Miles From Nowhere

I made this photograph in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.  I appreciate all the cactus I get to observe there.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
Blaise Pascal

 © copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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Blue World

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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I heard the "whoosh",  grabbed my camera and ran out of the house and found beauty.  These are the surprises that can thrill me every so often.

Suddenly the wind ceased. The air seemed motionless around us. We were off, going at the speed of the air-current in which we now lived and moved. Indeed, for us there was no more wind; and this is the first great fact of spherical ballooning. Infinitely gentle is this unfelt motion forward and upward. The illusion is complete: it seems not to be the balloon that moves, but the earth that sinks down and away...

Villages and woods, meadows and chateaux, pass across the moving scene, out of which the whistling of locomotives throws sharp notes. These faint, piercing sounds, together with the yelping and barking of dogs, are the only noises that reach one through the depths of the upper air. The human voice cannot mount up into these boundless solitudes. Human beings look like ants along the white lines that are highways; and the rows of houses look like children's playthings."

Alberto Santos-Dumont, 'My Air-Ships,' New York, The Century Company, 1904

Round and Round

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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I think I'll end the month with another picture from the Santa Monica Pier.  This is the world's only solar- powered ferris wheel.  It gives riders a panoramic view of the Southern California coastline from more than  130 feet above the Santa Monica Pier.  

“I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel

E.B. White quotes (American writer 1899-1985)

Palm Tree Silhouette

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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I just love California!

“Watch me at the window from your place on the couch, watch me pretending that I am really looking out. You say 'come here, I can't see you in this light,' but I'm much safer beside the moon tonight. 'Cause when I am a silhouette/ I have no fear, you”

Reach for Eternity

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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How many times in a lifetime does a person get to experience this kind of a view?  I must say, this Bryce Canyon adventure left me breathless.  Wow.

People are so wonderful that a photographer has only to wait for that breathless moment to capture what he wants on film. 

Weegee 

Blue Skies and Poppies

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved
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I love looking at poppies up close. They're so fragile, it's like you wonder how they survive in the harsh environment of the desert.  That's the reason that there aren't many years like this.  If it gets too hot once they bloom they die.  There have been many years when I could only find a plant or two.  The poppies are like me, they don't like the heat!

"If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom."  ~Audra Foveo