photo | the tao of jaklumen

February 17, 2014
by jaklumen 7 Comments

Weekly Photo Challenge: Treasure II

Here’s another photo inspired by this week’s Photo Challenge at the Daily Post:

Our shadow box. I removed the glass temporarily to get a good shot without reflections

Items, clockwise from left:

My tassel from community college, with the Phi Beta Kappa honor society logo
A brooch pin bearing the sign of Clan Bruce, as Cimmy claims Robert the Bruce as an ancestor
An event pin from the First Night Tri-Cities, WA event in 2007.
My graduation tassels from high school- one with school colors and one with white for Honor Society
A pin with the Gomberg Kites logo. Kiting is one of my hobbies
One of the baby spoons we got from the hospital when Princess was born
A Christmas ornament bearing the year Cimmorene and I were married

Please also see Weekly Photo Challenge: Treasure for more treasure involving Cimmorene as there is too much involving me here 😉

February 16, 2014
by jaklumen 1 Comment

Weekly Photo Challenge: Treasure

This is my wife, Cimmorene.

A selfie Cimmy took for her Loving Myself Through Gratitude blog.

I treasure her, and I treasure her commitment to character.

Cimmy created this while working on the LDS Young Women Personal Progress program, to be ready to help our daughter when she does it.

As usual, this post was inspired by the Daily Post at WordPress.com for the Weekly Photo Challenge.

February 2, 2014
by jaklumen 5 Comments

Weekly Photo Challenge Bonus: Toy Modifications

I considered some other photographs for the challenge, and here were two that brought back warm memories for me. They involve modifications to toys!

Princess wanted her pickaxe to look like a diamond one

This modification was done by my daughter, who is positively obsessed with Minecraft, and wanted this foam toy made by ThinkGeek to look more upgraded. If you click through the photo to see the image at Flickr, you’ll find the description to find out how she did it; she wrote it up herself.

Now, I take full responsibility for the next obsession and modification.

I modified a spare Mr. Potato Head body with fluorescent green paint so it would look like Slimer from the Real Ghostbusters series.

February 1, 2014
by jaklumen 6 Comments

Weekly Photo Challenge: Object

I love these photography challenges at WordPress. It’s a wonderful journey to revisit our archives at Flickr to meet these challenges. (Our? Sure! It’s a family account, and Cimmorene, myself, and our daughter Princess are the principal photographers.)

This week, in a post created specifically for this challenge, share a photo of one object.

This photo was suggested by my lovely wife Cimmorene, who also took the capture:

Tomato Jack o’ lantern

This was in response to Noah Scalin’s 365: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life! almost three years ago on February 26, 2011.

Description from Flickr:

The challenge with this one was to create something using the first fruit or vegetable encountered in the kitchen. Cimmy created this by hollowing out a tomato and carving a face in it the same way someone might carve a pumpkin. Side note: the original Jack o’ Lanterns were made from turnips.

For more of the photoset we did for the 365 challenge, see 365 Daily Creativity at Flickr. If you like these photo challenges and would like to participate, here’s a quick link to the WP Daily Post and the photo challenges category: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/category/photo-challenges/

January 29, 2014
by jaklumen 11 Comments

Weekly Photo Challenge: Juxtaposition

I’ll admit it, I was inspired by Michelle Weber’s first photo (View from Toul Sleng Prison, Phnom Penh, Cambodia) for this weekly challenge. I knew I had something similar, deep down in the jaklumen & family Flickr archive. It’s not a prison, though– it’s a chain link fence at the baseball diamond on a schoolyard.

Please note— this photograph is NOT mine. It’s one of my daughter’s, when she was just newly getting into photography. This is at a baseball diamond on the schoolyard at a local middle school, where I used to go to fly kites, as it was just across the street from the apartment complex where we used to live. She wanted a little more to do than simply take pictures of my kite flying, in an afternoon.

She was only 8 years old when she took this shot. I remember when I looked at it that I was impressed. This was a view that I had overlooked many, many times. I hadn’t really thought to take this sort of perspective before.

A big thank you once again to Rob Ross of Rob’s Surf Report and his entry Weekly Photo Challenge: Juxtaposition 1 – the caramel roll run. I drew inspiration from his post, discussed a little photography with him, and decided to start doing these challenges more to draw attention to our family photography pursuits.