by Erin Nicole

I don’t know if I’ve shared this one before or not.  I probably have.  Though I call this one “Faith,” this picture is not necessarily meant to be about religious faith.  Instead, it’s about what you believe in, whatever that may be.  It’s about having faith in anything, whether it’s God or science or your ideology or your country or your family or your friends or anything.  It’s about celebrating what you believe in your heat and mind and never giving up that faith.

As for the building in this picture, it’s actually the back of an old Albertson’s store.  The building was torn down a few months after I took the picture.

by Erin Nicole

I took this photograph many years ago, while watching the sun set in May.  It was a very peaceful moment and I think this pictures that.  One reason why I love this picture is that I didn’t even realized that I had also taken a picture of a bird flying across the sky until I looked at this image many months later.  That’s one of the thing that I love about photography.  You not only capture what you’re seeing but often, you discover what you previously missed.

by Erin Nicole

Always be ready and prepared.  I just happened to be outside when our neighbor brought out his red couch and left on the curb and so I was able to get this picture of a discarded piece of someone’s life.  I’m not sure why he threw out the couch.  It was old but it still looked like it was in perfectly good condition.  Of course, I didn’t sit on it or anything like that.  I’m not that brave.

The next morning, the couch was gone.  Someone came and got it and since I wasn’t woken up by the sound of municipal trucks rumbling down the street that morning, I can be sure that it was saved from going to a landfill.  It’s probably sitting in someone else’s house now.

Whatever happened to it, I’m glad I was able to get this picture before it went away.

by Erin Nicole

I took this picture a week and a half ago, at the tail end of the winter storm.  The power had just come back on after being off for for several hours.  I stepped outside and stood in the backyard, surrounded by snow and feeling frustrated and angry.  Then I looked up and I saw the sun reflecting off of these icicles that were hanging from our roof.  After getting my camera, I snapped this picture.

To me, this picture is a reminder that there’s beauty to be found during even the darkest of times.  Sometimes, it’s right above you.

The day after I took this picture, the temperature finally rose above freezing, the snow started to disappear, and these icicles fell from the roof, landed in the grass, and quickly melted.

by Erin Nicole

I took this picture at a nearby park on a temperate summer day.  I though the contrast between the clouds and the dark shadows of the trees and the civil defense siren made for a striking image.  I like that, even with the gray sky and the shadowy trees, the green of the leaves and the grass can still be seen.

by Erin Nicole

I took this picture a few years ago, on a Saturday.

It had rained all day and when it stopped, I went outside and I snapped this picture of the rainbow.  At the time, I didn’t give much thought to the rainbow.  I thought it was pretty and I figured that I might as well take a picture of it but otherwise, I didn’t really look at it.  I was more interested in how thick the humidity was and how swampy the front yard had become after hours of nonstop rain.  I took my picture and then I went back inside because, even though the rain had stopped, it still didn’t seem pleasant outside at all.

It was only hours later that I looked at the picture and discovered that I hadn’t just taken a picture of one rainbow.  I’d taken a picture of two rainbows.  It was a double rainbow and if I hadn’t taken that second look, I never would have known it was out there.

A second look is always worth it.

By Erin Nicole

I called this picture The Arrival, though I guess it could just as easily be called Erin Playing With Photoshop.  Though the editing is obvious, I still like the way the image turned out.  Though it may be a cliché, I like the flash of pink streaking across an otherwise colorless picture.  The building is an apartment complex located near the Shops at Legacy in Plano.  I, of course, added the sepia tone, the sunburst, and the pink lightning bolt afterwards.  I don’t know what’s arriving at the end of that lightening bolt.  It could be aliens or poltergeist or maybe an angel.  This picture is from a period I went through where I was always trying to add the possibility of an angel to every photograph I took.