Fotography Friday - Calgary, AB

This weeks photo will always be one of my favorites because it was taken while I was on my mission for the LDS (Mormon) Church. I had been out barely over a year when I was made Zone Leader and transfered to this area. Downtown Calgary. A missionaries heaven... or hell depending on how you looked at it. Our days were filled with crazy amounts of street contacting (almost no tracting) and preaching to people on the street. Most of our contacts we were able to make ended up living outside of our area because they just came into town to work. Which meant few investigators in our pool. Our ward was always shifting with new young couples coming and going almost weekly. And I was serving with an amazing companion who was called as a Mandarin speaking missionary. We taught an English as a second language class, met with several Chinese families (who spoke little to no English) and had some of the busiest days I can remember. Unfortunately I was only here for one transfer. But it was one of my favorite six weeks of my whole mission. This picture was the view from the balcony of our 17th floor apartment. It was taken with a simple point and click camera, and needed no color boosting at all. It really looked like this. Not to shabby eh?

For more photos of mine visit my flickr page.

Fotography Friday - Arlington Cemetery

Because I've been in DC this week I really wanted to use a picture taken here for this weeks Photography Friday. I've decided to use a photo from Arlington Cemetery. Not because it's the best picture I've ever taken, but because I enjoyed my time there so immensely. No picture, especially not this one, can capture the feeling of reverence and awe that is felt as one walks those grounds. I loved it there.

There is a strange type of beauty there. Even though it is tragic that these men and women have fallen. What they fell for is beautiful. And that makes them beautiful. I thought that the beautiful Cherry Blossoms that have fallen to the ground were, at least somewhat, symbolic.

-Travis_

To see this, or last weeks photo, full size visit my flickr page.

Fotography Friday - Ireland

It's Fotography Friday here at Life is That Random. What does that mean you ask? Well, in my spare time I like to pretend that I'm a photographer so I thought that this would be a good place to post some of my favorite pieces.

Todays picture comes from my first trip into Ireland. I was 17 or 18 years old and we were traveling along the western coast trying to get to our B&B before it got too dark. I kept watching this amazing sunset getting darker and darker begging my dad to stop the car. Finally, he did stop just in front of a bridge that had a pretty clear view of the ocean. But I didn't really like the shot from their so I grabbed my tripod and went running down a short path towards the water, and there was a sailboat. I was so excited. With great haste I pulled out my camera strapped it on the tripod and took a picture. (This was back before I had a digital camera so I had to wait three weeks to see if it turned out alright.) The skies were completely dark about five minutes after this photo was taken.

To see the un-cropped full scale picture just click the image. Or go to my flickr page.

Thanks for reading.

-Travis Cox_