Category: photos

a matter of perspective

It’s amazing how enormous things can seem tiny, and tiny things can become huge, all depending on your vantage point. Right now, I am marvelling at the enormous amount of inconvenience and discomfort that can be caused by a tiny speck of something that has lodged itself under one’s eyelid. On a related note, one takes for granted the enhanced depth perception that one has from the full use of two eyes, and one realizes that one has taken for granted the ability to pour a beverage into a glass without pouring large amounts of said beverage onto the table.

fading fall ferns

Here in the wooded parts of New England, there are plenty of ferns growing among the undergrowth. In the spring they poke up alien-looking shoots, which then unfurl and fan out into their more familiar fractal-like shapes. In summer, they typically appear in a range of greens, from bright chartreuse to deep forest green, and many a shade in between. In the fall, by mid-October, most of the green fades away, leaving a variety of other colors: reddish browns and soft yellows, along with the palest of minty greens.


This is a rather blurry photo I took last year, which doesn’t do justice to the colors, but gives a sense of the range.

This year, I was quite taken with some ferns that had faded almost completely to white, but without otherwise looking withered.

I loved the way the bright white shapes stood out against the dark fallen oak leaves.


This fern looks very feathery in white.


Zooming in, you can see how perfectly the fern kept its shape.

Find the fading fall ferns fascinating? Feel free to fill the fine form that follows.¹

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¹ And by that I mean “please leave a comment,” except with a lot more alliteration.²
² And by that, I meant that I used a lot more alliteration above. But if you wish to leave a comment with a lot more alliteration, please proceed!

joking by number

Today was 11/12/13, a fun date for those people who like to enjoy fun dates.¹ The date has compelled me to post something with a numerical theme, though not about those particular numbers.

A few months ago, we were telling jokes in the car on our way somewhere or other. I don’t recall who started telling jokes, but at one point the conversation went something like this:

John: Why 7 is afraid of 8?
Phoebe: Because 7 8 9!
Theo: Why is 3 afraid of 4?
Everyone else: Um, we don’t know. Why?
Theo: Because 4 is REALLY REALLY MEAN!

Can’t top that.

And just because, here are a few photos of numbers.


Some numbers written by Theo at age 3. Perhaps they are all facing the wrong way out of fear of the number 4.


Who knows what sinister plans the 4 has for the 5 here?


Two 4s, looking as menacing as you might expect.

¹Yes, I am one of those people: Cf. my many Pi Day posts, as well as posts for 12/12/12, 11/11/11, 10/10/10 etc. Hell, I even posted something on 7/8/9 that I’d completely forgotten about.

poppies

Since I seem to be on a run of posting old photos of flowers (and flowers from my in-laws’ house, at that), I figured this would be a good day to post these photos of poppies.¹ The top photo with the close-up of a poppy bud, with its fuzziness glowing in the sunlight, is one of my favorites. These photos were taken in May of 2011.

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¹I only learned of the symbolism of poppies for Remembrance Day in recent years. Poppies seem to have a very complicated and often controversial coexistence with humans.

flower, bee, ants

Here’s another flower I came across when hunting for a rose to post on Friday This bright pink flower is another from my in-laws’ house, this time from out in the yard. More interesting to me than the flower, though, was the activity that was going on inside it: a shiny green bee and a bunch of tiny ants were hanging out, collecting pollen, or nectar, or whatever goodies the flower had to offer. (Maybe it was really free beer and pizza. I’m not a botanist, though, so I can’t be sure.)

the bloom is off the rose (but the fruit is on)

After I posted yesterday’s relatively un-rosy photo of a dandelion, I realized that while I don’t have many photos of roses, I do have some photos that I quite like of rose hips. These berry-sized red fruits are packed with vitamin C and other valuable nutrients. They are also quite pretty. I came across these particular rose hips in September three years back, in Boston alongside a T stop at BU.¹

¹ FYI, the T is Boston’s subway (though it’s not always underground) and BU is Boston University.²
² And FYI is “for your information.” OYVMWS?³
³ OYVMWS is a meaningless string of capitalized consonants. At least as far as I know.

dandelion and rose (friday foto finder: rose)

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to find and share a photo for the theme of “rose.” This actually was more of a challenge than I expected. While I take many photos of flowers, either I don’t encounter roses often, or am less likely to be drawn to them to take pictures. I think it’s a little of each. Given my recent run on sharing leaf photos, in a perfect world I’d have constructed some roses out of maple leaves. But, alas, I was busy with other things, and our yard mostly has dried oak leaves, anyhow.

In any case, a moderate amount of digging through my photo library didn’t reveal any photos of roses that inspired me. But in my search for photos I’d tagged as flowers, I did come across many photos of dandelions. This particular one caught my eye: the dandelion is sitting on my mother-in-law’s floral patterned table cloth. Sitting, in fact, right next to the image of a rose. A rose-colored rose, even. So that’s about as close to rose as I’m going to get just now.

You can see a lot more of this particular little dandelion in a series of photos I posted a couple of years ago. I used a bellows in those, letting me get up really close and personal with the dandelion.

For more rosy photos, stop and smell the roses at the fff blog.

take it or leave it

Time ran away from me, as it so often does. Among work and appointments and grocery shopping and a dozen other things big and small, the hours of my day were eaten up. I find myself once more at 11:00 rushing to put up something to post. I had been planning to go all retro and post a ThThTh list, it being Thursday at all, but it was not to be. I still have more work to do before bed, and I can barely hold my eyes open as it is. So, here are some photos I took this morning before the school bus came. These large leaves on some roadside plant caught my eye across the street. Like so many of the plants I photograph, I haven’t the slightest clue what it is. But I liked the shape of the leaves, and the way they dangled from the stems, making a sort of garland.

This oak leaf interloper also caught my eye, trapped in the tangle of twigs over the big stems, and appearing suspended in mid-air.

I would also note that some of these leaves were impressively large. If memory serves (though frankly, at this hour, that’s a big if), I believe the front leaf in this photo is about a foot long. That one had flipped around in the wind, making the patterns of its leafy veins more visible.

That’s all I have for tonight.

photo shoot with a leaf of character

Yes, I’m going on about leaves again. This time about just one leaf, actually. I was out waiting for the school bus to drop off the kids one afternoon in late September when this little guy caught my eye on the driveway:

Naturally I felt compelled to take his picture. And then I picked him up and moved him around, trying to find a good background.

I held him up to catch the sunlight, and enjoyed his dramatic shadows.

Yes, I know that I am easily amused, but this leaf cracked me up.

It pleases me to share photos of this leaf because it follows up nicely on my recent posts featuring leaves, leaf shadows, and found faces.