Dilly Dally Dailies

2-10-09, originally uploaded by BetweenTheShutter.

I had a wonderful, peaceful lunch break today. I spotted these lovely little leaves creeping onto a wooden fence. I have to say I love the texture of the fence.

After I found this I went to my favorite park and ate my lunch, brainstormed, wrote out some of the life goals that have been swimming around in my head and then watched the clouds and the trees dance in the wind.  Sitting and enjoying nature has been on my to-do list for awhile. I need to start making that a regular part of my schedule. I recommend you do too.

(Hurray, we’re all caught up! and with any luck I’ll be able to keep it that way)

Hi Friends, 

I’m on vacation this weekend – and you better believe I’m taking pictures. But I won’t be able to get them up here until Monday or so.  In the mean time here are some b-sides from January.  I’m planning on doing this at the end of every month… Some days I take more than one picture (this month I took a grand total of 623!) and it can be challenging to pick one.  So I was thinking I’d put a couple of the “almost but not quite” ‘s up here every now and again.  I played a bit more with some coloring effect on some of these which was so fun I might keep doing it.  (some of them got a little out of order – sorry!)

Hope you enjoy these, let me know what you think and I’ll see ya next week.

Muah!
Jules 

1-12-09: 225 E. Cota St. – This place was just too cool to only take one picture!

1-13-09: Santa Barbara Post Office

1-14-09: East Beach on a Beautiful Day!

1-15-09: another angle of my “make a bad day better” dasies 

1-17-09: A trashcan that says “grace” on it… deep.  (I played with the colors a lot on this one)

1-19-09: A really cool deck I found at the beach.  The sun was setting which made for some fun lighting. 

1-20-09:  limes make [almost] everything yummier. 

1-12-09: I didn’t realize we had a foodland (or that they existed at all) until I took a weird way to get to a friends house. I guess there is exploring left to do here.  I really like the reflections of the traffic signal and my camera lens (yes, I took this through my car window while at a red light). 

1-24-09: Agua Dulce Foursquare Church’s outdoor lighting (I went home for a wedding shower that day).

1-29-09: I loved how these flowers weren’t going to let some silly fence keep them from growing the way they wanted to.  I really needed this encouragement the day I took this. 

1-24-09: Wedding shower just isn’t fun without a wedding dress made of toilet paper.

1-12-09: 225 E. Coat St. again – (Can you tell I liked this place?)

1-23-09: They day I found the cool green truck I also found Colonel Mustard, a crazy cool patchy blue guy, and Rusty McRuster.

1-30-09: I think I need to look up more often.  I have fun playing with the colors on this one.   

1-30-09:  I really liked the abandoned crayons at the foot of this massive artistic column.  There are a lot of different meanings you could throw on this one.  I’ll let you decide. 

1-28-09: Another image from my paperclip jar’s modeling debut. 

1-17-09: Seriously, how does she look so cool? I can’t decide which coloring I like better.  Feel free to vote. 

What a month! Thanks for keeping tabs on me and Happy February!

02-04-09, originally uploaded by BetweenTheShutter.

Today was a full fledged rainy day and I loved it. There is something so refreshing and cleansing and cozy about rain. (The fact that it hardly ever rains here probably has something to do with my being in love with it.) This barren little tree is sits outside of my office all day long. I think its rather lonely, so I took a picture of it to make it feel loved. I think it sighed a little bit when I walked away.

2-01-09, originally uploaded by BetweenTheShutter.

My good friend, Nif, and I went on a walk today and discovered an awesome park.  It’s up on some bluffs looking over the ocean and seems to go for quite awhile (we ran out of time and had to turn around before we hit the end). It was a gorgeous day and apparently this is the place to be when you are sporty, hot, and have a dog. Let’s just say that on the walk back we started talking about the steps we need to take in order to fit a puppy or two into our lives.

This tree reminds me of a crescendo and I love the way it kind of explodes at you.

(I’m sorry that I’ve gotten so completely behind! I haven’t stopped taking pictures I’ve just been working some bugs out of the whole getting them uploaded side of things. Everything should be back on track now. Thanks for hanging in there with me!)

Santa Barbara seems to have a lot of these trees.  They look normal enough the rest of the year but then in January something crazy happens and all of a sudden they are COVERED in these cute white flowers.  They seriously come out of nowhere.  And the best part is that I always forget about them until they show up. Yay for the happy flower trees!

I had trouble with this shot.  All the whites were too bright or the colors were too dark, or the background was a mess, or the picture was just way too busy (there are a ton of these flowers all over the tree) so I finally settled on this one and then had some fun in photoshop on it.  Experimenting in the spice of Dilly Dally I guess.   I’m still determined to get a couple good pics of these trees before the go back to normal so you might see something similar in the next few days.

It seemed innocent enough at the time… to give my cute little oranges some cute little faces. But I soon found out that I couldn’t bring myself to eat them for it would destroy the happy couples’ dreams of their future life together.  Plus their chaperon has a monocle and I’ve always had a soft spot for people that sport monocles – they always remind of the steward in Disney’s Cinderella.  He had to take so much grief from the king how could you not feel sorry for him?

After work today I got to hang out with my old roommates at CorkTree Cellars – it was a wonderful time of feeling grown-up, hip and stylish.  I was hoping to get a picture there but it was too dark, so my little orange friends will be famous for the day. (and there was much rejoicing)

01-22-09, originally uploaded by BetweenTheShutter.

I was feeling well enough to go outside (for a few minutes) today. I really like the rain, and puddles, and reflections…. so here you go a reflection in a rain puddle – what could be better than that?

  

01-17-09, originally uploaded by BetweenTheShutter.

Some friends of mine (and myself) traveled to the far land of Santa Monica to check out some galleries (and gelato) today. It was a day full of fun and inspiration (and gelato). This is the sun setting on Bergamont Station – a compound of galleries I will be going back to in the not-too-distant future.

(I also discovered that one can’t take pictures inside of the gelato place on the 3rd Street Promade.  It’s only January and I’ve already been shot down twice!)

I had a bit of a roller coaster day, therefore I procured some happy pink daisies to help me out of my funk.

In other news I found out that one is not allowed to take pictures inside Trader Joe’s… such a shame it was a pretty cool picture. I’m thinking I should keep a tally of how many times I get yelled at for taking pictures this year

01-04-09, originally uploaded by BetweenTheShutter.

It’s hard to tell but he is giving all three of us back rubs at the same time. Tea, breakfast burritos, good music, and a massage boy – what a life.

(and I used the timer for this one, I’m going to say that still counts as me taking the picture. Besides I took other pictures this day I just liked this one the best.)