Rediscovering the Viewfinder

One of the things I've missed most in recent months is photography. I couldn't walk easily enough to seek out pretty scenery, and I was really, really tired of taking pictures from my patio. I know now (despite the fact I'm battling bronchitis this week!) that it  won't be too long before I can get out again, go to photogenic places and try to capture their beauty with my camera.

I was surprised the other day when something unusually pretty popped into my view and prompted me go get my camera. That hadn't happened for a while. We'd just finished dinner, something that was spicy, greasy and delicious, and the little dabs of color and the arrangement of the grease bubbles on my dirty plate inspired me. (Okay, I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Whatever.)

Anyway, that kind of primed my photographic pump, and I've taken a few more pictures since then. I still can't get out too far, so most of those new photos have been shot--deja vu--from my patio. Only now I don't seem to mind so much.

Over the years I've taken dozens of photos of birds sitting atop the utility pole in my next-door neighbor's yard. Here's the newest of them:

The sycamore tree two doors down was split in half by a summer storm in 2015. I can only see the very top of it now:

This is Gimpy on a windy day:

Here I was aiming the lens through the back fence into another neighbor's yard. Can you believe how green everything is?

Turning the camera a little to the left toward the same back fence, here are two pecan trees gleaming in the sunlight:

I saved that pecan-trees photo to show you next-to-last because I just so happen to have a picture taken almost exactly one year ago of the same two trees. Here's how the scene looked on January 6, 2015:

Looks like last year got off to a gloomy start and never got a whole lot better. I  hope to expand my photographic boundaries in 2016.