Thinking about what to post for this challenge has been pretty interesting. First I was thinking of posting one of my pictures that show Physical endurance. Then I thought about Endurance of  Charachter and use one my youngest brother whom has developmental problems and still insist on helping in the farm, showing a drive to endure no matter the obstacles.

What about those things that can withstand the passage of time? I could not think of a better example than the  Porta Coeli, a church in my old town that was built in 1906 and still stands in spite of  attacks, hurracaines and earthquakes. Not so is the case with the small Chapel where we used to listen to Mass when I was a child. It was a shock to me, when in my last visit a few weeks ago, i saw that even the cross is about to crumble.

I was lucky enough to get my Lensbabies just the day before I left on vacation to see my family. Good thing, because everyone from my Grandma, to my  cousins had to put up with me while I tried to learn how to use it.
My two most frequent photography victims were my little Nephew and  Niece.
It was fun learning how to use it and trying it out with anything from babies, families, and even a few  boats at a fishing village.

On my first Visit to Washington DC, I found many reminders of the Painful events that had shaped history. One thing that shook me the most was seeing the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian and thinking about the results of it's cargo in Hiroshima. Next was the Arlington Cemetery where the  tomb of Kennedy reminds of of a big loss for our country. And the last place was the Holocaust Museum where an exhibit in the lower floor, shows the horror of the Holocaust as it is interpreted bythe art of children. The very last one some people may not agree on, but in my view it represents the growing pains of a nation. This Quote by George Washington seems poignant to me specially now,  when we are seeing in the US more divisiveness and overt prejudice against minorities and gays. We must be careful to not become what we once opposed.

This is a candid photo of my sister's family while I was trying to get a family Portrait last summer. The kids expressions are a good sign of how painfully frustrating this day was, and my sister's expression needs no explanation.

We are going throught a huge heat wave in the midwest so I went to one of the local splash pads with a friend's kids and got a chance to try some things for this weeks invisible challenge. The first thing that was present there and noone could see was the heat, although it was  pretty obvious as soon as the kids were able to get some relief in the water.  On the edges of the playgrounds there was also evidence of the little ones that were around.
Finally, what is the thing that i invisibl in almost every photograph? well, the photographer, and in this shot I was able to capture myself taking the picture in the  reflection of one of the kids eyes.

This set probably would've fit on either of the last two challenges, but I took the pictures a bit too late. This weekend we were trying some sparklers in the backyard and  experimenting with different speeds and exposures. Even my mom got in the action making her own snake.  We had not done this before because my nephew was still too little but now, even though he could not hold the lit sparklers, he had fun running all over the place and looking at the pictures in the camera. He was even game to help me experiment with this  action shot. He had shoes that light up when he runs, so I took this 2 second exposure of him running, but you can only see his shoes. Here I fired m flash half way through the exposure,  to see him. One last experiment had my sister move her sparkler in a circle for half a second, then for a full second. This last one was my favorite, and we got it, just in time before a storm came by with it's own light show.

Last weekend I went to my first Pride Parade in Chicago and had a blast! We actually marched on it and had the chance to take some shots of the crowds from the perspective of the marchers. Here are a few of them.

Looking into the party

 Even the buildings were festive

Doggie Pride
Happy as can be

Last weekend was a pretty busy one. I traveled to Chicago to go camping and for the Pride Parade. The small park where we stayed had a small dam that gave all sort of interesting textures to the water when it went over the top. Sometimes though the things that grab your attention are small ones like this  spiderweb glowing with the light of sunset. As a bonus here is another picture taking the week before at the Palisades park. And just because the Parade was so fun, I wanted to include one of the colorful decorations found all along the route.

I love camping and I love stargazing. Sometimes I've combined stargazing with photography but I had never tried to take pictures around the campfire before. This Saturday I went with some friends and I could not resist to bring the camera out and try my hand at some night pictures. I was fascinated with how the fire made everything look so  peaceful, and even the trees around us seemed to  glow with the firelight. The best thing though, was looking into the flames, it even seemed to be looking back at you. Finally it was time to put out the fire and go into the tents, by then the only light left was just the  starlight filtering through the trees.

A week or two ago, I was reading through the forums here and someone mentioned a website where you could download the plans for a pinhole camera and sugested we posted the results. Well, The build did not worked for me, but the idea was apealing so I drilled a tiny hole in the body cap of my digital camera and here are two of the results. This was my very first try. And then after I convinced my "model" to not move here is a second attempt.  I took some with my film camera the same way but are still waiting for it to be developed. It was a fun experiment.

I was going over some of my pictures today and I was looking at how many kinds of sky pictures I've taken lately from peaceful, to  stormy. It seems like Crepuscular rays make an appearance quite frequently in my pictures, but last week I caught this unusual ones over the Magic Kingdom after a storm. Very different than these clouds in Iowa before the storm. I've just learned to keep my eyes open to see what wonders I can catch with my camera, not only for sunsets, like I used to.

I was really excited when I read this morning about the new challenge with action pictures because I love to experiment with the camera. I was looking to post a couple of pictures of my vacation that just ended a few days ago and it seems I have a few action pictures there to start with.
I know there are plenty of Sea World pictures around, but I couldn't resist to include thisflying leap in my entry. We encountered this African Musicians that were really energetic and had the fastest  hands I've ever seen. I took three shots at different speeds trying to freeze the hands while moving and they all had the Blur movement in them. Finally this one was taken a few weeks ago. I had a friend walk in front of the camera at night while I shinned a flashlight on her for this Long exposure shot.

Life has suddenly become really exciting for me in the last couple of weeks with   new love, new places to  visit and oportunities to just  experiment with the camera, even met a few Ghosts . I posted yesterday an entry with several shots Chicago and mentioned the extreme heat that day. Well, while taking pictures of the lake I noticed the heat waves agains the boats in the water and I just had to snap a picture. One more thing that was really impresive were the storm clouds over Naperville. Now I am leaving in two days  on my way to Florida and I can't wait for what new things I can photograph down there.

I took my first trip to Chicago this Weekend and just my luck the temperature was in the nineties making it an almost unbearable day. It seemed that the only ones not concerned with the heat were the birds. I was inmensely grateful when my girlfriend took me to see Buckingham Fountain. We had seen the  water stream from all the way across the Marina and it was a great way to get refreshed standing under the stream of water carried out by the wind. The  water looked too refreshing to resist.

This weekend I went for the first time to a small zoo not far from home where they had what we believe to be rescued animals.  What really grabbed my attention the most where the elephants. This guys seemed to have come from a circus and one of them actually had a couple of stars branded on his skin. I was struck with the differences between the two animals, while one was still trying to reach for branches to eat outside their enclosure and seemd very active. The oldest one looked sad and tired. The look in his eyes makes me wonder what he must've seen in his long life.