sunrises/sunsets – nancy merrill photography

A Photo a Week Challenge: Sunrise

For some people, mornings can be a bit challenging. I’m an early riser, and I especially love late summer/early fall morning sunrises. While sunsets may get the majority of the attention, a beautiful sunrise has very few competitors. This sunset was last January.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO OF SUNRISES.

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: Vacation Memories

This summer, we were supposed to go to Europe. We had tickets to the Passion Play at Oberammergau with plans to travel around Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men. Hopeful, that trip will happen in a couple of years. In the meantime, we are doing a lot of close-by trips to the mountains. I feel very blessed to live in a place with diverse geography. I have mountains, deserts, and red rock canyons all within a 3-hour drive from my home. One thing Utah does not have is beautiful beaches. This vacation memory is from last September when we took a chance on a mystery trip and landed in Cancun, Mexico. It was so much fun, and I wish we had gone on one of these trips sooner. The travel agents are friends who live in our neighborhood. They had been telling us for years that we should go with them, and this was their last one before retiring. *sigh* At least we have the memories and the photos.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO VACATIONS PAST.

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.

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.

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.

Thankful November 7th: Photography

I love taking pictures. I love taking pictures of people. I love taking pictures of places. I love taking pictures of abstract things. I just love taking pictures. My love of photography started with I was very young. Starting from about age 7, if you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you, “A free-lance photojournalist for the National Geographic Society.” And I knew what that meant. My parents had a subscription to the NGS, and each month I would pour over the photos from around the world of amazing places and cultures. I got my first camera when I was about 10. I took a photography class in 9th Grade where we learned all about light, f-stops, aperture, and how to develop your own black and white film (yes, film). I got my first really good camera when I was 23, and I loved taking black and white slides. My first trip to Europe (when I was 26), all of my photos were slides. Crazy, I know. But now, with everything digital, most photos are shared online and shown in a new form of slide show. I was just ahead of my time.

Recently, I’ve delved in portrait photography, and it’s been a blast. Weddings can still give me some anxiety, but it is so much fun to capture moments and memories for people.

I had a hard time deciding what photo I would include on this post. I decided to use the first photos I posted when I started this blog seven years ago. I still can’t believe it’s been that long. What an amazing adventure!

Thankful November 6th: Utah

Earlier I posted about how I’m thankful for the beauty of our wonderful earth. Today, I wanted to focus on my home state of Utah. Utah has amazing diversity in nature, from lush forests to desert to red rock formations and mountains. When the Mormon pioneers first settled here, the leader Brigham Young prophesied that the industries of the pioneers would make the desert blossom like the rose, and it truly has. The Salt Lake Valley has a population of over 1 million people, and the state has a population of over 3 million.

I love traveling around this beautiful state, photographing nature and people across the landscape.

Thankful November 2nd: The Beauties of the Earth

For the beauty of the earth,
For the beauty of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies,
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.
Folliott S. Pierpoint, 1835-1917

I have been lucky enough to do a bit of traveling around this amazing planet on which we live (that sentence structure is a nod to all of my English professors at the University of Utah). I’ve been to Asia, Europe, Mexico, Great Britain, and most of the United States of America. Everywhere I go, I find beautiful things to photograph and wonderful people who fill my heart with happiness.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Sun & Water

I don’t know what it is about mixing the sun and water that always creates such beauty, but I’m really glad it does. This beautiful sunrise was taken at our beach resort in Cancun, Mexico last Thursday.

Two weeks ago tomorrow, my husband and I started on a fun adventure. We signed up for a mystery tour. We were told average temperatures (80-90) and we were told to pack an umbrella and a swimming suit. We were also told to bring our passports. That was it. Two weeks before departure, we were told to meet at the Southwest Airlines check in at the airport at 4:45am (no, that’s not a typo). We went to the checkin counter, gave them our bags, and got our boarding passes for Cancun, Mexico. Whoot whoot! A very nice surprise. We spent the week driving individual speed boats, visiting Mayan ruins, driving through the jungle on ATVs, zip lining (a personal favorite), snorkeling, playing in the water, and taking boats across the beautiful Caribbean Sea to small islands to have lunches on private beaches and do more water-based things. I would highly recommend going on this company’s next mystery tour, but the couple who runs the travel agency are in their late 70s and are retiring. This was their last hurrah, and we are so glad that we caught their final fling.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO (OR TWO OR THREE) THAT FEATURES THE SUN AND WATER TOGETHER.

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.