pigeons

The first of my promised catch up posts for the Photography Challenge I’m part of on Facebook.

Week 14 – and I’m hanging in there but I must confess I was quite at sea with the theme. I think I was overthinking it and so was predictably lost 😛 Also, those couple of weeks had that old ‘restlessness of spirit’ rearing its head again, and I wasn’t ‘with it’ for a while. And yet ‘peephole’ isn’t the most difficult of subjects…of course I was thinking & looking so hard that I forgot to ‘see’ the peephole in my main door 😉 We had some great pictures in the group as always and I despaired of ever getting the right shot…until I remembered our trip to the farm for Junior’s Birthday and an idea presented itself 🙂

This is what I love most about the Challenge – other than the fact that it has made me keep my camera close at all times – that it forces me to think and to persevere & of course the unexpected thrill of finding the right picture when I’m on the verge of giving up! So it was that for the first time in this Challenge, I went with a picture that I had already taken. Here it is and you can decide for yourselves whether it fits the theme.

Here is another shot that I also liked…although may I say that I’m not very fond of Pigeons. They are incredibly dumb birds…but they make good pictures 😉

And then my friend S (who’s also part of the Challenge), fashioned a simple but effective peephole with a printed page, taped it to her camera and clicked away with amazing results – so of course I had to try it! Turns out I’m not as skilled a ‘Peeping Tom’ as I aspire to be 😉 I took a lot of pictures mostly of the flowers in my balcony…of which I’m sharing one here. Couldn’t get my hands on printed paper (go figure!) and so used a coloured one instead. And then of course having finally ‘seen’ the peephole on my main door, took one through that and played around with it in Photoshop. I love the Oil Paint filter in Photoshop and how it transforms a picture into a painting 🙂

Flowering Peephole!

Through the Peephole!

Turned out to be a pretty fun Challenge after all 🙂 And all this talk of Peepholes is making me think of Alice in Wonderland for some reason :p A rabbit-hole is a sort of glorified peephole after all non? And look what adventures she had 😉

Here’s to Adventure People!

This week, the theme for my photography challenge was Eyes. Fairly simple and straightforward one would think, and so once again I wanted to do something different from the human eye – picturesque as it. Had a couple of ideas and finally settled for Barong Eyes, as you can see in the picture below. The Barong is a lion-like creature, the King of good spirits in Indonesian lore, that I came across in Bali. I spotted my Barong in a woodwork shop in a lane in Ubud and fell in love with his colours. He was quite gorgeous and I had to have him 🙂 He has had a place of pride in my living room ever since we brought him home and makes me happy just because!

Then of course I trolled around looking for stuff that I thought fit the scheme and came up with a few options – some old, some new. I’ve taken several pictures of my boy asleep over the years, but this one is new. I took a few angles, but when it came to sharing, I felt as if they were too intimate, an intrusion into his most unguarded, innocent moments…moments I wanted to keep for myself alone. I chose the one I thought was least intrusive…although it still feels a little odd.

I had taken the avocado shot a couple of weeks ago, but it struck me that it would be a fun take on the theme – an exophthalmic eye of some creature from Middle Earth perhaps?! An orc eye 😛 Had fun putting together these pictures – looking through the older photographs I’ve taken is always enjoyable 🙂 I hope you like them! Let me know! All critiques welcome 🙂

Peaceful eyes…

Another angle of Mr. Barong’s pop-eye!

What do you think? Orc eye?

Bird-eye!

Woman in a Hat by Picasso. I love this print that I bought in Barcelona 🙂

Shut-eye ❤