Hot Water Bottle

The first house where I lived in Wales did not have central heat, or even automatic hot water. The UK in the winter can be incredibly damp and cold, and you get chilled to the bone. Aside from being almost fully clothed when I went to bed, I found that the best solution to keeping warm was a hot water bottle. I would stick it at the foot of the bed as I was getting ready for bed, and by the time I jumped in, the area where my feet were was all nice and toasty. As I fell asleep, I’d move the bottle around so it would warm my back and then my front. I haven’t had a hot water bottle since then, but recently bought one because my back was hurting. I remembered what a wonderful simple little item this is, and have been using it for a few weeks. I find that I can turn the heat down lower when I go to bed and stick my bottle at the bottom of the bed like I did in Wales. I played around with making a cover for it using an old cashmere sweater. Now it will be doubly nice! You can find the old-fashioned red hot water bottles at any drugstore.

Inspirational Photos

- Source

Thundersnow!

Sometimes when we get a fast-moving snowstorm, like we did today, we also get thunder and lightening along with it. A huge flash of light and then some incredible thunder! Can I just tell you how much Connor hates thunder? Today’s snow is very wet and heavy snow and when I was walking Connor earlier this evening, I could hear the thud of big wet clumps of snow falling from the trees. This is the kind of snow that takes the power lines down.  But not here… not yet!

Art by Leonceo!

I want to thank Leonceo Omar Bennett for creating this image art for me. I love this. Thank you.

Books on Tuesday

Hideously, I had jury duty yesterday, along with 900+ of my fellow Baltimoreans. Since my number was towards to the very bottom of the list, I had to do a lot of sitting around and waiting. I finished my first book before lunch, and so needed to find something to occupy the rest of the day.

I stopped in a little used bookstore and spotted the perfect book: Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her World, Her Art.  I knew reading this book would transport me out of the jury waiting room and into a country house in Virginia and then over to England. I am not yet finished with this book, but am finding it totally fascinating. I only wish they had a family tree to I could get everyone straight! Here’s a great piece from Southern Accents (RIP) about Nancy Lancaster’s houses.

Today, I found a copy of “The Englishman’s Garden” by Alvilde Lees-Milne, whom I wrote about here. In this book, 33 Englishmen talk about the gardens that they’ve created, many times without help from a large staff or even a single gardener. The book is filled with images in black and white and in colour.

It’s nice to be transported through books!

To Natural Hair:

Art work by Love Sugar

Photographer’s Rights

As a blogger, I am constantly taking pictures of things that attract my attention. When I am in a shop, I always request permission to take photographs, informing the shop owner or manager that I write a blog and that I’d like to take some pictures and include them on my blog, along with a link to their shop. If the shop owner is smart, they will let me take pictures, because it’s free publicity for them.

It is very rare that my polite request is refused. If it is, then it’s not a place where I want to refer people. My feeling is that if the owner/manager is difficult about this request, then they might be problematic in other ways.

Many times, I walk or drive through neighbourhoods and take pictures of every house on the block. I can certainly understand someone being a little nervous about having a stranger take a picture of their house, but I am not out front with a tripod and a huge telephoto lens. I am always careful to be on public property as I am taking a picture of what I can see from that vantage point. If I want to get a close up of some detail, I use my telephoto setting on my camera and use the highest resolution for the shot. That way, I can edit it later without losing detail. The other day, I took a picture on a public street of something that was in full view of the public and I was assaulted because a person didn’t think I should have taken the picture. They tried to take my camera from me. I knew my rights as a photographer and objected strongly.

If you’re out and about photographing houses, landscapes, fashion and style or even your dinner, you should read and know your rights as a photographer. You can find a PDF of them here. And here’s a good article, also in a PDF, that explains in some detail what you can and cannot do, both while shooting pictures, and after you’ve shot them.

The law in the United States of America is pretty simple. You are allowed to photograph anything with the following exceptions:

• Certain military installations or operations.

• People who have a reasonable expectation of privacy. That is, people who are some place that's not easily visible to the general public, e.g., if you shoot through someone's window with a telephoto lens.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read through the Photographer’s Rights. You never know when the information might come in handy.