This week, Egidio challenges us to think about the music we might hear in our mind while creating an image. He writes, “What music do you hear in your photos? Do you have emotional connections to a photo and a song? Are there compositional elements that evoke a song title? For example, seeing the Rio de Janeiro Copacabana‘s sidewalks makes me hear Sarah Vaughan singing “Copacabana,” but not the Barry Manilow song by the same title.” You can read his entire challenge post here.

Usually, I don’t think of musical links to my images while creating them. That’s the case with my opening image. On a shore day, we departed the ship a bit later than usual. On our way, we discovered a crew emergency drill. For most of these images, I simply searched my galleries as I thought of some of my favorite songs. For this image, I thought of “Taking Care of Business,” written by Randy Bachman and performed by Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

We watched Billy Joel’s 100th concert in Madison Square Garden a few days ago. That event reminded me of Jim, the piano man we watched almost every night on two cruises. I don’t know if he still performs on cruise ships, but we enjoyed his music and comedic flair. “Piano Man” was written and performed by Billy Joel.

On a cruise stop in France, I captured a tour boat loading passengers for a day trip cruise. I had fun with some artistic filters built into my cell phone image software. For this image, I thought about one of my favorite songs, “La Mer” by Charles Trenet, “Beyond the Sea” by Bobby Darin (the same song with rewritten lyrics), and Orinoco Flow (Sail Away), written and performed by Enya.

Two songs came to mind with this image: Guitar Man, written and performed by Jerry Reed and also performed by Elvis Presley, and The Guitar Man, written by David Gates and performed by Bread.

I have many photos from the balloon festival, Albuqurque’s signature annual aviation event. I chose this one to share for this post as it was one of the balloons along the edge of the fiesta, and my location isolated the balloon. Including the sun was a bonus. The song is Up Up and Away, written by Jimmy Webb and performed by the Fifth Dimension.

You may have noticed a preponderance of 1970s songs referenced in this post. There’s a reason for that. I subscribe to SiriusXM’s Internet channels, where I listen to 70s on 7 almost exclusively. One of my favorites on the country and pop music charts in 1972 was A Daisy a Day, written and performed by Jud Strunk. The daisy symbolizes the man’s unwavering devotion throughout the years. He promises to give his love “a daisy a day” until the end.

We didn’t see many wild horses during several trips through North Dakota’s National Park. Then, in 2020, we encountered several small herds in one day. Feast or famine. The song is A Horse With No Name, written by Dewey Bunnell and performed by America.

As our cruise ship sailed through the park, accessible only by boat or ship, we saw several glaciers from a distance. The ship showed off one of its modern sailing features. The bow and stern thrusters were activated in such a way as to cause the ship to rotate in place 360 degrees. That maneuver ensured that everyone who wanted to could see the glaciers from wherever they were on the ship. Thinking back to a song and movie from the 1950s named North to Alaska, the music was written by Mike Phillips and Tillman Franks and performed by Johnny Horton.

Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park is one of the most beautiful parks I’ve visited. Sprague Lake has views that are not to be missed if you visit the park. The song that immediately came to mind is Rocky Mountain High, written by John Denver and Mike Taylor and performed by John Denver.

One image in my gallery was captured because of a song. On a trip to Rio de Janeiro to board a cruise ship, we arrived a few days early to tour the city’s sights. I purposely asked the tour guide to deviate from the planned schedule to visit Ipanema Beach. It wasn’t a stretch for the guide. We stayed in the Copacabana area, just down the beach from Ipanema. What piqued my interest in Ipanema Beach was that I was entranced by the song that started a dance craze in the 1960s. The Bossa Nova spread worldwide to the beat of The Girl from Ipanema, music by Antônio Carlos Jobim, and Portuguese lyrics by Vinícius de Moraes. It was performed by Astrud Gilberto.

That’s it for my challenge response this week. I enjoyed reviewing images from my gallery to associate them with a song and find images I haven’t shared in a long time, if ever. You can pixel-peep my response in this week’s gallery on my Flickr site here. Last week, Ritva had us thinking about the abstract, and it’s Tina’s turn to host the challenge next week. If you’d like to join in the fun, you can find a how-to here.

John Steiner