Category: photography

screened flowers

Late this morning, as I went to the kitchen to get a cup of tea, my eyes were caught by the glow of bright colors from the window. Theo had planted some seeds as part of a project in his pre-K class, and they grew into some marigold flowers. Most amazing to me is that John has been watering them, and they not only grew into plants, but are still alive these many weeks and even months later. This is especially remarkable because the only plants that have historically stayed alive in this house have originated in neglected vegetables.

In any case, it was not the survival of the plants that caught my attention, but the interesting patterns produced by the sunlight coming through the screen, casting shadows across the unexpectedly colorful dying leaves and shriveling blooms. I love the warped grid pattern that emerged on so many of the leaves and petals.

I went for my camera, as I knew the light and focus would be too tricky for my phone. I wanted to capture the glow of the plant, and the strikingly patterned leaves, so this was a job for manual focus.

Even with manual focus, it was tricky, but I enjoyed looking through the results.

elegant metal cranes

With Friday’s foto finder theme of “crane,” there was much talk of feathered vs. metal cranes. I shared some feathery cranes, and Archie, bel and az each shared some interesting photos of cranes of the metal construction variety. But in the quest for cranes in my photo library, I discovered that I had some photos of cranes that were both of the bird variety, and made of metal.

These feathered metal cranes can be found in the koi pond of the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

I realized in posting this that I have shared quite a few photos from the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, and from the same visit there in 2009, even: koi, exclamation points in the wild, and a sign reading “keep on path.” I even posted a twisted tree that, while not in the tea garden itself, was just around the corner from its entrance. I have photos from other trips there, but it seems that I keep coming back to this one set.

I still quite like these photos, at least in their content and composition, but am otherwise frustrated at quality of them. Back in March of 2009, when I took them, I didn’t yet have my current trusty camera. I used a little point-and-shoot, and happily carried it around for all my pointing-and-shooting needs. Back then, I didn’t know much of anything about white balance and exposure and depth of field, and while I could appreciate looking at a good photo, had no idea how to get one. I look at these two photos, and feel the limits of my post-processing. The greens aren’t quite right, and there are over-exposed bits, and the focus isn’t quite as sharp as I’d like on the parts that I’d like. These days, I’d know to use a smaller aperture (not that I necessarily had that option on my old camera), and would probably have used manual focus, to boot (which I definitely didn’t have on my old camera). It’s an interesting reminder of how much I have learned.

from deep within the library (friday foto finder: books)

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to share a photo of books Considering how many books we have in our home (where the number is in the thousands), I have surprisingly few photos of books. I’m sure that books appear in various photos in which the clutter of our house is visible, but I’d rather not go there. Instead, I poked through my photo library to find this photo taken in a library. I took this in 2010, whilst in the swing of my participation in Project 365 (a year of commitment to daily photo-taking). When I did that project, I was playing around with a bunch of monthly themes. When I took this particular one, I was working on incorporating motion blur. Hence the ghostly hand. When I saw that I took this photo 3 years ago to the day, I knew that this was the photo I should post.

To check out more books, pay a visit to your local library. To check out more pictures of books, pay a visit to the fff blog.

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.

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.

Shooting the moon

The moon orbits the Earth in an elliptical pattern, meaning, among other things, that it varies in how close it is to the planet. When a full moon coincides with a day when it is closest to the Earth in its orbit, the moon appears both bigger and brighter. 2 years ago, the moon was closer to the Earth than it had been in about 9 years, and this supermoon was dubbed the mega moon:

The March 19, 2011 supermoon was 356,577 kilometers (221,566 miles) away from Earth. The last time the full moon approached so close to Earth was in 1993. It was about 20 percent brighter and 15 percent bigger than a regular full moon.

Even more remarkably (yet strangely not even noted on the Wiki page), on that 2011 date, I was many months into my own 365-day trajectory of daily photography. This meant that not only did I keep my camera handy, I also had by that time learned to use it on full manual, and learned the advantages of using a tripod. In other words, I was in just the right position, in time, space and personal circumstances, to shoot the moon.¹

Even so, it was a bit of an adventure. Living as I do in a heavily wooded area, there was quite a bit of trial and error finding the right spot for the tripod. Not to mention figuring out the right exposure.

This shot, for example, showed me the futility of trying to get a photo without the tripod.

This shot was overexposed, and while it is a lovely glowing white circle, it could just as easily have been…a glowing white circle.

The more I got the moon into focus, the more the surrounding trees made themselves apparent.

Moving the tripod around got me different views of different branches, many of which I actually quite liked.

Eventually, I both found the right place to get a tree-free view, and figured out the right settings to actually see more details with my telphoto lens than my naked eye could make out.

I admit that I was pretty excited. Perhaps not over-the-moon excited, but quite pleased with myself, nonetheless.

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to share a photo for the theme “moon.” To see more moons, pay a visit to the fff blog.

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¹ I’ve had this title in mind for a while, as this was a set of photos I’d meant to share ages ago. (As in probably in 2011.) I was reminded of this when I saw a post by my friend Sarah also called Shooting the Moon, though with a completely different reference. When Archie announced a couple days after that the fff theme was “moon,” I figured it was all a sign that these were the photos I should post.²

² Especially since, I’m sorry to say, I couldn’t even motivate myself to even go outside and look at last month’s supermoon. It’s not that I was, you know, over the moon, but without the push of daily photography, I am much less likely to get out the tripod. Plus I was tired.³

³ And besides, I’d already recently posted photos related to a different meaning of the word moon.

dancing flames (friday foto finder: fire)

We have some local friends who use a fire pit sometimes in their yards. It can be so relaxing to sit around the fire on a chilly night, and watch the flames put on their ever-changing show of light and color and shape. I took these photos using my telephoto, which allowed me to look deep into the flames while keeping my safe distance.

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to find photos of fire. These have been burning a hole in my photo library since September. To see what other photos are on fire on other people’s blogs, please visit the fff blog.