sharleenstuartTell Me a story: June 2020
Posted on June 30, 2020
I have to confess that being stuck at home makes it hard to come up with new blogs each month. However, this month I happened to read about the Saharan Sand Storm that was moving across the Atlantic ocean towards the USA. Who would believe that a sandstorm would cross 5000 miles of ocean to affect another continent. The storm is predicted to impact Florida and Texas, and then head up even as far as Canada. One of the positives of the sandstorm is apparently sunsets, so I headed out to the Everglades National Park to catch the sunset.
Of course, I was not alone. There were plenty of folk out watching the sunset. This seems to have become the go to place just lately. I have been there on evenings when I am one of 5, and the place is really creepy and lonely, and when it get’s dark it really gets dark.
I guess every photographer had the same idea, lets see what we can get from the Sandstorm. And for each one of us, the evening definitely showed up. There were also just folk around watching the sunset. My struggle is how to social distance in this situation where there are too many people in a small area. I was able to walk away from the crowd to some extent. Added to that Palm Beach County mandated masks in public places and half the crowd had a face covering missing. Given that Florida’s Corona Virus numbers are spiking daily (3 days ago it was approximately 5000, 2 days ago in the upper 8000’s, yesterday was 9585 and today we are at 8530 and it is not even 2 pm), I am all for people wearing a mask. I have a few medical friends who have clearly stated that you do not want to be intubated. It is not fun.
I still don’t have a new zoom lens, so get in close to the sunset is still not happening, but I keep looking. Now that we are not traveling overseas, I may use my savings to get one. Simba needs to get his infected tooth out first (which is happening this week). Taking a cat to have a tooth removed, is like having a crown put on a human. Yikes. Hopefully I will be able to get both done soon.
I loved the layers of cloud, and I hope that some of this was contributed by the sand storm.
So what causes a Saharan dust storm. It does appear that the evaporation of water, along with the earth warming causes a shelf of sand between the dessert in the north and the savannah in the south causes dust to form. Smaller storms cause downdrafts, resulting in dust storms developing. Large amounts of dust are lifted into the atmosphere. The African Easterly Jet, a strong wind, was weak this June, and this allowed for more dust to accumulate on the west coast of Africa. When the wind picks up again, it then transports a very dense mass of dust.
What we are seeing now is the results of the storm across the southern states of the USA. Added to that, there appears to be another one coming through within the week. This one is set to affect south Florida more densely, so the scientists say.
Whether I saw some effects of the Saharan Sand Storm or not, I loved the effects of the clouds.
There are definitely some pro’s to the sand storm. Apparently sand storms love dry air. Hurricanes hate dry air. So while we are seeing sand storms, we are less likely to see hurricanes. I hope that is true because I am anticipating an active hurricane season. Temperatures in South Florida are high, and the air is oppressive. When it does rain, it may cool things down briefly, but then the humidity level escalates, and I am back to feeling miserable again. Richard, who loves the heat, has mentioned a few times that the air conditioning is a welcome relief just lately.
Another positive of these sand storms is that apparently, is that these dust storms bring much needed soil and nutrients to Florida and to the islands around us. The Amazon Rain Forest also receives their nutrients from these dust storms.
Apparently the sand storms also bring nutrients to the ocean in the form of phosphorus, which is a vital nutrient for growth. Who would believe it, but it is said that alga loves dust. The negative is that red tide apparently loves dust as well. We know what red tide does and we do not necessarily want that in Florida. That is a swimmers nightmare. Although that would be one way to keep people away from the beaches in this Covid-19 period.
A big positive for me is the beauty the dust causes to the sunset. Dust particles scatter the sun rays and leave us with an awesome sunrises and sunsets. Milky skies and the colors seen, will be dark oranges and reds..
There are a number of down sides to the dust storm as well. Microorganisms harmful to humans and plant life may get caught up in the dust storms. Fungal spores and bacteria may also be carried in the dust storms, which may cause harm to coral reefs.
Another negative affects people with respiratory issues, allergies, etc. Have you ever been off road riding where you are causing dust as a result of some crazy driving. I have, and my allergies kill me. Sometimes those dust particles in the storm don’t stay in the upper levels, and drop down and affect us. If you are not wearing a mask for Covid-19, you may want to reconsider the mask for the dust storms coming through. You do not want to land up in hospital with breathing issues, especially with Covid-19 spiking in a lot of areas that the dust storm will affect.
Unlike the dust storm, Alligators are native to Florida and a trip to the Everglades would be a bust if you did not see one. Of course it does help is there is someone fishing. The gator is curious and interested in what is being caught, it’s probably interested in the fisherman as well to be honest.
This particular evening was pleasant, even wearing a mask. Right now I have a handful of surgical masks. They are great except that they are supposed to be worn in freezing cold temperatures during surgery. That makes them extremely hot to wear. But if I can protect myself, and protect my family, while protecting you, I am willing to do it. It just makes sense for me.
Of course if you have the opportunity to share the sunset with a loved one, or a friend, this would be the perfect place to visit. The skies this evening were a splendor for the eyes. Ironically when I left home, I was not sure that I was going to get much.
We did the same as these folks a month or so ago. Richard gets antsy and needs to do something. We took our chairs, our mugs of wine, and we headed out to go and watch the beauty of God’s creation.
The night is done, I have packed up and am walking back to my car, when I take one last look. Yes there are still some photographers, hanging on, waiting to get the last shot, or just catching up with one another. This is the beauty of meeting other photographers at places like the Everglades National Park. We all love creation and the magnificence of it.
Thank you for joining me this month as we spend time sharing another day in our lives. This is a circle blog. Take some time to view what the other artists have for you this month. My friend Beth from Beth’s Photoblog is up next and I can’t wait to read what she has to share
30 Minutes in the Life: June 2020
Posted on June 29, 2020
It’s three months into the pandemic and I am watching the US numbers closely. My state is one of those that is spiking. When I first started looking at stats on March 18 the USA had 8500 positive corona virus tests. Today we have 706 830 a of 10:45 am. I was not watching deaths at the time. However today we have 37,175 deaths. My heart grieves for those families who have lost loved ones and who are unable to say their goodbyes properly. 63 510 people have recovered in the USA, that means there are a huge number of people still out there battling with this virus.
Florida on April 10 had 16828 positive tests and 37 deaths. Today they have 114 018 and 3329 deaths. Palm Beach County (where I live) now has 12498 positive cases and 490 deaths. Florida is spiking. Yesterday we had over 5000 new cases, and by the end of today we will be over 9000 new cases. Palm Beach county has now mandated as of yesterday everyone to wear face masks. It’s pretty strict, and it comes with fines if you do not comply. Many are freaking out, me I am good with it. All I need is to get a decent mask. Surgical masks are meant for negative temperatures and South Florida is not cold right now.
Life has changed for me as a result of the virus. I am now permanently working from home. I have to confess, I work pretty well from home. Best news is that I do not have to travel 2 hours a day to work a day. My 10 hour day is now an 8 hour day. I moved my computers home and had Richard and Cameron haul a huge 4 drawer metal filing cabinet up the stairs. If the office wants it back they are going to have to carry it out themselves 🙂
My desktop looks like something from the space shuttle monitoring room. I have my own personal 30 inch computer monitor. I have my work laptop. I also have two 20 inch work monitors. It is nice not to have to have work items on my personal computer, and it is also nice to be able to log directly into the server.
My office has to be a lot tidier these days. We have a zoom meeting at 9:30 am every day. I don’t work Fridays so I can be a little more lapse on the 3 day weekend. I have had to create boundaries as well. I tend to work beyond my hours because I am in my space. Before my meeting, Houdini, the quaker parakeet I rescued, has to be moved out of my office to the other room. He gets to come back at the end of my work day. He is kind of noisy.
I also have to create breaks. When you work in an office you are moving. You get up to go to the printer. You move to the kitchen for that cup of coffee. You head to your bosses office to meet. You are moving without thinking about it. Being at home, my office is complete. The printer is in my office. I make my hot drink when I wake up and my protein shake before my 9:30 meeting. I also bring up a flask of ice water. I am set for the morning. I am not moving.
I set a time on my calendar for lunch, I planned to walk around the community circle. I did that once and decided it was too hot. I moved the fan this morning to the front of the elliptical machine. I guess that is going to have to happen again. Florida is stinking hot right now and we have not even got through July and August.
My home office has become my place to be. Beyond my work day, I head to my couch to watch the news or to read my book. I am glad that I still love my home office space. This virus has definitely made changes in our lives. I was lying on my couch, in my office, the other night and I looked up to see what the sun was doing, when I looked up I saw the light shining on my flower arrangement. I loved the light on the tulips and I love this spiky greenery that makes me think it may be a thistle. Straight away I got up and grabbed my camera with my macro lens and started taking some images.
Just as you think life is opening up, life seems to be closing up again. As Florida spikes so my home office looks more appealing. I am happy to stay at home. I am not keen to be out and about and exposing myself or my family to the virus. My daughter in law has immunity issues. She is vulnerable. I want to do my part to keep her safe. So, I will stay at home as much as I can, and I will wear a mask when I go out. For me, it is the right thing to do.
Please stay safe, wherever you are in the world. Thank you for joining me for 30 Minutes in the Life. I would encourage you to take some time to visit my very talented friend Ivana from MaMagare Kidz Photo in Croatia and see what she has for you this month. Check out her Facebook and Instagram pages as well.
Share Six: June 2020: Ordinary to extraordinary
Posted on June 6, 2020
The simple pleasures in life can be found right at your back door. 
Close up on a dragonfly 
Where are we this month. I have been working from home in my upstairs office since March 16. Those first 4 weeks were crazy for me changing staff from live to virtual appointments. I had 4 weeks of things slowing down a bit. Along with work, I spent my time in the evenings studying the to stats. Watching what was happening in the world, in the state, and in the county with this virus. I was doing this daily. Downstairs Richard worked in his office. He started to go back to work 2 weeks ago. I have shifted to the permanent option of working from home. I have to be honest, I am happy that I will not be driving 2 hours a day. My office looks like the monitor room of NASA . There is a lot of monitors on my desk. And yes, I did stop and watch the SpaceEx shuttle head to out of space I have to be honest. What an amazing achievement for science.
Unemployment is high, the markets have dropped, people are wondering how they are going to feed their families, pay their rents. Food Shelters have lines heading out for miles and this is day after day. I am grateful that our company has managed to keep going and keep all staff employed.
This past 12 days has been hard. Having grown up in South Africa and lived through the Apartheid era, I know how much I hate racism. Watching what happened to George Floyd this week breaks my heart. My heart goes out to his family. I cannot imagine the hurt his mother must be feeling, hearing her son cry out for her. To hear him say “I cannot breathe”. My heart breaks for his children, who will never see their father again. My heart breaks for his family.
We have watched peaceful protests and we have watched we have watched protests that have got violent and angry with lots of looting and damaging and stealing the property of shop owners. I don’t agree with the violence, but I understand the underlying anger that comes with these actions. The killing of George Floyd has become a catalyst for change. There are so many areas that need to change. I am aware that I know only what I have read in books and seen in movies on the history of people of color in the USA. I know that I want to stop and educate myself better. I can do better.
The theme for Share Six this month is {Ordinary to Extraordinary} and it was chosen by Michele Tremblay Photo. The general idea is to take something that is simply ordinary and change it to something that could be viewed as extraordinary. I think we can apply that to our lives now in these difficult times.
This month was a challenging theme. Above are some of my ordinary images. Below is what I have done to try and make them into something a little more extraordinary.
Some years ago when I was in Seattle a friend gave my a hanging glass decoration which I have hang on my bedroom curtain rail. At certain times of the day when the light shines one it you will see these rainbow patterns.
The same curtains have a layer of beaded drapes. I fell in love with them when I was first decorating my room. The ribbon ends have taken some wear and tear from the cats and threads have pulled and they tend to knot up, but I still love the look of the beaded drapes hanging over my curtains.
I happened to pick up a feather walking out of the grocery store one day. Using a mirror I created this reflection that often reminds that this looks like it is lying reflected on the beach. This turned out to be one of my favorite experiments.
Nature is the simple pleasures in life I can find in my garden. These fat Lizards hang out sunning themselves on the rocks. I love the bokeh that this lens has created in the background that just gives this little guy a bit more oomph.
Feathers, I do love feathers. For the longest time we had little brown ducks coming up to feed at the edge of the canal. I have since been banned from feeding them because apparently they cause weeds in the grass. Of course, they drop their feathers everywhere, and this particular day I collect a few and again experimented with a mirror and then some black and white textures.
A simple chess set, lots of angles and some great window light and a bit of editing left me feeling happy with the final result I got from this image. My topic at the time was glass and it was fund to experiment with this photo.
Arum Lily are one of my favorite plants, and I love the color version but I wanted something with a stronger edge to it and so I decided to go black and white, with a little bit of texture.
This was definitely a fun experiment and I loved the abstract look of it. What is it? It’s a dragonfly 🙂 I came across a article about making abstract out of your images and decided to play.
Feathers, and this was definitely another favorite of mine. A feather from a Mallard Duck that hangs out in my back garden – placed on a mirror in front of a window with the light shining onto it caused the image to look sepia.
Another fun abstract image. Believe it or not the original image was wedding flowers. My son was getting married and I was asked to do the wedding flowers for the reception, bathrooms, and isles. This was the isle image that I had hung on my naked lady to see what it would look like. Playing with the same steps as the dragonfly, I was able to capture this creative abstract image.
My last image is back to the Arum Lily. This was taken in front of a window with the natural light shining in on it and then converted to black and white with textures.
Life right now is very ordinary, and yet not ordinary. Right now days seem the same, and yet we are watching all the protesting in the city. While the world is opening up slowly, I am still working from home, and I have to be honest, I am not rushing out. I am happy to take each day step by step, to watch the numbers and wait and see what tomorrow brings. I am not going to skip out on life, but I am going to make sure I know what life looks like before I head out. So ordinary is what each day is looking like, but in so many ways we can make it extraordinary. We can be kind, we can love on our families, snuggle with our pets, we can reach out to friends, by phone or by social media or write an email. We can enjoy the moments that this world has given us, the sound of rain, the beautiful sunset, the birds, our critters and we can appreciate the beauty in the simple things. I hope that you can make your ordinary day extraordinary as well.
We can come alongside our friends of color. Let them know we are there, and that we hear them. We can take time to educate ourselves. Read some books on what it is like for a person of color day to day. To pray for friends (and their families) who worry about their teenage sons going running, or driving out, or who are protesting. Be a catalyst for change, however small. Make a difference. Love your neighbor.
Thank you for joining me for this month’s Share Six blog post. This is a circle blog. I love sneak peaks – they are always amazing. This is an incredibly talented group of ladies. Please take time to visit my friend and very talented artist Lynne of Lynne Grant Photography and see what she has for you this month. To check out her Facebook page click here and her Instagram page here.
Keep following the circle to see what the other photographers have shared this month. Don’t forget to leave a little love on their page as well.
Come and share your images Facebook and Instagram tagging #sharesix_ordinarytoextraordinary
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30 Minutes in the Life: May 2020
Posted on June 1, 2020
The stay at home is kind of lifting in Florida, we’re in Phase 1. I confess to being a little skeptical about numbers in Florida. That said I have been at home for the past 2 months with a partner who hates to sit still. Me I love it. I love working from home, although I need to learn when to stop. That is probably my biggest problem. You don’t pack up and drive an hour home, so you carry on working. I am getting better, but even as I write this over the long weekend, I know there are things I need to do.
For the past few weeks I have noticed some friends heading out to the local section of the Florida Everglades, Loxahatchee National Park. I mentioned to Richard that it was open and that if he wanted to go out we could go there and hopefully not encounter to many people. This is typically my sunset spot and on any given night it is kind of lonely and there may be at most 10 of us.
Right now, I have not been going to the park because my zoom lens died and I have yet to get another one. I am challenged with what I want. Of course, I want the 150-600mm lens so that I can get up to the eyeball of the creature that I am photographing but the thought of carrying that lens around has me reconsidering. I also want a lens I can travel with.
So we headed out with our chairs, our tumblers of wine, and I took along my 17-40 mm lens, and my 24-135 mm lens. So no close up of the sun heading down, but that was okay because it turned out there was no visual of the sun and the evening was very cloudy.
When we got to the park half of the county was visiting as well. So we tried to practice social distancing and set up our chairs away from folk and then sipped wine as we waited for the sun to set.
In these images I played around with my 17-40 mm lens and I really loved the super wide angle the this lens offers. I cannot wait to use it in different settings.
In these images I switched to my 28 – 135 mm lens. This was the closest I was going to be able to zoom into the horizon.
I had bought the 18 -40 mm lens after using my daughters fish eye in Rochester. We were also supposed to be on the road in August, or rather on a plane 😦 , and I wanted the 18-40mm lens because I had visions of super wide open images. However, I am not sure that I see this happening. I am going to be pretty disappointed if it doesn’t. We had plans to visit my son in law’s family in Macedonia, and the kids were going to have a wedding reception for his family.
We were heading from there down to the Lake at Ohrid in Macedonia and then on to Skopje. From Macedonia we were off to Croatia, starting out Dubrovnik, then heading up to Split. then further north to Zagreb. From there I had plans to head to Berlin. I have traveled through places in Germany, but never to Berlin.
So with all that potentially on hold, I kind of suggested that maybe by the end of the year Australia may be an option. This is a trip we really need to do. So we have to weigh up where this virus is going to take us in a few months and what international travel is going to look like. Do we really want to be on a plane again? And landing in a foreign country may mean having to go into quarantine for 2 weeks. That’s like your vacation time. May as well just stay at home.
Looks like the virus is going to rain on our parade. As did the clouds in the distance. Fortunately for us, it never made it to where we were sitting.
We were happy to be honest, just to be outdoors and for me taking the sunset again. I tried to use people where I could to create silhouettes.
Silhouettes are a favorite of mine and there is that part where you don’t have to pose someone and the look is kind of natural and they are not aware that you are taking their pic.
Luckily the sun was starting to set and I was hoping that I could get something out of this cloudy sunset.
Evenings like this on the Everglades is always fun. You become the food source for all sorts of bugs, my favorite being the mosquito and the yellow fly. The yellow fly is actually worse for me as I react to it as I would to a bee sting. Nice sweet swelling that is as itchy as can be and normally results in me swallowing anti-histamine before I get any real relief.
I have learned to make sure, that even in summer, that I have a long sleeve sweater with me. That way I can try and stay away from being part of the food chain.
There were a few local fishermen hanging out, along with a couple of gator on the far side of the water. The Everglades is a natural habitat for gator. We have kayaked inside the waterways and come across all sizes of gators. It is kind of creepy, especially when the water is low or when the gator goes down under water. I keep wondering where it may come up and pray that it is not right alongside the kayak.
As the last of the sun was setting, I switched back to the 18 – 40 mm lens to try to get a few more wide angle images. The clouds created dynamic dark images with that tiny flare of light.
I was not the only person with a camera out there. Actually it is a popular spot for photographers and you never really know what kind of sunset you are going to get. Our day is done and all that is left to do is pack up and head home.
Thank you for joining me for 30 Minutes in the Life, and for chilling out with the sunset.
I would encourage you to take some time to visit my very talented friend Janet of Janet Crouch Photography and see what she has for you this month. Check out her Facebook and Instagram pages as well.
You can also find me on Facebook, and Instagram.
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