Category: travel

beach day (friday foto finder: coast)

While we live on the East Coast of the United States, our partiuclar town is quite far from the coastline. It’s sadly rare that we take the kids to see the ocean. Last August, following an overnight stay in New Hampshire to have Theo’s birthday at Canobie Lake Park, we made a detour the coast before heading home. Here are some photos from our largely unplanned day at Salisbury Beach.


The boardwalk.


Looking over the colorful beach crowds.


Buried treasure.

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to share photos on the theme of “coast.” Coast on over to the friday foto finder blog to see what other coasts have been cast.

3 shop window displays

Here are 3 displays I’ve come across in unrelated shop windows in the past few years.

Buttons. Paris, France. August, 2007.


Sewing machines. Boston, MA, USA. December, 2010.


Thread. Shanghai, China. May, 2012.

oft-travelled roads (friday foto finder: road)

Over the past few years, my family has made many road trips, especially between Massachusetts and New York. I tend to be the passenger more often than the driver on these trips, and sometimes I will entertain myself by taking photos. I love the way certain stretches of road will wind, following the curves of the landscape in these hilly regions. Here are a few photos taken on various road trips to New York state. (I don’t know exactly where the first two were taken–we follow highways through parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York. The last two are definitely in New York.)

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to find a share photos of roads. Once again, my photo library overflows with photos to fit this theme. To see what roads others have travelled, and to see the theme for next week, check out the friday foto finder blog.

One year and half a world away

This is where I was, one year ago today:


I took this photo on a walk along the Bund in Shanghai.

I’m finding it hard to believe that another whole year has gone by. I feel like I have very little to show for it. A year ago today, I presented my research at a prestigious international conference. (Here I am, giving my talk. I even won an award.) Two days earlier I had walked along a stretch of the Great Wall near Beijing, one of the most awe-inspiring experiences of my life.

Two days ago, I barely left my house. The past year has been a blur of holidays and birthdays, laundry and grocery shopping, illness and death, laundry and grocery shopping, celebrations and family visits, and more laundry and grocery shopping. I know that I have been working and busy, but once again I feel like I don’t have enough to show for it. I’m really not even sure what my point was other than…damn. A whole ‘nother year. And I haven’t even posted my trip photos!

3 weathered Beijing doors (friday foto finder: door)

Here are 3 of the many doors that caught my eye while walking around Beijing during my all-too-brief visit there last May. While there were plenty of doors that were freshly painted and well-maintained, I found that the weathered paint of these interested me more.

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to find a photo of a door. Once again, my biggest challenge was choosing from among my options! To see what other doors have been found this week, please pay a visit to the friday foto finder blog!

Also, if you (like me) find that run-down and weathered things make for interesting photos, please check out my friend Magpie‘s Decay and Desuetude blog.

photos of exclamation points

I happened to look at the search terms people used to find my blog today, and saw that someone had come seeking “exclamation point photos.” I found this rather surprising. Perplexing, even. For one thing, I haven’t posted (or hadn’t yet posted), to my knowledge, any actual photographs of exclamation points. (I did once compose and post a rather nice graphic of an exclamation point made of punctuation marks, but it’s not a photo.)

For another thing, I was surprised that someone out there would actually be looking for “exclamation point photos.” That is, someone out there who is not me. As it happens, I have found myself noticing exclamation points in the wild for the past several years. They are elusive and rare creatures, but happily, once spotted, they tend not to run away. Many of them will even consent to having their photos taken.

First, my earliest wild exclamation point sighting. This little guy was seen at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in March of 2009.

It seemed to be made out of green tea, which is common for wild punctuation marks in the area. Sadly, shortly after this photo was taken, the little exclamation point was squished and smeared across the table by the fingers of a curious nearby preschooler.

This rather startled looking specimen was seen on the ceiling tiles in a lab at MIT. I think it was trying to run away. (Spotted March, 2011.)

This cute little guy was on some steps of the Great Wall of China, near Mutianyu. It posed for me in May, 2012.

And most recently, this timid creature was seen at a zoo in Massachusetts in August, 2012. It was trying to hide under a few leaves, possibly out of concern that it would be stomped on. (And it may have had some reason for concern, as I believe that the feet in the photo belong to the same individual who smushed the green tea exclamation point of the first 2 photos back in 2009.)

As you can see, my blog will now be THE go-to place for photos of exclamation points. Perhaps one day I will write a guide book on the subject.

above the patchwork fields of middle America (friday foto finder: high)

The photos I’m sharing today are of a much loftier sort than the ones I posted on Wednesday. While dumpsters are rather down-to-earth, these photos are taken while looking…down to earth. From a plane.

Much like the abstract compositions that I find in the small details of peeling paint and rust, I love the giant-scale abstract compositions formed by fields, roads, rivers and other features of the landscape when viewed from above.

Many of the fields of the Western and Midwestern United States use a system of irrigation that leads to fields that are circular, or segments of circles, which are then interspersed among more traditional rectangles. These geometric shapes arrange themselves in a surprising array of colors: hues arising from different soils, different crops, different stages of growth, and likely other and sundry factors that are better known to those who farm those fields. Flying in a plane above, if you are lucky enough to have a window seat and the right weather and lighting conditions, not to mention the right flight path, you are presented with an ever-changing gallery of these wonders of shape and color.

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These photos were taken on 3 different trips. The first 6 are from August 2004, taken en route from the East Coast to Colorado (or vice versa), or from some connecting flight in between. The next 3 are from a January 2006 flight from Albuqueque, New Mexico. The last two are from a May 2008 flight to Houston, Texas. I don’t recall my specific itineraries, so I don’t remember where I was in each case. (I mean, other than in a plane. I remember that much.) They were all taken with point-and-shoot cameras.

This week’s friday foto finder theme is “high,” another that offered many choices from my photo archives.¹ I’ve mentioned it before, long long ago, but I really love heights. I therefore have many photos from high places: tall buildings, hikes, ferris wheels, and gondola rides. I considered posting something from each of these. However, I figured that seeing as I haven’t had the opportunity for space travel, views from a plane are about as high as I can manage.

I’ve posted a few of my other window-seat pictures before. And I probably will again. And if ever I have the chance to travel into space, I promise to share the pictures.

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¹ This theme also offered much opportunity for playing with words. You were very nearly given a post with the title “getting high in Barcelona.” But I decided not to go there. I mean, I *did* go to Barcelona. And I visited a fairly elevated spot. But I decided not to go that direction with my post…or my title.

ships in Hong Kong Harbour (friday foto finder: ship)

Seriously, I thought I’d manage to get my friday foto finder post up by the end of Friday this time, but clearly that ship has sailed. Here we are on Saturday Sunday Monday¹ once more, and I am finally getting around to posting for the theme of “ship.”

I do welcome the chance to dig through my archives and see what I can find to fit themes chosen by Archie for friday foto finder. A ripe period in my archives to find ships was from my August, 2011 trip to Hong Kong for a conference. That trip was amazing and varied, and I still haven’t yet shared all my stories and photos.² Below are photos of ships in Hong Kong Harbour from 4 different vantage points, and showing quite a variety of types of ship.

First, the view from the plane as I arrived:


Well, you can’t see many details of the ships here, but you can see that there are lots of them. But I just really like this photo. (I posted it before.)

Second, the view from the convention center where the conference I attended was held:


A view of Hong Kong Harbour from the conference center. (This was from day 3 or 4.)


Another view from the convention center.

Third, views of the harbour from Victoria Peak, visited during a rather irritating guided bus tour on my fifth day:


The bright colors of the shipping containers and loading cranes remind me of toys.


Another view of the cargo ships.

Fourth, views from the harbour itself, taken during an evening harbour cruise:


Many large cruise ships can be seen in the harbour.


When the sun goes down, the bright lights of these ships compete with those of the skyline.


Finally, here is one the red-sailed junks that are so iconic of Hong Kong.

¹ Time does get away from me. At this point, I’m racing against Tuesday.
² Well, I’m not likely to share *all* my photos, given that I took many hundreds. But I haven’t yet shared even all the ones I find worth sharing. My last recap post was over a year ago, with the recap of day 5 (part 1), and I have stories from the later part of that day, plus 3 more days before I flew back home to the US. A number of my photos, including some from above are posted on flickr. (Here are the photos from the 5th day of my trip.)

railway by the railway (friday foto finder: railway)

My photo library is loaded with railway-related photos. I love to travel by train, frequently commute by train, and as a parent of young children, we have many toy trains and rails in our home. I have many years worth of photos of railways of all sizes. So when I saw that Archie had picked “railway” for the friday foto finder theme, I figured I was golden.

What I hadn’t really taken into account is the trouble in making a decision when I have too many options. A couple of days later, and I’ve finally chosen share some of my more recent photos on this theme. (Not that I’ve been doing nothing else other than deliberating over train photos, mind you. I also had to do things like deliberate over what to wear and what to make for dinner.)

The week before last, I had a workshop to attend in New York City, and I opted to take the train down. I first took the commuter rail into Boston, and then took an Amtrak down to New York Penn Station. I had a couple of hours to wait in Boston between trains, and spent part of the time wandering around taking a few photos. Here are some photos of the model railway that is an annual tradition of South Station. This one is apparently a newer and bigger one than has been there in previous years.


(This is a crop of the photo above, but I wanted to show the two very serious-looking men in dark suits.)

As I hadn’t wanted to be weighed down with a lot of luggage for only a couple of overnights, and since my schedule was going to be too tight for any sightseeing, I had decided not to bring my real camera. It turned out to be a bit of a shame, because there are some times when having more options is a good thing. I did find myself wishing that I could adjust my settings to better deal with the bright light. On the other hand, my phone is handy to have in my pocket, and is easy to whip out for snapping a few shots reasonably unobtrusively.