Here, There & Everywhere

Yesterday my photography club participated in a shootout including about 10 or 11 other clubs. It was hosted by the Rome Photography Club at Berry College. What a wonderful setting for taking pictures. Unfortunately, the team that my cousin Sue and I were on was given the topic of silhouettes. Well first of all, with all the beautiful architecture at Berry, why would anyone want to take silhouettes?? Secondly, I’d never shot silhouettes and wasn’t really sure how to do it. The great thing about events like this is you can learn so much. I like to participate in these things more for the learning and the fun of being with others who love photography. So I’m not terribly disappointed when I don’t win anything. I did have one picture that made it to the first round. Our club won First place overall!

While we were out shooting for the competition, I decided to take photos for me as well. My father-in-law was raised in Rome and was a water boy during the construction of the Ford buildings. His grandfather was one of the subcontractors.

I sure wish they built buildings like these now.

   

I’ll just leave it at that. :(  Well, I will share several pictures from the last couple of days.

A morning view from our deck:

We went to town to pick up a few things and came back by way of Hwy. 276 and the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is the English Chapel that is in the Davidson River Campground.

Looking Glass Falls on Hwy. 276:

The river that flows along Hwy. 276:

An old shack somewhere outside of Balsam Grove. Note the Fresh Milk sign and the cat.

Tommy and I realize that we are fortunate enough to take time to travel back roads of this wonderful country. It’s amazing what you find when you get off of the interstates. Even when we drive some of the same roads we find new and different things to see. People are just so darn creative. :) What you can’t see from either of these two pictures is the bear at the steering wheel and the pig or bear coming out from under the truck at the driver’s side wheel well. Those are begonias in the back of the truck and pumpkins growing all around it.

As we were headed back into town to go to the grocery store, we saw this. We had to turn around and go back because how many times have you ever seen a llama as a caddy? If you’re in the need of one of these, check them out at www.llamacaddy.com.

The real reason we headed out on this particular drive was to find a covered bridge in the Dupont State Forest. You can see it way at the top of these High Falls. To get the proper perspective of how tall these falls are, check out the people at the bottom.

 

The deck you see here is off of our bedroom, so you can get a glimpse of our view:

Part of our drive up to the Blue Ridge Parkway:

One of my favorite shacks. :) I took a picture of this last May for a Moment in Time.

Down the road just a bit from the above shack is a small Christmas tree farm.

This stream is not too far from the house. It is really pretty all year long, but more so when there’s some water flowing.

What a beautiful time of year. This is probably my favorite time of year, but I know I say the same thing when Spring rolls around.

Yip, yip, YAY!! Our Photography Club’s competition subject this month was “Birds”.  I submitted two digitally and two color prints.

Digital submissions:

My NC Hummingbird got an Honorable Mention. Yay!

 

Color prints:

My “After Lunch” hawk got First Place! Yippee!! This was my first First Place.
Note—if you look close enough you can see some squirrel fur hanging out of his mouth.

Tommy and I went to the Cumming Fair last night. We saw some awesome frisbee dogs, a working sawmill, lots of rides and lots of people. We didn’t eat there as Tommy wasn’t feeling too good, but I sure wanted some fried pickles and funnel cake.

Here’s my new best friend. I laugh each time I look at this picture!

I have some more pictures and will post them later when I’ve had a chance to edit them. It was an enjoyable few hours.

Thanks to the cooler weather, some of our dahlia plants have revived. This one in particular is prettier than I’ve seen it all year.

After taking pictures of the dahlias I walked around back to the garden and found this:

Tommy’s picking butter peas—YUMMY!

Almost every time we’re in NC, Tommy and I take one day (or part of one) to go for a drive. Since we’ve traveled the same roads so many times in the past, we decided to try a different route last week. Here are a few pictures from that drive.

And this is what we left the morning we headed home. If you look close enough you’ll see just a bit of red in the trees. Yay! Fall is on her way.

Here’s one of my favorite photos I found while scanning the old, old slides I received recently. My mother was a great seamstress and always had my sister and I dressed beautifully for special occasions. I believe this was an Easter dress and my sister had the same dress in a different (possibly pink?) color. Don’t you love the hat and how about the blonde highlights in my hair? :)