1/7 Solitude

Solitary Skater

1/7 Photograph Solitude

Seclusion / Peace & Quiet / Isolation

7/365 Cold Swings 1/7

Today, I stopped by the park where I thought could find good subjects for the solitude prompt. When the temperature is way below freezing, who would be at a park? I was happy to see a couple of skaters on the pond and I asked this young man if I could take a picture of him skating way from me. He was kind enough to skate away and I got the shot. The ice looked so good for skating  and if it wasn't so cold, I might have gone home to get my own skates.This is the pond where my oldest learned how to ice skate and where our dog knocked me on my butt the first year in our house. I may not be the best skier, but I never fall when skating! 

I then went over to the playground section to photograph the very quiet play area. The learning part of the prompt was converting the pictures to black and white which I like for snow pictures as it takes care of any white balance problems with the snow. The edits were done in Lightroom 5.

The prompt for today should have been icy cold as that is how I felt. But that cold still didn't prevent me from filling my car with $2.14/gal gasoline! The woman filling up in front of me, had no gloves on and I don't know how she managed. 

It was nice to get home, start a fire and warm up a serving of soup. Yesterday, I took out the hambone from Christmas and made a delicious soup (without beans!). The Smoked Ham, Barley and Vegetable soup recipe came from Epicurious and I would make it again! The calories for it was higher than I would have liked, but the soup was filling!

Woodpecker chilling at suet feeder.

Whites Park

Obligatory Cat picture- Even they were cold today.