Walking for Happiness (or, What did you take a photo of on your walk today? PART 4)


#1

Hi everyone. I thought I’d start a thread that someone started on another forum I once frequented, I thought at the time it was a very uplifting and positive thread. It was called Walking for Happiness and I will give it the same name here. The idea is to share photos from your favourite walks, and you can purge your feelings too, so I’ll start.

Today I was in a bit of a grouchy mood, but my usual morning walk considerably brightened it, as the beauty of the countryside never gets old to me. Today the weather was overcast which perfectly suited me, I often use these walks for reflection and thought. If you are fond of walks and nature and like taking photos too, please share :slightly_smiling_face:


(Pete A) #2

I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Walking and hiking is keeping me alive.

Must be ambulatory!


#3

Lovely photos of a beautiful place, thanks for sharing Pete. Being out in nature is so deeply reviving isn’t it, for the body, mind and soul. Here’s to many more happy walks and continued good health!


(Pete A) #4

Endorphins, serotonin etc :heart:


#5

Yay! Sounds like a thread for me though I don’t want to bring the big camera with me every time… And it’s a hassle enough to get out the microSD from my phone once or twice a year (stupid thing doesn’t work with the cable)… But we will see :slight_smile:

I LOVE walking. But I am a land mammal, walking is very natural to me.
My big hiking days are in the past (not so big, 40km at most but I don’t like to rush or walk at night :D) but I do love my tiny and small and longer but still adorable walks (10-15 minutes, 50 minutes, 2-4 hours, respectively. okay, 4 hour only happened when I was hunting mushrooms, obviously it wasn’t all walking). I live in the very edge of a mountain range (Hungarian so it’s tiny anyway but the higher parts still looks cool… sometimes even the lower ones ;)) and next to another so we have elevation, that’s nice and fun.

Indeed :slight_smile: It’s good to move my body and get some fresh air and sunshine - but Nature plays a huge role in me loving my walks. We have forests everywhere here and I gladly show the place :slight_smile: It’s not THAT pretty now that it isn’t green. But flowers come out very soon. Some of our crocuses already sprouted their leaves, my SO says, I forgot to go and look…

Meanwhile we STILL have fresh fruit in the garden and a quite seasonal one, not rosehip, that will be around until March (later too but it rots then) but not in my garden as I have way too many thorny plants already and cut it off when I see it.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #6

I’m glad to see this idea being revived, and edited the title to make this thread part of our ongoing series. I also closed part 3, so new posts can all go here.


#7

Oh gosh, I didn’t realise there already was a thread like it on this forum! It was just something I thought I’d share, but hey ho, no harms done. Yes, let’s keep the thread alive as it’s such a positive one.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #8

I’m looking forward to seeing more great photos. I’m glad to see the idea started up again.


#9

Oh Shinita, your description of where you live sounds lovely, the edge of a mountain range. There’s nothing like that here, but I have come to fall in love with the tranquility of english countryside. But in my own country where I was born and grew up, the nature was more striking, there were mountains, tall majestic mountains I would walk in whenever I could and pleased. Nowadays I don’t have the energy for mountains, and so I’ve come to prefer this pleasantly flat terrain where I live, we have some excellent walks on our doorstep. My walks are never long, 40min a day, but I’m hoping to extend them a little come spring and summertime or just do several more shorter walks. Fresh air is so good, and having yourself surrounded by the beauty of nature and being aware of the seasons and noticing such little changes, it does the soul good as well, there is something to treasure in each season for sure. Right now though, my whole body is yearning for spring.


(Jane) #10

Full moon setting over my meadow.


#12

Beautiful and tranquil.


#14

Oh indeed, there was that old series… It disappeared at some point, I dig it out 1-2 times but it’s bothersome and I can just put whatever into the current carnivore thread :smiley: We have all kinds of topics there and scenery fits it well. But I make few photos anyway.
I consider this one better to talk about walks and whatever, I never was particularly good at photos with little text.

I felt so well today while doing my second walk! My stomach was full and I STILL could run quite a bit (considering how short the whole distance… though I walked back and run down again multiple times :D). The sun already went down but it was light and pink/purple clouds… Didn’t make a photo and it’s quite fine, it wasn’t spectacular and I annoyed myself enough times to get a meh photo about originally cool clouds :frowning:

@never2late: We have ponds and rivers too! I love mountains (even tiny ones. big ones are better but I appreciate what I have) but I really need waters too. Sea would be best but Hungary has none, oh well, ponds and rivers are lovely too. The river has a great sound on the zillion rocks in its bed… And the bigger pond has many birds…
Summer is problematic for my exercise as it’s too hot. Now the weather is perfect for walks and coming summer, I will be completely unable to run, except maybe in the shadowy forest on cooler days… I really should use the chance that I won’t get overheated so easily outside!

I don’t visit the wildlife park forest often in winter but I better start soon… In the first years I missed some plants curling out, I went in spring and the small plants on the ground already was so progressed (yeah, they needed to use the sunlight before the trees got their leaves back) and it was a bit sad. I got better :slight_smile: And I never miss the early sundrops and hellebores :smiley:
I surely will make new photos of them, I don’t know why, I did it so many times before… But they are irresistible. Just like the pasqueflowers, they are more spectacular, a bit more late and I just can’t resist to make shots of them. One of my favorite flowers are pasqueflowers. I find hellebores funny as the ones here have green petals. And they don’t wilt, they stay for months while the seeds grow.
Mushrooms entertain me greatly too. There is always something to see around here, I should remind me of this and visit the forests again… My normal daily walk happens around the pond as there is always things to see (many birds and I like the water too) and there is a nice path without mud. The forests often get muddy.

I am fine with winter now as it was a mild one and we have plenty of springlike sunny days. I had years when I was super bored of winter at this point. Or a bit later. January is still early but February is often hard on me. And March still can have so much snow and so little green… Winters are too long here to my liking. Summers too :smiley: I prefer some proper spring (not the ones not being able to decide if they are winter or summer, sometimes we had 2 weeks of nice spring, with winter before and hot summer afterwards. I mean hot for me when I am used to winter. I need TIME to get used to some warmish summer and I never can get used to the hot part, they are awful and my activity tends to drop quite dramatically. I act like a vampire and hide from the sun in my dark room (it’s a south room under the roof. because I love sunlight. when it’s not summer. so it’s super sunny and too hot without shade in summer. too hot with shade too but better)).
It’s not easy to be someone who needs solar energy to function and who can’t stand high temps. but at least I don’t live in England. Or worse, in North-Europe, very north. 2 days without sunshine and I start to have problems. Once we had a 3 weeks fog in November, it was pure hell. But I am stubborn and survived to experience more (non-summer) sunlight in my life.


(Robin) #15

Trying this again. My earlier post had several images (some personal) and I caught it immediately after posting. But y’all are so zippy, you responded to the first one. So I deleted that and am trying again. (That’s the way my morning has gone so far.)

Anyway…Kansas sunset while walking my dog

. And my husband is the one with the camera and bike.


#16

Beautiful photo Robin. One can never have too many sunsets🙂


(Pete A) #17

I was trying to figure out what that was! And why haha


#18

Pretty! Why I can’t shot pretty skies :frowning:
But you will get pretty flowers when the time comes, I am best at macro+plants :smiley:


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #19

Great photo, Robin!


#20

I love taking close photos of plants and flowers, and such wondrous details as you can lay your eyes on in Nature. When all the way back in december we had our lovely ice landscape, I really wanted to capture all those glistening, frozen details, but it was just too cold. I often see a squirrel or a robin, but am never quick enough. Come spring, I’ll have to get some close ups of the cherry blossom, my favourite tree.


#21

Not a walk and no photo but I saw a robin yesterday :slight_smile: I have a great view from my kitchen window , I see the neighbour mountain range, lots of pine trees and the bush that so many animals love… The robin was in it but when the time comes, it will be full with butterflies and hummingbird hawk-moths. I put a lot of effort into making good shots of the latter. Because butterflies are soooooooooo easy. They are slow and take their sweet time on a flower. The moth is super quick though. And the wings beats like crazy. The sun is shining and I don’t have enough light to make a sharp shot! And I need to decide what is more important, some more sharpness of the wings or quality of the photo (as I raise the ISO and it shows in the case of this old camera)… Not like a blurry wing photo couldn’t be pretty…

But there is another thing. Due to the huge need of light, the depth of field is tiny. The whole small moth just won’t fit…
Here I got a sharp wing with 1/6400 second, a blurry butt (oh they have pretty patterned butts :smiley: the Hungarian name is “duck-tailed moth”) and a grainy quality (I avoid using 1600 iso whenever I can but as I explained, I needed it for a non-blurry wing. well it depends where the wing is, when it slows down to change direction, it’s easier to get sharp. it’s probably impossible when it’s the quickest).

34_6400

I contain my excitement (I have many okay shots) but I must show this one too :wink:

I did these with the 300mm lens as it’s impossible with the rest. It’s quite huge and heavy, it can’t be helped at 300mm.


#22

Fantastic photos Shinita, I would love to capture a little creature like that. I only use my smart phone though to snap photos, when I’m out and about. It was really in that icy landscape we had I saw so many details worth capturing. A black crow ruffling his feathers in the snow, it still stays with me even though I couldn’t capture it. And all those perfectly sparkling leaves and gloriously dark glistening green emerald of moss. I never see that many interesting details in spring or summer, but winter is too cold for me for all its sparkling beauty. Flowers I’ll probably take lots of photos of in spring, and the local park with its pond we love to walk around, with its rich birdlife … It’s ever fun to capture something. Thank you for sharing your beautiful photos.