Tag: photography

a matter of perspective

It’s amazing how enormous things can seem tiny, and tiny things can become huge, all depending on your vantage point. Right now, I am marvelling at the enormous amount of inconvenience and discomfort that can be caused by a tiny speck of something that has lodged itself under one’s eyelid. On a related note, one takes for granted the enhanced depth perception that one has from the full use of two eyes, and one realizes that one has taken for granted the ability to pour a beverage into a glass without pouring large amounts of said beverage onto the table.

fading fall ferns

Here in the wooded parts of New England, there are plenty of ferns growing among the undergrowth. In the spring they poke up alien-looking shoots, which then unfurl and fan out into their more familiar fractal-like shapes. In summer, they typically appear in a range of greens, from bright chartreuse to deep forest green, and many a shade in between. In the fall, by mid-October, most of the green fades away, leaving a variety of other colors: reddish browns and soft yellows, along with the palest of minty greens.


This is a rather blurry photo I took last year, which doesn’t do justice to the colors, but gives a sense of the range.

This year, I was quite taken with some ferns that had faded almost completely to white, but without otherwise looking withered.

I loved the way the bright white shapes stood out against the dark fallen oak leaves.


This fern looks very feathery in white.


Zooming in, you can see how perfectly the fern kept its shape.

Find the fading fall ferns fascinating? Feel free to fill the fine form that follows.¹

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¹ And by that I mean “please leave a comment,” except with a lot more alliteration.²
² And by that, I meant that I used a lot more alliteration above. But if you wish to leave a comment with a lot more alliteration, please proceed!

flower, bee, ants

Here’s another flower I came across when hunting for a rose to post on Friday This bright pink flower is another from my in-laws’ house, this time from out in the yard. More interesting to me than the flower, though, was the activity that was going on inside it: a shiny green bee and a bunch of tiny ants were hanging out, collecting pollen, or nectar, or whatever goodies the flower had to offer. (Maybe it was really free beer and pizza. I’m not a botanist, though, so I can’t be sure.)

dandelion and rose (friday foto finder: rose)

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to find and share a photo for the theme of “rose.” This actually was more of a challenge than I expected. While I take many photos of flowers, either I don’t encounter roses often, or am less likely to be drawn to them to take pictures. I think it’s a little of each. Given my recent run on sharing leaf photos, in a perfect world I’d have constructed some roses out of maple leaves. But, alas, I was busy with other things, and our yard mostly has dried oak leaves, anyhow.

In any case, a moderate amount of digging through my photo library didn’t reveal any photos of roses that inspired me. But in my search for photos I’d tagged as flowers, I did come across many photos of dandelions. This particular one caught my eye: the dandelion is sitting on my mother-in-law’s floral patterned table cloth. Sitting, in fact, right next to the image of a rose. A rose-colored rose, even. So that’s about as close to rose as I’m going to get just now.

You can see a lot more of this particular little dandelion in a series of photos I posted a couple of years ago. I used a bellows in those, letting me get up really close and personal with the dandelion.

For more rosy photos, stop and smell the roses at the fff blog.

photo shoot with a leaf of character

Yes, I’m going on about leaves again. This time about just one leaf, actually. I was out waiting for the school bus to drop off the kids one afternoon in late September when this little guy caught my eye on the driveway:

Naturally I felt compelled to take his picture. And then I picked him up and moved him around, trying to find a good background.

I held him up to catch the sunlight, and enjoyed his dramatic shadows.

Yes, I know that I am easily amused, but this leaf cracked me up.

It pleases me to share photos of this leaf because it follows up nicely on my recent posts featuring leaves, leaf shadows, and found faces.

more multi-colored leaves

I’m thinking of changing the name of this blog to “collecting leaves.” Not really. But I do seem to be sharing quite a few leaves. What can I say? It’s fall, and I live in New England. The leaves put on a show, and I am a captive audience member. Who likes to take pictures.

There are fewer colorful leaves on the trees these days, as the chilly winds of November have blown in and cleared most of the trees. Most of these photos were taken over the last few weeks.


Looking up at the layers of red and green oak leaves in my yard.


This plant is pretty as much for the berries as for the leaves. This is the same type of plant whose leaves looks so purple in my other leaf post.


This plant couldn’t make up its mind about what color to wear, so it decided to try out a different look on each leaf.


I like the way these leaves fell in line on the brick sidewalk in Cambridge, MA.


I was drawn to the flame-like colors of this lone leaf at the playground. (I think it’s some kind of maple leaf, but I’m not entirely sure.)


These leaves are in the shrub at a friend’s house. I was quite taken by what looks a bit like a tan line on one of the leaves. (The yellow triangle on an otherwise red leaf looks like it was a result of the leave below it having previously been on top of it.)

from deep within the library (friday foto finder: books)

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to share a photo of books Considering how many books we have in our home (where the number is in the thousands), I have surprisingly few photos of books. I’m sure that books appear in various photos in which the clutter of our house is visible, but I’d rather not go there. Instead, I poked through my photo library to find this photo taken in a library. I took this in 2010, whilst in the swing of my participation in Project 365 (a year of commitment to daily photo-taking). When I did that project, I was playing around with a bunch of monthly themes. When I took this particular one, I was working on incorporating motion blur. Hence the ghostly hand. When I saw that I took this photo 3 years ago to the day, I knew that this was the photo I should post.

To check out more books, pay a visit to your local library. To check out more pictures of books, pay a visit to the fff blog.

full-color fall color

With the gray days of winter looming in the not too distant future, my eyes are savoring the flashy colors of fall. The New England trees are putting on as lovely a show as ever, but the vines and shrubs and even some of the weeds are competing for attention.
red leaves

orange leaves

yellowish leaf

green and red spotted leaves

purple leaves

The first 4 photos are ones I’ve taken with my phone in the last few weeks. The fifth photo is actually one I took with my camera a couple of years ago. I have some more recent photos of this same type of leaves and berries, but the leaves weren’t nearly as purple.

a bowl of morning sunshine (friday foto finder: morning)

We live in the woods, and for most of the day, our house is in shadows. For a few hours each morning, though, the south side of our house is bathed in sunshine. Our breakfast table in particular has been known to catch some of these morning rays.

This week’s friday foto finder challenge is to share a photo for the theme “morning.” This photo is from September of 2010, and it’s actually one of my favorites that I’ve taken. I loved the way the pieces of O cereal arranged themselves in the bowl to best show off their shape in shadow, and how the subtle fluting of the glass bowl resulted in a radial pattern of bright reflected light.

To see what other mornings have been captured and to share your own, pay a visit to the fff blog.