flowers glowing. But nothing can ever glow like You.

How frail is a life – yours went from laughing and joking on Monday, to gone forever Wednesday morning. Wherever you are now, I know your company is smiling.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge # 114 – Negative Space

/ Leya / 92 kommentarer

This week, Amy is our host, and she wants us to show the importance of negative space in our photography. Negative space is the area around the main subject of your photograph. (Which means that your main subject is the positive space) Check out her post, see brilliant examples and learn more about this!

Positive and negative space are two important tools for us to give an enhanced emotional feel to our images, which is essential in photography. Looking forward to seeing your choices!

Negative space is there to give your photos a sense of calmness
…and subtlety.
Well used, negative space provides a natural balance against the positive space in a scene.
But, images can also appear lonely
..or solemn (or funny…)
Most of all, I would say negative space often gives a contemplative beauty to the image, a unique possibility for us to declutter, relax and recover in this jumbled and unruly world.

Our special thanks to Rusha Sams for hosting last week’s Labor of Love. We had so many positive and uplifting experiences of genuine love and care!

Be sure to check out Tina’s Travels and Trifles post next week as she hosts Challenge #115.

And, as always – may you stay safe and well. Our thoughts these days go especially to all of you out there fighting the wild fires.

Thursday Thoughts – The Sun is Shining In

/ Leya / 14 kommentarer

Autumn is coming, and the sun is shining in, shimmering in the fading flower beds – finding the last ballerinas – and finally peering in through my windows.

Suddenly there is another quality of light, and a familiar chill in the air…

 – even if…in my rooms the warm evening sun is lingering.

A last walk in the garden before the sun sets, and then a silent cup of coffee while cleaning up and getting ready for the night.

I am so grateful to have lived another beautiful day.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #113 – A Labor of Love

/ Leya / 70 kommentarer
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #113: A Labor of Love

First of all – thank you for so many inventive, creative and fun interpretations of last week’s challenge – Pick a Word! Fabulous!

Rusha Sams of Oh the Places We See is our host this week, and she has chosen to highlight all those people who work for a better society and a better world. A Labor of Love.

As so many of us do these days, I think of the health care workers, police and firefighters – all those brave people helping us in this unruly world. But my thoughts also go to all those who work for a sustainable world and helping vulnerable species to survive – because biodiversity is essential to us all. Without biodiversity we will all perish and our planet is lost. Even if we are living in a pandemic now, we know that other problems will not go away – we have to fight them all, simultaneously. Tough. But, the pandemic is also a result of how humans have abused and misused Nature and our only home, planet Earth.

In the header, the dotterel beach in Coromandel.

My daughter voluntered in New Zealand in 2011, working in a Nature preserving program.
She worked mostly with inventory of traps and keeping the forest open. All voluntary work is of course unpaid (monetarily…) work – A Labour of Love for the planet.
Saving the NZ Dotterel was/is a project involving many volunteers. During hatching time there was a time table for those watching the birds 24/7. We saw some Dotterels running on the beach, but also some little ones dead.
A big threat to all endemic animals, maybe especially the NZ flightless birds (the kiwi is only one of them) are the invasive possums. Emma brought home several skulls and bones from roadkills.

In 2016 we went to Ecuador, the Amazon Basin and the Galapagos Islands. Threatened already then by the oil industry and new settlers burning down the rainforest, but little did we know of the many fires that would arrive through mismanagement and the pandemic.

A vast piece of jungle was once bought by a man from the Netherlands who wanted to save it from getting destroyed. We stayed at his eco-lodge with local people guiding and lecturing about herb medicine and Amazon plants and animals. These people were born and raised here, lived here and knew the jungle like the back of their hand.

They took us out on crystal clear waters…
…silent canoe days
…and if not out on the waters – then bird watching high above the Amazon jungle.
Luis was one of our skilled guides, helping us find essential plants for cuisine and health. This was certainly a Labour of Love for him – a way of helping his people, animals and plants survive. He could also recognize and identify several hundreds of different bird sounds.
For Andi, his Labor of Love meant that several villages could survive – and thrive.
This journey is the most highly treasured one of all my journeys through 47 years. To see these people’s loving faces in preserving and teaching about their natural environment was a great joy and to learn how deep their knowledge is of Nature’s secrets was truly humbling. Knowledge and skills of this kind can only be yours if you are born and raised here. I am forever grateful to have met them all.

”We hope you’ll join us in sharing your interpretations of “A Labor of Love” whether you showcase a person or a group or an object notable for the labor or laborer involved.” Publish your post and add your link to the Comments section at the bottom of Rusha’s post. Please don’t forget to add the tag Lens-Artists so you can be found in the Reader.

Next week we will be back on schedule, and Amy will be our host for challenge #114. Until then – stay well and be kind. To yourself as well.