Bokeh Thursday

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!! Today has been a blur and I'm running as fast as I can! This image is in response to an invitation to a new group on ipernity called Bokeh Thursday, and the theme this week was "Clothespin". I wanted to try something different than what I've seen in the past, so I tried stacking a few and putting some sparkly tinsel in the background to add some colorful bokeh in addition to the bokeh of the clothespin itself! I hope you like it! In about 30 minutes, Steve and I will be leaving to go take firework pictures, but I won't be back soon enough to put one up for my 365, which is why I'm in such a rush to get this done before we leave! :D Emile Cioran (8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher and essayist. Wikipedia: Emile M. Cioran Explored on July 5, 2013. Highest position: Page 4. Explored on Flickr on July 4, 2013. Highest position: #180.

Teasel flowers really attract bees, and I had a great time taking pictures of them today. I saw this guy hanging out on a teasel head and it was sticking its tongue out to reach something clearly out of reach below. Maybe it was doing tongue stretching exercises, I don't know! :D But I knew I'd have to feature this bee for one of my Bokeh Thursday pictures!! :D

2 more pictures in notes above! :D Here is a Tarweed flower uncurling in the morning light. You can see why the opening bud in the previous photo looked like spaghetti, but now the petals look like curled fingers! Crazy cool! By the way, this flower is called "tarweed" because it's completely COVERED with sticky droplets of stinky resin which looks and behaves a lot like tar when livestock walk around in fields full of these flowers. Their lower legs and belly will become nearly black with this stuff and it's extremely hard to remove! On top of that, it STINKS to high heaven! Some species of tarweed smell like lemons, but this kind smells like rotten citrus...EWWWWW!!! :D By the way, if you'd like to see the pictures I took last year of tarweed species, here's a link! Janet's Tarweed Images

Did you know that teasel has really beautiful tiny flowers?! They are so pretty, and in fact, the buds are lovely too--a grid of tiny green "pillows" that gradually turn lavender and then open up into these blossoms! :)

2 more pictures in notes! Behold the amazing, sticky and stinky TARWEED! Last year I went completely crazy taking pictures of this gorgeous flower, and I'm convinced that you can't take a boring picture of this blossom. Here we have a close-up of an opening bud. I simply LOVE how it looks like strands of spaghetti in there!! That's just crazy, isn't it?! By the way, if you'd like to see the pictures I took last year of tarweed species, here's a link! Janet's Tarweed Images

4 more pictures in notes above! Here's my second submission for Bokeh Thursday ! This is where the other 25% of my liquid comes from every day: espresso latte coffee, one in the morning, and one in the late afternoon! I took a picture of the latte foam through a glass mug. Actually, I was so busy taking pictures after Steve made my coffee that by the time I began taking pictures, the thick foam had melted most of the way, but I loved the way the bubbles looked on the side of the glass! I had a lot of fun fooling around with filters and this one was the craziest looking so I made it the main image. You'll see above that there are 4 other versions! I really wanted to do some crazy artistic filters but these images are supposed to be about bokeh, and turning them into artistic filtered pieces would remove any sense of bokeh so I resisted...but they really looked cool! :D (I don't know if the top one is my favorite--I think they are all neat, so let me know if you have a favorite, I'd love to hear your opinion!!) :D

1 more picture in a note above! Today is Bokeh Thursday and the theme this week is Drinks/Drinking, and I have two submissions (my second one has 4 other versions as inset pictures). Since 75% of my daily liquid intake is water, I took a picture of one of my water bottles with droplets of water on the lip! Some fun with sliders and this picture is the result! :) By the way, if you enjoy taking pictures with bokeh in them, you might be interested in this group. Lots of very nice people and we would love to have more join in the fun! Bokeh Thursday

These wooden beads are 1/2" squares and meant to be strung onto sisal strands (a natural rope fiber) and used as a chewable toy for our parrot! The blocks are colored with vegetable food dye so they are non-toxic! :)

This one has such a beautiful amethyst-colored crystal bead, I like the skewed perspective and interesting abstract quality. Believe it or not, the green crystal beads are the same size and shape as the amethyst one! They are only about 1/8" in size! :D