Donna's Week 9 - Stay Positive and Have Fun

Hello everyone, it was such a nice week.  Next week has the potential to be different.  Rob is in Quebec all week and it will be the first week Blake and I will be home alone, since I've gone back to work.    Blake and I both have doctors appointments and keeping the puppy exercised will be the biggest challenges.  Oh and speaking of the puppy, we had our first puppy training session, that involved what our puppy trainer called a "domestic".  We thought we were doing a great job with Shadow, but it became obvious this week, that if I didn't have treats in Shadow's face, Shadow had no interest in complying.  Getting her to sit, sleep and stay without treats was a crazy challenge, but we did it.  Now, I just have to stay strong and not give in.  It should be interesting, my plan....
Stay positive and have fun!


I found this week's topics hard again... really "instrumental" and "spicy".  Here goes.

Instrumental

I tried to think of rhythmic, harmonic and musical and this is what I came up with.  This is a thermal stream in Yellowstone Park.  The temperature of the water coming from the thermal vent determined the colour of the algae growing in the stream.  In this case the algae was brick red.  I think the movement of the water and the algae looks very instrumental.  

Starts with R

This little guy is a yellow bellied marmot.  They are found in high altitude regions of North America.  We found this one at the top of the tree-line on our trip from Billings, Montana to the Northeast entrance of Yellowstone Park on one of the most beautiful roads in the US, the Bear-tooth Pass.  

Marmots are giant ground squirrels, their closest living relatives are ground squirrels and prairie dogs.  Marmots are Rodents. 

Button Up

This is Centennial Park in Grimsby, last winter.  I love the red gate and the escarpment in the background. Just looking at it makes me want to button up.

Spicy

I edited a lot of my Yellowstone pictures this week.  I think it is going to be an amazing photo book.  I was really fascinated by these fungal mats.  There are way too many pictures of these fungal mats, but each one is a different colour, has a different texture and a different pattern.  To me, this one looks a little spicy.

T

So most of my shots are of nature and there are very few straight lines in nature.  I cropped this out of a snow picture of my back fence.  

Bird

This swan was another Yellowstone picture.  Swans are generally pretty easy birds to photograph, well except for the fact that they are white, camera's don't really do white well.  Saying that though, swans are big birds, generally pretty slow moving and since their legs are moving under water, they are mostly stationary.  I have tons of boring swan pictures, apparently for an interesting photograph you have to capture behaviours.  So, now I am always on the lookout for behaviours and then hoping I can still get a sharp picture.  This picture is not as sharp as I would like, but the water is such an amazing selection of greens, against this grey/white swan, and the swan looks half stress out and half chillaxed.  I am not sure if he is yawning or is pissed off and that tension is what I think makes this a much more interesting picture, than my normal boring swan shots.

Wild Card

A few more shots of those awesome rodents, the yellow bellied marmot.  Cutest rodent I have ever seen.  Have a great week.