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.

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.

img 0212

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.

—

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.

3 rusty dumpsters

I love the patterns often formed by peeling paint and rust. With their constant exposure to the elements, along with the rough treatment they receive due to their function in the world, the outside surfaces of dumpsters are often home to particularly fascinating non-objective compositions.¹

Here are 3 dumpsters I have come across in the past few years.²

¹ In posting this, I realize that may well have now proven to many of you that I am completely insane. That may well be, but I assure you that I am quite harmless.
² The two blue ones are in parking lots where I park frequently. I can’t remember where the green one was.

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.