To follow up yesterday’s flowers in the rain, today I offer some sunnier fare.
A sunflower and visiting bee from 2 years ago.
Blue and purple wildflowers by Salisbury beach a few weekends ago.
Flame-colored astilbes I saw at the zoo this weekend.
Category: photo sets
3 more silhouettes of amusement park rides
These are 3 photos I’ve taken of amusement park rides in recent years. The photo I posted yesterday from our visit to Canobie Lake Park a couple of weeks ago reminded me that I have had this little set collected and ready to post for ages.
2010, Story Land, New Hampshire.
2013, Southwick’s zoo, Massachusetts.
2012, Edaville, Massachusetts.
drawing a blank
Do you ever feel like there is something important that you are missing? As if the signs are there, but you just can’t figure out their messages? Maybe it’s just me.
Here are 4 photos of blank signs I’ve come across in my wanderings.
The first 3 are from nearby Massachusetts towns, and the last is from a suburb of Dublin. I’m sure that if the signs actually showed any text, the text would somehow reflect the location.
Yet again, I found myself stuck about what to post. Too many options, not enough time to work through some of them. Happily, I came across this set of photos that I had put together at some other point when I felt stuck. So, I guess these blank signs offered me some direction.
an assortment of harps from Ireland
Here are a number of harps I encountered on my trip to Dublin last month. It’s one of those cases where I didn’t realize that I had amassed a collection of photos on a theme until after the fact. With the exception of the last photo, these are all just photos of things that caught my attention at different times during my visit.
Brian Boru’s Harp, from the 15th century, in the Long Room of Trinity College.
A harp of a more modern vintage, which appeared in a Dublin restaurant towards the end of my dinner one night.
A glass of Guinness, with the trademark harp logo. This was my first Guiness in Ireland, which I enjoyed in a little pub under the train station in Howth, a town on the seaside, outside of Dublin.
The Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin. Also known as The Harp Bridge. Photo taken from the top level of a double-decker bus, on my way to the airport.
The Euro coinage in Ireland has a harp on the back side. (This is the one photo I took after returning from my trip.)
The friday foto finder theme from 2 weeks ago was “music.” I was actually in Dublin 2 weeks ago today, and heard live music that day. (In fact, harps were played, along with a range of other instruments, including fiddles, banjos, a bodhrán, and Irish bagpipes.)
This week’s friday foto finder theme is “fridge magnet.” I actually probably did see harp refrigerator magnets for sale in Dublin (I know I saw magnets, and I know I saw souvenirs with harp motifs), but did not think to purchase (or photograph) any. I do have quite a few fridge magnets of my own, and will probably share some later. If you would like to play along with this week’s theme (or one of the past week’s themes, as I’m doing) pay a vist to the fff blog. New participants are always welcome!
filling the gap: 2 photos of Portland standpipes
So, um, yeah. These were 2 sets of standpipes that caught my eye in Portland, Oregon, when I was there on a trip for a conference. In September, 2012. (And so my gap of the previous post has been filled. More or less.)
5 photos of standpipes
Here are 5 standpipes (or sets of standpipes) that have caught my eye. Some caught my eye for their reflective shininess, and some for their weathered patina.
2009
2010
2011
2013
2014.
As I put these together, I saw that the 5 photos were neatly from 5 different years. (I had a 6th photo that was also from 2011, but it didn’t fit as well, so I didn’t include it.) Would you believe that it bugged me that I didn’t have a standpipe photo from 2012? Further, I noticed that it should have been of a weathered (rather than shiny) standpipe, in order to best complete the pattern. I actually started to look through my photos from that year before realizing that it was crazy to do so, especially given that I have more work to do tonight before bed, and it is after 11 p.m.. (This is the sort of compulsion that I’m talking about.)
the life and times of an Easter egg
frost feathers
Over the winter, I often would find that my car (parked overnight in the driveway) would be covered with frost in the morning. I frequently admired the various patterns. In fact, it was only a few days after I posted a series of photos of the scribble-like frost patterns I’d seen on my car on different days that I went out to find these new and unexpected frost designs:
Rather than the more typical zig-zaggy patterns, the car was covered swiling, whirling whorls and arcs, reminding me strongly of plumes.
Interestingly, it was not just the windows that were frosty, as was often the case, but the whole body of the car.
I suspect that the patterns were not so much frost as thin sheets of ice from freezing rain, which wind had blown around as it froze.
The patterns were just so feathery.
The piles of stuff in the back of the hatchback showed through, adding various colors to the palette of swirls.
These shapes remind me of palm trees.
I had remembered that I’d taken these photos and have been meaning to post them, but I hadn’t remembered that I had taken them the same morning as I took so many photos of ice drops in the back yard. I do wish that I’d gotten some photos with my real camera, and not just my phone, but I suspect that the delicate frost patterns didn’t survive much of that sunny morning.
Photos from a sparkling winter morning
Those of you who have known me for a while will surely know that “sparkling” is not a word that typically gets anywhere near the word “morning” in my world. (Certainly it is not a word that has ever been used to describe me in the morning.) However, there was one morning this January when I was bedazzled by the sparkle of own backyard.
After bustling the kids out to the bus, I walked down the driveway to be greeted by a display of glittering light. The sprinkling of freezing rain the night before had left droplets of ice and water decorating the tangled vines and thorns of our overgrown garden.
The winter sun was low in the sky, gradually burning off the cold mist.
The low rays lit up the ice and water drops all around.
In many places, there were water droplets, lined up along the horizontal branches like dangling crystal beads.
Little balls of ice had been caught in the winding twists of wild grape vines, looking like jewels wrapped in wire.
I was charmed by the twists and coils, the quirky designs of some mildly deranged jeweler.
(This one reminded me of a dangling lightbulb.)
I first tried to snap photos with my iPhone (not shown), but the phone came nowhere close to capturing what I was seeing. I went inside and got my real camera with telephoto lens.
Even with the good camera and good lens, focusing was a challenge. These little beauties were only a couple of centimeters across, with the ice drops probably measuring 6 or 8 millimeters. (I find it funny that the jewelry-like shape of these forms inspires me to use the metric system. When I buy beads, they are always measured in millimeters.)
Using my long lens also meant that I had to be several feet from my target. (See? Feet. I am an American.) It was often tricky to even find what I was trying to focus on in my screen, and any little sway of my body would often throw the focus off. (Really, a tripod would have helped, but I’m not sure how it would have worked the way I had to contort myself to get the different angles to capture the sparkle.) I went back inside to get my pancake lens (200 mm fixed length lens), and had better luck.
Clearly, I was bedazzled, as I see from my photo metadata that I spent about 2 hours taking photos. (Not counting breaks to come in to change lenses, and to look at the photos on my laptop.)
My fingers were numb in my fingerless gloves when I finally tore myself away. It was, after all, an icy January morning.
It was totally worth it.
collecting tokens 