Category: Photography

Flash Fiction, Photography, Pictures & Words Challenge, Writing Prompt

Pictures & Words Day 10: Ever in Motion

Carrie Sue Barnes
Photo/Writing Prompt: Motion
There were numerous reasons to love the lake. Everyone had a favorite. For Alex, it was the movement. The lake was ever in motion. Even when it appeared so, it was not still. There would always be a current beneath the surface. Tides would roll in and back out. The lake wasn’t capable of stillness.Therein was the romance, in Alex’s opinion.
That perpetual movement meant you could not be still if you were to be a part of it. Swimming, floating, boating. Either move yourself or let the lake move you. True stillness was not an option.
Alex’s favorite hours to kayak were at dawn when the surface was as close to motionless as it could manage. Paddling until she was surrounded by water a quarter mile in any direction, then laying that paddle across her knees, Alex let the lake have the helm. Often she could see straight down to the ribbed sand 12 feet below. Picking an object still discernible on shore, usually a tree, Alex would watch it to gauge where and how far the lake took her when she offered no resistance. 
Nothing soothed, excited, or satisfied like the endless motion of the lake.
Photography, Pictures & Words Challenge, Writing, Writing Prompt

Pictures & Words Day 9: On My Screen

Carrie Sue Barnes
Photo/Writing Prompt: On My Screen
On Saturday, I revisited a short story I began writing in January. It was a couple months since I last touched it. Reading it with fresh eyes I found I loved the words I’d put on the page. That isn’t always the case when I return to a previous idea or snippet of a story. 
It’s a quiet little story. Sentimental. I hope someday I’ll have it complete and I can share it with you in one way or another. That’s what I hope every time I start a story that I believe I could see through to its last lines. 
This is my first venture into the short story genre. It’s a challenge. I tend toward too many words, something that a short story author can’t afford. It is exactly the sort of project that I need as a fiction writer!
Maybe I’ll post an excerpt on here soon, or I’ll wait until it is finished and introduce you to Martin and Irene Tucker at that time. Stay tuned!
Photography, Pictures & Words Challenge, Writing Prompt

Pictures and Words Day 8: I Will Look Up

Carrie Sue Barnes
Photo/Writing Prompt: Look Up
For every human life lost to senseless violence recently. Hatred will always breed hatred. Love will always breed love. You and I are the same, my friend. We are each a person made in the image of God, created with dignity and inherent value. I am not worth more than you. You are not worth more than me. We are the same, you and me. Let us not hang our heads. Let us look up, into each other ‘s eyes that we may never deny the humanity we see there. Let us look up, where hope lives. Let us look up and see ourselves in each other. 
Photography, Pictures & Words Challenge, Writing Prompt

Pictures & Words Day 6: Leaving It Til Morning

Carrie Sue Barnes

Photo/Writing Prompt: Close Up

I slipped into the water. The steam hit my face and I closed my eyes, feeling the moisture gather on my lashes. The faucet went on filling the tub with tiny splashes as the new water hit the surface. It was already deep enough to cover my hips but I let it run on. I’d added lavender scented bubbles and I inhaled slowly, deeply. Further, lower, I sunk until my chin touched the water. With my toes, I pushed the handle of the faucet to halt its flow. Then I began a relaxation technique I’d learned years ago.

Think about my toes; relax my toes. Think about my feet; relax my feet. Calves… thighs… stomach… working my way up through every muscle, every part until I reached my face. I felt the tension loosen between my eyebrows and at the base of my skull.

I needed this. After today, no, after the last three days, I needed this. It wouldn’t fix anything, but fixing everything is exactly what has me feeling this way. For tonight, it’s a bath, a book, music. That’s all. No fixing. No solving. It’ll all still be there waiting for me in the morning.

Motherhood, Photography, Pictures & Words Challenge, Writing Prompt

Pictures & Words Day 5: Sweetness to the Senses

Carrie Sue Barnes

Day 5 Photo/Writing Prompt: Sweet

My daughter was full of protests, tantrums, and screaming toddler attitude tonight. There was no patience and no use of the bits of sign language we’ve been practicing. When I laid her in her crib, she reached around for her lamb who has long been her source of extra comfort when she’s tired. That lamb has been missing for a couple days, sadly, and as her disappointment brought tears I felt the guilt creep in. I chided myself for not looking harder for it today. Nevermind that I’d spent a considerable amount of time combing through every room in the house the day before. Forget the fact that she would undoubtedly sleep just fine once she relaxed despite the absence of her favorite little stuffed animal. There was the mom guilt ready to climb on my back.

A couple hours later I snuck into her room. She stirred a little then stilled. I stood at her crib, a shaft of light from the hallway allowing me the sight of her back rising and falling as she breathed. My eyes fell on her mouth, so tiny and pink. Where earlier there was the high pitched crying of a one year old who wants her dinner right now, there was only quiet. Steady inhales and exhales. My own breathing slowed as I listened. I caressed her soft cheek and let go of the guilt; the “I didn’t play with you enough today” and “I forgot to read books with you before bedtime” and “I shouldn’t have lost my patience with you” guilt. She was resting well, in all her inherent sweetness, and tomorrow I would try again.

Photography, Pictures & Words Challenge, Writing Prompt

Pictures & Words Day 4: Independence Day

Carrie Sue Barnes

Photo/Writing Prompt: Celebrate

So far I’ve used these prompts to write bits of fiction. Today, Independence Day, I’m just going to write my thoughts. We celebrate America today. My country. My homeland. Land of beauty and adventure and opportunity. Land of violence and hatred and prejudice and greed.

There are days when I don’t feel like celebrating this place. A lot of days. I open a news website to check out the latest national headlines and I am bombarded by the spectrum of destruction. Left to myself, I don’t know that I’d have done anything today to celebrate.

But I have little children. Little children deserve hope. They deserve to discover the underlying greatness of this endeavor we call the United States of America. They need to know the worth of the lives laid down for it all. They must come to value freedom and realize that true freedom and independence allows you to do what is right and good for all, not simply whatever serves your appetites in the moment. Maybe the best way to open their minds to that truth is to start with celebration. Celebration of the origins and the ideals, the sacrifices and the dreams; perhaps in those celebrations we plant the seeds of commitment to being the ones who tip the balance toward light and away from darkness in this country.

Photography, Pictures & Words Challenge, Writing Prompt

Pictures & Words Day 3: Red

Carrie Sue Barnes

Photo/Writing Prompt: Red

Photo taken at Red Arrow Beach, Manitowoc, WI

Mamma always painted her toenails red. Maybe not always. I don’t really know. The older I get the more I realize that my memories are rather suspect. They are mostly images and ideas formed in my brain from stories told to me and photos shown to me. They aren’t truly my memories. They are transfers, secondhand copies of someone else’s remembrances.

The red toenails come from a photo. An old picture from the beach when I was two. Someone took it from above, standing over where Mamma and I sat facing the water. Side by side, knees up and heels in the rough sand. Our wide, flopping sunhats shadowed our shoulders. My tiny toes rest near hers. Hers are painted red.