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2009 Photo Roundup: Part 2

Alma mater, hail...

In October, we headed to the ol' alma mater for Homecoming and our five-year(!) reunion. Autumn is my absolute favorite time of year in Virginia, when the humidity breaks and the leaves turn the colors of the sun. There's nothing like the feeling of returning to campus, going back to all your favorite haunts (the delis!), and spending time with friends who have moved far away. Even though I totally skipped the football game, I have a lot of Tribe pride. Here are just a few pictures from that weekend.

The oldest academic building in the U.S., The Sir Christopher Wren Building, is an icon. Thomas Jefferson and I took classes in it. My husband and I got married in it. We named our dog after it. (Wren, not Sir Christopher.) The little green fellow welcoming you there is my man Lord Botetourt.

They finally rebuilt the Lake Matoaka amphitheater. It was, and now is again, a great spot for outdoor concerts, plays, and sunny-day studying. I wish they had done this while I was there, but I'm just glad they did it at all!

Bricks, bricks, everywhere. Welcome to Williamsburg!

Smells like team spirit...

And a visit to my old favorite study spot, Aromas coffee shop, presented my camera lens with this sign:

It's just funny.

2009 Photo Roundup: Part 1

Here are a few of my personal favorites of the pictures I took in the last year. I made a nature-themed calendar for my parents and in-laws for Christmas, and used some of these pictures in it.

This is my current favorite photo. I am a little bit in love with it. I just adore this color palette of bright berry-red, sky-blue, and crisp, clean white. To me, it says winter, but in a happy way, not the dull, dreary, slushy way that winter starts to feel like come end of February.

I took this the morning after our first decent snow and ice storm in December. My dog had to be very patient as I took her along for my photo walk. She can only sniff so many smells under one tree, where I was fixated on these berries for a good while. I made this shot Miss January in my 2010 nature photography calendar.

When my parents visited me last summer, we took a day trip to Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. I didn't really know what to expect, and was blown away by the enormity and variety of beauty, both natural and manmade. The place is immense. I would love to visit it in every season. More of my shots from Longwood Gardens to come later, but for now, here are my two favorite butterfly pictures from that day.

Around late March/early April in Baltimore, the cherry blossom trees explode with tufts of light blossoms. When the wind blows, the petals shower down on you like snowflakes. It's one of my favorite things about living here, and sadly, it only lasts for a couple of weeks. This is a beautiful old church in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood.

I took pictures of this cardinal over Thanksgiving weekend, on the University of Virginia ~~campus~~ grounds, when we were scouting out garden sites for the morning-after brunch for my brother-in-law and his fiancee, who are getting married there this coming June.

There's nothing more striking in the gray of November than a bright red cardinal, no?

A Year and a Half Later...

So, here I am, a bit of a bloggy failure. I gave up on it awful quickly, didn't I? Maybe it was being busy with other things, maybe it was lack of confidence in my photographic abilities, maybe it was pure laziness. Probably all of that. Mostly, I know there are much better photographers out there, I mean, have you been on Flickr lately? Sweet mother of pearl there are a lot of good photographers out there. (Wherever there is. The Interwebs, I suppose. The Blogosphere.) Normal people just like me, with a good camera and a good eye, and they're so, well, good! (The English major inside me is screaming, "What is this crap writing with the weak adjectives? Use your internal thesaurus, Shakespeare." To her I say, "It's a BLOG. You don't have to be a good (hehe) writer in a BLOG.")

Anyway, it's a new year, a new decade, and I am trying to have a new attitude about things and stuff and life etc. My husband has been bugging me about blogging, because he knows I love both writing and taking photos, so I'm going to give it another shot (no pun intended). Maybe he's right? Maybe I will love it this time? Maybe I am lacking in confidence in my abilities? Anyway, who doesn't have a blog these days? Everyone's grandmother has a blog! I read blogs! I have friends who blog! I comment on blogs! Why shouldn't I jump on the bandwagon? (Blogwagon? Bandbloggon?) Besides, I just saw Julie & Julia, and doesn't that just make a girl want to start a blog so she can be discovered and get a book deal and then they will make a movie about her with THE.ONEANDONLY.MERYL.STREEP. and adorable Amy Adams will play her, all cute and perky with her red hair and her cuteness? (Now I may have overconfidence in my space in the Blogosphere.)

So. Here we are. 2010. I will be back soon (I promise!) with a roundup of my favorite photos from 2009, and then we'll go from there, shall we? (And by we, I mean me, and my one reader aka my husband.) (Hi, honey!) What have I got to lose?