Category: photos

night and day

I’ve now been in Hong Kong a whole week, and I have so much to write about that I don’t see how I can share it all while I’m still here. Instead, I will just offer a little teaser: This has been a trip of contrasts.

Central and Admiralty districts, Hong Kong Island, as seen from a godawful touristy harbour cruise by night.

Sai Kung district, New Territories, Hong Kong, as seen from the tail end of a breathtaking hiking trail by day.

I have two days left, one of which (today) will almost entirely be taken up by the conference. The “almost” part is only because I have decided that I’ll probably need to ditch the conference for a couple of hours to fit in a last coffee date with one of my local friends. Tomorrow I have reserved for going to Macau.

I’ve landed

I’m in Hong Kong now. Woohoo! But I need to try to get some sleep so I can start exploring for real tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are a couple of photos.

A view from the plane. The pilot was considerate enough to approach not only from an angle that gave my seat a good view, but also one that I can easily match up with the maps I’ve been looking at. We’ve got the Wan Chai district running along the top of the lower landmass, and Kowloon across the water. I am staying in Wan Chai, just a bit left of center, apparently quite near that fairly tall building with a spire.


A view from my 20th floor window. (See the spiky building?)

Project 365: a few of my favorite photos (part 2)

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

Project 365: a few of my favorite photos (part 1)

I wrapped up Project 365 a few days ago, and have a really long, rambling summary post in the works. (I bet you can’t wait!) However, seeing as it was a photography project, I thought I should post “a few” of my favorite photos from the year. And seeing as I had trouble picking, “a few” apparently means “a number so large that I should probably not try to squeeze them all into one post.” So, I’ve split them. Here are some from the first 6 months, listed by month. I’ve even listed my monthly themes, which I haven’t really shared before.¹

Month 1: reflections

011:365 New York City building reflections


019:365 Inside and outside, at my in-laws’


028:365 Rain drops on the train window

Month 2: shadows

043:365 Shadow of a lightbulb


045:365 Floating bike rack


062:365 Menacing bunny slipper

Month 3: Text

072:365 Up


090:365 Wood, stone


091:365 No trespassing

Month 4: motion blur

107:365 flashing light ring in motion


110:365 My Docs


111:365 Comparing apples to oranges

Month 5: light(s)

126:365 Silhouette


132:365 Compact fluorescent


138:365 tail lights through rainy windshield


139:365 Burnt out

Month 6: patterns

154:365 Milk crates in snow


170:335 Orange cones at the SFO airport Bart station

—
¹I wondered if people would be able to guess…

364 down, 1 to go


364:365 A ridiculous still life, with everything but the kitchen sink.

Unbelievably, I have just about made it through Project 365. 364 days in, I have managed to take (at least) a photo a day to share online. Admittedly, there were 2 or 3 times when I didn’t quite manage to take a photo before midnight, plus some other times when time zone mismatches made it look like I’d missed a day, but I always remembered to take some sort of photo by the time I went to bed. In this year of chaos and of feeling stuck, this project has felt like an accomplishment.

For my penultimate shot of the project, I decided to get all wacky and revisit some props and repeat subjects from my year of photos. (It’s sort of a pictographic summary.) In this photo can be found at least 20 things that have either been the subjects of my photos more than once, or that represent things (or categories of things) that have recurred in my project photos. (I’m sorry to say that even though it appeared in at least 4 of my photos, the kitchen sink is not included in this still life.)

How many can you find?

If you are curious, but haven’t looked at many of my photos, you can peek the thumbnails in batches on my flickr account:

And here’s another game for you, if you want to play. Each month, I chose a theme (or some sort of visual motif) to work with. Can you identify them? (Okay, it was not actually all 12 months.)

If you want to play, leave a comment with:

    1) one thing from the still life photo above that has either appeared in some of my Project 365 photos, or that might represent things from those photos
                    ~ or ~
    2) a theme identified from one of my monthly sets
                    ~ or ~
    3) the number of things from the photo you have been able to identify
                    ~ or ~
    4) any months for which you have been unable to identify a theme

If you don’t want to play, leave a comment telling me:

    1) how cool I am for doing this project and for achieving awesome levels of awesomeness
                    ~ or ~
    2) what a dork I am for making up this game and for achieving dorky levels of dorkiness
                    ~ or ~
    3) the number of times you rolled your eyes while reading this post
                    ~ or ~
    4) any moths for which you have been unable to identify a thorax

If you don’t want to play or leave a comment, click here.

looking through the glass

Just as I was getting ready to go pick up the kids this afternoon, I took a drink of water. Looking through my glass as I drank, I thought, as I often do, how cool the distortions looked. I had a couple minutes to spare, so I thought I’d see if I could capture what I was seeing.

Here is the glass on the counter. I used this to gauge the distance for focusing on the bottom of the glass.

Then I held up the glass to look out the window.

I love how changing the angle of the glass a bit changes the scene. (Especially with that big drip of water rolling around in the glass…)

Just about everything looks more interesting. Case in point: the dirty dishes in the sink.

Then I grabbed this stray wine glass from the counter, where it’s been sitting for no good reason ever since its failed appearance at the yard sale fiasco.

I was thinking about dropping it off with my next donation run, but I may have to use it for a few more photos, first.

‘Cause, ooooh, swirly!

(I’ve been trying to catch my breath, and get caught up with things beyond breathing. It was a crazy couple of weeks with lots of time away from home. We are back home for a bit.)

lessons

Here are some scenes from my violin lesson.

(There’s a story behind these photos, but I can’t get into it now, since it’s almost midnight, and I have to get up early in the morning to pry two overtired children out of bed to get them to daycare and preschool so that I can head to a lab meeting that I talked my bosses into scheduling for tomorrow since I couldn’t make the Tuesday meeting in person and I was sure we’d be back from my in-laws’ by Wednesday at the latest, and I need to get to bed since I’m tired after a long day involving packing up two stir crazy children and driving with them over 4 hours, much of which included stop-and-go traffic, only to get home half an hour before needing to leave for the violin lesson, which was rescheduled from Monday, and still needing to get the children to eat dinner before leaving for the violin lesson and half of dinner ended up being graham crackers in the car, which sounds like an intriguing name for a dish, kind of like pigs in a blanket, and I’m so tired right now that I think I’m starting to see things since I’m pretty sure we didn’t have a large floating guinea pig in the house when we left last week.)

a flower and two stumps

We’ve stayed down at my in-laws’ for a couple of extra nights to help out, so I’ve had some bonus photo time. Here are some things from the yard that I found very pretty.

The stump of a mimosa tree.


The stump of another kind of tree.


A daylily. (Actually, I found the stumps more interesting. But I liked the lily shot, too.)

sharing a chair

One of my regular pursuits is to try to get a good picture with both Phoebe and Theo. They are often like bouncing atoms, rarely at rest at the same place at the same time. Today at lunch, they were fighting over a particular chair at the kitchen table. I have no idea why that chair. But then they finally agreed that they could sit in the chair together. Oh, the cuteness! I had to get a picture! Of course, my hands were full as I headed towards the table. I turned around to set aside the plates of food I’d been about to serve and pulled my iPod out of my pocket. As soon as I had the camera pointed in the right direction, though, Phoebe decided she was over the moment. She ran off. However, we were able to talk her back to the table, and amazingly, both of them stayed put (without glue or other restraining devices!) while I aimed the iPod camera at them. Rejoice! There was much cuteness to be had. (Not shown, though, are the shots of the kids with food hanging out of their mouths.)

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(I do find myself wishing I’d grabbed for my real camera, since the iPod photos are so grainy. Instagram filters are fun and all, but I’m pretty sure I’ll grow tired of them…)