Our photo blogging challenge host selected a theme with plenty of scope to begin the new year: inside. Thanks to a few all-day meetings and the fact that my immune system was overwhelmed by a nasty seasonal virus that had me down-and-out for 7 days, I was stuck inside a lot more than usual this month.

Inside Access – I volunteered to photograph the Southern Alberta First Lego League Championship Tournament held January 2 at the Calgary science centre. The main benefit of volunteering to photograph this type of event is that you gain inside access – to information, to spaces that are otherwise out of bounds and to high-profile participants. In this case, I received a heads up that members of the 501st Legion would be invading at noon and got things organized so that I came home with this keepsake. It’s hard to imagine another situation where I’d find myself standing beside a storm trooper!

Cranberries – Fresh cranberries go on clearance after Christmas so I bought a few bags. It takes a bit of time to wash, sort, chop and measure them into 1 cup portions for the freezer. But the advance work pays off when I feel like baking cranberry-lemon scones, cranberry coffee cake or some other recipe showcasing cranberries. There must be a lot of red power in the skins; even though the fruit is white inside, it turns red once it’s cooked.

Catchlights – Portrait photography is not my thing, but I’ve read enough about it to know that catchlights are used to add extra sparkle to the subject’s eyes. On a “something from nothing” kind of afternoon, I started with a tube that used to have cookie sprinkles inside, positioned it inside my homemade lightbox and played around until I managed to get some coloured lights picked up in the tube walls.

Into the Vortex – Since the first time I used the bathroom sink at our weekend place, I’ve been fascinated by how the drain works. There’s no stopper, but unless the faucet is turned on full blast and turned so that it’s positioned to the side of the bowl, the water doesn’t drain until it reaches a certain level in the sink. Then all of a sudden, a whirlpool forms (complete with vortex) and the water disappears into the drain!

Inside Looking Out – Deer bedding down in our backyard is a pretty regular thing in the winter. I crept downstairs right around sunrise and was happy to see that three of the four deer were all visible between the posts supporting our back deck. Our oldest son noticed there’s a bit of noise in this one, which makes sense because I was shooting from inside the house, through a triple pane window that hasn’t been washed in a while!

That’s all for this month. Click here to see what was happening in PJ’s part of the world and for the link-up to all the other posts for this month.

I treat this photo blogging challenge like a once/month photo assignment. The one-month time frame makes it pretty low stress. New participants are welcome to join the photo blogging challenge any time. Please join us! The February theme will be posted at a ‘lil Hoohaa tomorrow.