I’ve spent most of the last few days trying to think of “Z” words but unfortunately I keep thinking of things I can’t photograph or don’t have photographs of like maze, zeppelin and the hole in the ozone layer. In the version of English I was taught we use”s” for a lot of words that Americans use “z” for and I refuse to change my habits. Finally I did come up with a few ideas so here they are.
Buzz Lightyear
Blaze in a fire-pot
Dozy Ducks
Ford Zephyrs
Polly zzzz
Buzz Lightyear toy from the Op Shop.Firepot at duskBest to let sleeping ducks lie.
Ford Zephyr at Oatlands
Either a Ford Zephyr or a Zodiac. at the Geeveston Christmas Parade
My X’s are mostly to do with transportation today. X really marks the spot there. Explorer of the Seas and Celebrity Solstice both have an X in them. Explorer has one in the name while Celebrity Solstice is plastered with the letter X. I took a good one of the funnel some time ago and there is a big X on it. I also found a railway crossing sign in my travels today. I was driving along the rather notorious Mudwalls Road to go to Richmond today and there was just the very thing I needed for the challenge. It was a narrow road and there was a rise and a bend and some deep ditches on the side of the road. You wouldn’t want to put a wheel in one of those I thought to myself. Still I took a bit of a risk and pulled over easing the car on to the verge as carefully as I could so I could get my X photo of the crossing sign. No traffic passed us and we got away without getting side swiped or bogged. Someone driving in the opposite direction probably wondered what that idiot woman in the purple cardigan was trying to do however. I also got a picture of a hotel in Picton New Zealand that has an X in the name from my archives. The blades of the windmill in Oatlands also form a very nice X.
Celebrity SolsticeCelebrity FunnelExplorer of the SeasOxley’s Rock HotelRailway Crossing SignWindmill at Oatlands
We are up to X and on the home run to the end of the alphabet.
First a few railway themed X’s:
Climax
Exhibit
X Class
The first photo was taken on the Puffing Billy Railway in Victoria of their Climax locomotive. The second one is also a Climax but this one lives in the Tasmanian Transport Museum at Glenorchy. The Climax, also pictured in the third photo is an exhibit or as the partially obscured sign says an “Xhibit”. Finally, a Tasmanian Government Railways X Class diesel locomotive.
Volunteer driverClimax locomotive at the Tasmanian Transport Museum. Glenorchy.Climax Locomotive at Tasmanian Transport MuseumTasmanian Railways X Class Diesel.
Here are a couple of X shapes:
Here is an X I’ve used a couple of times before in the Which Way and B&W Challenges but it is such a good X I can’t leave it out. It is on the Hobart waterfront outside the Brooke Street Pier building.
X marks the spot
I took this photo because of a funny story that Naomi told me about her friend Leigh who lives in Adelaide. Well it wasn’t so much what happened that was funny it was his reaction to it that made us laugh. Apparently one night he was fast asleep in bed and was woken by a crash. He got up and went into his living room. Leigh described the scene to Naomi over the phone. “I saw a cross on the floor.” His ceiling fan had fallen down. Not a good thing to happen of course but we have a visual sort of sense of humour and picturing the incredulous Leigh and the cross on the floor set Naomi off laughing and then of course she told me and I laughed too. We’re not unsympathetic. We just can’t help ourselves.
This is Voyager of the Seas, sister ship to Explorer of the Seas which we cruised on. Voyager visited Hobart in December 2016. We took some photos at Macquarie Wharf, this was before the river was dredged to allow larger ships into Wharf 2-3. We then went across the river to Rosny Hill Lookout to take some more. Cruising is a popular vacation. (See how I did that?)
Voyager of the Seas at Hobart in 2016
Voyager of the Seas taken from Rosny Hill , Hobart
Valhalla Ice Cream is a locally made brand of ice cream that comes in several flavours. It’s very good. Valhalla was one of the many food vendors at the Taste of Tasmania Food Festival.
Valhalla ice cream.Colourful signs of the food and drink vendors at the Taste of Tasmania
A friend of mine donated some vintage cutlery to the Op Shop. I brought them home to wash first.
I started jotting down some words that had both an O and a U in them and came up with several good ones but the trick was to find these words in objects that I could photograph or ones I already had captured. Diving into my archives I found a good many and several I liked a lot. Some because they reminded me of good times I’ve had on an outing or holiday with Vanda or Phillip and even times with my beloved pets. Others I just loved the colour or the way the photo turned out. I am not the world’s greatest photographer as I have said many times so when I get it right I get quite excited. There are one or two in this collection I really like. I have learnt something while looking back on photos I have taken over the last few years. When you are taking photos of the things you love they are bound to come out better than the shots we take because we think we need to take them. I don’t know if anyone else gets hung up on this. I think we often snap this or that and then those photos are put away and forgotten. Who does not have a box of old photographs never displayed in an album. I know it’s all digital these days and I often wonder where these pictures end up. Well there are things I love like my pets, ships, old buildings and cars of course. I’ve noticed I’m taking better ones of these but my snap snap snap shots are still boring and lack a sense of interest so I delete them. Most of todays pictures are things I like and here they are.
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I’ve gone with a lot of variety for this challenge. I felt like having a bit of everything and hoped to add colour and interest. Here are the words I have picked out for the photo challenge.
