churches – nancy merrill photography

A Photo a Week Challenge: Lights

With Christmas this week, it’s time for my traditional lights challenge. I love Christmas lights. I love the warmth and magic they bring to the season. To say that I am addicted to light would be very accurate. Of course, we need light to live, so that’s rather fitting. I hope your holiday season is filled with light and love and the joy of hope.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO FEATURING LIGHTS.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.
Come back here and post a link to your image in the comments for this challenge.
Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Backlit

I seem to be visiting photos from vacations past. It’s probably because we haven’t taken many trips in the last twelves month. Ah, well. While I remember very well where and when I took the photo from last week (Switzerland in 2016), the only things I remember about this circumstances for this photo is that it was during our 2014 trip to Scotland and England and that we stopped because we saw a very pretty church and wanted to go inside. However, I do love this photo and feel that it’s perfect for a challenge this time of year because the stained glass is a beautiful depiction of Christ’s Crucifixion, very timely as much of the Christian world just celebrated Easter and the Eastern Orthodox churches will be celebrating in early May.

I do love stained glass. I love how from the outside of the building you can’t really tell what it is going to show you until you come inside and let the sun do its work. I have visited Notre Dame in Paris, and I was so happy to hear that, even with the tragedy of the fire, the great Rose Window was preserved.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO THAT USES BACKLIGHTING.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.
Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Squirrel!

With the mountains so close, Salt Lake City has a lot of wildlife. Once, while waiting for a lightrail train to pass, a beautiful, four-point buck came bounding down the tracks ahead of the train. My sister is constantly battling to keep her plants and trees alive from all of the deer that make their way down to her yard during winter and early spring. Usually, chipmucks and potguts stay in the mountains, but we do get frequent squirrel sitings. This guy made his presence known during a wedding shoot at a popular photography site near downtown Salt Lake. He was so obliging to pose that I couldn’t resist taking his photo.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO (OR TWO OR THREE) OF ANIMALS, WILD OR NOT.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.
Come back here and post a link to your image in the comments for this challenge.
Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Summer Vacation 2020

This year, summer vacations are going to be very different from years past. My sister did a 10-day virtual summer vacation on Facebook, posting pictures from vacations past and asking people to guess were they “where” that day. It was great fun, so I did the same thing. Here are the photos I included. They span 9 years of vacations, and I would love to go back and see each and every place. So, if you could visit anywhere in the world this summer, where would you go?

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO OR… THAT SHOW YOUR DREAM SUMMER VACATION.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.
Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Over 100 Years Old

This is the Box Elder Tabernacle in Brigham City, Utah. It was built by the Mormon pioneers who settled the area in 1897. The tabernacle is still used as a meetinghouse now, seating approximately 1600 people. It is also a wonderful venue for concerts and other special events and is open for tours during the summer. It was put on National Register of Historic Places on May 14, 1971.

Whenever we travel to Europe, it’s easy to find buildings and points of interest to photograph that are 100-1,500 years old or even older (Stonehenge, Colosseum, Pantheon, etc.). To us newbie Americans, that’s amazing. In a few years, we will be celebrating our 250th anniversary as a country, so anything that’s 100 years or older is very old to us.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO OF THINGS 100 YEARS OLD OR OLDER.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ and “Photo a Week” tags.
Come back here and post a link to your image in the comments for this challenge.
Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

Christmas Lights Day #23

Salt Lake Temple with Christmas lights

Christmas Lights Day #12

Salt Lake Temple with Christmas lights

Thankful November 24th: My Faith

You are getting two post today because yesterday was too full to do a post (gone from 8 in the morning until 11 in the evening). And the first one today was for fun (see Thankful November 24th: Chocolate for reference.) This post will be much more serious. I’m sure that many people who follow this blog and read my posts are aware that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes known as the Mormon Church). I haven’t tried to make it a secret. I have also tried to not be overbearing about it. I was born and raised in Utah in a family that is very actively involved in this religion. When I was 22 years old, I served as a volunteer missionary to Wisconsin. I married my husband in the beautiful Mount Timpanogos Temple in American Fork, Utah. I have been living my religion as best as I can for almost 53-1/2 years. Having faith has grounded me, given me hope as I see things happening in the world around me, and provided me with a community wherever I have moved. I am a firm believer in Jesus Christ. I have faith in a Heavenly Father, who loves and knows me. I’m grateful for scriptures I can turn to for comfort and guidance during difficult times in my life.

Whatever your religious (or non-religious) life may be, I hope that you find love, happiness, and joy in the Christmas season this year. I love celebrating the birth of my Savior with the entire world.

Thankful November 19th: Light

I know it may seem obvious and a bit silly to say, but I am so thankful for light, and not just as a photographer. The other evening, we had the most glorious sunset. I was driving and couldn’t stop and grab a picture of it. Sometimes it’s nice to just enjoy the beauty and not worry about angles and f-stops and aperture. C.S. Lewis once wrote “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

Thankful November 18th: Traveling

I know that I’ve already expressed gratitude for the earth and its beauties, but I am also very grateful for the chance I’ve had (and continue to have) to travel many places around the world and also close to home. When my husband and I got married, he hadn’t traveled much. A couple of years after we married, I convinced him that we needed to take a trip to Great Britain to visit a nephew who had been transferred to London for a year, along with his wife and three boys. It was the best thing that could have happened to us. Since then, we have made a few more trips across the pond to the east, across the pond to the west, and headed down south for my first experience in Mexico (besides Tijuana). I’m looking forward to many more adventures around this amazing globe we live on in the near and distant future.