For this monthly prompt from Kate at The Squirrel Chase, the idea is to pick a photo we want to play with and process it using three different methods. The photo I’m featuring today is one I took at a local zoo at the elephant area.
All processed photos were made using apps available for the iPhone at Apple’s App Store. Also, all images, including the original, were resized (shrunk) to make them quicker to load (and to take up less space in my WordPress media folder).
The April 2023 A to Z Blogging Challenge is over. Well, the sponsors of the challenge would like us to each publish a “Reflections” post where we look back over the past month and discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly. So let’s do some reflecting.
M.C. Escher’s “Hand with Reflecting Sphere”
My theme for this year’s A to Z Blogging Challenge was classic rock songs. Each day during the month (except for the first four Sundays), I posted a classic rock song: a video from YouTube, along with a brief bit of background about the song and the recording artist(s).
This turned out to be much more difficult than I thought it would be. For every letter of the alphabet — except for X and Z — there were dozens of fantastic classic rock songs to choose from and picking just one song for each letter was maddening. But this was what I signed up for.
Actually, it wasn’t what I signed up for because I didn’t technically (and officially) sign up at all. I had gone through all of the official rigamarole for the 2018 through 2022 A to Z Challenges, but this year I was one of a number of bloggers who participated in the challenge without signing up. We were “going rogue,” and Paula Light, one of us rogue participants, created a unique non-badge badge for us:
Anyway, I made it through the month posting classic rock songs and I hope I brought a lot of fond memories for those of us who grew up in the classic rock era. And perhaps I introduced others who weren’t around in the 60s and 70s to some “new” music — at least to them — that they enjoyed.
For me, it was like posting my responses to Jim Adams’ Song Lyric Sunday prompt nearly every day of the month. I enjoyed doing that and learning some of the very interesting — and often surprising — backstories behind the songs I featured. On the other hand, it took up a lot of time, so I didn’t get to read as many of the posts from other bloggers that I follow. And I also wasn’t able to participate in as many blogging prompts as I usually do.
Stats wise, my April 2023 stats (with around 12,400 total views), were my lowest April views since 2018. That could be because my number of annual views peaked in 2019 and have been going down every year since then. Or it could be because I didn’t “officially” register for the A to Z challenge and, therefore, didn’t get as much exposure for my A to Z posts. Or it could be for both or for neither of those reasons.
Bottom line, I’m glad I participated this year and I hope those of you who took the time to read my A to Z posts enjoyed them. I plan on being back again next year, either officially or unofficially.
If you missed any of my A to Z classic rock posts, just tap or click on the letter below and it will take you to that letter’s song.
Brian, aka Bushboy, posted his monthly Last on the Card prompt, where he asks us to…
Post the last photo from your camera’s SD card or the last photo from your phone taken in the month of April.
No editing — who cares if it is out of focus, not framed as you would like, or the subject matter didn’t cooperate?
No explanations needed — just the photo will do.
Create a pingback to Brian’s post or link in the comments.
Tag “The Last Photo.”
I’ve actually got three photos to share, all taken with my iPhone late yesterday afternoon. This first one was taken at around 3:00 pm. My wife and I were in our front yard and suddenly I heard my wife scream as she was pointing to the ground. When I looked to see what she was pointing at, I saw this:
There, lying in the pine needles and mulch, was a dead rat, but only recently deceased. Maybe he was taken down by one of the neighborhood cats.
Then my wife and I went into our backyard and sat down in the swinging chairs on our deck. It was about 4:30 pm and I looked up and saw a pale moon in the sky, barely visible among the wispy clouds, and I took this photo:
If you squint and look hard, you may be able to see the moon horizontally in the center of the photo and vertically a little below center. But thinking that you might not be able to clearly see the moon, I took another photo around a minute after the one above, cropped it, and played around with the brightness, contrast, and a few other settings to come up with this photo below:
It shows the moon, which appears to be floating just above a sea of billowy clouds. I thought this slightly retouched photo looked interesting, so I decided to include it.
Welcome to Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge. Each week I will be posting a photo I grab off the internet and challenging bloggers to write a flash fiction piece or a poem inspired by the photo. There are no style or word limits.
The photo below is from Yi Wei at Unsplash.com
For the visually challenged writer, the photo shows a man riding a bicycle in the bike lane in a large city.
If this week’s image inspires you and you wish to participate, please write your post, use the tag #FFFC, and link back to this post. I hope it will generate some great posts.
Please create a pingback to this post or manually add your link in the comments.
This, That, and the Other 