Author: alejna

a bowl of morning sunshine (friday foto finder: morning)

We live in the woods, and for most of the day, our house is in shadows. For a few hours each morning, though, the south side of our house is bathed in sunshine. Our breakfast table in particular has been known to catch some of these morning rays.

This week’s friday foto finder challenge is to share a photo for the theme “morning.” This photo is from September of 2010, and it’s actually one of my favorites that I’ve taken. I loved the way the pieces of O cereal arranged themselves in the bowl to best show off their shape in shadow, and how the subtle fluting of the glass bowl resulted in a radial pattern of bright reflected light.

To see what other mornings have been captured and to share your own, pay a visit to the fff blog.

Check out these 6 grate photos

I don’t often like to toot my own horn, but I must say that I have taken some grate photos in my day. A lot of people take some really good photos, but few people will really take the time to take grate photos. How many grate photos do you have in your own photo libary? Here are just 6 of the grate photos I’ve taken in the past few years.

These first 2 grate photos were taken in Sevilla, Spain, in Alcázar. Who could pass up such photogenic grates?

This is not just a grate photo, but an ornate grate photo.

This is more of a humble grate photo: a bathroom drain grate, somewhere in Massachusetts.

And even though I know I once shared 3 photos of storm drains, here are 3 more storm drain grates.

sign and symbol

I often find my eyes drawn to signs, especially the bold and simple graphics of traffic signs. (That is, after all, what they are designed to do.) While some people find that the signs can be detracting from a photo, I actually like the way signs can give a sense of place, especially through the language, text and cultural symbols. In other cases, a sign symbol is used so internationally that rather than reminding us of the locality of a site, we are reminded of our connections.

This is all a rather lofty and overblown introduction to a set of photos I have which include “do not enter” signs. The symbol is a red circle with a horizontal white bar, and it appears on signs the world over. (Or, at the very least, many countries around the world.) Here is I selection I have from 4 continents, taken in 5 different years.

Europe:

In front of the Notre Dame, Paris, France, August, 2007


Sevilla, Spain, September, 2009

Asia:

Macau, August, 2011

North America:

Boston, MA, USA, October, 2010.

South America:

Campinas, Brazil, May, 2008. (Yes, this last one isn’t actually a sign. It’s the light shining through a circular window onto a red carpet in the hallway of the hotel where I was staying. The window is open slightly in the middle, which caused there to be a brighter bar of light in the circle of light. Try to tell me that this doesn’t look like a do not enter symbol.)

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This week’s (okay, last week’s) friday foto finder theme was “circle.” I have oodles of circles in my photo library, but this circular symbol was one that came to mind for the theme.

3 photos of broken glass

Here are 3 photos of scattered broken glass fragments on pavement that I’ve come across in recent years.¹


Train station parking lot, August, 2010


Sidewalk, May, 2013


Rest area parking lot, September, 2013

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I had to drive into Boston for a meeting yesterday, and traffic was a bit slower than is typical late morning, due to construction. I’d also had rough night, sleep-wise, so I’d had more caffeinated beverages than is typical. These combined factors led to me stopping at the rest area on my way in, which is not typical. I looked down at the ground and admired the patterns made by the cracks and the weathered paint, which is typical of me. And I was rewarded by the sight bits of aquamarine-colored glass, bits of someone’s broken car window, sparkling in the sunlight like cut gems. Naturally, I stopped to take some pictures. I was especially pleased that I now had a third photo of broken glass I’d come across to round out my collection. I find it funny that I can remember where I was when I took each of the previous broken glass photos. My mind is littered with this sort of largely useless information.

iron flowers (friday foto finder: flower)

One of the nearby farms we visit to pick fruit has a playground which prominently features a vintage tractor, long since retired from its days of labor in the fields. Kids love climb up into the seat behind the big steering wheel, and on busier days, there can even be a line to do so, with adults nearby taking advantage of the photo op. It’s fun to see the kids up on the tractor, certainly, but I also find myself drawn to the details of this old tractor. I see so much character in the peeling paint, the flakes of rust, the curves and lines and joints. There are several places on the tractor where the hardware (perhaps bolt heads) reminded me of flowers: the hexagonal shape was segmented such that it looked like a ring of petals around the central circle.

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to share a favorite flower foto. Archie chose this theme in celebration of Spring, which has now sprung in the southern hemisphere. Here in the northern parts, many of the outdoor blooms have already died back. While I have loads of old photos of real flowers in my archives, these iron flowers called out to me.¹ To see what flowers others have picked, stop by the fff blog. (And won’t you consider joining in the foto-finding fun, too?)
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¹ Writing about these iron flowers also gets the song Iron Flower by K’s Choice stuck in my head. ²

² I think this may constitute my first instance of embedding a video in a footnote. While there are plenty of footnotes in my academic writing, I have to say that they are much less amenable to multimedia.

green spaces of Hong Kong (friday foto finder: green)

Hong Kong, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, is known as an urban jungle. But the territory also boasts a wide range of green spaces, which more closely resemble “jungle” than “urban jungle.” When I visited Hong Kong in 2011 for a conference, I enjoyed exploring the urban jungle, and also managed to see a few of the greener spaces. The highlight of these excursions was a hike with my friend YTSL, a Hong Kong local who knows her way around the green spaces of Hong Kong. We met up and took a series of subway rides and buses out to Wong Shek, on the Sai Kung Peninsula. (I wouldn’t have remembered exactly where it was we went, but happily YTSL mentioned it in her post shortly after our hike.)

The day was hot and humid, and also very hot and really humid, but I managed not to pass out. I also managed to take several hundred photos. (Pausing to take a photo is a good way to catch one’s breath.) Did I mention that it was hot and humid? It was all entirely worth it, as the views were stunning, and I appreciated them even through the heat and humidity.

The blue skies were filled with fluffy white rather expressive-looking clouds.

Below the blue and white there was plenty of green to be seen.

There were splashes of other colors, too, among the green fronds.

The path was sometimes narrow, sometimes not, sometimes paved, sometimes not. But always surrounded by green.


A particularly photogenic cloud poses for the camera, trying to steal attention from the picturesque rocks, water and greenery.

We passed a small number of homes which appeared to be inhabited, and more that were clearly long abandoned.

Some of the abandoned buildings were taken over by green.

Our hike finished up with a ferry ride back to our starting point, which offered plenty more beautiful views of green peaks. (A few more photos from the excursion are included below, in the slideshow. And several hundred more are still on my laptop.)

This post was brought to you by the color green, which was week’s friday foto finder theme . Green abounds in my photo library, especially of the local greenery, but it seemed a good excuse to get back to posting some of my long-promised travel photos. To see what other green can be seen, stop by the fff blogfff 200x60

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a parking space with a view (friday foto finder: rooftop)

One of our favorite places to go in the Boston area is the Boston Museum of Science. We started getting a membership a few years back, which has resulted in more frequent visits to the museum. The museum has a parking garage, something important to consider when driving into Boston. The lower levels are typically a bit cramped, as parking garages tend to be, and empty spaces are few and tight. But the rooftop level usually has plenty of empty spaces, and a gorgeous view, to boot.


July, 2012


January, 2012. (This one you may recognize as the purple from my 6 unrelated photos post.)


September, 2012


July, 2012

We went to the Museum of Science again this weekend, and headed up to the rooftop to park, as usual. There were some others up there, too, apparently also enjoying the view.


August, 2013

These guys were remarkable patient with me as I got out my camera.

This week’s (fine, last week’s) friday foto challenge was to share photos on the theme of rooftop. I may have more interesting and exotic rooftops in my photo library, but this is one rooftop that turns up in my photos again and again.

To see others rooftops, and see what theme is up next, pay a visit to the fff blog. Won’t you play along, too?

grains of sand

I’m playing around with crops again, this time to show the coolness of the grains of sand from one of yesterday’s photos. (More of my zooming in can be found here and here.) Next I need to get photos of sand with a real macro lens set-up. Or a microscope!

sand and surf (friday foto finder: seaside)

This Sunday we headed to Salisbury Beach for what may be our second annual late August visit there. It was a beautiful sunny day, warm and breezy. We didn’t have too much time to stay, but we enjoyed lying on the sand and playing in the waves. I was supervising most of the wave-playing, so I didn’t get too many photos this time. These were three that I found quite pleasing. I was especially happy with the shell photo, as my telephoto lens captured more detail of the sand grains than I’d really noticed directly with my own eyes. (The sand is actually the same coarseness as what you can see in the seagull photo, though dryer than what the gull is walking on.) It made me wish that I’d taken more than one such photo! And also that I’d thought to bring home a handful of sand to photograph some more. (We did bring home plenty of sand, in our towels and sandals and stuck to the beach toys. But I’m not likely to scrape enough together to be photogenic!)

This week’s (okay, well, last week’s) friday foto finder theme is seaside. After spending some time looking through my old seaside photos, I realized that (what with the rarity of our seaside visits) I had already posted highlights from most of my seaside photo batches. (In fact, our last trip to Salisbury Beach was featured in a fff from June.) Rather than reposting, I opted to wait a few days to see what our weekend travels offered.

To see what other seaside delights have been offered, pay a visit to the friday foto finder blog.