Week in Photos

It has been a quiet week here at the Zoo. 

No trips to the beach.

Photo taken during my last trip to the beach in October

No trips to the Japanese Gardens.

 The weather has been nice, a little rain now and again but temps in the 50's and 60's.

 Yet most of my week has been spent indoors.

 Preparing for Christmas and Capturing quiet moments like these.

 According to Bubba the stool in the bathroom is the best spot to play his sisters' game undisturbed. It can be difficult finding a private spot in a home with six people.

Weekly Top Shot submission not the best but my favorite.

As far as work goes this week has been spent working on a request for a calendar featuring old school VW's, Navy ships and E2C Hawkeye's. This is the composite photo cover for the calendar.

In between that and editing client photos, Val and I came up with a few more designs for the humor section of our gift shop.

Have a wonderful week everyone!

Linking up with:

This That and the Other Thing

Looking through the images I have complied to use here on Artistic Composition it occurred to me that my creativity isn't necessarily dormant but rather it is all over the board. So here it is a rather random post of my unfocused creativity over the last month.

We start by putting the camera away and pulling out the sewing machine to create this Sailor Moon costume for my granddaughter to wear on Halloween.

Next while trying to come up with a design to wish a young woman who likes the Harry Potter stories  a Happy Birthday on her Facebook page I came up with the above design and was inspired to create the motivational print below as well.

This next photo is actually a composite photo created for my Father-in-law.  At the end of October I went to visit him and my Mother-in-law in northern Arizona and they took me to see the Grand Canyon. He asked if I could get a good portrait shot of him as he has not had his portrait taken in some time. He is 6'8" so without a ladder to take the shot most of them wound up with more sky than canyon in the background. While he liked them we both decided a composite with the canyon in the background would be just right.

With so many beautiful shots of my trip to Arizona I have been working on creating some new inspirational print designs to add to our gift shop.

Of course it occurred to me that a new year will soon be here so the past couple of weeks I have been working on various designs for scenic and inspirational calendars which I am now adding to our gift shop. The design below is from a photograph of a statue of Merlin the Magician that stands in a shopping center in Sadona, Arizona and can be found in the Arizona calendar collection.

Do you ever find that your creativity becomes unfocused?

Please hop over and check out the wonderful posts linking up with A Rural Journal's Your Sunday Best.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday: Flight

I hope you will enjoy my submissions this week. From time to time I like to try and capture all of the prompts in a single shoot thus resulting in a cohesive theme for the series. 

This week's prompt list: Shine, fast, left, peace and plain.

My chosen theme: Flight

Shine:

 Following this gull with my camera I shot straight up directly into the sun shine as he swooped over my head.

Fast:

 He was so fast. For this shot I wanted a stronger motion blur to the background than the bird which was accomplished by moving the camera with the bird.

Left:

 He looped around to the left and turned to come directly back towards me.

Peace:

Alright, I know it isn't a dove but he still looks so peaceful.

Plain:

Although I am more drawn the the shots with delicate of fluffy white clouds in them this one with the plain blue sky is alright.

I managed to capture all of these while I was at the beach with my family. Shortly after taking these photos I took my camera back to the car so I could get in the water and enjoy some fun with my kids and grand kids. While in the water a flock of gulls decided they liked my oldest daughter's bright red hair and were circling and swooping down at her. At her request I created these two composites to remind us of the episode which with our rather odd sense of humor we found very funny.

Although my daughter liked the first one I wasn't completely happy with it so I did this next one also.

Please be sure to fly over to Ashley Sisk's for more Scavenger Hunt Sunday submissions.