mosaic muse {landscapes}

Today we're wrapping up our latest theme on landscapes. Thank you for all your contributions to the flickr pool. I have had such fun making a mosaic from your pictures, looking through them all and particularly enjoying all that stunning scenery. But it was the colours that really struck me as I looked through them; the wealth of colours and shapes.

1. OJ sky, 2. Primavera, 3. California Poppies, 4. The hills, 5. ~ golden summer dreams ~, 6. Untitled, 7. field of dandelions, 8. ... softibus!, 9. view south, 10. aspiring giants, 11. Path to the Mountain, 12. It's Really Pretty Here. :), 13. Untitled, 14. Reservoir, 15. aprshowers2, 16. For Mortal Muses - "Landscapes"

I'm sure you have more landscapes to share with us. Please link up with your landscape pictures using the linky tool below and make sure you add our mosaic muse button to your posts to show you're part of the community. The link will be open from now until Sunday evening. Ashley announced our new theme Change last week and with that we're starting to make some changes around here. So this theme will be a little different as we start to share some of our new ideas. And then we're taking a little break while we make some larger changes. We'll be back though on the second July. So stay tuned!

kirstin of fleeting moments.

<center><a href="http://mortalmuses.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6149/6036986994_81c277cf91_o.jpg"/></a></center> 

the landscape of you

I love a good landscape shot--the water, the land, the foliage, and all the other elements coming together in harmonious beauty. Throw a nice urban structure in the mix and I'm really feeling at home. Be radical and add the human form to the shot and now you're singing my tune. That's my perfect recipe for a landscape.

I've been trying to push myself a little further with my self-portraits this year. And although I adore a good outdoor shot, it's sometimes a struggle for me to find a quiet place in the middle of New York City and I am not yet 100% comfortable with strangers watching me run back and forth, posing, twirling and jumping like a nut in front of my own camera. To overcome this I've been challenging myself to try more outdoor selfies. This month, at my {In the Picture} project our theme is "big world, tiny you", where I encouraged everyone to get outside and put themselves into the landscape. This type of self-portrait is not about the details of your face or a closeup of your body, but rather, finding that perfect outdoor spot that makes your heart sing and inserting yourself into the moment.

Heather ~'s shot is a beautiful example of how adding yourself to the natural landscape can tell a story and capture a feeling. If you feel like trying this yourself, head outside today and take your shot...I am hosting a linky party on my blog tomorrow (5/25) if you want to stop by!

Until next time,
Christy {Urban Muser}

untitled by heather~

the beauty of not knowing

 

I'm terrible at surprises.

I was the child who shook and inspected every single present under the Christmas tree. I skipped to the end of the books to read the ending before picking up again in the middle.

I thought I'd outgrow my need to know but still today, I can't help but read the synopsis of the movie I am about to watch. Even when I said I didn't want to learn the sex of our second child, I couldn't not look when the ultrasound tech left the room with telling information on the screen.

I like to know. Yet when I was perusing landscape images, I was drawn to these images of not knowing.

What beauty lives up and over the hill or beyond the curve of the road? The question is relegated to rhetorical status because the images here are playing coy, leaving more questions than answers. Journey clearly trumps destination. I find myself drawn into the images precisely because I don't know the answer. And I don't have to.

 Because there can be such beauty in not knowing.

 tara is tea of boots & tea and tara on the wander on flickr.

Highway One, CA-Beauty at every twist and turn by KJBehavior

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Thank you Tara for guest musing with us today. If you'd like to know more about Tara, be sure to visit her at boots & tea or on her flickr stream. If you are interested in a future guest muse role, please email us at mortalmuses9 [at] gmail [dot] com.

landscapes: blocked or open?

I've been focusing on not hoarding my film of late, working hard to get out and shoot my instant film. Landscapes are not usually the content at which I aim my lens, particularly my Polaroid cameras, so this theme gave me a new challenge that I quite enjoyed. I started looking at the vast prairie that surrounds my community in new ways. I noticed ponds and trees I'd never quite seen before. And I thought about what would work for a Polaroid shot.

While out at a nearby nature area with a dear friend and fellow photographer, I came upon these still-barren trees reflected in a small lake. I wanted to get closer, but alas a chain link fence prevented my desire. Still, I wanted that shot. I just knew that was the image I wanted to use for this landscape post! So I took my time, framing carefully, getting between those diamond metal shapes of fenceline. And I clicked the shutter. At first, the blurry lines of the chain link annoyed me in this photograph, but the more I look at it, the more I think they add to the charm and truth of this landscape. Sometimes landscapes are wide open spaces, free for us to roam, like in mapleeye's aptly named "room to grow" photograph below. Other times, the landscape is just beyond reach as in my image. Blocked or open, they do make for gorgeous scenery for us to capture in our minds and with our cameras.

Meghan of Life Refocused

room to grow by mapleeye

a feeling of trust

Although I'm a big city girl at heart, I need to get out from time to time. These small escapes always work wonders for me. As I walk along the dusty trails of the nearby countryside, I gradually leave behind the hustle and bustle (mainly in my head). No need to do anything. I sit down in the meadow and contemplate my surroundings. High grasses. Bustling bees. Ever-changing, cloud formations. Trees that spread their green, lavish in abundance, and other trees still waiting for warmer days. I like it to just BE. A feeling of trust rises within me. Trust that everything has its own rhythm; Trust that everything is unfolding at the perfect time; and trust that I'll know when it's the right time for action...for inspired action. The wind turns the blades of grass, and from the distance, I hear the sounds of the big city. All is well. 

 

I see the same mindful serenity in this beautiful shot by Bright Glass. There is so much peace in it. Circumstances come and go. We go on our way. 

 

view south by Bright Glass 

 How about you? Can you trust the process of life? And even more importantly: Can you trust yourself and your capabilities to find the right moment for inspired action?

Claudia

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Thank you Claudia for guest musing with us today. If you'd like to know more about Claudia, be sure to visit her flickr stream and also check out her street photography, street inspired, on flickr. If you are interested in a future guest muse role, please email us at mortalmuses9 [at] gmail [dot] com.

big sky country

When I moved to California from Toronto 16 years ago and met my (now) husband, we bonded over road trips in his old Bronco to the desert, the mountains and the Pacific Northwest forests and coasts. I was bowled over by the landscapes and fell in love with wide open spaces.

It was Death Valley that stunned me into silence, however. When we first arrived after an almost half-day drive from the San Francisco Bay Area, it was already twilight and the stars were coming out. We set up camp and I think I barely spoke a word for the rest of the evening. I couldn't believe how silent it was and yet how the stars vibrated and sang. It still defies description for me. We returned many times, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends and the magic never faded.


We recently made the trip again after many years, this time with our eight year old daughter. We silently hoped she would feel the same magic as we had, but braced ourselves for the fact that she might be bored and wonder why we'd dragged her all the way there. My husband sometimes talks about how I go "feral" in the wilderness - going silent as the silence and space take over and letting my spirit become awestruck. Although our trip was brief this time, we saw the same thing happen for our daughter. At twilight we stopped by the side of the road and she took off like a bird into the dusk, stopping to collect rocks and sticks and build sculptures with no need of any interaction from us.

Skiingrn1's amazing photo from somewhere between Idaho and Nevada reminds me of those long ago road trips to the desert, with mix-tapes on the car stereo as a soundtrack to the views passing by. The title of this post is taken from Big Sky Country by Chris Whitley, always included on any road trip mix-tape.

cheers,
kim (mosey)

The Wide Open Road by Skiingrn1

where land meets sea

I am most at peace where land meets the sea. The colors strike me as the perfect compliment of blue and green. My family has access to a summer cottage on the shores of Cape Ann in Massachusetts so I packed them up a few summers ago so that they could have the "east coast experience". You should have seem their faces when they hiked through thorny brambles only to find that the beach was full of rocks not sand. A completely different kind of beach to my California beach babes. I couldn't get enough of the old tree lined streets lighthouses. If you look hard you can see one below.

At home Southern California has a more dramatic approach when it comes to the coast. Rolling hills abruptly end and give way to jagged cliffs anchored by palms and chaparral. Our beaches are carved out of little and big coves making it almost impossible to walk on the sand from one beach to another.  That's why we all have cars so we can drive to our favorite "secret"  or not so secret beach, we all have them.

It doesn't matter what shore I am standing on they all have the same effect on me. Calm.

Calm is exactly how I feel when I saw this photo from skiingrn1 called Lone Sailboat. What a stunning capture of a part of Alaska that's not all ice! Perfectly sharp I can almost hear the boat as it cuts through still waters.

a landscape of adventure

Earlier this year, I spent five weeks travelling around Southern Africa, specifically South Africa and Botswana. Neither country is new to me, I'd been to each several times, but just the thought of a new adventure truly gets me going. The excitement of what's to come. The anxiety of figuring it out. The sense of accomplishment when it all comes together, followed by a deep seated contentment while I soak in my new surroundings...preferably with a drink in hand watching my new world go by. Twelve years had passed since my last visit to the Moremi Game Reserve, and the time had softened my recollection of its landscape. Only a pile of slides, catching dust in a box could revive those memories, and if you're at all like me, just the thought of dealing with the thousands of transparencies I took in another lifetime keeps me from going back to relive them again.

 When I came across ~ania♥ in Morroco for a while's image of a hazy morning in Essaouria, I could feel that same pull inside of me, telling me to drop everything, begging me to go. You see, for me, a new landscape is an adventure waiting to happen, the best kind of change to experience that exists in my world. When I'm not on a new journey, I'm usually dreaming up a new one, researching where to go, how to get there, and what to do...if anything at all. My head is simply stuck in the clouds and refuses to come out, and I hope it never does. Whether it's looking out of a railcar on the trans-Siberian Railroad, lazily swaying in a hammock on the Corn Islands, or keeping warm by the fire of an Inner Mongolian yurt...these prospects are all waiting to happen. And it looks like I just might need to go feed some seagulls on the coast of Morocco too. How about you? Has a new landscape surrounded your senses lately?

 Holly ~ Soupatraveler

bird's view by ~ania♥ in Morocco for a while

the next theme is...LANDSCAPES

I spent a lovely few hours over Easter looking through boxes of pictures I took as a teenager. What surprised me the most was the number of landscapes I took back in the day. Nowadays, I am all about portraits, but clearly landscapes were something that made me smile. So I thought I'd give them another try. It was a lovely excuse on a drive through Wales this past week, to ask Tom to stop the car so I could snap away. I have found myself looking at the world in a different way, at the bigger picture these past few weeks and encourage you to do the same. Hey, I even had a go at HDR, so this might be an excuse for you to try some new ways of processing too!

I'm a city girl, like Christy who uses her iPhone to show off that iconic New York landscape!

skyline by urbanmuser

I loved Meghan's view of Nebraska. This barn looks like the beginning of a really good story, doesn't it?

nebraska barn by meghan davidson

Are there wonderful photos you'd like to share from your travels abroad, like Holly who took this in Africa? You can almost hear the thunder, can't you?

distant thunder by soupatraveler

I am so looking forward to seeing your landscapes from near and far, from cities and the country and in any format!

kirstin of fleeting moments