Blue

            The word challenge this month is “Blue.”  The ultra challenge is to fulfill this solo photo requirement without actually shooting something the color blue.  At first the challenge seemed difficult, until I thought about the different ways I might use the word “blue” in a sentence.  After a short while, I came to realize that “blue” and “depressed” or “sad” can be used as synonyms.   This at least gave me direction.  The next step was to illustrate this.  As luck would have it, we had quite a bit of rain this month, and rain nearly always makes me feel, well, blue.  Actually, I’m not really sure if it is the rain exactly or the fact that “rainy days” often mean “stuck in the house days” and I despise being stuck in the house.  I love the outdoors and when I can’t be frolicking in nature I start feeling rather down.  So on one of these awful rainy days, I grabbed my camera and went outside to shoot the rain.  Well, rain itself is rather challenging to shoot since it doesn’t stay still long enough for me to focus the camera. Besides, if you shoot right into the rain the lens gets wet and splotchy which only manages to make my out of focus shots even more blurry. In an attempt to keep the lens dry I dug out an old umbrella.  I’m not a fan of umbrellas since they never succeed in keeping anything save the top of my head dry.  Instead of umbrellas I usually just wear a hat which I then don’t have to worry about carrying when the rain finally stops. Anyway, I opened the umbrella and held in over the camera hoping that it would keep my lens dry enough for me to get a few decent shots.  It served its purpose, protecting my camera while I got drenched.  But I love water, so being wet on a warm day was not bad at all. Lord knows what my nosy neighbors thought though as I knelt down in puddles taking pictures of more puddles, weeping flowers and fallen forlorn petals.  I’m not sure I’m crazy about any of my shots.  No, that’s not exactly true.  I love the daffodil photograph.  That one I think came out well. The flowers really do look like they are crying, but the others aren’t as good. The irony of my little photo project is that once I went outside in the rain to take pictures, once I no longer felt trapped in the house and once I felt as though I had accomplished something, I no longer felt blue. So, in case I failed miserably with the ultra challenge, I will throw in a picture of bubbles floating across a bright cloudy blue sky and therefore leave you with one blue photo.