Etcetera #13 {Skyscapes, Self-Portraits, Mysterious Feathers, and Inflatable Pineapples}

| Allison

Hello, dears!

I’m finally back with a collection of the random photos I’ve acquired since my last Etcetera post! 😀 Some of the pictures for today include vibrant sunsets, undignified cats, friends’ engagement photos, a baby turtle I rescued, my brother playing drums, and a large collection of paper butterflies.

I’m never quite sure what I hope to accomplish with these posts, but if you’re interested in pretty photos or hearing random bits about a farm girl’s life, mayhaps you will enjoy this scrapbooky collection. 🙂 There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there? So, onwards! To the pictures!

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Sky photography

Okay, beautiful sunsets are one thing, but when it’s a sunset with a little moon too…? Perfection. 😀

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I edited this one differently to see if I could create that sort of faded aesthetic – you know? I think it worked… maybe.

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Doesn’t this look like an oil painting? I love the warm tones behind the blue-grays.

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I went a little overboard on the editing here – sunsets are just too fun to edit. 😀 Ahh, so pretty!

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people photography

As I mentioned in this post, Aria & Andrew did an engagement photoshoot with my friend Bethany and her fiancé recently, while I sneaked in a few pictures from a safe distance. I guess I was the third shooter or something. 😛 Again, click here to see Aria’s gorgeous professional photos.

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Next we have a few self-portraits I took a while ago. It was fun to experiment with an editing style that’s a bit more dark and contrasting than usual. I really like how these two turned out!

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1. More the way I normally look. XD 2. The obligatory “hiding your face” picture (and I forgot to take my watch off, of course…). 3. A slightly strange one where I used a skin-smoothing brush to get that plastic magazine page look that social media tells us is realistic. *shakes head*

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We started a club in our old house’s attic with some friends years ago, so when they visit us at our new farm now, we often have a club meeting for old time’s sake. 😛 Logan squeezed himself into this old writing desk because he was the secretary for this one. (Also we had club shirts, but we’ve quite outgrown them by now – so Logan’s wearing his over his shoulder. 😀 )

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My brother Jeff and two of his friends started an informal “band” together. 🙂 They’ve been practicing several songs together on the guitar, piano, and drums, so I went out to the garage one day to get some photos.

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Ooh yes, I love these! Several months ago I had the opportunity, to take some proposal pictures! Since I don’t know if the couple would want me to share those here, I’ll just do a couple of shots from before and after the proposal.

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The location and lighting were BEAUTIFUL! Such a neat opportunity and such an amazing couple. ❤

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nature

I snapped this picture while walking up the steps from the lake house we stayed at in August. I saw this tiny, bright flower growing out of the stones from the corner of my eye and couldn’t not photograph it. Isn’t it lovely?

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Mom planted this clematis vine by the lamppost in our front yard and AHH, it makes me so happy! Purple is my favorite color; plus I just love how the flowers look, winding up the “Narnia lamppost” like this. 🙂

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Fun fact: I find galls fascinating, especially these big ones. They look like large, wooden beads or something, even though they’re made by insects and hollow-ish inside.

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Not a particularly great picture, but I wanted to post it because guess what? I found the feather stuck in the ground just like this! I very much doubt any human came all the way into the woods to stick it in, and I sure didn’t. I wonder how it managed to fall all the way there and land quill side down…

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These two glowy pictures are from one of our flowerbeds filled with fall mums right now. I looove the lighting, ahh!

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Oh yeah, I got this one during Bethany’s photoshoot too… wait, did I? Now I forget. Anyway, I love the bokeh and colors and lighting once again. Crepe myrtle is so pretty.

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I always find this cloud formation interesting. It looks like a sherpa fleece blanket – you know what I’m talking about? The sun through the lacy oak leaves and the delicate clouds looked so beautiful together.

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Mom got these zinnia seeds from a friend right before her heart surgery in June. (Now she is almost completely back to normal after a successful surgery and long recovery, praise the Lord! ❤ ) The flowers are still blooming in our herb garden. Some of the blooms were HUGE and so perfect!

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pets & animals

Firstly, we must take a moment to recognize Tom, who doesn’t appear that often on this blog. He doesn’t seem impressed about that.

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Tom is… unusual (which is to say, a fairly normal cat), particularly in his poses and positions of relaxation. He thinks he’s dignified, but…

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HA, I love this one! If this was a meme, I think the caption would be, “when your mom is in the other room but you’re too lazy to get up and talk to her like a civilized person…” :’D

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Nellie the goat returns! She has no qualms about hopping up on anything or anyone within reach, as my sister Carmen is demonstrating here. (And our dog, Maggie, is just like, “Look at me aren’t I a good dog I would never do that.”)

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Guysss, look at this adorable little turtle I found in a creek! I took a walk through the woods one day and found this little baby stranded on his back in the sand. I flipped him over, took some pictures, and saved his life. It was my good deed of the day. :’D

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At first I thought these bluebirds were dove decoys since dove hunters have been putting them up on powerlines around our farm. But nope, they were real because they flew away before I could get better pictures…

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We seem to have a lot of butterflies on our farm, including these stunning zebra swallowtails.

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Eeyore the donkey catching the last beautiful rays of sun one evening.

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Guys, we have SO many deer on our farm. It’s bad (for the crops, I mean). But they made for a neat picture! It reminds me of some old movie or estate picture somehow. Also I just realized… huh, are all of them actually bucks?? Wow.

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landscapes

I love the green and blue tones in this out-the-car-window picture from our vacation.

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Two more car window vacation pictures. I think the b&w filter fits the fog and old barns perfectly!

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I’ve discovered you can get some neat pictures right after golden hour. I don’t know if it was technically blue hour yet, but anyway, maybe the sun going down isn’t quite as disappointing as I usually think it is when photographing. 😛 The lighting gives everything a soft, peaceful look.

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I got this before my dad and brothers took out the cattails around the outside of the pond, so it looks a little less bushy now. And less green. I can’t wait to take fall foliage pictures and make an autumn playlist post for you guys!

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Instead of photographing from a car window, here I took a picture out the side of the Mule. Some of the secluded pastures look enchanting at golden hour – even more in real life than in photos, of course.

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Also taken during Bethany’s photoshoot, when Maggie had to be tied up so she wouldn’t get in the way. Poor pup.

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Heh heh, doesn’t this birdhouse look like it’s wearing a very bored expression?

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Another eye photo, but of course. 😛 I saved this frame from a video, actually. It’s so hard to focus on your own eye with a DSLR. :[]

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One day our cousins came up for a visit and we decided to swim in the pond. We went to town before that and got these pineapple inflatable things for holding drinks… only we tried them with soda cans and they just flipped over. Oooops. What are they even supposed to be for…?

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I like the way the Virginia creeper vines look on the weathered wood of our barns. ❤

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Lastly, here’s a random photo of LOTS of butterflies I painstakingly cut out for these journaling kits. They looked so pretty that I just had to arrange them and take a picture before using them. I have this as my phone lockscreen now. 🙂

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Well, that’s it for today, my friends! I hope you enjoyed this random assortment of photos. I’m quite relieved to have finally (almost) caught up, heh heh.

Do you have a favorite photo from this post? What type of photography do you like seeing (or taking) best? And which do you prefer: cats, dogs, or goats?

Thanks so much for reading, dears, and have a lovely day!

***Allison***

P. S. Photos taken with my Nikon D3400 and a 35mm lens. Edited with Lightroom.

50 thoughts on “Etcetera #13 {Skyscapes, Self-Portraits, Mysterious Feathers, and Inflatable Pineapples}”

  2. Please don’t make me pick a favorite! There’s just too many to choose from! Okay, I guess I’ll pick the clematis collage, because it’s just. so. beautiful!! 😍 But of course your other photos are stunning as well! 😉

    I love nature photography best… flowers, sunsets, landscapes… They’re all lovely. I enjoy sharing the handiwork of the Creator in my photos.

    And I’ve never had a goat, so I *think* I would choose dogs. But then, the cats might not agree with that choice, so maybe I should just never decide. XD

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    1. Ahh, well thank youuu! I love the clematis photos too. ❤
      YES, nature photography is definitely some of my favorite, both to take and to see. Same!
      Heh heh. I know, it's a hard decision. XD
      Thanks for the wonderful comment, dear!

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  4. Such a fun post; as always! Oh my goodness that goat cracks me up. 🤣 I LOVE that meme you came up with for that picture of your cat; it fits so well! 😂😂 So many beautiful nature pics; I don’t even know where to begin. I’ll just say I loved them all and you are very, very good at capturing beauty. *nods seriously* 🙂

    Beautiful self-portraits! Ooh and yesss, that birdhouse is wearing a VERY bored expression. I love that. 😄 Wow, how amazing to see that many deer on your own property! Though yikes, of course, for your crops. Thankfully we don’t live in an area with any deer for that reason, but since the mountains here aren’t too far away, we have had a deer (a buck!) run through our driveway before. It was crazy. 😮

    So many butterflies! Amazingly arranged, and very beautiful. Thank you, again, for sharing all these fun photos! You have such an interesting, fun life. Reminds me of my own in some ways; since I’m a farm/country girl too. 😉😊 (whoa, this was a long comment. My apologies XD)

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    1. Haha, THANKS. I know, Tom is hilarious. XD And ahhh, that means so much! Thank you!
      HAHA, isn’t it funny? I know, there’s so many deer; it’s crazy. Well that’s nice. Wow, yeah!
      Hee hee, thanks. It’s neat that we have similarities in our lives. I always love your comments, long or not!

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  7. I loved seeing the variety of photos! It was cool to see all those bucks in the one photo. I’ve gotten pretty close to does to photograph them, but I hardly ever have photographed bucks. Also, I noticed that you edited photos with Lightroom! I didn’t think you used that before. Did you recently get it, or am I misremembering?

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    1. I’m so happy you liked them, Sassafras! I know, right?? I didn’t even mean to. It’s funny how often I’ll notice details in a photo only when I’m editing it or looking at it after the fact. Oh yeah, I started using Lightroom… mm, semi-recently. It’s been a couple of months, but I’m slowly transitioning from picmonkey.com to Lightroom. 🙂 I’ve had it for a while, but my computer didn’t have enough RAM to use it, ha ha. Then I bought extra and it works now, thankfully!

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  8. Allison! Your photography is so amazing! You should look into selling some of your photos on a stock photo site, or even just creating a stock photo site for bloggers. Basically, I’m just trying to say that I think you could make some money off these!

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  15. This… is… BEAUTIFUL!!! I WISH I LIVED HERE!!!! OMG, all of it is so beautiful & so GREEN!!!!!!!!!! It feels FRESH & JUST AMAZING!!!! I LOVE YOUR WORK!!!!!!!!!!!

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  20. Ahhh those sunset photos are amazing! And yes those clouds and the pic before it do look like paintings! 😀 Whoa, I love how the long thin clouds in that sunset pic divide the blue sky and the other side in have. It’s so unique! ❤
    Oooh, I love the orangy lighting on your self-portraits! It highlights your shirt and makes you look like you're wearing lipstick and it's so pretty. 🙂 It's a very warm artistic sort of style I think. But you're the expert. XD
    Wow the proposal photo with the sunlit green meadow looks straight out of a rom-com! XD
    Oh my gosh I can imagine what a full view of the lamppost looks like with those purple flowers crawling up around it! It was probably so pretty!
    Wow that feather photo is so cool! It's like God let it fall that way just so you could take a picture of it. ❤
    Awe that caption for tom yawning is perfect! XD
    Wow Nellie is so big now!!!! :,( ❤
    AHHH I LOVE TURTLES HE'S SO CUTE!!!!!! ❤
    Haha that birdhouse is so cute too. 😛

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    1. Gahh, THANK YOUU. It made me happy to see this nice, long comment. 🙂 I know, isn’t that neat?
      Well thank you! I like the lighting on the self-portraits too.
      Aww, ha ha! ❤ It was beautiful.
      I KNOWWWW IT WOULD BE GORGEOUS.
      I know, right? That's it exactly. ❤ That's how I feel about so many photo opportunities – God just gives me so many beautiful things to remind me of his love, and I'm so happy to share them.
      Heh heh, thanks.
      She really is!
      I KNOOOOW.
      Heh, yep.
      Thanks again for the lovely comment, Heather!

      Like

      Reply
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