These are some photos of the plants in my in-laws’ front garden from today. While spring and summer gardens are certainly pretty, I find the late fall withering to be more interesting.
This maple leaf interloper looks like it’s trying to fit in with the ivy.
Also, can I just say that I am really impressed with how well my iPhone camera does with these fairly macro shots? There was a lot going on in preparation for this trip, and I totally forgot to bring my camera.
I went to a conference last week in Portland, and while there is plenty to say about that trip, for now I will just share this moment from the start of my trip.
I flew out last Sunday evening, and I arrived at the airport a good 2 hours before my 7 p.m. flight. Boston Logan is, as major city airports go, a fairly moderate and manageable size. Airport security typically goes pretty fast (at least compared to some airports (Denver, I’m looking at you)), and I expected to have a good chunk of time before boarding. For whatever reason, though, things went really slowly in security that evening. I watched my cushion of extra time dwindle away such that it looked like I’d be getting to my gate only a few minutes before boarding. Having finally passed through security and reassembled myself and my luggage, I wasted no time heading to the gate, which naturally was as far from security as possible in that terminal wing.
With my gate just in view, I looked out the window. It had been raining earlier, and the clouds had parted a bit to provide a spectacular sunset.
What’s more, there was a rainbow.
Rainbows are big in our household. Phoebe and Theo both love color, and rainbows are a frequent subject of artwork. For that matter, rainbows are a frequent subject of conversation.
I confess that this love of rainbows in my children has been encouraged by me. I loved rainbows as a kid. I mean I *loved* rainbows as a kid. I had what might be considered a “rainbow phase.” And for someone who mostly wears gray and black, I still love color. I love that my children love color.
So imagine my excitement at seeing a rainbow. At an airport. (Because I also love airports.) My inner child was giddy.
My flight was scheduled to board in about 5 minutes, but I didn’t hesitate to stop to walk over to the window. I had my iPhone handy, and snapped a few shots. But they absolutely didn’t do it justice. I parked myself at some conveniently open seats at the gate closest to me (a gate which happily didn’t have a flight scheduled imminently). I unloaded my backpack, and dug out my camera with my telephoto lens.
What I found sort of hard to understand was that the vast majority of the people waiting around in the airport seemed to be completely indifferent to the stunning view. I say “vast majority” because I did overhear one guy on his phone nearby saying something about the rainbow and pretty sunset, but that may well have been in reaction to seeing me whip out my camera. (I think I made him look.) Nobody else appeared to be looking. I wanted to just stand at the window and stare.
But I also wanted to share, especially with my rainbow-loving children. I headed over to my gate, and found a seat. They hadn’t started the boarding process yet, so I figured I had time. I got out my laptop, and loaded the photos from my camera onto it. I sent an email to John with a photo, and posted it to Facebook as well. I may well have posted it here on my blog as well, but my row was called for boarding, so I had to pack up my laptop in a hurry.
I realized that if I hadn’t gotten stuck in security, I would likely have missed the rainbow. (I’d likely have settled down at my gate and buried my head in my electronics until called to board.) I wouldn’t have heard a peep about the rainbow from anyone around me.
Are most adults really so blasé about rainbows?
A photo taken with my iPhone. You can find the rainbow only if you know where to look. (It’s near the white rectangular structure near the horizon, about a third of the way from the left.)
Taken with the telephoto.
Rainbow and plane.
The scenery was beautiful even without the rainbow. This scene is to the left of the rainbow. The views of the sunset from the windows near my gate were also striking, but the crowds were too thick for me to get close enough to take pictures.
One last zoom of the windmills and big tanks just beyond the runways.
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These were the photos I was considering for the friday foto finder theme of “right.” To see a rainbow, conditions have to be just right. You have to be at the right place at the right time, with the weather conditions and the lighting just right such that the water droplets are in the right direction from the sun.
Okay, az, you’ve talked me into it. I’ll try my hand at joining in Archie‘s friday foto finder, a weekly photo-sharing activity.
This week’s theme is “Left.” This photo is one from a 2009 trip to San Francisco, a left-leaning city on the US Left Coast. Here we are on a left-leaning ramp, with left-pointing arrows.
Here are 3 pictures of fruits I have taken over several years.
Apples, from October, 2008. (In a Massachusetts apple orchard.)
Oranges, from September, 2009. (In Sevilla, Spain.)
Unknown type of berries¹, a few days ago. (In Massachusetts.)
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¹ I really wish I’d had recent access to a banana tree, since that would make a better set. The last time I saw one was probably in Brazil in 1991, and I didn’t get any photos. But I do like the berries.
Here are 3 fallen leaves I’ve come across on outings in the last few weeks.
For the past 3 weeks or so, iPhoto, the application I use most for photo managing and editing has been broken. It had been buggy for who knows how long (Months? Years?), with weird things like the ghosts of deleted photos reappearing (beware the haunted thumbnails!), and tags running amok. An update became available, and I thought “yay, this should fix things!” But the result, instead, was that I could no longer open my iPhoto library. I kept getting an error message saying that my photo library was damaged, and to restore from a backup. Many things were tried, including restoring from a backup, which supposedly also was broken.
Given that I could see that my photos were still on my hard drive, and my back-up drive, I didn’t panic. However, it was very annoying that I was unable to access many years’ worth of sorting, tagging and rating. And given that my photo library was getting up over 50,000 items…holy crap, that’s an increase of about 16,000 since I wrote about my digital hoarding tendencies…but that was fairly early into my Project 365 year, and well before the photo binges of trips to Hong Kong and China… Wait, where was I? Oh, right, given that my photo library was freakin’ ginormous, it’s not like I wanted to start over with the tagging and sorting and rating.
In some ways, it was a bit of a relief. It broke me of some time-sucking habits, like looking through photos for things to post. Rating, tagging, and deleting here and there. It was almost a nervous tic to sit down at my laptop, and poke through piles of photos. Also on the bright side was that I got more comfortable at photo editing in Photoshop.
But it was also really irritating. I mean, I still do want to post photos from my trip to China, and I’d already spent a fair amount of time sorting through those. Plus all those Hong Kong and Macau photos I have yet to post. Plus, you know, I like looking at my photos.
So, I’m happy to say that after performing a series of dark rituals, unmentionable incantations, and database rebuilding (I think that last bit may have involved chicken blood) iPhoto is now mysteriously functional again.
In marginally related news, I also have increased facility to share photos of my eye.
After the initial shock (and a number of subsequent shocks each time I caught a glimpse of my eye in the mirror from the wrong angle over the next couple of days), I got fairly used to the eye. And a few days ago (a week after the subconjunctival hemorrhage first appeared), I noticed that the red areas were noticeably shrinking.
I actually had a really great time on my trip last weekend, which was only slightly affected by my eye. I was a bit self-conscious about it at the wedding, but not a soul ran away screaming. (It was almost disappointing.)
In this photo, with me squinting in the bright light, you have to look to see the red.¹
I did wear some sunglasses for part of the time, especially during the outdoor cocktail reception. (The late afternoon sun was very bright.) John has quite a few nice pairs of sunglasses he got a few years back when he had contact lenses. I had many options to choose from, but was taken with these vintage-looking ones with blue lenses. (I chose my dress to match them.)
Seeing this photo, though, leads me to believe that my messy hair may also have deflected attention from my eye. As it turned out, my friend and I were almost late for the wedding, due to getting stuck in traffic in New Jersey. Our preparations were somewhat frenzied.
And for those of you who were voting for me to go in the pirate costume, this is for you:
Aye, photo.
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¹ For those those of you (or perhaps that would be for that one of you) who would like to see what my eye looked like up close, here is that photo that John talked me out of sharing. And here is that same photo with the red of the pupil fixed with “red eye reduction.” Just because I could.
We drove down to my in-laws’ yesterday evening, arriving a bit after 8, with the light just barely fading. After we unloaded the car and spent a little time with Grammy and Grampa, we headed to the back yard, lured by the twinkling flashes of light. In the the deep twilight, the lawn was sparkling with the light of dozens of fireflies. John grabbed a few empty jars (my mother-in-law is always one to have a good supply of empty containers handy), and I grabbed my camera.
The fireflies were remarkably easy to catch. One had to do little more than reach out a cupped hand towards a low-flying nearby flash. When I did this, more often than not, the firefly would land on my hand. The kids enjoyed running around catching and collecting them in the jars.
I tried to catch the sparkling with my camera.
The little buggers turned out to be remarkably hard to catch flashing. I aimed my camera at one of the rapidly populated jars. Click. Click. (Nada.) Click. Click. (Zilch.) I’d take a dozen shots, with nary a flash. Then stop, look up. (Flash!) Click! (Too late.) Using manual focus, and the setting for rapid-fire shooting, I squatted low to the grass. Click-click-click-click. Click-click-click. (Score!) Several hundred shots later caught me fewer than 2 dozen moments of flash. (But it was fun.)
Late this morning, I went for a stroll with my mother in the gardens of her apartment complex. The sun was hitting this flower just right to make its leafy interloper glow. (I do wish I’d done a better job with the focus. I may try to go back again tomorrow at the same time of day, but I doubt I could find the light just so again.)
Here is the next big batch of my favorite photos that I took during my year of daily photo-taking. These are from the second 6 months, listed by month, along with the theme I chose for that month. (Favorites from the first 6 months can be found here.)
Month 7: color
190:365 After an icestorm
199:365 Snow cone
206:365 Hydrant
Month 8: shape(s)
235:365 The mega moon
month 9: texture
249:365 Fountain of Youth. (Title credit goes to my mother. Photo taken at my cousin’s wedding reception.)
253:365 Chain link curtain
254:365 Tissue rose
262:365 Dandelion macro
272:365 Flower in a mandarin orange
month 10: perspective
282:365 Phoebe among the dandelions
303:365 Stack of fruit
month 11: people
312:365 Confrontation in blue (aka “Donkey Darko”)
321:365 Washing hands at a farm
337:365 A flower for you
month 12: tired of themes
342:365 Cars on the driveway
343:365 Stairwell at MIT. (Taken with my iPod, and largely unedited.)
349:365 taken with my iPod, and filtered in Instagram
354:365 Theo telling Grampa about the fireflies
355:365 Picnic at the rest area
358:365 Peacock, up close
collecting tokens 
