Tag: photo challenge

Lens Artists Photo Challenge #353 – Stormy

June 18th, 2025

I want to take a brief break from my Europe journals to participate in a photo challenge my mom, Beth of wanderingdawgs.com, is hosting. She recently joined the Lens-Artist team of photographers who prompt bloggers with weekly challenges. This week is Mom’s first time hosting, and she has challenged us to share stormy images.

My mom has been blogging on her WordPress site since 2013, when she and my dad took their RV to Alaska. She started Wandering Dawgs to chronicle their adventures. In recent years, they’ve slowed down their RVing, but Mom still blogs regularly. She’s found community through her blog and frequently tells me about RV and photography friends she’s met online. For several years now she’s been active with the Lens-Artists and participating in the weekly Lens-Artists Challenges. I’m excited for her that she was recently asked to become part of the team of hosts. Congratulations, Mom!

On Tybee Island, where I grew up and where Mom and Dad still live, thunderstorms and hurricanes are as much a part of life as humidity, seafood, marshgrass, and Spanish moss. It seems only fitting that Mom selected storms as her theme.

I’ve got lots of images of storm clouds in my photo archives. The cloudscapes of Georgia and Florida were a favorite part of living there. Here in Virginia, I don’t have as clear a view of the sky to see unobstructed cloudscapes, but we do get pretty good ice and snow in winter, and some great cloudbursts in spring. When looking through my photographs for this challenge, I realized I have no good shots of stormy weather in autumn. I’ll have to remedy that.

Spring

Spring at the nursery during a cloudburst

Shopping for plants at the nursery, I got caught in a sudden downpour. I dashed into a greenhouse doorway to sit it out. It was over within minutes.

Summer

I love storm clouds in summer, so that’s what my favorite storm-related pictures are of.

Thunderheads over the Gulf of Mexico

Thunderheads at sunset

Double red flag before Tropical Storm Isaias, Atlantic Beach, NC.

After Isaias.

Fall

I have no images of leaves blowing, or wind in jewel-toned trees, or a good autumnal downpour. The best I have is a shot of a walk in the park after a storm in Munich.

After the rain in Munich

Winter

Most of my winter photos are of the aftermath of storms rather than the storms themselves. We do get spectacular ice storms here that make for pretty pictures.

Walking in a snowstorm

Evidence of an ice storm

Gust of wind after snow

Thanks for the fun challenge, Mom!

If you’re interested in following or joining the Lens-Artists challenges, John from the team has more information here.
Impermanent

June 22nd, 2017

I must have taken 100 photographs yesterday for the transient photo challenge: everything about the beach is impermanent. Waves roll in, crash, spend out, and they are gone. Shells clack together and crumble in the pounding surf. Sea grass clumps wash ashore, then lift and move as waves wash over the flat sand. Surfers follow the swells: they appear when there are waves, and vanish when the sea is flat. Shore birds follow the tides, follow the fish, follow the tiny coquina clams that surface in the swash zone, then burrow back into the sand when the water recedes.

I photographed waves, shells, surfers, turtle nests. I photographed froth as it moved over the sand, sand as it moved over my toes, my toes as they were washed clean in fizzy bubble water.

Standing in the swash zone, where sand shifts under my feet

I photographed surfers bobbing, dozens of them clustered in the same tiny strip of shallows, where the sand under the surface is just right to break waves for surfing. I photographed surfers standing on the shore, boards under their arms, pointing at sets coming in. I photographed surfers standing up on waves.

Bobbing in the surf

A pretty wave

What is most transient of all, though, most impermanent to me and my family right now, is the family condo we are staying in. This is our final vacation here before the condo is sold. My husband came here for the first time the year he was born, and has come nearly every summer in the 44 years since that first visit. Our children have grown up with this condo and this beach, too, and I wanted to capture as much as I could before it’s gone from us.

Shorebird breakfasting

Turtle nest and sea oats

Water rushing back out to sea

My morning writing spot
Weightless on the beach

January 10th, 2016

We travelled to my home town of Tybee Island after Christmas, and there’s something about smelling the salt air and being near the ocean there that makes me feel unburdened. Weightless. The sky was overcast the whole time we were there, which makes the images feel heavy. I, however, still felt light. Here are some of my photographs from our trip for this week’s Daily Post Weight(less) photo challenge.

Silhouette of kids at the beach at sunset.

Afternoon low tide at Tybee beach, December 2015.

Sea foam on a winter day.

Tidal creek at the end of my parents’ dock.

Sunrise on a morning run.
Hidden stump

May 30th, 2015

Hidden stump on running route

Back in January, I started bringing my phone on my running route so that I could entertain myself while I ran. I leaned on my phone’s camera to find novel ways to look at the same scenery I saw every single time I set my timer and vowed to run for 30 minutes.

Despite passing this stump dozens of times, even when the trees had no leaves and it must have been exposed, I never noticed it. I only saw it this past weekend, when I slowed down. When I didn’t set a timer. When I decided to walk instead of run.

For the Daily Post Photo Challenge: On the Way.
Broken paint

May 24th, 2015

I love the textures of this peeling paint on a cabin at Fairy Stone State Park in Virginia. I shot several permutations using the rule of thirds, thinking of Rothko’s compositions with each framing of the peeled paint.

For the Daily Post: Broken photo challenge.
Beer table

July 19th, 2014

This photograph needs no words.

What better container is there than a table that ices your beer? None, that’s what. My husband found plans for this awesomeness over on Ana White’s site and he put it together in a couple of weekends. It makes me happy.