Dogwood Photography Challenge Week 10 and 11: Portrait Environmental and Reflection

I’m not really that great at portraits, and I’m still kind of behind on my photography challenge, so I’m double stacking my pictures today.  I took this bird a few weeks ago at the Maxwell-Gunther Reserve on the Chocktawatchee Bay in Niceville.  It’s a group of cabins reserved for military personnel and retirees.  Really close to Destin.

If you ever wonder where songbirds go when they fly south for the winter, this is it!  The birds come here.  Often in January and February our area is over-run by birds of all shapes, sizes, and colors.  We don’t have the parrot population that California gets, but we do get a lot of songbirds, loons, ducks, geese, eagle, falcon, and owls.  Anything that migrates from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the East Coast comes here.

For week 11, the challenge was reflection.  Last week I went to EPCOT for the Flower and Garden show.  I love taking pictures of anything natural.  It’s my favorite thing to do is walk through gardens and take lots of pictures.  I have a really great submission for week 13, because I got some great macro shots of butterflies.

I have done a LOT of reflection the last few weeks.  Sadly, I lost another friend to cancer.  When you have cancer, you become a survivor, but you also realize that life is not something that you take advantage of.  With losing my father, then making and losing cancer friends, you realize every sing day is a gift from God.  So I have been doing a lot of reflecting, and I think one thing I would like to start is some kind of Art Foundation for cancer patients.  Painting, photography, and mosaics have gotten me through this tough time.  I think it would be great if we (survivors and friends) did things like the 52 week challenge, and then have an on-line store, where the proceeds go to help families dealing with cancer it would be great.  It’s something I’m tossing around in my brain right now.  I would sure like to do something like that.

Well, it’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining, and I plan on taking my camera to the baseball game tonight to get some shots of my kids with their friends.

Dogwood Photography Weekly Challenge Week 8: Panorama

I skipped week 8.  It has been a hectic week this week.  My husband has been in China, my kids and I had a lot of appointments, and I had chemo today.  Week eight was a panoramic picture.  I went to a local military beach and snapped this picture and merged it in Light Room.

My infusion went well today, though I’m considerably tired.  I did get some really positive news.  My CA-125 reading went down 40 points!  The doctor is going to continue me on Doxil.  I’m still planning on going to next base to talk to the doctors about clinical trials.

Here are some more pictures from the shoreline along the Chochtawatchee Bay in Florida…

 

Dogwood Weekly Photography Challenge Week 9: Shadows

This week’s challenge is artistic shadows.  I tried taking several shadow pictures, with very little luck, but at last week’s Mardi Gras, I was able to capture these beads laying on the boardwalk in the shadows of a building.  That’s all I have to say about that.

It has been a crazy few weeks, and that’s why I am behind in just about everything.  I gave up Facebook for Lent.  I haven’t given it up 100% though.  I still go on and read statuses, sometimes I post a little bit.  I mostly post my photography, updates on cancer, and updates about my friends.  Recently, I posted regarding my friend, Becky, who passed away.  It’s the fifth death in our little local cancer group.  It’s the first person I have known quite well.  So her death caused me to go into a tailspin.  I have had to talk myself down a few times this last week.

I’m still stable.  As in my cancer is not growing, it is not shrinking, it is remaining the same.  It feels like the last two weeks of each chemo cycle it grows, but once I get chemo it shrinks it.  It’s frustrating, and annoying.  I find myself on my downtime doing a lot of research.  It’s hard to explain to people that I have cancer, but I feel great (for the most part), and I don’t look like I have cancer.  It’s definitely one of those invisible diseases, and it’s really hard to explain that you aren’t terminal, but you aren’t entirely well.  I feel like I have a ticking time bomb inside me.  One day it’s going to explode, and I’ll be like Becky, slowly fading away.