Good to Be

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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This is another of my photos from a Senior (high school) photo shoot.  I love this shot so much. She looks exactly like a person should when they get out of high school and starts their adult life; feeling great, with the whole world as her oyster.

From the end spring new beginnings. 

Pliny the Elder

Seventeen

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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I did a "Best Friends" photo shoot last year.  They were about to start their senior year of high school.  We had a great time together.  You could tell that they were special friends.

"No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever." 

Francois Mocuriac

Unusual You

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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Today I'm posting a Photoshop piece.  My new goal is to post at least one new piece a week.  This week I happen to be one ahead!

A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant - rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance - but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself. 

Roberto Burle Marx

Learning How to Die

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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These photos are of an abandoned building that I believe was a church or a VFW hall.  It's very dilapidated and has been a hangout over the years for homeless people, teenagers who are partying, and gang members.  I loved the day I had here.  There were many rooms and interesting areas to photograph.

Men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed-off wings where he never ventures. 

Francois Mauriac

Arboretum

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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I haven't posted photos in the recent past because I just put in a new 1TB hard drive in my Mac Pro, otherwise known as "Big Papa".  It wasn't difficult, just time-consuming.  So far, so great.  Now I have much increased space, which I need because I have 24,000 photos and 15,000 songs in my itunes library.  The photos for today were taken on my trip to the Getty Museum.  The paint on the arboretum is the only paint on the entire property that's not white.

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. 

Albert Einstein

The Slow Life

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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What could he actually be discovering and creating in his mind?

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing. 

Dodie Smith

Wither Must I Wander

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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I'm encouraging myself to continue my surreal photo montages.  I have a series of these and I am adding to my collection.  I'll be posting these every so often.  

Is there something we have forgotten? Some precious thing we have lost, wandering in strange lands? 

Arna Bontemps