Sara’s Fave Photos

The tulip display is only getting more so at the Pike Place Market’s North Arcade where all the flower sellers are. These are forced ones, but the weather is warmer than usual here in the Seattle area and the field ones will be a bit earlier than usual. I can’t wait for the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival (about two hours away) in April. This year I’m sure some will be blooming at the very beginning of the month.

For more ruby redness, visit Ruby Tuesday, and be sure to check out Color Carnival while you’re at it.

We saw the sun for a few minutes this morning, but now all is gray again. In honor of the brief view of the happiness-giving orb, here are two studies in yellow, complete with shadows. Visit Shadow Shot Sunday for more interesting shadows. Go to Color Carnival for more brilliant color, and of course, Mellow Yellow Monday for you know what. Check out Today’s Flowers, too.

The lemons are SOOC, or straight out of the camera. As for the daffs, I couldn’t resist Auto Tone in Photoshop when I saw the neat purple-ish background it produced.

Remember: Now you can always get back to the latest entry here by clicking on the “Sara’s Fave Photos” title in the header, no matter where you’ve wandered in the blog. I invite you to click around, and hope you enjoy your visit.

Today I saw rainbows in three locations as I drove around and did errands. You’ve gotta be quick with rainbows; they just won’t wait for you. So while I was driving down this alley in downtown Burien, I stopped the car, leaned my head out the window, and took the shot. I actually like it, even though this type of urban shot isn’t my usual thing. Gotta love rainbows.

Visit Thursday Challenge for more Sky photos, and/or visit Skywatch Friday for even more skies around the world!

It’s cleared up and the sky was showing the change the other evening. This one is SOOC, or straight out of the camera. For more skies around the world, visit Skywatch Friday.

Navigation Note: Now you can always get back to the latest entry here by clicking on the “Sara’s Fave Photos” title in the header, no matter where you’ve wandered in the blog. I invite you to look at the memes or tags on the left, or whatever appeals to you today. Hope you enjoy your visit.

While it has been quite rainy recently, wetness does not necessarily a photograph make. I thought I’d show this one of a delightfully noisy creek in the Quinault Rain Forest, on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, taken last summer.

Visit Watery Wednesday for more cybermoisture. For fans of scenery, visit Scenic Sunday. And try SOOC, for more straight-out-of-the-camera shots.

I was at the Volunteer Park Conservatory, right near the Asian Art Museum, having a fine old time with my little Canon and the help of a monopod to help brace the shots. I actually hate shlepping and setting up tripods. I want to take too many shots from too many angles for them to work for me, except in special situations, of course.

I am trying to get the Conservatory to feature a wall calendar for 2011 with photos of their incredible plants and flowers, a calendar created by yours truly. When you visit a place like that, are you tempted by a photo calendar? (Assuming it’s wonderful.) What do you think of that idea?

Visit Ruby Tuesday for more photos featuring the color red, and SOOC for more straight-out-of-the-camera shots.

This shot from the archives, taken on a sunny April day, just feels so good after the pretty relentless gray and wet we are having here, with more of the same predicted. We didn’t even get the promised sunbreaks this afternoon.

Des Moines is pronounced Duh Moynz by the locals, yes with the final Z sound, and I understand that it actually means The Monks, although why I do not know.

Hope you enjoy the view of blue sky and puffy clouds as much as I do. Visit Skywatch Friday for more skies around the world. Check out Scenic Sunday for more lovely scenery, too. Fans of blue, visit Blue Monday.

Thursday’s Challenge is “ROMANTIC” (Flowers, Chocolates, Hearts, Lace, Red, Pink, Sunset, Holding Hands,…) and so of course I have to post flowers. This bouquet also photographed at the NW Flower & Garden show in Seattle last week. It says Be Mine to me!

This also works for Color Carnival (the local gray skies make me crave color!) and is a straight-out-of-the-camera shot, or SOOC.

This urn at the NW Flower & Garden show was almost as tall as I am, and the forsythia stems must have reached almost ten feet. Now that was one impressive bouquet! They keep the lights quite low to keep the plants lasting well, I am told, and the dim lighting was a bit of a photo challenge, but still so pretty.

For more interesting visions of red, visit Ruby Tuesday. And check out Color Carnival for more photos like this. And see SOOC for more straight-out-of-the-camera shots.

They do smell heavenly. But be super careful about getting the pollen on your clothes, as it can stain permanently, I’ve found out, unhappily. I grew this and it bloomed in August. They are actually pretty darn easy to grow, but do put in stakes early, because they get tall and delightfully covered with flowers and then maybe a wind comes along and pfffft, it’s a mess. All you gardeners out there, stake early and stake well! You’ll be glad you did.

Visit Macro Monday, Mellow Yellow Monday and Ruby Tuesday for more great photos in blogland. And for sure, Color Carnival, too.

I got a lot of mileage out of that one sunny half-hour walk the other day. Here’s a nice winter shadow shot for you. Visit Shadow Shot Sunday for more interesting penumbras. And it’s SOOC, or straight out of the camera, also.

Oh, another flower meme! How can I not? This one is in Norway, and it’s called Blooming Friday. Lovely photos. Here’s one to start thing off, something actually blooming here in the Pacific Northwest in January in a rare burst of sunshine. It’s called Heather and I think its real name is Erica. Maybe.

It’s straight out of the camera, or SOOC, bright enough for Color Carnival, and PINK as well!

Visiting a friend I was surprised to see the amount of papers on her desk and all around her office. I’ve heard that “a clean desk is the sign of a sick mind,” but I can’t look at too much disorder without getting antsy. How do you find important things? Sometimes I’ve just got to straignten things up, or at least line up the piles. But we’re all different, aren’t we?

In any case, the theme for Thursday Challenge is “Messy.” This qualifies.

Here’s another saunter into the archives, this from May 12 of last year: my backyard. I planted every single one of those bulbs the previous fall and was so happy to see how they looked. This year they might even look better, but only the barest tips of the crocus leaves are showing now.

For more entrancing flowers, visit Flowers for Today. I also call this pretty darn Scenic, too! And sunshine makes taking a perfect (or at least pretty good) photo so easy, so this is SOOC as well. But do you think it’s colorful enough for Color Carnival?

I was at the Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle, and some intrepid flower growers were there in their usual spot in the North Arcade, showing their heaven-on-earth wares. This one grower had tulips, forced in a greenhouse heated with propane; so expensive to grow, so welcome to see and purchase. The others, mostly Hmong immigrants, had the usual spectacular, unique and incredibly cheap bouquets of dried flowers, but that’s for another day.

For more blissful pink, visit Pink Saturday. For more brilliant colors, try Color Carnival. And for more straight-out-of-the-camera shots, visit SOOC.

Here’s a view of Puget Sound from Seahurst Park the other day showing a fairly typical sky of our region. The many cloud layers with the dark rainclouds on the way are more appealing to me than straight gray, which is what we have today.

This is another SOOC shot, or straight out of the camera.

Visit Skywatch Friday for more skies seen round the world.

Puget Sound (near Seattle) is huge but quite protected, so even on windy days we don’t get much wave action. I like the sound the little swishing waves make on the pebbly shore. This water shot reflecting the blue sky of a sunny day was captured about two weeks ago.

Visit Watery Wednesday for more cyberwetness, and SOOC for more straight-out-of-the-camera photos.

That amaryllis bulb from a week or so ago is continuing to open. It’s in a south-facing window, but it’s mostly been cloudy and rainy, which is actually great if you are a plant like this one. I’ll keep you posted.

For more rubine redness, visit Ruby Tuesday. Color Carnival is always a thrill. And go check out SOOC for more straight-out-of-the-camera shots.

My sister brought me some flowers the other day and these gerbera daisies are still going strong. So cheerful in the Seattle “sunbreak” we had for a while this morning.

See more interesting shadows at Shadow Shot Sunday. And more brilliant colors at Color Carnival. More straight-out-of-the-camera shots at SOOC. More yellow at Mellow Yellow Monday. More macros at Macro Monday. And more flowers at Flowers for Today!

I’ve discovered that I’ve left incorrect links to some recent meme entries, and I apologize. I thought that by leaving the link to the category it would help people find things, but I didn’t realize that sorting by category disables the comment feature. No wonder it seemed so quiet out there! Sorry, everyone. I’ll go back to leaving the general blog url for most memes and let visitors find their way by category if they wish, or just by scrolling down a little bit. Please DO leave a comment if you feel so inspired; I love them. I’ll do my best to return the visit as soon as I am able.

Since everyone likes this photo so much, and since I like it a ton also, I’m calling this my Best Post of the Week. Check out the cream of the blog week there.

I guess I wasn’t the only one entranced by the scenery a week or two ago near Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle. The sunset over Puget Sound was pretty darn nice, don’t you think?

For more skies and sunsets, visit Skywatch Friday. And you might like to visit the folks at Scenic Sunday, too, even though we are early for that one.

Yes, this is with the new camera, but unfortunately I did not have the right settings in place, and the quality of this image, which is straight out of the camera, is pretty poor. But isn’t it a lovely scene? There I was down near the water, with such a sunset and the ferry right there, as scenic as it gets, and fumbling around in the almost dark I just failed to get it right. Darn. Well, try to imagine it with sharp, brilliant edges, and all the water ripples showing.

Visit Thursday Challenge for other special images. This week is free choice as to theme.

We went to a new (to us) park nearby in Burien, WA. Hubby has discovered geocaching and of course I wanted to try scenic shots with my new Canon s90 Powershot camera. What do you think? This it totally straight out of the camera (SOOC). I am trying to master the manual controls, a very difficult endeavor. This had the ISO set to 80. I thought I understood cameras and settings from my old SLR film camera days, but these have so very many settings that there seems to be no logic to it.

In any case, check out Watery Wednesday for more cyberwetness. And you can always stop by Scenic Sunday (I’m early, I know) for more scenigasms.

I seem to be most attracted to photos from exactly half a year ago. This one was in a neighbor’s yard. Alstroemeria is a very nice spreading perennial that can take a bit of neglect. And they make superb cut flowers, lasting a LONG time. The only downside is no scent. I planted some pink ones and we’ll see if they do well.

For more closeups, visit Macro Monday, and for more brilliant yellow, visit Mellow Yellow Monday.

This is my friend Lyle’s dahlia garden. You can see the telltale shadow of me trying to photograph with one hand while holding the bouquet I had just picked in the other. Oh, the warm and sunny days of summer!

For more lovely flowers, visit Flowers For Today.

A sunny patch in the weather made some lovely shadows the other day. Visit Shadow Shot Sunday for more interesting and entertaining shadows.

It’s also straight out of the camera, or SOOC.

And even a week later this photo still makes me pause, so I’ve tagged it Best Post of the Week.