Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Bayeux

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France2

We drove from Paris to Bayeux.  We wanted to use Bayeux as the starting place for our day of Normandy WWII site-seeing. Bayeux was a beautiful city, and we were lucky enough to have a great view of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Bayeux from our hotel room window (we stayed at Churchill Hotel and highly recommend it). I photographed the cathedral two nights in a row – the first night was foggy, so I couldn’t resist taking more pictures of the cathedral against a dark, clear sky on our second night in Bayeux. On our way out of Bayeux we stopped at the cathedral so that we could walk around the inside of it – it was fairly early, so I was surprised and thankful that it was already open. I would have been sad had I not gotten to see the inside of the cathedral that I had thoroughly enjoyed photographing the exterior of the building.

The cathedral was consecrated on July 14, 1077, and was rebuilt following extensive damage during the 1100s.

The fog provided both a nice challenge and a beautiful, blue backdrop against which to photograph the cathedral.

Notre Dame Cathedral – Bayeux

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Beavers Bend State Park – Broken Bow, Oklahoma

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Fall is upon us in the Texas panhandle!  The days are getting cooler and shorter, and I can’t help but look back on the trip we took to Beavers Bend State Park during the first weekend in November last year.  We went out of our way to take Talimena National Scenic Byway on our way to the park.  The byway was beautiful, but it wasn’t very conducive to stopping for photographs, which was a little disappointing.

Talimena National Scenic Byway

There were several areas to pull over and stop at scenic overlooks, but many of them were on the west side of the road, which meant that we were staring straight into the sun.  This overlook was on the east side of the road, so the sun was at our backs, and we were actually able to see the view.

Talimena National Scenic Byway

We arrived at Beavers Bend after dark and spent quite a bit of time searching for a campsite.  It would have been easier to find a campsite had we arrived when it was still light outside.  This was our first trip to Beavers Bend, and we weren’t familiar with how the campsites were set up (common parking lot, a parking area at each campsite, etc.).  It had been awhile since we had eaten, and I was getting hangry, so we finally gave up, got out of the car, and stumbled across an open campsite at the Dogwood Campground.  It was the only open campsite we had come across in our hour-plus search, and we just knew it was going to be a crummy campsite, but our chili was calling (actually…the ingredients for chili were calling).  We woke up in the morning, and Bryan got out of the tent first.  He ventured out, and then came back and told me that I had to get up because it was the most beautiful campground ever.  I initially thought that he had to be lying but got up anyways and was me with a gorgeous view.  The Mountain Fork River was a short (less than 1 minute) walk away from our tent.  We did quite a bit of hiking while we were there, but the trails were not marked very well, and we weren’t able to plan our hikes ahead of time because web-based-information for Oklahoma State Parks in general is…lacking.  Here’s a link to a site with some information on hiking trails at Beavers Bend.  I think we hiked several portions of the David Boren Hiking Trail, the Skyline Trail, and the Forest Heritage Tree Trail.

If you visit Beavers Bend and aren’t able to find a place to pay for your campsite, don’t worry about it.  We went to the headquarters office and asked where we were supposed to pay for our site.  They told us that someone walks around the campgrounds each day collecting fees from the people who are at their campsites at that time.  So….if you’re not at your campsite, then you ultimately don’t have to pay — not much of a way to run a business.

Fog Rolling Across Mountain Fork River (Dogwood Campground)

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Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris – Inside & Outside

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Notre Dame Cathedral

Visiting Notre-Dame on the day that we landed in Paris was a great way to kick-off our trip to France…and a great place to take refuge from a brief rainstorm.  Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris (Our Lady of Paris in French) was every bit as beautiful inside as I had hoped it would be.  Notre-Dame is on the eastern half of Île de la Cité, and is a great example of French Gothic architecture.  Notre-Dame’s cornerstone was laid in 1163, and construction was completed during 1345, though it was damaged, restored, and updated many times throughout the years.  It was one of the first churches built with flying buttresses as supports.  It was designated a Monument Historique in 1862.  Fun fact: much of the outside of the cathedral, including the gargoyles and chimeras were painted in vivid colors at one point in time, though all of the paint has since worn off.

Rose Window

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Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris Towers

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FranceWe got to our hotel in Paris around 10 AM, checked in to our room at Hotel du Cadran, grabbed our backpacks, and ventured out into the city.  Our first stop was Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral.  It started raining almost immediately when we got out of the metro station, so we went straight into the cathedral without spending any time outside.  The inside of the cathedral was beautiful, but I really wanted to go up into the towers.  Thanks to the rain shower (which passed quickly) the line for the Notre Dame Towers was fairly short, so we didn’t have to long to wait.

As I understand it, the gargoyles are used as water spouts to direct the flow of water off of the cathedral roof.  I assume that everything without a water spout is a chimera.  Chimeras are mythological fire-breathing creatures, most often portrayed as lions, though I did not see any lion-esque chimera at Notre Dame.

Being eye-level with the chimeras was amazing, and the views of Paris were spectacular.  The 387 step climb to the top of the South tower was well worth it!  I was amazed to see that each of the chimeras on the upper levels of the cathedral appeared to be unique.  So much thought and artistry went into the design of older buildings.  It always amazes me that mankind was able to accomplish so much with such little technology.  According to the cathedral’s website, the gargoyles and chimera were installed during the 17th and 19th centuries and were designed by Viollet-le-Duc and Emmanuel Bell.

For reference, I thought I’d include a photograph of the front of the cathedrals so that you can see where the towers are.  The South tower is on the right.

Notre Dame Cathedral Towers

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2015 Supermoon Total Lunar Eclipse

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Anybody who knows me knows that I’m a pretty big nerd — it’s okay, I came to terms with it long ago and learned that it was way easier to embrace my nerdiness rather than try to hide it.  My husband and I were pretty excited about tonight’s supermoon total lunar eclipse.  We spent a good portion of the night in the alley behind our house…sitting in lawn chairs and observing (and photographing) the eclipse.

This is the first photograph that I took of the eclipse.  I took it with my 18-250mm lens and then quickly remembered that I own a 50-500mm lens, which I promptly switched to.

8:15 PM

The photographs that I took with my 50-500mm lens are much more zoomed-in.  I struggled to get decent photos as the eclipse progressed but wanted to include them in this post anyways in an attempt to show a decent progression of the eclipse.

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Somewhere in the Caribbean Sea…

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Puerto Rico

During July 2012 my husband and I flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico, as the starting point for our week-long vacation in Vieques.  Every time we fly somewhere, I try to book a window seat so that I can stare out the window and maybe get a few good pictures or see something I’ve never seen.  On our way to San Juan, we flew over an incredibly magical looking place — the water was the most gorgeous shade of blue, and there were TONS of islands.  You could even see patterns in the water being caused by the current and the depth of the sea.  I was sitting next to an unusually clean/clear window and was able to get some great pictures.

I never would have imagined that I’d ever find out the identity of this magical land…until today.  I’m so excited that my fifth blog post is about a something that was a distant memory until I stumbled upon a photo someone posted from NASA’s Earth Observatory website on Reddit.  I immediately recognized the photograph because I, too, had taken pictures of it.  The area is called Exuma, and it’s part of The Bahamas.  Exuma is made up of over 365 islands, called cays.  Here’s a link to Exuma on Google Maps.

This photo is the one that immediately came to mind when I first saw NASA’s photos.

Hog Cay, Davy Cay, Tommy Young’s Cay, Hummingbird Cay, & Bowe Cay

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Photography Contests Galore!

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Photo Contest Entries Collage September must be the month for photo contests. Birds & Blooms’ Backyard Photo Contest entries must be postmarked by September 15th, and entries for Solvay’s Specialty Polymer’s Business Group’s 2016 calendar are due on September 15th, as well.  Entries for the 2015 Amarillo Tri-State Fair are due on September 17th.

Birds & Blooms – Backyard Photo Contest

I was cleaning up my office when I came across a page out of the September 2015 Birds & Blooms issue about a photo contest that I had intended to enter but had completely forgotten about.  There are three categories in the competition – Best Flower, Best Bird, & Best Butterfly.  I regularly take photos of all three of those items, so I decided that I’d go ahead and purchase one print to enter into each of the categories.

The flower photograph that I’m going to enter is a photo of some gladioli that I planted this year.  I love that they’re tri-colored, because all of my other gladioli are only one color.  I also think that our “rustic” fence makes a nice photo-background.

Backyard Gladioli

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Night Photos of La Ville Lumière

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Prior to embarking on our trip to France, I contacted a good friend of mine from college (Chris — who had just gotten back from Paris) to see whether or not he brought his tripod with him on their trip, and, if he did, whether or not it was worth the hassle.  I brought my tripod with me on the December 2014 trip that Bryan and I took to New York City, but I did not use it a single time.  I didn’t want to bring it along on our trip to France if it was just going to sit in our hotel room the whole time.  Chris more or less said, Sarah — Paris is The City of Light, if you’re going to bring your tripod on only one trip, it should be this one.  Chris took some excellent night shots during their trip to Paris, and he made a convincing argument in favor of toting a tripod overseas, so I made the decision to bring mine — and because I decided to bring it, I told myself that I would definitely use it — no ifs, ands, or buts.

For being such a populous city and popular tourist destination, it was surprisingly easy to find places in Paris to set-up a tripod (without inconveniencing others) in an attempt to get nighttime shots of many of their popular tourist destinations.  Bryan patiently (and graciously) escorted me around the city late at night (it did not get dark in April until after 10 PM) so that I could take photos of the Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, and Notre Dame.

The first stop that we made for nighttime pictures was Pont Alexandre III, one of the many bridges that crosses the Seine in Paris and a location that Chris suggested for getting photos of the Eiffel Tower at night.  The location definitely did not disappoint, and being able to get portions of the bridge, the Siene, and a neighboring bridge all in the same photograph as the Eiffel Tower made the photos a little more interesting.  Here are two of my favorite shots from that location.

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Les Jardins de Claude Monet

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During May 2015 we took a trip to France.  After spending three full days in Paris, we rented a car to head out to Normandy and then on to the Loire valley.  We stopped at Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny on our way from Paris to Bayeux.  I’m not sure if the gardens of today are still true to how Monet planned them, but they were lovely nonetheless.  I was particularly excited to get to see the ponds and water lilies and a slightly-modernized version of his Japanese bridge — both made famous by his impressionist paintings.  I was truly amazed at the huge variety of plants and colors that were present in Monet’s gardens.  I like to think that Monet put a lot of thought into designing the gardens and that maybe what is there today still looks like what he envisioned in his head…like a living work of art. We got a little bit turned around after we left the parking lot.  There weren’t really any signs indicating where the entrance to Monet’s Gardens was, so we walked the wrong direction for a bit.  We eventually gave up and turned around, and I took this photograph on our way to the entrance, not knowing that it was actually the back of Monet’s house.  I thought that the shutters, vines, and colors were charming.

Shutters on the back of Monet’s house

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Hello, world!

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At one point in my life, writing was very important to me.  I put it on the back burner for many years and have decided that I need to make it a higher priority — not so much for the sake of writing but more so for the sake of remembering.  I’m planning on using this blog to showcase my photography and to document stories from the many trips that Bryan and I take each year.  As year after year passes, I find that it gets harder and harder to remember things that happened during trips that we took five years ago, and it makes me to sad to think that those memories are slipping away, little by little…never to be remembered again.  Hopefully this blog will help me do a better job of preserving our memories.  And hopefully I’ll do a better job updating this blog than I’ve done updating my old blog.

Here’s to photography, travel stories, hope, and the future!