Team Up Thursday: Where I walk

Following on from Megan and Melody's theme: Where I Live, JoLyn and I decided to look around where we live and show you where we walk. I don't know how far from JoLyn's house her path is but I suspect not too far as I've seen the beautiful mountains she can see from her window. My path (on the right) is literally across the road. It's a bit deceptive because it looks so gentle and pastoral here when in actual fact it is about to drop off in a big way and carve its way down to the bottom of the Sturt Gorge at a calf wrecking gradient! You have to 'tack' along the path to get up and down it safely.

I love the difference between the vegetation in each photo. The green path in my shot is a winter phenomenon. In Summer that same path will be dust and the evergreen trees and shrubs around will be leeched of their intense green by the relentless sun.

Hope you enjoyed a glimpse of where we live and walk today on Team Up Thursday. As always, check out the offerings from everyone else at the flickrpool or by clicking over to
Mental Inventory or Hip Momma's Journal.

Team Up Thursday: Celebrate

Following along with Melody and Megan's theme : Celebrate, JoLyn and I bring you 'close up' and 'distant' celebrations.

Look at the stunning photo JoLyn took! She was at a birthday party where they were blowing bubbles and she caught this one just as it popped! Bubbles are such a lovely celebratory thing nowadays aren't they? So much less messy than rice or confetti! I am constantly awed by the way JoLyn can get so close to things like this and freeze minute moments in time.

My photo is from our January home fireworks spectacular. I think we were celebrating the fact that we had actually organised to have people over for a BBQ! I'm afraid my husband's work hours and demands mean that he is not often available for socialising. I personally think he prefers it this way :-) Still, when I do pin him down, he makes the effort and this is the result. He scrapes off dozens of sparklers and packs the powder into metal tubes which he then tapes to the pool fence. Another sparkler on the top as a fuse and then we retire to sit back and enjoy the show. I was pleased with the reflections I managed to capture here.

Be a part of Team Up Thursday and see how people have interpreted their various themes: click over to Megan or Melody.

Team Up Thursday: On The Water

This week's offering for Team Up Thursday is indicative of my current health status: kind of washed out and damp.

For 'On The Water' JoLyn took this wonderful shot of her son in law competing in a triathalon. (No, I have NO idea which one he is :-)) The full shot is gorgeous. All those orange hats!!!I'm afraid I was less inspired and only managed to find some of the seals from the Kangaroo Island fur seal colony. I was inclined to cheat and put up one of Himself's stunning close up shots of a seal frolicking but I am too honest, and anyway, I've posted it once before :-). Still it would have made a great diptych.

For more creative Team Ups, check out Melody and Megan's sites as well as the flickr pool.

Team Up Thursday (on Saturday): After Dark

JoLyn's photo of people playing volleyball after dark and mine of Himself hard at work as usual in the wee small hours make our belated contribution to this week's Theme Thursday.

We're off to KI now (running late) so I can't even link!!!
See you on Tuesday!!!!
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UPDATE

So, here I am on KI on Sunday night, accessing the internet through Himself's phone. I just had to come on and add a bit more detail about these two photos.

JoLyn had been on camp all week and this photo was taken on the volleyball courts where the girls were playing with neon 'glow in the dark' sticks. Very cool! I wanted to try and encapsulate what goes on at our place 'after dark' which is basically, Himself earning us a living. Sometimes, if we come home late (ie after dark) we find the whole house in darkness and Himself riveted to his computer screen. He seems almost surprised to realise the sun has gone down!

There are many more interesting pair-ups to be seen on 'Team Up Thursday' over at Megan and Melody's. Enjoy!

Team Up Thursday: Speed

In stark contrast to our theme, JoLyn and I have been anything but speedy getting this diptych to you! We had planned to do it last week but life caught up with both of us.

JoLyn took this sensational picture of the wheels of a 4WD as it speeds down the highway. I personally LOVE this shot. When I first thought about 'speed' I saw, in my mindseye, the blur of motion but wondered how to balance that with clarity of subject? Well, JoLyn has absolutely nailed it as far as I am concerned. That soft focus that gives you the sense of motion suspended in time, coupled with the diagonal lines of the road, suggest speed perfectly in my humble opinion.

My shot, on the right, is an ancient one; pre-digital in fact. It actually came straight to mind when we chose 'Speed' but I had wanted to try and capture something different. I took my camera to work last week to try and shoot some of the action on the indoor soccer courts but in typical fashion, I had left the memory card in the computer at home:-( It was a darn shame too as I had a phalanx of willing 'models' :-D

So it was back to the ancient pre-digi shot.

Taken in 1989, it's a shot of one of my pupils at the local Sports Day. She was a complete natural. Notice how she's running in bare feet? I think she went on to run at a State level once she'd gone to boarding school in the city. I'm not sure if you can tell but she's in mid-stride, about 6" off the ground!

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Report Mountain is retreating in the rear view mirror and Exam Canyon is fast approaching. I always query the value of end of semester exams for the lower ability pupils. I know it is supposed to prepare them for exams in the future but really, it just takes 3 weeks out of my teaching time. There is the pressure to 'revise' and so lessons are spent doing 'revision booklets' which most of my kids don't bother doing properly or do hastily with no attempt to retain anything. If I try and do it differently the kids are resistant, accusing me of 'not preparing them properly', and yes, I do mean accuse! It's a real bugbear of mine.

Still, no point complaining, no one listens. :-)

For your weekly diet of diptychs, click over to Team Up Thursday and perhaps contribute something yourself?

Team Up Thursday: Lunch

After a little bit of a hiatus last week, JoLyn has worked her magic yet again to create something lovely out of my very ordinary offering.

It was 'Lunch' this week and, having come to terms with the unsuitability of my camera for macro shots, I decided against trying to capture food and went searching for a different kind of 'lunch' instead.

I had intended to take a photo at school as lunch time is full of opportunities. There is the litter, the mass of heads in the Shed area or on the lawn, the frenzy of the indoor football courts and of course the squashed food of all varieties, ground into the bitumen. I am still tempted to try and take some of these shots, just for my own satisfaction. But yesterday was another one of 'those' days and it had flown past before I realised that I'd forgotten to take any photos. Oh, and I was on duty on the indoor sport area and that kind of ties you down....

So I found this shot instead. It's taken at a friend's magnificent property, in between Kangarilla and McLaren Vale, here, in the rural edges of Adelaide. You can't quite see it here, but their view goes out to the coast. Not bad ey? Although it did take some fairly hairy trekking over hills and ridges in a 4WD to get to this spot.

My friend (the blonde) whom I've known since school has always been a country girl and until recently lived on an enormous property, of Baz Luhrman-like proportions, near Broken Hill. After nearly 10 years of drought they'd had enough. They sold the place to the wild life heritage people in the government, sold the sheep and bought this beautiful property only 40mins from the heart of Adelaide. They run a few cows but most of their livlihood here comes from water. Ironically, after their long battle with drought, they now sell water from their bores to surrounding farmers and vine growers.

So that was lunch for us on Easter Day 2007. JoLyn teamed it beautifully with the mouthwatering sheen of strawberries and chocolate and we just made it to your screens this week! For more delightful duos, check out Team Up Thursday over at Melody and Megan's.

Team Up Thursday/Saturday: Trouble

JoLyn has already told the story of how we switched out theme this week over at her site when she posted our Team Up double almost on time. It's Saturday here now and I have only just managed to get myself into gear to get my side up.
The shot on the right is JoLyn's toddler terrorist grandson. Beware! He has drool and he knows how to use it! I just thought of this medallion the BA was given when she was a wee kid and a bit of a terror herself! Here she is wearing it and giving me a bit of attitude about all the photos!

The other day when she was clearing out her room and getting rid of some of her 'kidstuff', she put the medallion in the 'junk' pile; but I couldn't let it go and rescued it for my memory box. As soon as we decided on 'trouble' I knew I wanted to use a shot of it. I had quite a lot of trouble getting a good macro shot of it I'm afraid and I am having to acknowledge that mt DSLR, although an improvement on my PAS, is pretty limited.

If you want to see the limits stretched however, click over to Team Up Thursday at Megan or Melody's place and check out what's on offer.

Team Up Thursday: Looking Up

JoLyn and I decided on 'Looking Up' as our theme this week and she surprised me with an early delivery of this amazing shot taken on the beach in Nicaragua. It's a good job I am not easily intimidated :-D

JoLyn has had an amazing time visiting Nicaragua recently and she has lots of photos and stories to share over at A Year of Happy.

My rather soft focus, but emotive, carousel horses were taken at the Adelaide Fringe Festival some years ago. I thought they looked like they'd seen a ghost but as it turns out it was just a rainbow :-D.

I've got so much to do but I'm going to take a few moments to check out the other Team Up Teams this Thursday. Why don't you have a look too? The hosts are The Hipmomma and Megan at Mental Inventory but you can see all the diptychs on the flickrpool.

Have a great Thursday!

Team Up Thursday: Peaceful

For Team Up Thursday this week the theme was Peaceful. JoLyn snapped a peaceful holidaymaker catching a few zzzzs in a hammock in Nicaragua last week. My peace was of a different variety. Last year, the Baby Angel did The 40 Hour Famine for World Vision and rather than give up food, she gave up talking!

She carried that notepad around with her for the whole 40 hours and wrote us messages! It was very funny. I told her she should keep the book as a reminder of the time.

Many of the kids at school do 40 Hour famine each year. They don't just give up food nowadays; there's technology, furniture, shoes and transport, all of which serve to remind them how it feels to live in a society where none of these things are taken for granted. JoLyn's post the other day about her time in Nicaragua gives a tiny glimpse of how the rest of the world lives.

So on this Team Up Thursday, I hope you're all feeling peaceful, grateful and blessed! Click on over to Megan or Melody to see what everyone else has to offer or just click on the button on my sidebar. (I hope it works.....)

Team Up Thursday: Close Up

JoLyn is in Nicaragua this week and has limited computer access so she asked me to take her breathtaking photo of water splashing and do something with it.

Do you know how daunting that was????

Well, there was much tooing and froing across the room last night as Himself weighed in on the project with his designer's opinion. This combination was not his choice; in fact he disagreed with it so strongly he sent me some of his own super-duper close up shots taken with his professional fabuloso macro camera thingy, to use instead. I felt that would be taking 'assistance' too far and preferred to use one of my own. He did like one I put together using a photo of rock textures from Kangaroo Island (again) but I didn't think the close up was close enough and my camera is just not good enough to get in reeeeal close like JoLyn has done.

So here you have a more 'real' offering. My imperfect shot paired with JoLyn's sensational one (Himself was most impressed) as if she is about to bathe the Baby Angel's tired feet!

And that's Team Up Thursday for this week from me! I'm not even sure whether JoLyn will choose this combo as I gave her the option of the (designerly) better combo with rock. She can only get internet access early morning and late evening and I don't know if I missed the window when I belatedly got this together last night. Oh well! Makes for an interesting 'life on the edge' :-D You may get to see Himself's preference over at A Year of Happy.

For more dynamic duos, check over at Melody or Megan's for Team Up Thursday.

Team Up Thursday (er Saturday...):Green

Things have reached a new low. Not only have I posted nothing since Friday...I couldn't even get Team Up Thursday up on time....although I had it ready! There just always seems to be something else to do. So here it is, although JoLyn got it up on Thursday and did all the posting and commenting on everyone else's diptychs. She probably has something more intelligent to say about it too; my first week back at school has been neuron crunching.

I'm trying to get a post together to sum up the recent weeks...

Team Up Thursday: Breakfast

Oh! The angst this week fellow diptychers!
What made us choose 'breakfast' as a theme????

I mean, to start with, heavenly images of frying eggs, bacon and pancakes sprang to mind........ but then left. I thought of trying to capture Himself's face over breakfast first thing in the morning....but I was endangering my lens :-D. JoLyn went out to see the horses having breakfast but was still uninspired.

I had actually had a picture in my mind all week, after seeing our two cats line up for breakfast at their bowls recently; I kept waiting for the scene to repeat itself but Pippin was obviously feeling uncooperative and was nowhere to be seen. As a result I had to make do with a solo Morticia as she chowed down the other morning. I'm not sure if you can see it but she's actually looking at me out of the corner of her eye!

'What is that mad woman doing lying down on the laundry floor???'

JoLyn on the on the other hand captured a classic example of the sort of multi tasking many of us perform at breakfast!

So it is with trepidation that we give you our hard earned and dubious 'Breakfast' diptych today.

Would you like hash browns with that??



Check out what other duos have prepared for you today/night...over at Team Up Thursday!

Team Up Thursday: Shadow

I feel as if I am in a bit of a shadow world at the moment. The usual routine of school and work is on hold for the holidays; I have a lounge room full of pre-teen boys talking about banshees and personality credits in some X Box game; Himself and I continue to struggle with finances and the idea of moving into a smaller place and my mum and dad are selling up their holiday house here in Australia and clearing out all its contents! Some of these will end up here which means we have to clear out contents as well.

It's not conducive to a relaxing holiday.

And so, for Team-Up Thursday, JoLyn and I give you: 'Shadow'.




Mine on the top, JoLyn's on the bottom.

I am loving the creative process that JoLyn and I have settled into. Each week one sends the other an initial photo and we work from there. Sometimes she puts them together, sometimes I do. Sometimes we re-crop and re-colour on the basis of the other's shot. Sometimes we re-crop the other person's shot to go with ours! While some pair-ups leave the choice of photos to chance, we are being quite deliberate about making ours work together.


When I started to think about the 'shadow' theme, I had all sorts of ideas about weird and wonderful shadow patterns but, as always, the 'best laid plans of mice and men' meant that it rained VERY heavily where I am and snowed in Utah!!! The grey and overcast skies meant little chance of capturing anything fresh and new; however, fortunately, JoLyn had taken a series of excellent shots of her amazing 'freerunning' son, A, the week before.


And, once I'd seen this, I knew just which shot I would grab and crop!


This is my daughter (in the red shorts), my stepson and my niece jumping for joy on Kangaroo Island last year!

I particularly like this diptych. I like its graphic quality and the way A's shadow is stretching out towards the three ink blots above him!

And just for good measure, and because JoLyn likes to know how shots came about, here are the rocks near where the above photo was taken.

They are called, appropriately, Remarkable Rocks and I think with all the weird and wonderful play of light on them, they could easily represent our 'Shadow' theme too.

What do you think?

Visit the flickrpool or Melody and Megan to see what other Teams have been up to this week. As always I recommend a trip over to AmyJo's to see how she has interpreted the letter H this week.


POST SCRIPT: I can't believe I have posted about this the very week I find out that there is a RULE about collaborating!!!!!! Seems JoLyn and I will have to rethink our strategy!!!!! JoLyn...I am so sorry....I am SUCH a BAD influence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Team Up Thursday: Morning

Is morning your favourite time of the day, or, like Himself do you dread it? These two 'morning' images were taken on opposite sides of the world in opposite seasons.
Jolyn is in Utah and I suspect these mountains are just outside her house.
My picture (on the bottom) was taken at Port Vincent two weeks ago, as the rescue boat made its way out to the course.
Whether you're an early bird or a night owl, Team Up Thursday has something for everyone! Check out the hosts Megan and Melody for some really inspiring photography.

Team Up Thursday: Yellow

Lately, I am inclined to wonder whether I would get around to blogging at all if it were not for the commitment of 'Team Up Thursday'!

This week, JoLyn and I played with the theme ' Yellow'. That's her beautiful Idaho forsythia on the left and my sad, single grapefruit off our sad little tree, on the right. We haven't fiddled with the colour at all. The yellows are just that yellow!

Our grapefruit tree was left behind by the former owners of our house who decided at the last moment that they couldn't be bothered trying to load the half wine barrel tub it is growing in, onto the removalist's truck. It has struggled with our lack of attention ever since. It rarely flowers and has only fruited once. That time, Small Boy and his mate knocked the nearly ripe fruit off with a cricket bat. I must admit I was inclined to do the same thing to portions of their anatomy; however this year I put a whole lot of peel around it and decided to combat drought by using a rudimentary drip watering device. I was rewarded in spring with a mass of blossom and, eventually, a whole little tree full of miniature green fruit!

Unfortunately, I came out one day to find the entire crop had been decimated by white fly or aphids or something. And I couldn't even blame the children! Imagine my excitement on finding one, lone survivor a few weeks later. I was sure it would suffer the same fate as its predecessor so whenever a cricket bat or basketball made an appearance in the backyard I would erupt from the depths of the house and fling myself in front of the precious swelling orb, ready to take the proverbial cricket ball 'bullet' on its behalf.

Somehow it survived and I captured it in all its radiant, yellow glory, moments before picking it and reducing it to a glass full of exquisite juice. 'Such is life' my poor little grapefruit buddy.

For more double delights, click over to Melody, Megan or the flickr photopool and bask in the combined creativity.