This would have been a cool 'transition' shot from last month's 'superpowers' theme to this month's theme, 'blue' if I'd had this shirt last week. Turns out, I got this t-shirt as a (very cool) Father's Day gift today from the kids. The Superman logo is entirely blue, so I knew I had to use it anyway.
This is what I wrote to Self Portrait Challenge participants to introduce the new theme for the month of June: 'Blue.'
For the month of June, I intend to honor the founder of Self Portrait Challenge, Kathreen Ricketson.
Kathreen died tragically on May 16, 2013.
I'm revisiting the theme 'Blue' as it was a theme that she chose (February, 2008) and the news of her death has left me feeling a bit blue.
In her own words:
Blue is a cool colour - its the colour of the sky and of the water. But apart from its visual representation blue can also mean a number other things too - lonely and depressed [feeling blue]; sexual impropriety, or racy talk [blue jokes], blasphemous [blue language], aristocracy [blue blood].
The colour Blue in your chakra: Dark, clear Blue indicates a spiritual feeling. Light blue shows devotion to noble, spiritual ideals and the presence of the feminine energies. Muddy blue shows heavy karma, selfishness, possible non-belief in spirituality. Blue shows an active effort to communicate in a gentle way.
(Thanks to the Wayback Machine!!)
Having said all that -- please feel no obligation to adopt melancholy this month. Kathreen had taken her children out of school (homeschooling) and was travelling around Australia for a year, writing a book about their adventures in the process. Kathreen lived life fully and would encourage us all to do likewise, I believe.
For those who are interested in more news, there is more information and pertinent links at this thread.
This weekend, we celebrated the end of another year of Christy's work toward achieving her master's degree in social work.
She has a short break then two summer sessions and two more full semesters after that, but if all goes according to plan, she'll be done about this time next year!
This has been a particularly tough semester with her first practicum (and an 80 minute drive, one-way) and another class besides that.
I'm pleased to say that she is doing very well and has achieved very high marks while carrying herself with poise and grace.
Banana splits at our favorite ice cream place was something we'd all been looking forward to for a while now.
I've never (before) posted a video to the internet.
There -- I said it.
I remember when Christy and I were discussing my desire to acquire a second camera body back in 2010. She encouraged me to consider getting a (dedicated) video camera, instead. I resisted.
I get still photography. I understand (most of) the lingo. I get the relationship between aperture, shutter speed and ISO, and how those things affect depth of field and are affected by available light, etc.
Throw frame rate into the mix -- and I'm lost. File formats? No. Compression rates? No.
Still, "video" has come up several times in my mind and in the minds of other SPC participants and I gave 'fair warning' back in September that the theme was coming in case they wanted to begin to address any real or perceived technical hurdles.
So, here we go.
It wasn't as bad as I had anticipated. Windows Movie Maker to the rescue! It let me edit two clips together and add simple transitions, etc. It's default format is proprietary, so I had to export it as a file that Flickr recognizes as a video format (WMV, AVI, MPEG4, etc.). This would be similar to converting/exporting a Photoshop (.psd) file to a JPEG, for example.
About the video, this past week was spring break for the kids. Christy had a class on Monday night, so we knew we couldn't leave until Tuesday, so our usual trip to The Smokies was out, so we found a cabin to rent in Brown County, Indiana. There is a large state park there (where these videos were taken) and a small town (Nashville) that is Brown County's version of Gatlinburg, TN.
As you can see, it wasn't exactly "warm" on Wednesday, especially on the hilltops where we decided to stop for lunch and enjoy the view. It was warmer on Thursday and warmer again on Friday.
This "movie" itself is a bit of a movie mashup. At the beginning, Harrison is giving his interpretation of the events that occur at the beginning of 'Pirates of the Caribbean' when Captain Jack Sparrow pays the Harbormaster and then proceeds to steal said Harbormaster's purse. That film had come up because of the signs in the park about the ($100) fine for littering. We were joking about if we were going to get fined for littering, that we'd better make it worth our while which somehow transitioned into the Jack Sparrow reference.
The second clip involves 'Star Wars' of course (specifically, Ben Burt's sound design for lasers in the SW universe.
