Photo-a-day: 365 August

Day 136: Mutant sunflowers...

My sister and I created a scatter garden this year. We combined all the seeds we had been storing, some of which had been gifts, purchased from an unnamed huge corporation. I found these amongst our sunflowers - dwarfed, thick-skinned fused double-headed flowers. My initial thought was to destroy them. Any suggestions?

“There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

Day 137:
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go.
-Dr. Seuss

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
-Khalil Gibran

Day 138:
“Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.”
― Edward Whymper, Scrambles Amongst the Alps

Day 139: Tall Man

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
-Abraham Lincoln

Day 141:
Do not be misled by what you see around you, or be influenced by what you see. You live in a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, false values and false ideals. But you are not part of that world.
-Sai Baba

Day 142:

"As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death."
-Leonardo da Vinci

Day 143:
There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.
-Pythagoras

Day 144: Fauxtographer's Salute

Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.
-Hans Christian Andersen

Day 145:
Essentially what photography is is life lit up.
-Sam Abell

Day 146:
“As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

Day 147: Fig Noir

The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity.
-Ulysses S. Grant

Day 148: I kept trying to get her to hold the clothes up, but she wasn't having any of it...

“Some of my old memories feel trapped in amber in my brain, lucid and burning, while others are like the wing beat of a hummingbird, an intangible, ephemeral blur.”
― Mira Bartok, The Memory Palace

Day 149:
"Ifing the river is called, which divides the earth
between the sons of giants and the gods;
freely it will flow through all time,
ice never forms on the river."
— Vafthrudnismal from the Poetic Edda, Larrington trans.

Day 150: This is not the photo of the day. Rather, you are looking at a portion of the project of the day, a time lapse video of the lilies opening and closing over the day. (What more is a video than several images put together? So, these are my PHOTOS of the day )

Day 151: After some initial disappointment, T-rex finally decided he likes his future self after all.

Day 152: Rainflower

Day 153

Day 154: The progress so far - Left to Right: Starting image, resized to a square; Tri-Fold; 4-Fold

“Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.”
― Winston Churchill

Day 155: Thin King Press

Day 156: Having a bit too much fun with my tri-actions... started making some of my India photos into kaleidoscopes. Thinking about making some meditative, hypnotic (and possibly seizure inducing ) videos with them... "Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects."
-Henry Ward Beecher

Day 157: Thanks to the rain, my laundry was washed twice

Once is orthodox, twice is puritanical.
-Lord Melbourne

Day 158: Tangled Cosmos

“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Day 159:
We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.
-Amos Bronson Alcott

Day OneSixty: Of Whiskers and Worlds

“Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire, he is still only a whisker away from the wilds.”
- Jean Burden

Day 161:

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you. ~Maori Proverb

Day 162:

People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.
-Jim Morrison