Sharon's Week 34: Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary

Find Beauty in the Ordinary

I am in desperate need of a vacation!  On Tuesday at work this week, I put some files in a colleague's desk because my drawers were too full.  On Thursday I spent a total of an hour and a half looking for a file, not at all remembering that I had removed some files.  Thank goodness my colleague finally came by her desk and asked what she thought was a silly question, "Well, did you look at the ones you left here?"  I felt kind of (okay, really) dumb but that was just the beginning.  Friday night, Levi and I brought dinner out to my parents for their anniversary (52 years!).  We were sitting on the swing chatting after dinner when I got a text, "Are you and Levi still coming for dinner?"  Well, my stomach dropped...I had completely forgotten about those plans!  I called and apologized about five hundred times but I didn't feel any better.  Well, I am happy to say that I AM on vacation now so my brain can relax, refresh and replenish some grey matter.  Woohoo!

When I saw this week's topic I had every intention to change things up a bit and do some indoor, still-life photography.  Initially I thought of the forks I photographed last year and figured I would start with something similar to that and go on from there.  Well, my creative juices were just not flowing and I couldn't get started so instead, I headed to Whitefish Island thinking about seagulls, pigeons and ducks...they're pretty ordinary but I think they can also be beautiful.  I am still using Carlos (the old camera) since Hermione is still at the hospital, and I can't remember how to change the focus method to focus just on a single spot so my photos are not as crisp as I would like but I think they capture this topic anyway.

We begin with some extraordinary cats having an ordinary nap.  They are having trouble getting up on this shelf these days since when they were spayed on Tuesday, the vet also trimmed their claws and they are way too short...the poor girls can't climb!

So I did find some pigeons yesterday.  I couldn't decide which of these two photos to use, so I am using both.  I think the colours on pigeons' necks are beautiful and when you add in the beady orange eyes, I think they are stunning.

And there were many ducks.  I liked this one all by herself.  She looks rather large sitting there.  I hope she is not planning on laying some eggs at this time of year.

For some reason the seagulls were absent but here is an ordinary bird who was making quite the noise in that little tree.

These next two photos are flowers on ordinary thistle plants.  The leaves looked the same but as you'll see, the flowers are quite different.

I have always liked the looks of cattails and since they grow everywhere, they can be considered ordinary.

I also thought that I could get an ordinary chickadee but they were nowhere to be seen.  I could hear them all around but they were not presenting themselves for photos.  After I gave up on the boardwalk, I headed over to the other island where the birds were in crazy abundance.  They are quick little buggers though so I had to boost my ISO (which Carlos does not like) in order to get a fast enough shutter speed.  As a result, the quality of my bird photos is not great but I loved the look of this one anyway...just don't look too closely.

There were bees buzzing around all of the wildflowers.  My focus problems made this difficult but here are two ordinary bees on some ordinary flowers.

And finally, we have an ordinary field of wildflowers.

That's my week.