iSPY 09.2021 & SPSH Photo Challenges

 

Shutterbugs and photo-lovin’ friends glad to have you join me for iSpy 09.2021 & SPSH Photo Challenges.  Today I am sharing snapshots for the recent edition of the iSpy series hosted by my blogging buddy Lysha at A Camera and a Cookbook.  Lysa gives us 5 prompts each week and shares her own photos with an iSPY link up on Saturdays.

Also happy to be joining Mary-Lou at PatioPostcards and friends for the summer photo scavenger hunt (SPSH). This is my third SPSH share for the season. We will share our final pictures for SPSH on 10.01.2021.  There’s still time for you to join us.

 

iSPY 09.2021 & SPSH Photo Challenges

 

Taking pictures has become one of my favorite hobbies.  When I am not participating in a challenge, I lose my enthusiasm for photography because I don’t know what to do with the pictures I am taking!!  Didn’t get a photography post together for August so glad to be back in the saddle again.  If you missed it, you can find my last photography post, here.

 

2021 SUMMER PHOTO SCAVENGER HUNT

 

So excited to have spent Friday evening catching up on blog reading and to discover that Mary Lou has released the photo prompts for the summer photo scavenger hunt.  Yay!!!  You can visit her post here at Patio Postcards for more information.  Keep in mind, there are only 2 rules;  please use photos taken between 06.01.-09.30.2021.  The second rule is one I wasn’t aware of from participating in previous challenges.  You or a loved one must have taken the photo.  I always thought I had to be the photographer!!

First check in/link up was Wednesday, 06.30.2021.  Have a look, here.  The second check in was 08.09.2021, but I  am fashionably late.  The last link up date is the final one, 10.01.2021.

 

2021 SPSH LIST

 

1. A Breakfast of Champions  
2. Favourite Time of Day 
3. Something To Represent Home But Not The Building
4. Head In The Clouds; shapes or interesting patterns  
5. The Art Of The Fold
6. Something That Makes You Laugh or Happy  
7. What’s In Bloom  
8. Window Views  
9. Something Older Than You
10. The Delivery Van/Truck Making The Deliveries  
11. The Shape of Round/Circular  
12. Something That Is Cause For Celebration  
13. Your Marie Kondo Moment – Or Not
14. Inside Your Fridge Or Cupboard
15. Your Best Doodle Art (not public graffiti)
16. A Guilty Pleasure; Something That Recharges You
17. An Exit
18. Upside Down, Right Side Up  
19. Steps, But Who’s Counting  
20. Decades Of Sharing; find something in your home that is from the 70’s or 80’s or 90’s or 00’s

Alternates

A: show off your  COVID safety; masks, cleaning, or other related supplies

B: a local landmark  

C: the most beautiful landscape photo of the season

 

MY LATEST FINDS

 

• #1 breakfast of champions – not much of a champion of anything but this was a delicious breakfast for grandparents!!  Marked an item off my summer bucket list with our visit to Mamacita’s Restaurant downtown.  PC ordered their churro waffles and I ordered the salmon and gruyere grilled cheese sandwich, then we shared.  Really tasty.

• #4 head in the clouds; shapes or interesting patterns – Wolf?  Fox?  I see some kind of wild forest animal.  At least its snout and open mouth.  Whatever it is has kind of a week chin!!

• #7 what’s in bloom – jimson weed.  It is thriving after our monsoonal rains in August.  A few years ago, some crazy kids got the bright idea to make some tea with jimson.  They died.  The flowers are so beautiful but the entire plant is poisonous, especially the leaves and seeds.

• B: a local landmark – This much larger than life statue sits on the grounds of our international (and only) airport.  It is of Juan de Oñate, (born 1550?, New Spain—died 1630), conquistador who established the colony of New Mexico for Spain.  [source]  The statue is not popular among locals.  Oñate is honored as an explorer but scorned for being brutal, cruel and immoral.  And yet we have glorified him with this huge (and off-scale – the horse is much too big by comparison to its rider) monument.  I chose not to photograph the statue from the front as a mini-protest.

 

ISPY #37

 

– golden hour:  

We babysat for the pumpkins on Friday night while Lauren and Francisco went to the movies.  In an effort to wear them out good so they would sleep late for their parents on Saturday morning, we took Lucia and Cami to the park after dinner.  They played hard on playground equipment for about 30 minutes.  Then Lucia spotted her friend Red being walked by her friend Monty and took off across the park after them.  I love the way the setting sun gave them all three a golden halo.

– action item:

Have been wanting to ride the trolley downtown since they brought them back a few years ago.  This was the closest I have come…

– change:

On Thursdays, I change the saying on my message board.  I have a Pinterest board dedicated to having fun and a section under it just for message board sayings.

– cell phone:  

I drove us to church this morning so PC could play a game on his phone.  Snapped this photo, that is pretty nondescript, in the parking lot before we went in for the Sunday service.  Fiddled around with some editing settings trying to make it a little more interesting.

– your choice:

Snapped this the same evening as my golden hour shot above.  It is the view of the Franklin Mountains from the westside of El Paso.  In real life there was a huge, almost full moon rising above the mountains but it is hard to see in this photo.  I like the contrast between the texture and shapes of the rounded river rocks in the left foreground with the angles and lines of the buildings in the distant right.

 

YOUR TURN

 

Looks like I still have a lot of prompts to find for the scavenger hunt in the next 2 weeks.  Also need to take my Sunday Stills photos and try to stay caught up with iSpy.  What have you been photographing lately?

Hope to enjoy another week mostly at home.  Need to give the house a once-over, laundry, ironing, running and swimming.  Blog reading is on my list for tomorrow first thing in the morning.  If you blog, I will be by to visit!!  What do you have going on?

Thank you for stopping by.  Hope you will come back by tomorrow for my friend Leanne’s guest post.  And my autumn 2021 fall bucket list reveal on 09.21.2021, Tuesday.

Hugs and kisses,