One time we were wandering around in Santa Fe, primarily driven by a little window shopping. What’s a photog to do, but look around?
Luckily I thought to look down, too:
It’s pretty rare to see these sort of prisms / vault lights in New Mexico. Seattle, sure. Europe, definitely. But not in the Southwest…
While I was experimenting with stock-style photography, I turned my attention to my computer’s keyboard. It’s just sitting there, can’t run away, why not? “D” and “F” are right next to each other (pity the “O” is all the way over on the other side of the keyboard), so I thought they’d be the perfect subjects for a little bokeh / DOF shot:
Green coloration added in PS Elements in honor of St. Patrick’s day…
A little stock-style photographic experimentation:
This shot started with some techno-junk I had kicking around. An ancient ATA hard drive (get one just like it off eBay for about $5), and the motherboard of a defunct PC for an appropriately tech-flavored background. Throw in some flash bounced off the ceiling, and voila!
Next stop for the drive — platter removal (should make a nice wall-mount clock face!).
Nature reclaiming what once was hers at the now-shuttered George Inlet cannery (near Ketchikan, Alaska):
The cannery was closed in 1957, but parts are still open for tours (fun if you like learning how things used to be done). It’ll be interesting to see how much of the cannery the current owners will leave to naturally decay…
While we were driving around in Newfoundland, we saw something very foreign to U.S. eyes — the use of highway frontage for family storage (in some spots, gardens too). We didn’t see this in Novia Scotia, so maybe it’s a uniquely “newfie” thing?
Along one stretch of the highway on the west coast of Newfoundland, there were a few miles over which nearly all the dirt roads running off the highway were lined with idle lobster traps.
Apparently depletion of the local stocks means that the lobster season is very short — something like a week out of the year. As a result, people have to do something with the traps for 90+% of the time. Roadside seems to work…
It was a gray, overcast day — so the full-color version of this didn’t do much for me. I like the sepia, though. Brings out the texture in the weathered wood.
I grabbed this scene along the west coast of Newfoundland, in Gross Morne National Park:
Amazing place — during the ice ages, this was nearly all under water. All, except for what are now mountains. Once the ice melted, the land “rebounded,” and what once were fjords became deep valleys (while the nearby seabed became a coastal plain that people live on and tourists drive on).
An orchid at the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden:
For a photographer, one of the handy things about being married to a botanical fan is that when we travel, flowers are always involved. HTBG is particularly good in this regard, as it seems to have something in bloom no matter when you show up (at least, it’s been good for us the two times we’ve made it there). Just a few miles north of Hilo on the big island, it’s got a wonderful walking trail (some of it wheelchair accessible), and a wide variety of tropical plants.
FWIW, about all I did to this shot (out of the camera) was de-saturate the greens a bit so the flower would stand out a bit better.
Seen at the Hector Heritage Quay; Pictou, Nova Scotia, Canada:
I found these coils of old rope over in a corner of the Quay (essentially a small museum). A decorative touch, but likely also a good use for some rope that was nearing the end of its working life.
Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I bought a new computer a few days back and my workflow has been shot while I’ve been trudging through the process of moving all my stuff from the old gear to the new. But the good news, of course, is that I now have a much faster computer with dramatically more screen real estate (no more 15″ screen!). I can actually check my shots at the pixel level without spending all day scrolling around.
Anyway, I saw this collection of rhinestones while wandering around the stalls at the National Western Stock Show:
I didn’t see a lot of these actually being sold, so I have to wonder if this is really a fashion trend in the C&W world, or merely a reflection (no pun intended) of the shop owners’ own personal tastes.
Some hand-/foot-holds on a smokestack of the Battleship Texas:
I liked the geometry of this shot, with the eclectic mix of regular, repeating elements with odd jumbled patches. It took a bit of work in PS Elements to get this lined up (since I took the shot from below, there were significant skews to remove for this view).