Category: photo sets

interpreting Jack Frost’s cryptic scrawls on my car

When the weather turns cold, but the snow isn’t falling, any remaining drops of humidity in the air get applied to whatever surfaces are left exposed outside. While it sometimes looks like my car has been draped a sheer but sparkly fabric in the morning, other times the frost appears in lines and shapes that resemble hieroglyphics. I don’t always know what to make of these weird drawings and cryptic messages.

Yesterday when I got in the car, there was a thin, long white zig-zagging line across my windshield, and I thought for sure that the windshield had cracked, but it turned out to be another one of the frost’s practical jokes: the apparent crack wiped away with a finger tip.

Here is a collection of some of the insane ramblings that Jack Frost has inscribed on the surfaces of my car.

This bit looked like the start of a spiderweb, or maybe the beginnings of some sort of dastardly plot.

These bits look like someone was at work with an Etch-a-Sketch.

Who can say what was meant by this:

I wished I could have gotten the phone’s camera to focus better, but I was cold. But I thought the message looked important.

Dire warnings written on the tail light?

A treasure map drawn on my rear window?

I’ll let you know if I am ever able to decode this.

Has Jack Frost been leaving you cryptic messages as well?

an eclectic row of hedges (friday foto finder: hedge)

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to share photos on the theme of hedge. Around here, there is plenty of shrubbery and such in the landscaping, but it’s not so common for the bushes to be arranged in hedges. Of course, the term hedging my bets came to mind, but that didn’t generate any photos either. I found myself checking out the definition of hedge for inspiration:

From Dictionary.com¹

hedge [hej] Show IPA noun, verb, hedged, hedg·ing.
noun
1. a row of bushes or small trees planted close together, especially when forming a fence or boundary; hedgerow: small fields separated by hedges.
2. any barrier or boundary: a hedge of stones.
3. an act or means of preventing complete loss of a bet, an argument, an investment, or the like, witha partially counterbalancing or qualifying one.

I didn’t particularly remember taking any photos of hedges, but I thought surely I must have, especially during my travels. I did find quite a few samples, which I’ve lined up here in a row for your perusal. (Though really, this is more of a column of hedge photos than a row of them.) (I also wonder if some of the towering French examples still count as hedges. I suppose that I am hedging my bets by showing so many varied examples.)


2007: Le Jardin des Plantes (“The garden of plants”), Paris, France. A range of hedge sizes can be seen, including some that are rows of not-so-small trees.


2007: The gardens of the Palace of Versailles, France. Off in the distance, you can see what look like rows of box hedges. But I think the tiny specks in front of them are people, so there’s no way they are “small trees.” They are gigantic. The mother-of-all-box-hedges gigantic.


2007: Saarbrücken, Germany. I liked this leafy gate, which enticingly showed glimpses of a hedge maze behind it. (Attempts to photograph said hedge maze in the fading light with the little point-and-shoot I used at the time were blurrily unsuccessful. Here they are, tiny so as to hide the blur:


2009: Parc Güell, Barcelona. Swarms of tourists swarm over a stairway in front of a pretty unremarkable hedge.


2009: Alcázar, in Sevilla, Spain. Judging from my photos, Alcázar is chock full of hedges, some of them quite striking. Funny how they didn’t stick in my memory.


2009: Again in Alcázar, in Sevilla, Spain. These hedges were a bit more unruly.


2012: at MIT, Cabridge, MA. Finally, here’s a hedge that’s closer to home. I’m pretty sure I was looking more at the willow trees, whose dangling strands looked remarkably even at the bottom, reminding me of freshly-trimmed bangs.

To see what hedges others have lined up, and share your own, pay a visit to the fff blog.
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¹ This citation of Dictionary.com made me think of this article: “If everyone still wrote like they did in college.”²
² Of course, when I was an undergrad, there was no Dictionary.com. We had to cite a freakin’ dictionary. Like, a book.³
³ I feel like such an old fart. Imagine me saying, in my best crotchety old man voice, “Back in my day, we didn’t have the internets or wikipedia or this dot com nonsense. We had to dig our references out of the fields by hand, with nothing but spade and card catalog.”

photos of a burned-out mill (friday foto finder: factory)

In this part of New England, the textile industry once dominated. In the towns around where I live can be seen many an old mill. Many of the mills are now abandoned, others have been converted to new uses. This particular mill was once a yarn mill, but in recent decades had been converted to space for dozens of small businesses. About 6 years ago, the whole mill complex was largely destroyed in a fire. The fire started in the middle of the night, so happily there were no casualties. But the businesses were destroyed, and many lost their jobs and livelihood. (It particularly saddens me to think of the many artists who had studios in the mill, who undoubtedly lost years worth of artwork.)

All these years later, the mill is still a burned-out shell. Much of the debris and rubble was cleared out, but large sections of the structures still stand. Here are some photos that I’ve taken on a few different occasions over the past year.


The smoke stack has been converted into a cell phone tower. I vaguely remember that this happened after the fire.


The shell of the rather ostentatious columned façade.


A sign on the fence remaining from before the fire: “No smoking beyond this point.”


I find it a bit eerie to see that remnants of the landscaping survived the fire. Here are some ornamental trees and a hydrangea bush, in their late fall but otherwise healthy states.


I found the striped shadows of these exposed rafters to be quite striking.


A different angle on those shadows, and zoomed in a bit. (Hence the graininess.)


The façade does look very imposing against the fiery colors of a dramatic sunset.

This week’s foto finder challenge was to share photos on the theme of “factory.” To see what other sorts of factories others have found, pay a visit to the fff blog.
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5 photos of imperfect leaves

If you thought I was done posting photos of fall leaves, you were wrong. But this time, there’s a twist: not all of these leaves are fall leaves. Some of them are from this spring and summer.

In each of these photos, it was the holes that caught my eye. As is so often the case, it is the imperfections that lend character. I find it funny that while we seem to often strive for perfection, flaws and irregularities can be more interesting and appealing.

gas

Here are 4 photos I’ve taken on different days in recent years.

I realized in posting these photos that I’m not entirely sure what to call the things in the photos. They are not unlike manhole covers, but the holes that they cover are not man-sized. They are significantly smaller, perhaps 8 or 10 inches in diameter. Definitely too small to fit a man. Perhaps a slender gnome could fit, in which case they could be gnomehole covers.

access denied

I’m feeling rather obstructed in my progress these days. Here are 4 photos of gates and doors that I couldn’t get through.


September, 2009. Sevilla, Spain.


August, 2011. Macau.


March, 2012. New York, NY.


August, 2012. Massachusetts.

Clearly, I am able to attach significance to these bits of metal (unlike those of 2 days ago). Also, I do seem to get around, even when I’m not getting through…

found faces

The wallpaper in the bathroom of my grandmother’s house was a repeating marbled pattern with blue and white, looking a bit like swirled paint. There were no clear shapes in the swirls, but my eyes found faces in them. Sometimes the faces would scare me a bit when I was little, especially when I’d need to get up to use the bathroom in the night. In my memory I can still make out the faces (2 men with beards, one young and one old, and a young woman) though the house is no longer in our family, and the wallpaper is no doubt gone. (I really can’t imagine that the new owners of the old house would have kept that wallpaper.)

I sometimes still see faces in other places, and I know I am not alone in this.¹ Here are a few of the faces that have appeared to me in the blotchy or peeling paint of various surfaces.


A column in a subway station in Boston.³


A wall on an abandoned building in a town outside Boston.


A wall in Providence, RI.

Do you see the faces in these photos? Do you find faces in other places yourself?

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¹ I have a friend who started a tumblr to share photos of the found faces that she has come across. And Archie has mentioned his own found faces a couple of times.²
² For that matter, the face finding feature of iPhoto has also been known to find faces in other objects.
³ This photo was from November 2, 2012–one year ago today. After finding a photo to post yesterday from November 1st of a previous year, I went poking to see what other photos I had in my library from November 2nd when I looked to find something to post today.⁴
⁴ And the reason that I was looking for something to post today is that I have decided to do NaBloPoMo again this year for November, and post daily for the month. I think this marks the 7th year that I done this.

full-color fall color

With the gray days of winter looming in the not too distant future, my eyes are savoring the flashy colors of fall. The New England trees are putting on as lovely a show as ever, but the vines and shrubs and even some of the weeds are competing for attention.
red leaves

orange leaves

yellowish leaf

green and red spotted leaves

purple leaves

The first 4 photos are ones I’ve taken with my phone in the last few weeks. The fifth photo is actually one I took with my camera a couple of years ago. I have some more recent photos of this same type of leaves and berries, but the leaves weren’t nearly as purple.

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.