Fourth Week - Focus 52 - Play

The theme for this week was 'play'. For me, since I don't like to make pictures of my son public, this week was rather object based. I did take a picture that I liked - the son getting ready for soccer - but I stuck with the objects.


As always, I have three of my pictures from this week, with one being my final pick as my favourite.

The first is this one:



We were cleaning up the basement this weekend (as an aside, the stuff we got rid of is shown in this picture - all except the tricycle which is being stored). We found the sons old tonka trucks. I love the colours of tonka - so business like and so childlike at the same time. They were some great toys and ones that he got a lot of use out of as he played.

The second is this one:



This one, for me, shows that you can play no matter how old you are (not that my dad is old. He's not. He's just older than my son). My mom decided to play with my dads mind and for Christmas got him a big puzzle - a 3000 piece puzzle. This was his toy, his puzzle, his quest for the past month. And it's done. He was so delighted - and challenged - by this puzzle that it was just a great release for him - which, really, is what playing is all about.

However, this third one is my focus 52 for the week.



This is the new focus of the son - Chess. He just wants to play all the time these days. Someone at his afterschool program is teaching him and he's so excited by it - the idea that he can play with grown ups who quite often don't know as much as him. He finds it amazingly fun - and is good at it - and it really makes him happy to play.


The link to the work of everyone else is here. Lots of great work again this week!

Third Week - Focus 52 - Cold

The theme this week was cold. Info found here.

Well, these days cold is easy to do. I have to admit, I am ALWAYS freezing at work and often when I'm home. The weather keeps changing, I'm drinking cold water and at times even wearing layers doesn't help.

So cold - taking pictures of it - seemed easy. It just wasn't quite as easy as I would have liked.

This picture:


This was a contender. I just felt bad because it was taken with the husbands camera last week and couldn't qualify if I play by the rules. When we went sledding last week I made a heart in the snow. The light and shadow weren't perfect but I like it. The cold white snow sparkled.

This one:


This one I also liked. The spareness of the bushes, the snow, the bricks all represent cold. I liked how there was one contrasting brick in the middle.

However, I had to go with this one from this week:



This epitomizes for me what cold means. Having to get the son all dressed up for the cold, extra clothes, boots instead of sneakers and all of that fun stuff. Seeing rows of kids boots reminds me that I'm not alone in that frustration.

Second Week - Focus 52 - Connect

The word of the week was connect. I tried to find connections in different places, sometimes with success, other times not at all.
I picked three pictures again this week that I liked. This week was a weird one in terms of opportunities to take good pictures. I followed through with my 365 but I will admit, this wasn't the best week for pictures. HOWEVER, I did get a new phone that has a decent camera in it, so I took the opportunity to play with the camera in different ways and at different times - some of my pictures that I like the most were taken by the phone camera.



This picture was one I took last weekend on a walk with my family. The connection here is between the joy of family, the beauty of nature, the starkness of the trees - but how they all stand together. That's a family - joy, beauty, individuals together to create a united front.



This was a snow day that wasn't a snow day. This was the view from our school windows half way through the day. A lot of snow fell - enough that we finally could go sliding this weekend. This day we got home and found that we couldn't get into the driveway - it was completely blocked with snow. We went in the house to get ready to shovel and when we came out a few minutes later our neighbour was snow blowing our driveway. We cleaned up our driveway and then helped out another neighbour. The snow connected us all - made us help each other and come together. At the end of the shovelling, our snow blowing neighbour came over and we were all able to talk about how we were all going in to supper. We don't normally talk but that night the snow banded us together- connected us - and made us friends for that short time.

Finally,


This is the one I've chosen as my focus 52. It's a spinning wheel for a game of some sort. I found it when I went into the back room during karate class - my lungs were acting up and I had to take my inhaler. When I went back there, there it was - the big, colourful wheel. I took a picture of it with my phone - I thought that the Polaroid effect would be neat for this wheel. This wheel would be used for a community event - a raffle of some sort or a fund raiser. Not something I would normally go to in the community. However, I do go to karate in that the hall - until then I had only been there to vote. Seeing this wheel reminded me that I'm connecting with the community in ways I never thought I would - spending three and four hours a week in the hall. I'm seeing things like posters for events I'd never heard of, commiserating with other karate adults about the dirt on the floor and finding out that darts had been the night before, having cancelled classes when other events were booked before classes. Perhaps it seems a tenuous connection - this wheel representing all of this. But, even though I don't plan to do much more in the community, going to karate in the hall gives me a view of it that I never had before. And, from a photo side, I loved the colours of the wheel.

And that's it - making connections from making connections.

This week for everyone is here

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Testing my ability to post from my phone.

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First Week - Focus 52

This week was the first week for Focus 52. I picked three very different pictures from this week to add to the pool because I couldn't commit, so I'll discuss each of them here.



This one is one that was taken out of desperation - later in the day and trying to get one for my 365. However, when I looked at it on the computer, I liked it. I like how bereft the tree looked and how cold the presentation was. This was picture 168 from my 365.



We went to a restaurant and asked for the jell-o cup to go. Apparently you need to get everything in the take out containers - it was in jell-o cup shape in the container until the son attacked it. I like how jell-o looks in pictures - I guess it would be much worse if it had to be in shape.



This one was taken because I liked the arrangement - they had room scents that were themed on different authors. They then had some of the books by those authors. In between the two were animals - owls, turtles and so on. The display was really pretty - the colours were really great and the proportion and layout was perfectly done. Well done chapters peoples.

I think my favourite is the owls. I like the jell-o and the tree is nice but the owls had that little something about them. The pop of red, the greys and greens. I like it.

Week one roundup of the project here. Check it out - these people are good!