“Mommy, mommy, look! The tree and bushes are catching fire! Look, they’re all yellow and red and orange.”

“Oh, sweetie-pie, that’s not fire, it’s the leaves changing color for autumn.”

“Changing color?”

“Well, every year we have 4 seasons. Remember Winter? We went skiing and built a snowmen?”

“Yeah, it was cold!”

“In Winter there were barely any leaves. Then Spring brought them back. With Summer, the heat of the sun made them gold. Now, they’ll crumble and fall again for Winter.”

“So they ARE burning?”

“Yeah… when you put it like that, they are indeed burning! Just not catching fire.”

This post was written in response to 2 challenges, that had similar picture prompts this week, and contains 100 words.

100WCGU, with the photo prompt below:

And Sunday Photo Fiction, with the picture:

To see other stories inspired by this picture, click the blue frog below:

The picture that has actually inspired me for this text was the one for 100WCGU.
The initial idea I had for the Sunday Photo Fiction was different, so I may choose to write another piece for those, if I find the time this week.

Photographic essay

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Etol Bagam

We’re 7 in our photography classes. So our teacher assigned to each of us a color of the rainbow for our essays.

I got red.

Red???? Seriously????

I would have liked to have green, and go to a forest for nice pictures with the sun rays finding their way in through the tree branches full of green leaves.

Or blue, and have a stunning picture of sea and sky.

Or orange, yellow, purple, indigo… Just not RED!

What can I picture in red?

Love? Pfff!!!… As if this even existed!

Red roses, strawberries? Blah, cheee-sy!

Blood? Uh… That’d be cool! But maybe too graphic, huh?

And why do I keep thinking love for red? Love does not exist! It’s an illusion!

Well, fine, I admit I believed it until recently. But now I know there is no such thing like love. Just pain.

Love pain!

Love pain????

Hey… maybe that’s it!

This post was written in response to the Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers, with photo prompt from pixabay.com (AdinaVoicu), and contains 150 words.

To see other stories inspired by the picture, click the blue frog below.

The red mark

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Etol Bagam

The day was supposed to be joyful. The big day party was about to begin and the boats were arriving full of guests. All seemed well and excitement was in the air.

Then suddenly, as the gates were about to open so the festivities could start, a scream was heard coming from the house. There was a BANG! Everyone looked at the house and they saw it.

The house had been marked! The front wall that was all bright white until a minute ago, had the creepy red mark now.

The guests turned, went back to their boats and started to sail away.

It’s not wise to be for too long in the shadows of the red mark.

The party was over!

This post was written in response to this week’s Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writer , with photo prompt by Louise from the Storyteller’s Abode, and contains 122 words.

To read other stories inspired by the picture above, click the blue frog below.

One-Four Challenge: September Week 1

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Etol Bagam

The One-four challenge is back this month after a month of review.

I’ll be honest and admit I haven’t reviewed much at all in August, and the images I’ll be using this month were actually created back in July, when I learned about the challenge and went crazy about creating 2 sets of images, the one I used then, and the one I’ll be using this month.

Having been so long since the editing of the pictures, I need also admit I don’t remember how exactly I edited them, except of course by the obvious. I’ll try to remember at least those obvious. All edits were made on my Android phone, using the Photo Editor app.

So here’s the first version:

In this one, the obvious edit was the color splash, where I kept the reds only. Then I made it darker, added a vignette of dark corners and made the reds even more red (original was magenta).

Hope you’ll like it.

One Four Challenge – Red (White and Blue)

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Etol Bagam

Hi there,

I have been away for a long, long time.

Then yesterday I signed in again and discovered a new photo challenge that seems interesting.

It’s the One Four Challenge, by Captivate Me.

The idea is to make 4 edited versions of the same picture and post one each week of the month.

We are already on week 2 of July, so this month I’ll be posting only 3.

And since it’s July and we started the month with a national holiday in the US, to celebrate Independece day, I’ll be using a picture I took on the 4th, while waiting for the sun to set and the fireworks to start.

To accent the picture, I’ll use the 3 colors of the flag, starting today with Red.