LENS-ARTISTS

Lens-Artists Challenge #57 – Taking a Break

/ Leya / 39 kommentarer

Once a year, go somewhere you have never been before – Dalai Lama 

Tina allows us all to take a break this week, and I am just back from a lovely break together with my family. The best way for me to enjoy life!

We went to Denmark this weekend, the whole family, and watched the Danish wake-board championships together with many enthusiasts.

The weather was great, and the competitors skilled.

The only means of transport needed in summer!

Afterwards we decided to go for the sand sculpture exhibitions – and they were spectacular too. But, what I enjoyed the most, was being together with my children.

Find what brings you joy and go there. –  Jan Phillips

On coming home this afternoon, I walk in my garden, among the flowers, listening to the late summer fluttering of tiny wings.

The Painted Lady is watching me, closely.

When she turns around, I admire her intricate outfit. And I feel good.

 

Welcome to join in the challenge!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lens – Artists Photo Challenge #56 – Seascapes and/or Lakeshore

/ Leya / 46 kommentarer

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.

 – Jacques Yves Cousteau, Oceanographer

 

Amy shows some amazing seascapes from her cruisings, and challenges us to post our own memorable moments from seascapes and lakeshores. My images are from my Icelandic journey this July.

First I would like to thank you for sharing your dreams with us last week – amazing! Now some of my seascapes might continue in that dreamy perspective…but it certainly takes some time to wake up from a dreamy era!

Having visited Iceland several times before, we soon realised how lucky we were with the weather. So lucky, that Icelanders we met could not but smile and congratulate. – They told us that their own criteria for ”Good Weather” is No Wind.

My opening image was shot from the peak of Eldfell at Heimaey in Vestmannaeyar, looking out to the North Atlantic. Hiking the volcano is fairly easy and takes less than an hour. And you are rewarded with breathtakingly beautiful views – if the mist lifts, and this time it did.

All the other seascapes are from Snæfellsnes peninsula, West Iceland. The name of the sea or fjord added. And, there is no colour enhancing – this is true Icelandic blue!

Arnarstapi, Faxaflói

Lóndrangar, Faxaflói

Stykkishólmur, Breiðafjörður

Stykkishólmur, Breiðafjörður

Hvammsfjörður

Hvalfjörður

Hvalfjörður, and yes, this is the pier where the whaling ships unloaded – and still unloads the captured whales. In 1981 we were here to see it with our own eyes. A 50 ton whale was taken care of in less than three hours. I cried all the way. The only comfort was that every piece of it came to use – nothing was thrown away. Many skilled Japanese worked here in those days. We know that they still catch whales in Iceland, and this station was used last year. I was not happy to learn this. But, it seems there is some trouble with Japan, so, no whaling in 2019. Hopefully Icelandic whaling will come to an end, because they no longer depend on it for a living.

The sea lives in every one of us – Wyland

Welcome to join in – we are looking forward to seeing you!

 

 

 

 

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #55 – Dreamy

/ Leya / 201 kommentarer

Endless ocean, blue water, dreamy sky,
tranquil beach, love in the air, mind fly high.
― Debasish Mridha

I love Iceland, and spent a week and more there again this July, it was our fifth visit over the years. I love its dreamy, but often rugged atmosphere. They usually have all weathers in one day, and the landscape changes fast – and often dramatically.

island-2019-405-redigera.jpg

A lot of people tell me I’m a bit dreamy, but I like the idea of that. Of being somewhere else.

– Alex Turner

I thought I would share some of that Icelandic dreaminess with you – so this week’s challenge is  – Dreamy.

 

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If you go to the dictionary, it says ”having a magical or pleasantly unreal quality; dreamlike.” On our way over the sea to Vestmannaeyar, this huge cliff emerged out of the fog and rain, when suddenly a ray of sun burst out through the heavy clouds and revealed a lonely farm house nesting in that emerald green. Who would have imagined? And who would be able – and want – to live out there? An enigmatic dream unveiled.

 

Wherever you go on Iceland, you will find lonely churches perched on mountain tops, hidden behind towering lava flows – or in fields of lupins. Looking like tiny toys placed there by a playful congregation. Often the little church is clearly visible from afar – but this one was only faintly visible in the fog. (And the lupins are of Alaskan origin…)


Dictionaries might also suggest an informal meaning of Dreamy – delightful; gorgeous. Maybe this last image belongs more in that category – or maybe in both of them. As usual, click to enlarge.

Finally, this window view, in the middle of the night, from Helgafell (Holy mountain). I wonder…were there really two tractors out there – or was I only dreaming?

There are many possibilities hidden in Dreamy – maybe you are given to or indulging in daydreaming? You might even want to illustrate one of your own dreams? Or are you one of those people who suffer from frequent nightmares (though I hope not …)? Now we are looking forward to Your interpretation of the theme Dreamy!

Last week brought us many wonderful details from you all, and thank you Patti for hosting last week’s Detail challenge.

 

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #54 – Detail

/ Leya / 41 kommentarer

When you pay attention to detail, the big picture will take care of itself.

– George St-Pierre

First of all – thank you for a marvelous response and encouragement for us to keep going with the challenges! Cheers to you – here we go for year two!

From Patti we are urged to think about details this week. I thought of our travels in Bhutan last spring, and the colourful Tsechu we attended in Paro. So many people, so many faces, so many details. All these people, they make up a great picture together – a picture where you maybe don’t pay attention to the details so much…at first.  Sometimes there actually are so many details that you have to decide to really take a closer look. To get the Whole picture.

It’s the details that make people distinct, that make them individuals. 

– Howard Lutnick

The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail. 

– Charles R. Swindoll

This magnificent temple displays tree carvings of utmost beauty. As I am usually well prepared when traveling, I knew what else to look for – the hanging pouches above the window. They are natural details, not man made. In fact they are bee communities. The bees are free to live there, and the Bhutanese don’t touch them or take away their honey.

Art is all in the details. 

– Christian Marclay

Things can happen when you least expect them so you always gotta be prepared. And pay attention to the details. The devil is in the details.

– Lesley Kagen

Abundant details or a few – they all make up the whole picture. What makes you tick? Personally I love both ways, and the combination of man made details and natural ones gives the picture a whole new dimension. I find it fascinating.

 

Thank you, Patti, for an inspiring challenge – you made me think of details from different angles!

 

Lens-Artists Challenge #53 – Your Choice

/ Leya / 139 kommentarer
New Zealand is not a small country, but a large village – Peter Jackson

There is real purity in New Zealand…It’s actually not an easy thing to find in our world anymore – Elijah Wood

Today is a very special day for us here at Lens-Artists – the one year anniversary of our Challenge. While we were all initially saddened by the discontinuation of the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge, for us it became an opportunity to expand our blogging horizons and to create some amazing new friendships.

I feel that New Zealand is my second home.  – Luke Evans

On our end, we have transitioned from four independent photography bloggers to a tightly-knit team that supports, encourages and helps each other as we develop and create our weekly challenges. We’ve also been fortunate to have expanded our follower base thanks to bloggers like you who support and inspire us.

Toitū te whenua (Leave the land undisturbed).

As a result, our challenge has become near and dear to each of our hearts. We’ve gone well beyond being individual members of a team and have become four good friends.  We are tremendously thankful to you for your appreciation of our efforts; and for making us smile or feel touched by your responses.  As our thank you for your support and encouragement, we’re suggesting that you respond to today’s challenge with any subject that’s near and dear to YOUR hearts, as we’ve done with our images today. If you’d prefer some guidance, choose any of the four subjects we’ve selected this week (Friendship, A country that’s special to you, Imagination and Connected).

We are a proud nation of more than 200 ethnicities, 160 languages, and amongst that diversity we share common values. – Jacinda Ardern

Each of us has included several captures that are special to us in some way.

Mine are from a country and people that occupies a special place in my heart – New Zealand. Aotearoa is the Māori name – and the most popular meaning usually given is the ”land of the long white cloud”. A strikingly diverse Nature,  warm-hearted People with strong Environmental care and – an insane sense of humour! It is also the country in which JRR Tolkien’s characters so naturally belong. New Zealand opened its arms to me – and I immediately felt at home there.  I would never have guessed that our blogging community could feel like ”home” too – but it does. It is a privilege to host this challenge once a month.

I’ve learned that home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling.
― Cecelia Ahern

Thank you again from the bottom of our hearts for making this such a terrific experience. If you have a subject that you feel might inspire us, please feel free to suggest it – we’d love to hear from you.  Should you be new to our challenge and interested in joining us, please click here and be sure to include the Lens-Artists TAG so we can all find you. Happy Blogging to all of our loyal followers and friends, and Happy Anniversary to us!

Whatungarongaro te tangata toitū te whenua

(As man disappears from sight, the land remains) This demonstrates the holistic values of the Maori, and the utmost respect of Papatuanuku, Mother Earth.

 

Have you seen these

Each week on Lens-Artists, we highlight several responses from among our followers. This special week we’d like to thank ALL of our followers for their thoughtful, funny, often-feisty and always wonderful posts. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do, and will continue to join us as we move into year two of the Lens-Artists Challenge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #52- Serenity

/ Leya / 20 kommentarer

It is the stillness that will save and transform the world. – Eckhart Tolle

Midsummer is over for this year, 2019. Sunny, happy and festive. Few great occasions in Sweden invoke so much serenity as Midsummer does. (And the reverse…) Nature is at its height in beauty, and the soft light lifts our moody Nordic minds.

The nights are sleepless…

…and the days are endless

Everything passes, nothing remains. Understand this, loosen your grip and find serenity – Surya Das

 

This week Tina is our host, visit her for serene thoughts and beautiful images for the challenge!

 

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #51 – Unique

/ Leya / 47 kommentarer

Unique – ask a dictionary, and it says being the only existing one of its type or, more generally, unusual, or special in some way. The most unique place I have visited is the Galapagos Islands.

This Ecuadorian archipelago with 19 islands are all unique in their own way – both flora and fauna. They all have endemic species, and the animals let you come close without being startled or afraid. They do not consider humans their enemies. Unique.

Thank you, Charles Darwin!

Charles Darwins resa med HMS Beagle 1831-36, Galápagosdelen

Some of the strange and fascinating landscapes on the islands –

If you look closely, you might see the flamingo…-

We had a very unique opportunity to see the land iguanas eating from the giant cactii.

Not many visitors are that lucky – at least our guide told us so.

Unfortunately we came too late to meet Lonesome George. Every effort to help this last of his species failed, and he died 2012. But we met several other giant tortoises on the island Santa Cruz.

In the header, two marine iguanas – unique to these islands, but unfortunately on the road to getting even more unique. As the waters are warming due to climate change, their sea food is dying and their numbers are already decreasing.

Let us hope these islands will stay unique – in a positive way. Nature is good at mending – if we will just let it.

A special thanks to Amy for this week’s photo inspiration.

 

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #50 – Trees

/ Leya / 197 kommentarer

Most of you know how much I walk in the forest – all year around. So the theme this week comes natural (!) to me – Trees. I will stay in Sweden, except for the header – waiting for you to post trees from every corner of the world! Anything about trees is free for you to explore in this theme – leaves, forests, fruits, stumps or saplings…maybe tree houses? Looking forward to seeing you here!

In the header, a famous site – The Dark Hedges in Ireland. Famous because of the Game of Thrones. There are thousands of pictures from under those old giants…I guess it must be the most photographed tree avenue ever?

Mille posing

The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky.  – Jane Goodall

This is Mille, my first Lagotto, posing nicely… As a child I too spent many hours every day in the forest and in the trees – climbing, jumping, playing and wishing I could swing in lianas, like Tarzan. Sigh…

The old Sallow

A tree grows. If you’re staying the same, something is wrong. You’re not alive. – Hamza Yusuf

This grand old Sallow stands in our summer garden, and someone lives in this flat every year. This spring a Eurasian blue tit – but, the family left last week for new adventures!

Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish. ― Munia Khan

If a tree dies, plant another in its place.  – Carolus Linnaeus

There is little in the architecture of a city that is more beautifully designed than a tree. – Jaime Lerner

I’m just delighted to be living, to be able to have a simple conversation, to feel a ray of sunlight on my skin and listen to the breeze move through the leaves of a tree. – Ryuichi Sakamoto

My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.  – Robert Frost

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.  – Albert Schweitzer

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.  – Martin Luther

I think the kind of landscape that you grew up in, it lives with you. I don’t think it’s true of people who’ve grown up in cities so much; you may love a building, but I don’t think that you can love it in the way that you love a tree or a river or the colour of the earth; it’s a different kind of love.  – Arundhati Roy

 

Hope I haven’t been ”too much” with many photos this week – but you who know me will understand – Trees have always been close to my heart and a big part of my life. Now I am really looking forward to seeing Your posts – hopefully you too will have a great time with this challenge! Thank you to Patti for last week’s  abundance of Favorite Things –

Finally, wishing you all an inspiring week!

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #49 – Favorite Things

/ Leya / 55 kommentarer

Our host this week, Patti, challenges us to show some of our own favorite things! They may be old or new – but all of us have favorites…

Many favorites have their own story, and some of my favorites are living things. In the header, a precious tulip I got from a collector, a friend of mine who sold his garden last year – he and his wife are now in their 80’s, and found it too hard to maintain it all.

Voltaire had Candide concluding, after all his travels around the world: Il faut cultiver notre jardin – ”We must cultivate our garden”.

And in my garden, I find the peace and magic I need when life gets too busy. I guess he was right, the old Voltaire…

Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. ― Anatole France

My best friends ( maybe not ”things”… but…) – Totti and Milo – belong to my family, and therefore they are also my favorites, together with my other children. I grew up with animals – so living without them would be impossible.

The orchid is Mother Nature’s masterpiece. – Robyn.

I have kept my grandmother’s geraniums for more than 30 years, and they are my favorites as well. I can see her loving smile whenever I tend to them. The same feeling is there for other flowers I once got from old friends and relatives, now gone. But the orchids are something extra when it comes to beauty – first and foremost this delicate Cattleya, which has lived here for quite some years now. A glorious treat when in flower, filling the rooms with a delicious scent.

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
― Groucho Marx

Not to forget – books and pencils, of course… Favorites for reading, writing and sketching. Preferably outside of a dog…

 

Welcome to join in the fun! Remember to link your post here and tag it ”Lens-Artists” to help us find your post in the WP Reader.
Next week, it’s my, Ann Christine’s, turn to host the challenge, so be sure to visit!

 

 

 

 

 

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #48 – Wild

/ Leya / 44 kommentarer

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”  – Henry David Thoreau

Tina encourages us this week to go Wild! And, this time of the year I spend as much time as possible outdoors, in the wild, so my decision was easy – to go for my own neighborhood and use the most common meanings of the word Wild (according to Wikipedia) –

 

Wild animal – I met this lovely deer on my morning tour a couple of days ago. She noticed me of course, but waited patiently in the sunlit glade until I was gone.

Wilderness – a wild natural environment not significantly modified by human activity.

Wildlife traditionally refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Represented in the header by a wild rose.

One of the most fascinating things in the wild is the metamorphosis of butterflies. Here some caterpillars of the small tortoiseshell, feeding on stinging nettles…

…but later developing into these beauties – Wild Wonders!

Finally, Wildness – the quality of being wild or untamed……easily recognizable even in domesticated animals – such as my dogs running and chasing each other like maniacs.

 

Would you like to go wild for a moment? Welcome to join in! Tag your entry ”Lens-Artists” so we can find you in the reader. And stay tuned for next week’s host, Patti, for challenge #49!