It says: Now Persephone stepped forward. She stood between her mother and her husband with a new serenity and strength.
"I shall decide this matter," she said. "True, I have eaten of the pomegranate. But, my husband, if you love me, you will understand that I am not a creature of darkness. Allow me to return to the sun and flowers I love. Allow me to leave with my mother and I will return to you six months of the year, a month for each eaten seed."
Another with the Diana.
I hope you & yours have a happy Thanksgiving tomorrow. If you've taken any black and whites lately and catch a minute on Friday, come by and leave me a link. Friday's my birthday and I'd love lots of lovely b&w's to peruse.
(And just ignore this, please.)--> A3552MW7H5ER
Taken with my Diana camera.
This guy was on the corner spinning this sign around.
Notice the shorts? Yeah, that's November in Georgia for you. Though today it's cold enough for a nice sweater and squishy socks.
He seemed to be having fun spinning the sign around.
At least as much fun as a person can have standing around with a sign advertising real estate that's obviously not selling.
I have to wonder how much money he made doing that. And if people walking by talk to him or not.
Or if anyone who saw him there with his sign thought, oh wow! A loft in the high $100's! Exactly what I need to buy today!
If you've taken your own b&w photos this week, please link to them below. I'd love to come by and see them!
Yesterday I was honored to be on the Scoutie Girl blog. I did an interview on art and process and inspiration and things like that with the brilliant and lovely Amy of doobleh-vay and one of my all-time favorite Etsy shops, Little Alouette. So please check it out if you have a moment.
And if you would allow me to lead you in another direction, I'd love for you to check out my new friend Susie's shop - MishMish Market. Susie does lovely watercolor prints, some with personalization available. She's also participating in The Miracles of Hanukkah Sale this week and that's how I ended up buying this print for V's room just a few minutes ago.
So, unless you're Alexis, who has heard just a wee bit, or Kim, who has heard the whole story, you might not know that I've been stuck at home for a few weeks now. I blame the recession and my own procrastination.
See a few weeks ago, I had an errand to run so V and I were in the car. We were on our way home and I decided to drive around a little bit and see the sights because I still don't know my new hometown very well.
So I was keeping up with traffic and all was well when we all came to a police roadblock. The officer let the car ahead of me through, but had me pull over. So he could give me a ticket. For speeding. I fail to see how I could've been speeding when the car ahead of me was not but I decided to keep my mouth shut - which was probably a good idea since the officer kindly informed me that my Tennessee license plate is expired.
Oops.
Two citations and a couple of days later, we got to add a third. On his way to work, R was not even out of the subdivision when he was ticketed for a rolling stop in the neighborhood.
Oops again.
So that's about $350. Normally I don't like to complain because I feel like this blog is my happy place. I've seen in the news that counties are not making enough money in taxes. So it seems logical to me that they would think they need to go out and get that money from somewhere. But should anyone from my local police department happen upon this post (not likely, but you never know), I would like them to know that we will have to find that money somewhere in our budget. And that means that we will not be spending it in our local shops. So you're not really generating tax revenue; not from me anyway. I won't just charge it and forget it. I am staying home and not spending money.
Now, how do I do that? Stay home and not spend money? Easy - I'm a procrastinator. I still haven't gotten my new tag yet. And, because I fear another ticket, my car is in my garage. I haven't driven it since. I'll get it soon, but first I had to get my birth certificate. I know I have one here somewhere, but I couldn't find the box it's in from the move. But I got it and I was all ready to go get my license/tag when I found out that I also need my marriage certificate to prove my name change. So now I have to order that.
And it's on my to-do list, so I'm sure I'll get that done by January, February at the latest. (I'm only half kidding.)
So I'm stuck at home. That doesn't bother me too much - there's no place like home to me. But V asked me the other day why we never go to the park anymore. She will again, just not yet. Instead, we'll work our way through Preschool Art this winter and hang out in the backyard whenever there's a small patch of sunshine. I figure that if nothing else, it cuts down on the chance that we'll be exposed to H1N1 - a silver lining if I ever saw one.
These photos were taken at the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, as were the rest of the photos I've shared this week.
The property was bought in 1850 - six acres. It's a quiet, lovely place with lots of beautiful magnolia trees. When I was a kid, my grandparents' neighbors had a huge magnolia in their yard. We played under that tree for hours. I remember scrubbing the fuzz off the underneath of the leaves with my thumbs and wishing I could climb all the way to the top.
When we were there, there was a photography club taking photos. Also young women jogging. And families checking out the history. It felt serene - more like a park than a cemetery. Margaret Mitchell is buried there.
The sun was really high in the sky while we were there, which made for some fantastic light beneath the shady trees - though the only shade I had for the photos in this post is in the next one. This picture looked fine on my computer, but here on R's laptop it looks a little dark. May have to revisit that one in Photoshop. What do you think - too dark?
I have a few more pictures from Oakland that I'll try to find time to blog this weekend, but now I'm on the lookout for another photo-taking adventure. No idea right now where that will be! Gotta talk to R about that.
Do you have any b&ws you'd like to share this week? I'd love to see them! Please link to your post or photo below. You can also add them to the flickr group as well. And happy weekend!
I don't usually have good luck taking photos of flowers in b&w. But I like these.
This one was in full sun, which I usually try to avoid, but I think that works because this poor flower is on her way out...
This one was in the shade and was so pretty! I wanted to pick it. I love Gerbera Daisies. It was hard to make every petal distinct - and they aren't all distinct. But good enough, I think. I might have worked some Photoshop magic, dodging and burning and all that. But I didn't.
It was just the other day, but I can't remember what color these flowers were now.
On Saturday we went into the city of Atlanta - something I rarely do.
I don't like the traffic; I don't like the noise.
But you can find some quiet places in this city.
You just have to know where to look.
Seen in our backyard...
Do you have a b&w post or photo to share for November in b&w? Please do!
Today was busy busy! I've had my nose to the grindstone all day, and I have a long list of to-dos for tonight. But I wanted to mention that tomorrow morning I'll post a Mr. Linky so you can share some of your black & white photos with me (I can't wait!).
And I wanted to share this photo with you. I like it. It reminds me of Spaghetti Junction.
R was off work today and will be tomorrow and I'm hoping we'll go some fun places between now and Sunday evening so I'll have lots more good photos to share.
V got a bike for her birthday, so I took her outside to ride for a bit on Sunday afternoon.
It's still a bit big for her, so after a while she wanted to take her trike for a ride around the block.
Was really wanting to stop and take pictures of these in b&w. But V's a girl on the go and I had to keep up.
Around the bend, we came to this yellow and green lawn, which I thought would look pretty cool in b&w.
Feels a bit surreal to me.
Deb, one of my twitter contacts gave me a link to a great post on the Digital Photography School blog on different ways to convert color photos to black and white.
And I found this blog, K AB A K UBA, with some pretty intense b&w photography via another twitter contact, LensBaby. (Have I mentioned before how much I want this LensBaby with the plastic optic? No? Well, I do. Hopefully Santa reads my blog [or Lensbaby. ha].)V's watering duck. She loves him. But she leaves him out in the yard most of the time, and he gets a bit dirty.
Poor little duck.
