Category: photos

digging in


Our array of snow shovels.

Some of you may have noticed that I have been posting rather frequently of late. I decided, you see, that I would post every day this month. I have so many photos and stories to share, I decided to just dig in. I don’t really have a plan, beyond that. I’m just picking from among the photos in my digital hoard, or posting as things come up. I hope to share some more of my travel stories, and other posts I’ve started to draft. Maybe, when I’ve laid it all out, some sort of pattern will emerge. Or maybe it will be just a big pile. But it will be my pile.


There are some bushes hiding under these piles.


Our front path.

And now I should try to dig back into my work, which has been entirely neglected for the past few days. Not only have I spent a lot of time shovelling snow, but I have also not had any time without at least one young child since Thursday.

Happy Year of the Snake!

Today is the day to ring in the Year of the Snake.


These are some Japanese clay bells that I bought in San Francisco’s Japantown 12 years ago. I’m quite fond of them. Who knew that snakes could be so cute?

digging out

As you may have heard, the US East Coast was hit by a blizzard over the past couple of days. We weathered the storm without any incident (happily, we didn’t lose power), and by mid-morning today the skies had cleared and the sun came out. All told, it looks like we got somewhere between 18 inches and 2 feet of snow. (It was crazy-windy last night, so there was much drifting.)

John had shovelled several times during the night, so the driveway only had about 8 inches when the snow stopped. He had, however, left the car untouched. Come 3 in the afternoon, pretty much all of the other necessary shovelling was done. It was time to deal with this:


Dude, where’s my car?

Theo, who often enjoys brushing the snow off the car with our long-handled snow brush, decided that he would take on the job.


2:54:28 p.m. Trying the side of the car first, but having trouble reaching the car.


2:54:46 p.m. Around to the back, and looking determined.


2:55:09 p.m.


2:55:16 p.m.


2:55:59 p.m. “You can get the rest, Mommy.”

So it was up to me.


4:09 Close enough? I think this is kind of a good look for the car. And we didn’t have to go anywhere.


What do you see? (Please participate in the snow Rorschach test.)

pushing buttons (friday foto finder: buttons)

Little kids love to push buttons, and my children are no exceptions.¹ Whenever we ride elevators with the kids, we have to give each one a chance to push the buttons. One will get to push the outside call button, and the other the floor selection. There have been moments of great disappointment when other elevator passengers have helpfully pushed a button for us.

Here is Theo pushing a button at the Boston Museum of Science, which is a great place to take kids who love to press buttons. Not only do they have more than one elevator, but they also have a number of exhibits with interactive displays that involve pushing buttons. This photo was from September, 2011, when Theo was 3 years old.

This week’s friday foto finder theme is “button.” Go check out the fff blog to see what other sorts of buttons people have found.

—

¹ Remember that time Phoebe called 911 as a toddler? I do. Grammy & Grampa’s phone had a big, pretty red button on it.²
² My kids have also been know to press each other’s buttons, but those moments don’t tend to make the best photo ops…

The shape of shadows: 5 stairways with shadows of their railings

When an object casts a shadow, the resulting shadow shape is dependent on a number of factors beyond the characteristics of that object itself. The angle and direction of the light, intensity of the light, number of light sources, and the shape of the surface onto which the shadow is being cast all play a role in the resulting shadow. When the surface in question is varied, the shape of the object casting its shadow gets transformed and distorted. Stairs, with their multiple planes, bend shadows that fall onto them into zig-zaggy shapes.


Albuquerque, NM. January, 2006.


At MIT, inside the Stata Center. April, 2010.


At MIT. April, 2010.


In New York City, going up to the High Line. March, 2012.


At the karate school, at a nearby Massachusetts town. February, 2013

trailblazing

At some point last school year, I started going on morning walks with a neighbor whose kids get on the school bus with Phoebe. We have a couple of standard routes, depending on how much time we have to walk. What with busy schedules and sometimes uncooperative weather, we haven’t gotten too many walks in this winter. We did this morning, and without any planning, we headed a bit off our typical routes. We walked down a couple of neighboring streets, and when we got to the signs marking the town conservation lands, we were inspired to wander up the trail. Our morning walk turned into a bit of a hike, and an exploration. At some point, the trail ended, and we kept going, heading through the woods in the general direction of our road. With no snow on the ground, and with the undergrowth in its rather sparse wintery state, the going was pretty easy. I We did end up crossing a few creeks a few times, using stones and, in one case, a fallen tree.


A little pond, frozen over and dusted with snow.


One of the streams. We didn’t cross on this fallen tree.


Close-up of the ice in the stream.


I was quite taken with these mushrooms.


Here are those same mushrooms, looking straight on.

fuzzy-mushrooms
See how fuzzy they are? (This is a zoomed in crop of the mushrooms. A ‘shroom zoom, as it were.)


I think this tree was flashing us.


You can see here how this stream was pretty easy to cross, via that little dam of rocks.


More ice.


I like ice.


A fallen tree, whose roots have been worn away, leaving a bit of a star shape.


Stump fungi. You can see here that there is a bit of fresh snow here. The big, fluffy flakes were just wafting down lazily, adding to the ambiance.


The ruffles of this fungus remind me of a flamenco dancer’s dress.

It’s so funny to realize that this place has been around the corner the whole time I’ve lived in this town, yet this was the first time I’d ventured in these past 13 years. I hope to head back in, and bring my real camera. (Not shown are the varied shots where I didn’t quite get the focus.) I was glad I had my phone with me, though, as it not only let me take the photos, but helped us decide our path a couple of times. (It felt a bit like cheating to use my phone’s GPS, but this was supposed to be a quick morning walk before starting work, not an all-day exploration.)

tree-lined road on a foggy morning

There was a brief stretch last week when the temperatures were strangely balmy for a January in New England, and we awoke to a thick fog on Wednesday morning. This is a photo I took from the top of our driveway, looking down our street while waiting with Phoebe for her school bus.


Photo taken with my iPhone, with the Instagram filter Sutro applied.

shadows with highlights, highlights with shadows

On Friday we awoke to a cold but bright and sunny morning and a very light dusting of snow. After going about the usual morning routine and getting the kids off to school, I came home and got ready to do some work. I’m not sure why it caught my eye, but when I looked out my back door, I saw something I hadn’t seen before: The sun had melted the very thin layer of snow, all except for any that was in shadow. On our deck, the railings cast their long morning shadows onto the deck floor, and each shadow had its own outline of snow. The angle of the sun had clearly changed since most of the melting, as the snow didn’t line up perfectly with the shadows. Instead, the thinner dark stripes had their white highlights, and the thicker white stripes were set off by a dark shadow outline.

deck-stripes


Yes, our deck could use a good sweeping, and perhaps a scrubbing. But the leaves and debris add a bit of texture, right?

ice droplets in the morning sun

Below are 3 crops of the same photo, taken a couple of weeks ago on a bright sunny morning after a bit of overnight freezing rain.


Full size.


Zooming in a bit.


Zooming in a bit more.