Contest pictures

It is time to enter the yearly Birds and Blooms photo contest.  They have changed the rules a little.  You can only enter 1 photo in each of 4 categories.  I only have entries that qualify for 3 of the categories.  It use to be that you could enter 6 photos.  One could enter them all in the same category if they chose to do so.  So the categories that I am entering in are:  Best of Birds, Best of Butterflies, and Best of Flowers.  I put seven pictures of flowers on facebook to see what other people would chose.  The big winner is this one.

The bird one I am going to enter is of the eagles in Eagle River, Alaska.

And finally the butterfly picture is one I took in South Dakota at the State Capital in Pierre.  I have that one entered in a Dakota photo contest and the people really like it.

I never win, but from the ones I have entered in the contest, I have had two of them published in the magazine at other times.  I also sent a picture in of a pheasant I had taken in Brown County, SD.  I wrote a story about the picture and about the pheasant and that was published.  It is always fun to see your photo in print.

I won't know for almost a year how these pictures have done.  Time will tell----perhaps we will see them in the magazine sometime.



A Small Town in Indiana

There is a small town in Indiana with several large murals painted on buildings.  It is in Noble County.  It is Ligioner.

I have a daughter that lives in Ft. Wayne, IN.  She has a 5 year old daughter that we really like to spend time with.  I also buy most of my beef in Shipshewana, IN because it is hormone free.  So to get to Ft. Wayne from Shipshewana we usually take highway 5.  It goes through Ligionier.  The town has many gorgeous murals on what was very drab sides of buildings.  They say there are nearly 12.  I have not seen them all, but someday I need to stop and see several things in the town.  The Ligonier Historical Museum was built in the late 1800s as a Jewish Temple and features beautiful stain-glass windows. The museum is home to more than 1,000 artifacts relating to the city¹s past. It is operated by volunteers.  I need to visit that.  I love stain-glass windows.

             When you are coming into the downtown area from the north this is the first mural you will see.

It depicts how Ligonier was in 1835.  It is a gorgeous mural.

When you get on one of the side streets, you see this one.

It is interesting because it shows the businesses of the past and the people that owned them.  This is my favorite mural that I have seen so far.

The one pictured below is on the other end of the downtown area so when you come in from the south you see this one.

The sun did not let me get a real good picture, but it also is a beautiful mural.

Pictured below is an example of one of these types that tells about some of the people that were insturmental to the town's development.

Once I decided to write this blog about Ligionier I did some research and plan to go there to spend time and see what other interesting things I can find out about the town.

I hope you have enjoyed my photos of murals in a small town in rural Indiana.

Whales off the coast of Maui

God's creatures always amaze me.  We have been whale watching 3 times in Hawaii.  The first time we had them on both sides of our boat for most of the cruise.  We saw their backs and their tails and they were close, but we did not see one breach.  Sort of a disappointment as they were so close.  The next night we went out on a catamaran for a barefoot cruise.  Off in the distance there were whales breaching.  I took some pictures, but it was getting dark and the whales were quite a distance away. This past January we rented a condo for a few days at a resort in Maui.  The first thing we did was go on a whale watching cruise.  It is a good thing we did, because before we got back to our condo it had started raining and it rained for 2 days straight, closing roads, and causing a lot of cancelations of activities.  But this cruise had to be one of the best of the year for the crew.  We had whales breaching right beside our boat.

I had my long lens on and it was too much.  I could not get the whole whale in the frame.  There were several male whales and one female.  Of course the males were fighting each other.  Here is a picture of two of them.  If you look closely, you can see bloody spots on one of them.

There are regulations as to how close you can get to whales.  But if they come to you, one just turns off the engines to the boat and sits there until they leave.  This is what we did for quite sometime.  The crew of the boat believes that the female was under our boat.  The males were all around us.  The spray from the whales landed on us.  It was so much fun to be so close to these marvelous creatures.

This has had to be one of the best experiences that I have ever had. 

We went whale watching again in Maui because our other activity that day was called off, and we saw a baby whale breach.

There were lots of whales that day too, but not the amount or the closeness to us that the other trip had.  On Oahu we saw several breach also.  It was truly a good January for humpback whales in Hawaii.  I will go whale watching again if I get the chance.  We are heading out to the northwest this fall.  Perhaps we will see whales there.

Getting Started

I have several loves---My God, my husband, my family, my country, photography, and nature.  What God has created for us is a beautiful world.  Yes there are problems, but if you look close, you will find beauty in everything. 

I have always beleived that if you can get a good photo of a bird, you have accomplished a lot.  I love to travel and have been to all 50 states, Canada, and Mexico.  I have not traveled abroad.  I am not sure I will.  My very favorite place to vacation is in the Anchorage--Denali area in Alaska.  Denali National Park has to be one of the more beautiful places on earth.  One day we were outside of Anchorage on the Seward Highway and my son-in-law pointed to a bird and told me that it was an eagle.  I lifted my Canon Rebel and took some shots.  The Rebel focused perfectly and this is the photo I got.

I have often wondered about that shot.  I have gone to take pictures of birds in flight before and sometimes the camera  cooperates, but most of the time it does not know what to focus on.  Well, getting that photo really inspired me. 

Below is a photo I got at Eagle River in Alaska.

This is a fovorite of mine.  I call it "Move over."  There were so many eagles there on this one day.  They would fly and you could feel the wind their wings generated.  Her is another photo taken in Eagle River.

I emailed this one to my husband who was home in Michigan and he thought at first that it was photo- shopped until he looked closer.  Another favorite of mine.

We were in Homer, Alaska and my daughter and I were walking on the beach.  We spotted two white heads way in the distance, so we just kept walking.  We got closer and closer to this pair of eagles.  It was incredible.  We were so close that you could hear them chattering to each other.  Here is a picture of the two of them.

For my first blog I am going to post one final picture of an eagle.  I hope you have enjoyed my photos and my commentary.  Please feel free to make comments and follow me.