MIA

Due to an unexpected family tragedy I am going to be MIA for a little while whilst I deal with a lot of things.
Right now I am grieving.
When I feel stronger I will post once more.
It may be a couple of days or maybe longer but I will be back.

Blessings to you all.

Sunday Stills Challenge and other random ramblings…..

Happy Monday world!
What?
It’s not Monday in your part of the world yet?
Not to worry. It soon will be. 😉

As I type this I am once again seated at my infamous messy creative space. Actually, it is a lot messier now as I am still scanning photos and have them scattered around the place. I have a feeling that I am doubling up on my scanning and have the same photo in more than one category folder but oh well. 🙂 I guess that just makes them easier to find later.

Through my Lens – Sydney and Bondi Beach

Upon alighting the ferry at Circular Quay, we merged with the swirl of humanity flowing in the same direction and burst forth upon the Quayside.
This area of Sydney is steeped in history and the first thing we saw was the old Customs House.

What the world needs now

I woke up this morning with a song in my head.
I know its strange but this often happens to me and I have to wonder what it was that I was dreaming about prior to waking to cause this phenomenon. I remember a lot of my dreams but there are many that I don’t.
However I digress….
This morning I woke up singing an old song from the ’70s that contains the following lines:

“What the world needs now, is love…. sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of”

and I thought “What has changed in the last 40 years”?

On photography and memories

As I have been scanning and backing up photos over the past few days, I have found some photos that really start the memories flowing.
Many photos are of grandparents, great grandparents, their siblings or other relatives that are important for the knowledge of my roots however I didn’t really know too many of these people well. Some I have never met but know only through photos, notes scribbled on the back and the stories of my relatives. I can look at them and see  my children, cousins, nieces and nephews (and even myself) in these faces from long ago.
Then there are the photos of people that I have known, loved …. and lost.

Backing up – and a laugh

I’ve been reading too many blogs lately about the perils of not backing up.
I thought I had a pretty good system for my backing up and I try to do it regularly.
I back up to two external hard drives and then I burn to CD/DVD. However the other day I was informed that CDs can fail after 5 years or so.
*sigh*
This threw me into a bit of a panic, so for the past few days I have been copying a lot of my CDs made 10 years or more ago onto my external HDs.
I am contemplating purchasing little USB drives to back the external HDs up to as apparently they have a longer life span.

Monochrome Madness Wednesday – A rose by any other name

This week I have chosen a photo that I took quite some time ago to enter for the MM Challenge on Leanne Cole’s blog.

I used to belong to our local camera club however with one thing and another I stopped attending. One day, one of the members (who lives only a few doors around the corner from me) knocked on the door and asked if he could pick some flowers from our garden for use in an workshop that afternoon.
I was more than happy to comply with his request.

Kindness is a way of life

Often we read or hear ‘feel good’ stories where a person has gone that little bit further and extended a kindness to those who need it.
This is not a bad thing.
In fact, it is absolutely brilliant.
I have blogged so many times about kindness and its effects not only upon ourselves but on those around us.
However, I believe that in our efforts to point out the kindness of others through the avenue of social media, we often overlook the every day kindness of those around us.