Daily Prompt

birdsong

I heard this glorious symphony of sound during yesterday’s morning walk in the Vancouver sunshine. It was a healing moment with which to escape the daily doom and gloom that I feel we are all being subjected to know right now.

Why not join me on my walk and enjoy the images of Kitsilano Beach, Vanier Park and snowy Vancouver at its wintery best by visiting escape with me which I have also posted today. I’m feeling better already. I hope you are too.

escape with me

I have a treat for you today. Come and join me on my morning walk yesterday and escape for a few minutes from the hate, the anger, the despair, and the noise that we are all being pummelled with each and every day. I don’t know about you but my troubled soul needed a little healing and when the sun rose yesterday on freshly fallen snow with the mountains stark against the bluest of skies, I knew all I had to do was dress warmly, put on my boots and venture out into the crisp air and morning sunshine.  I’m happy to say it worked.

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It didn’t take long to enjoy every magical moment with everyone else who was out and about.

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This gallery, which I have also made into a slide show, I hope will help sooth your soul too.

This next photo is for Cheri and her Weekly Photo Challenge: Shadow

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As I came closer to the trees  in Vanier Park I was greeted by a symphony of sound that made me stop in my tracks and listen for several minutes, joined by others who were equally as enthralled.  Here is a short excerpt from my post entitled Birdsong for today’s Daily Prompt: Heard.  If you feel like pausing for a minute or two and hearing more visit the post and listen to it all.

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I hope this has made your day as much as it did mine.

branch majesty

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I rescued this majestic branch whilst walking home one day last summer and brought it back to the studio. It was about to be pulverized in a wood chipper but like the photinia that you will remember from my yard work to art work story, it became my model.

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Using the small branches from the photinia as drawing tools it started to come to life transforming my empty sheet of Arches watercolour paper one warm July day.

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Finally, as I completed the painting today with the brushes from the Gift of the Four Treasures, the spirit of the branch filled the studio once again and its story was complete.

Daily Prompt: Leftovers Sandwich

Daily Prompt: Today, publish a post based on unused material from a previous piece –a paragraph you nixed, a link you didn’t include, a photo you decided not to use. Let your leftovers shine!

tea

Perhaps this image doesn’t truly qualify as not a single sandwich was leftover. However, the image itself is indeed a leftover, as it was one that I had thought of using for the Weekly Photo Challenge: Juxtaposition in January, but never did. Some meta detail: the sandwiches were egg and tomato, cucumber and cream cheese and smoked salmon and cream cheese.

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Photography 101: Edge – Today is all about straight edges, and tweaking your image to ensure your lines are perfectly positioned.

The Weekly Photo Challenge: Converge – Photos are visual spaces where shapes and lines, objects, and people come together

I was going to discard this over-exposed photo that I took last weekend of a girl in a red scarf walking along the railway tracks. However, after a little editing the image developed a certain edginess that had a mesmerizing quality to it.  I hope you agree.

I originally posted this for Photography 101 two days ago but with Ben’s Weekly Photo Challenge today asking us to “explore the ways lines and shapes can converge in interesting ways through photography” I have updated the post for Ben’s challenge as it seems to be the perfect fit, particularly as I had originally thought of giving it the title “The Vanishing Point Vanishes”.

Dare Quam Accipere

Thomas Guy
My earliest memory of Thomas Guy was seeing him on his pedestal in the forecourt of Guy’s Hospital the day I came for my medical school interview.  I wonder what he thought of this keen young man, wide-eyed and full of enthusiasm striding passed him towards his hoped-for future. I hope he was pleased with what he saw, for I would see him every day for many years to come. Occasionally I would remember to wish him a good morning or a good evening, and thank him for founding this great hospital all those years ago in 1721.

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And so it was that fifty years ago I began my medical studies; and so it is this very day marks the fiftieth anniversary of the edition of the Guy’s Hospital Gazette that welcomed us all as students of one of the finest medical schools in the world. I hope all medical students everywhere beginning their own journeys this month will enjoy the words of Passim written by the then editors of the Gazette, Drs. Davis and Hicks. Their timely and inspiring words will serve them well, as they did us, in the years to come.  Remember to highlight the text to enlarge it and read it more easily.

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Much has changed over the past fifty years.  Guy’s has joined Kings’s College Hospital and St Thomas’s Hospital and the combined institution is now known as the Guy’s King’s and St Thomas’ School of Medicine at Kings College London.  The good news is that the editors of the GKT Gazette are developing an open access digital library that will collate all of the published issues since the inaugural Guy’s Hospital Gazette of 1872 , for which our thanks are very much in order.

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This post is in response to Ben’s Daily Prompt: Reverse Shot. What’s your earliest memory involving another person? Recreate the scene — from the other person’s perspective.

Daily Prompt: Sweeping Motions

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This painting from a few years ago, like Express Yourself, is all about sweeping motions creating an imagined landscape that could be described as somewhat dreamy…maybe!

Beauty and the Beach

Showboat
Whether you’re dancing…

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stretching…

Kits beach strolling

strolling…

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picnicking

playground

twirling…

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hurling…

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grilling…

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chilling…

joy

jumping for joy…

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or simply just sitting and watching the sunset…

kits beach

…There is nowhere better than to be on Kitsilano Beach on a perfect Vancouver evening.

In response to Ben asking us “What makes us go “Click!” and as a final submission to Cheri’s WPC “Silhouette”. Those of you who have been following my blog know that Kits Beach and English Bay are two of my favourite subjects and you can find more pictures by following the links from my tags below.