We're All Ears :: March Challenge :: Leaping Greenly

If you are living in the upper half of the US, you might be experiencing a white-out of epic proportions. Here is the snow hill where my kids used to go to school. The kids there were in heaven, rolling and tumbling and making forts. I can assure you that it was never, ever this high when my son was playing king of the hill. 

MAKE.IT.STOP.

Everywhere I look I am surrounded by white. The snow drifts around these parts are higher than my car in a lot of places, making it dangerous to just inch out onto a road. [And it seems neverending! I heard a prediction of -40 degrees again on Monday...guess that means I will have to put socks back on!] 

I know that last month I was all enamored of the sparkling beauty of the snowflake but this month I am all.....pffffffft.

I was going through my now defunct blog [treasures-found.blogspot.com] recently in preparation for a writing class I am teaching today, and I stumbled across this post that I wrote on May 19, 2011. 

I really enjoyed reading all the things that I wrote back then. I truly had a knack for telling a story. But more than just words, I also have love of visuals, and telling a visual story is just as compelling to me. 

Back then I used my Canon DSLR camera for everything, I bought some filters to turn my lens into a macro and took myself on a photo-safari walk around the riverside park next to my office. I still remember this vividly.

So I made a little collage to remind me that spring is just around the corner....right?!

[Just to be clear...I have actually used this similar set of photos in a challenge back in September 2014...but they are sooooo good and I am sooooo longing for these colors!]



Here's to a hopeful return of sunshine to start the onerous melting process. 
Here's to the Vernal Equinox that is coming on March 20th. 
Here's to the slumbering buds and the dormant blades of grass that are preparing their debut. 
And here's to the coming Saint Patty's Day celebration of all things green (especially my favorite Shamrock Shakes! ;-).

Let's break out all the GREENS we can find for this month's We're All Ears challenge. 

See you right here on Friday, March 19th!

We're All Ears :: March Inspiration

If you've been with me long enough, you know I love macro photography.

There is something really special about seeing the tiniest things blown up to mammoth proportions that so intrigues me. There is an endlessly fascinating array of things that can be magnified by the macro lens and those that take such photos have my utmost admiration. I do have a macro lens on my regular camera (that hasn't seen much use in the past year or so), as well as a Photojojo macro lens that snaps onto my iPhone. But the best macro shots I managed to take were ones with a set of progressive filters that just screwed onto the regular lens of my big-ass camera (the one that doesn't see much action... after I dropped it on said lens...). I really need to get a different regular lens and break those out. I miss them.

So I was really thrilled to just do a random search to see what I could find and something that would help me get in the mind frame of the coming spring (it is coming, right?). 

I discovered these marvelous macro photos by Martin Amm who is a German nature photographer. Each of these is an extreme close up of dragonflies or damselflies covered in morning dew. I couldn't decide on just one so I grabbed a few to hopefully capture your interest from different angles.

Positively effervescent, don't you think?
And I just realized that the very first We're All Ears challenge in February 2014 was a pair of damselflies...sort of like coming full circle!

What intrigues you most about this up close and personal photography?

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To participate in the We're All Ears creative challenge:

Make earrings inspired by this inspiration.

Write a post on your blog.

Add your exact blog post URL link to the
InLinkz code right here on 

Friday, March 20th.

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We're All Ears :: September Inspiration

Macro photography fascinates me. I love to see the up close and personal worlds that talented macro artists can capture. The inner workings of a flower... The secret life of bees... The unexpected textures of metal... Thankfully, with the advent of DSLR cameras and all the fun gadgets that you can buy, the world of macro photography is more accessible than ever.

I went looking for amazing macro nature shots and stumbled on a very gifted artist named Damon Clarke. His macro shots of the forest are what I wanted to share with you today, but given the fact that his work is copyrighted, I couldn't very well use them, even in good faith. But you really should check out his work at www.macrophotography.com.

Inspired by the beautiful worlds Clarke's Forest Collection, I remembered that a few years ago I took a macro photo safari of my own at Pfiffner Park on the banks of the Wisconsin River. That was to test out a set of macro filters (similar to these) for my DSLR camera. Unfortunately, my regular DSLR lens bit the dust when I decided to drop it on my studio floor (and it didn't bounce...imagine!), but I still have those macro filters and one day I will get another lens that will work with it. You just screw these filters onto the front of the lens and turn it into a macro. Of course, to replace, I did buy a more fancy macro lens, but I really loved being able to swap out the filters, and even layer them for enhanced detail. 

Now I mostly take pictures with my iPhone and I did purchase a set of Photojojo magnet snap lens, including a macro/wide angle (but it requires an extreme close up, so it is more suited to flowers and lichen than to jewelry). So this series of pictures made me pine for my damaged lens.

What I love about each of these pictures is the way they all feel like tiny worlds to me. As if I could just shrink down and fall into one to explore the terrain, like an ant scouting a location, charting a course for a brave new world. The one on the left makes me think of the banks of a wide river, like the Amazon, with its twists and turns and coursing currents. The one on the top right makes me think of aerial views of farmlands with crops planted. The one in the middle - my very favorite - feels so alien to me, as if these are dwelling places for some other interstellar race built on the top of a verdant mountain.

So, since there is a shift in the seasons upon us, I thought that these would be a fitting inspiration for September. I am really looking forward to seeing how this inspires your designs!

What inspires you about this world within a world?

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To participate in the We're All Ears creative challenge:

Make earrings inspired by this picture.

Write a post on your blog.

Add your exact blog post URL link to the
InLinkz code right here on 

Friday, September 19th.

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