I am pleased to be back to hosting the Sunday Stills Photo Challenge and appreciate everyone who took part in Hugh’s themes over the last two weeks!

We are back with what I thought was a difficult theme: Yin-Yang.

So difficult, I had to google it for definitions and hunt up some example images! I have had this on my theme list for over two years and I’m happy to finally use it.

yin yang symbol

“The yin, the dark swirl, is associated with shadows, femininity, and the trough of a wave; the yang, the light swirl, represents brightness, passion and growth.”

Above is the symbol commonly associated with Yin-Yang. Image from Pixabay.

In ancient Chinese philosophy, yin-yang is a concept of dualism, describing how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.

Dog brothers Aero and Gideon happened to flop down into this position after a busy day running on the beach. Gideon, the blonde one, is 6 months older than Aero, but belongs to my daughter and now lives with her in San Diego. Both dogs have the same parents, believe it or not.

Blonde and brown dog yin and yang
A Long Day on the Beach

Yin-Yang is also the balance between two opposites. Gideon is mellow and sweet, while Aero is a guardian personality, whose sharp, staccato warning bark can curl your hair.

Blonde and Brown dogs
Brothers Gideon & Aero

But they love each other and I know they miss being together.

While visiting the Grand Canyon earlier this month, I swept my lens over the South Rim. I thought this photo had a yin-yang quality to it showing the lights and darks in nature.

Grand Canyon View
Long Lens View


My Lumix FZ300 has a 600-zoom travel lens and I captured what appears to be twins posing above a rocky outcrop over the canyon. Upon closer inspection, they wore opposite colors. Hint: these girls can barely be seen in the upper left quadrant of the above image. Love that zoom!

Tourists at Grand Canyon
Tourist Twins

I shared these images a couple of years ago and thought they each have that yin-yang feeling.

Winter Yin-Yang
Winter Yin-Yang Reflection
Flowers twinned
Yellow Gray Duality

The images in this post are inspired in part by BeckyB’s January Light Squares Challenge.

Special shout-out to three bloggers who posted for Sunday Stills in December and those who joined Hugh in January. Life is Great, Locating Frankenstein’s Brain, and Just Muddling Through Life. Hope to see you all again!

I am excited to see how creative you will be with Yin-Yang this week! Don’t forget you can post anytime during the week.

Sources: The Hidden Meaning of Yin-Yang and Wikipedia

Camera graphic

© 2020 Copyright-All rights reserved-secondwindleisure.com

Published by Terri Webster Schrandt

Mostly retired, I am a part-time reporter/photographer for a local monthly newspaper. I'm former university adjunct faculty, self-published author, and retired recreation and parks practitioner living in Eastern Washington State near the Idaho border. Second Wind Leisure Perspectives is my blog about living a leisure lifestyle that includes fitness, photography, and fun.

67 thoughts on “Sunday Stills: The Light in #Yin-Yang”

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  3. Your image of the Grand Canyon is breathtaking and your ‘Winter Yin-Yang Reflection’ is a work of art! Adore the marigold dancing with its shadow as well!

    I have been shooting with a variety of Lumix Cameras since 2014 (FZ200 and GX8) but have never tried the FZ300. That zoom is A-MA-ZING

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  7. Oh, Terri! You have started off the new year with amazing photos. I just checked the prompts for January yesterday so need to get busy. Glad to see your interpretation of Yin-Yang. That dandelion and its shadow! Those sweet pups. You always inspire me to look harder, deeper. Thank you for sharing what you capture in your lens with us.

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    1. Thank you, you are too kind, Donna. Like I’ve said, half of photography is luck and capturing the image when the feeling strikes. I hadn’t even thought of yin-yang when I took that photo a few summers ago of them flopped down on the beach. It worked for the theme 🙂

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  9. I love your interpretation of Yin and Yang Terri, The pups are cuties and yes the Yin and Yang there works. The twins, fabulous how I couldn’t spot them in the above photo, but your zoom picked them up as a perfect Yin and Yang. Brilliant, I’ll have to have a think about this one 🙂

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  17. Hi Terri, I enjoyed your take on Yin-Yang and must admit I was a bit worried I didn’t understand it enough to post and I also looked up the meaning. Instead I posted about the bushfires in our area and the local support. I agree with others, the pups are very cute. 🙂

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  19. Not only is your photography exceptional but your interpretation of yin/yang opens so many possibilities. Where others would be stymied by imagined constraints, you’re bursting with creative energy that sees this theme everywhere. Aero and Gideon melt my heart but I’m also intrigued by the weed leaning over the cloud reflected in the puddle, by the dynamic vista of the Grand Canyon against the serenity of the sky. So interesting to view this post – thank you, Terri.

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  32. A challenging theme indeed. I think your Winter Yin-Yang Reflection is a very nice interpretation. I had a photo lined up, but then took a couple of different images, with the theme in mind, on a recent walk. Maybe I’ll run all three this week. Anyway, the first is at https://grahamsisland.com/2020/01/19/shadow-on-the-beach/.
    I’m with you on the zoom on your camera. My FZ200 is still going strong and it gets a good deal of rough treatment.

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  37. Welcome back to Sunday Stills, Terri.

    What a tough challenge you’ve set for your first week back. I thought it was going to be challenging to find something, but after looking at the images you included in your post, I found this one.

    I was thinking along the lines of the water in the photo – one dark and the other (snow) white. Does it comply with the Yin Yang theory?

    Liked by 3 people

    1. I’m telling you, Hugh, I got lucky with my brain firing the right synapses in being able to find a few. YES! this pic is perfect and glad you found one! I so appreciate you being able to host SS and I’m pleased to see a couple of new bloggers as a result!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Oh, you’re welcome, Terri. I enjoyed hosting the challenge. The first week was rather quiet, but I put that down to it being just after the Christmas and New Year holiday. Last week’s challenge seemed to attract a lot more entries. I’m glad the photo I included fits this week’s theme. It’s going to be interesting to see what everyone comes up with. After all, a challenge is supposed to be just that – a challenge that gets us thinking.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. On another note, since I just read your latest post, did you notice my captions were not centered? At first I thought it was because two were older and had been published before, but in the two Grand Canyon shots, on in centered and one isn’t. I wonder if it makes a difference in when I wrote the caption (in the post or directly on the image when writing alt text, etc)? Another ghost in the machine.

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      3. Yes, I did notice that some of the captions were not centred, Terri. It may be down to the way you added them. I usually always add captions in the same block as the photo/image, rather than adding it in the media library. It’s worth keeping an eye on (I’ll do the same on my blog). It could be a bug that the Happiness engineers need to be made aware of. As they always want an example, if it happens to my captions, I’ll certainly contact them to look into it.

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