Tag: friday foto finder

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.

photographing fireworks (friday foto finder: fireworks)

In the US, the 4th of July (aka Independence Day) is traditionally celebrated with (among other things¹) displays of fireworks. We took the kids to see some fireworks a couple of years ago at a nearby town, and this year we went to a school field at a different nearby town. (Our own town doesn’t host any such displays.) Both times, I enjoyed the challenge of trying to capture the fireworks in photos. I’ve learned a bit more about how to use my camera² in the past 2 years, so I think I had a higher success to failure ratio this time around. (So funny to realize that July of 2010 was before I embarked on my daily photography adventure for project 365.)

As best I can tell, it helps to have a camera that you can set to full manual mode: you’ll want to set the aperture, shutter speed and ISO levels, and also not try to rely on auto focus. (Things typically move too fast with fireworks for my camera to find a focus on its own.) I played around quite a bit with the settings, and took probably well over a hundred photos, to get some shots that I liked. (Two of the great things about digital photography are the cheapness of taking so many exposures, and the near-live feedback about how your photos have worked out, letting you make adjustments accordingly.)

Here are a few of my favorite shots.


A big poof of red, with white and blue accents. (This was taken with my telephoto lens, zoomed to 45 mm: aperture f/4, iso 1400, shutter speed 1/50.)

Next I switched over to my 20 mm fixed-length lens, which can open to a really wide aperture. It looks like I stuck around an aperture of f/1.8, set the iso down to 400, and then a shutter speed of 1/10 (a tenth of a second).


This is one of my favorites, as it reminds me of a dandelion gone to seed.


This was taken at a lower shutter speed (1/2, or a half second), and the added blur gave the effect of shards of ice crystals.


This was another slow one, and it reminds me of ribbon.


This upward-dripping effect may have been due to me playing around with moving the camera as I took the shot. (I do remember intentionally moving the camera for some shots, but don’t remember whether this was one of them. It’s also possible that somebody bumped me. Or maybe I sneezed.)


Many of the colors didn’t come out for me, except when a single color dominated. I liked the way this one, while sparse as the blooms went, showed a wide range of intense colors.


I love all the shapes formed by the puffs of smoke in this one. I see butterflies and flowers and ducks. Also a few blobs of oatmeal.


Here’s an early one from the show, where I was still trying to work out the focus. Clearly, I missed, but I like the result anyhow.


Theo was quite scared by the fireworks 2 years ago, or at least by the loud noises. (He did like the pretty lights.) This year, he only half-heartedly covered his ears. Phoebe was fully entranced. (Here I had to crank the ISO way up to 1600 to see anything. The red glow is likely from some red fireworks–the only light I had in this shot.)

I have a few more shots in the slideshow below in case you are compelled to see more. Click on the photos above to see them bigger.

And in case you are wondering why I’m now posting 6-month old photos, it’s to participate in …um… last week’s³ friday foto finder with the theme of “fireworks.” (The photos would have been exactly 6 months old if I’d managed to post on Friday!)

To see what fireworks people were celebrating, go check out the friday foto finder blog. And if you’d like to participate this Friday, the theme will chocolate.

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¹ Also hot dogs, potato salad and flag-waving.
² An Olympus Pen E-P1, which I have been known to refer to as “my epi-pen.”
³ It was a hectic week, and the last few days were a crunch of presentation preparation followed by a bit of conference attending. This time without traveling.

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A Sunday Afternoon on a Saturday afternoon for a Friday endeavor (friday foto finder: art)

Post-holiday sluggishness has set in, likely fueled by too many holiday treats.¹ In any case, I am slow to post. My photo library is full of photos of all kinds of art this week’s friday foto finder theme. Here it is Saturday afternoon, and I am finally getting around to posting some photos of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. This famous painting by Georges Seurat is located in The Art Institute of Chicago, which I visited during my May, 2010 trip to Chicago for a conference.

I hadn’t seen the painting before in person, though I had seen various reproductions, as it is one of the most famous works of pointillism.²


I know some people would find that these people are in the way, but I like photos of people interacting with art


The painting has lots of interesting details to explore. Click on the photos to embiggen them a bit.


A monkey! (Also a little dog.)


There is also this pointillist border all around.

To see what art others have put on display, please check out the friday foto finder blog.

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¹ Can sluggishness be fueled?
² I also remember the painting from its noteworthy role³ in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. [youtube]
³ It was not a speaking role.

smokestacks from Vassar Street (friday foto finder: chimney)

I may not have a lot of photos of chimneys at hand, and didn’t motivate myself to take anything like an interesting shot of my own house’s chimney. However, I do have quite a lot of photos of smokestacks, which serve more-or-less the same function. Smokestacks are architectural features that have long attracted my eye. While I’m sure that old brick smokestacks were considered eyesores when first built, they now add interest to many old mills and factories.

Here are several views of some smokestacks visible from Vassar Street in Cambridge, Massuchusetts. (Most were taken from a building that is part of the MIT campus, but I don’t believe the smokestacks to belong to MIT.) I took these between November of 2005 and October of this year.

November, 2005


January, 2010


July, 2010


December, 2011


October, 2012

To go see what other structures others have chosen to blow out their smoke, please stop by Archie’s friday foto finder blog.

Prairie dog pair (friday foto finder: animal)

For this week’s friday foto finder, we’re on the hunt for animals. My photo library is full of all sorts of animals: furry, feathery, scaly, slimy or otherwise. But here’s one animal photo I’ve been looking for an excuse to share. These two prairie dogs live in our local zoo.

This photo cracks me up, and it seems like it’s screaming for some sort of caption. Any suggestions?

To see what other animals people have captured, please pay a visit to the friday foto finder blog.

mailbox (friday foto finder)

It was bound to happen one of these days. Archie picked a theme for this week’s friday foto finder that is not well represented in my photo library. This week, he chose “mailbox.”

I suppose I could just run outside and snap a photo of our home mailbox, but it’s really not a very interesting one. Instead, I dug out this photo of a standard US mailbox outside the post office in Beulah, Colorado, that I took in 2005. (Perhaps I should disambiguate. I took the photo in 2005. Not the mailbox. I did not take the mailbox in 2005. It would not have fit in my luggage.) Okay, the photo is still not all that interesting. However, it is fun to see what standard mailboxes look like around the world. At this point, I believe that the other participants of friday foto finder are in Europe & Australia.

Actually, I think that the photo below is also of a mailbox, but I don’t entirely remember. I took this one (the photo, silly) in 2010, and if memory serves, it’s the top of a mailbox outside the karate school. In any case, I find the photo more interesting.

To see what other mailboxes people have posted,¹ go check out the friday foto finder blog.

Coincidentally, I just this week came across a collection of photos of mailboxes from around the world at the Postcrossing Facebook page, where Michele, of Voix de Michele, shared a photo of a mailbox in Abu Dhabi.

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¹ Ha! Posted!

Photos from the Musée D’Orsay (friday foto finder: station)

The Musée D’Orsay in Paris is a remarkable building. It was built as a railway station around the turn of the (last) century, but only used as a rail station for a few short decades. The large and impressive building was converted into a large and impressive art museum in the 1980s, and it houses, among other works, a very large and impressive collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces. (Most of which are impressive, but not very large.)

When we visited Paris in 2007, I made my first visit to this museum. It might seem surprising that I had not been there before, especially given my love of art and the fact that I had lived outside of Paris for 2 years. However, the first year I lived in France was 1980, and the museum would not yet be open for another 6 years. I’m pretty sure I heard of the museum when I lived in Paris again in 1988, and I’m not sure why I never made it there then. I certainly remember going to other museums. (I particularly remember the Rodin Museum and the Orangérie.)

In any case, I was very taken with the museum, as much (if not more) for the building as for the art. I loved the grand arches, interesting use of glass, and many other details.


I love the tunnel-like effect of the main hall.


This gigantic clock faces inward.


This gigantic clock faces outward, and can be seen from inside the café.


People and sculptures.


Looking up.


Multiple levels.


High vantage point.


My rosy-cheeked little one in front of some of Renoir’s famous rosy cheeks.

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This week’s friday foto finder theme was “station.” Given my love of rail travel, it might not surprise you that I have many photos of train and subway stations in my photo archives. However, this was the station that came to mind first.

To see what other stations are being shared, please visit Archie’s friday foto finder blog. Won’t you consider participating, too?

basket (friday foto finder)

This was one of the first photos I took when I arrived in Macau, an excursion I made on the last day of my trip to Hong Kong in August, 2011. These large baskets were stacked near the sidewalk under a pedestrian ramp. I’m not sure what they were for.

I do wonder if they belong to some sort of produce vendor, as they look similar to the baskets in the photo below, which were in use at a Hong Kong street market.

This week’s friday foto finder theme is “basket,” which led to me rummaging through my virtual basket of photos. This time, after much rummaging, I did end up going with the first photo that came to mind.

To see what other baskets others have shared, and to find out how to participate (it’s easy!), check out the friday foto finder blog.

flower (friday foto finder)

This week’s friday foto finder theme is “flower.”

This flower may have seen better days, but I appreciated the tenacity of its petals.

To go see what flowers others have picked, check out the friday foto finder blog.