My third  series of notecards, As Scene by Rabbit Whiskers, consists of notecards with photographs of various scenes that I have found to be pretty, interesting, or both; usually things that I see while on a walk with Pascal.

Many of my photos come from my favorite “haunt,” Heather Farms. This is a huge open space park with both natural, wild environments and carefully planted and tended, beautiful gardens; a photographer’s dream place! I could go there daily forever and still see different things each time.

While a majority of the scenes on my cards come from pictures taken at Heather Farms, we also often go downtown for walks and I always encounter something unexpected there, like the koi pond that I posted photos of a few posts ago. I haven’t used them yet, but I may decide to use some of the koi pictures on notecards in the future. There are also scenes taken from my own garden as well as scenes from other places that I walk.

Do you like this cottage in the picture above? It has a rather funny story to go with it. A year and a half ago my daughter gave me this wonderful little camera for my birthday. I was so surprised and excited,  I couldn’t wait to go try it out.  I quickly browsed through the manual, learning just enough to know where the button was to push for a picture, and a few other basics, but otherwise, I really knew nothing about using the camera. I took Pascal, and of course my new camera, downtown for a walk the following morning.

I parked the car a few blocks outside of the central downtown area and thought we’d walk into town from there. I had walked by this old cottage many times before, and each time wished that I had  a camera to take its picture. I love this cottage!  So- here I was, finally!  Me, Pascal, the cottage……. and my new camera! When we got to the driveway of the cottage I made Pascal sit while I pulled out my new camera  and “click, click-” just like that, took a few quick pictures and continued into town, taking  pictures on our way. Once home again, I downloaded the pictures to my computer and was pleased to see that yes, my picture of the cottage looked, well,  just like the cottage-

Several months before I got my camera I came across a photography site online, Zytu.org that had different daily slideshows of pretty and interesting scenes; photos that I enjoyed looking at, so I added them to my homepage.  After downloading  my photos to the computer I decided to post my photos on the web pages Zytu offered. Now that I had a camera I thought it would be a good way to keep track of my favorite photos and also thought it would be fun to see if anyone else looked at them. In the back of my mind I remembered reading something earlier about Zytu adding some photos to its daily slideshows taken from pictures they found on the pages on their site. I didn’t really think about that when I put my pictures on their site. I just barely knew how to use my camera. My photos wouldn’t be picked.

This picture of the cottage was one of the first  that I uploaded to the Zytu site. A few days later I happened to walk by my computer which I had left on my home page. My eyes hit on the zytu slide show just as the photo of the cottage flicked past! I thought I was seeing things. It couldn’t be-  It must have been a photo of another cottage that was similar to the one that I took-  But I waited for the twenty photos to flick by so I could see  this “other” cottage again. There it was! It was no “other,”  it was mine!! I was so excited, I must have watched it flick by a zillion times that afternoon.

Zytu is fun because it keeps track of how many people click on each individual picture. Not only did I never expect to see my photo in their slideshow,  but everytime I think about it, it makes me laugh~  this photo of the cottage made it to their section titled, “Most Viewed Photos”-  It is not only in that section, it is the first photo on the fourth row of the first page of that section, where it has been for the last year and a half! To date, this photo now has 816,889 views!! If someone had told me this was going to happen, I would never in a million years have believed them. Sometimes I wonder what the people who own that cottage would think if they were to be told that 816,889 people from all over the world have seen their home. Do you think they’d believe it?

Anyway, this cottage is also going to have a place on one of my notecards, so if you like it, it might be something to watch for~

This photo was taken at Heather Farms and is one of my favorite photos of Heather Pond. This too will be on a note card,

as will

this

and this, all from Heather Farms. My next post will be a bit about my second series of notecards, Notes From Rabbit Whiskers~