Why “Seldom Scene”?

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Maybe you’re wondering about the name of this new blog — at least, I know my wife is. I should take a moment to tell you where it comes from.

It seems to me that all too often we hurry through our lives, focusing on where we’re going and how late we are in getting there. Meanwhile, we’re obliviously walking right past incredible beauty all the time, every day. When I was gearing up to start this blog (and struggling to come up with a name I liked) it struck me that of the images I’ve posted on Flickr and other sites, most of my favorites were of subjects I nearly walked right on by — but then spotted out of the corner of my eye.

I almost called the blog “Scenes seldom seen,” but thought it was just too wordy. “Seldom Scene” is more compact, and ties in a bit of wordplay to boot. So that’s the story — in the future, I hope to capture and share with you a wealth of small fragments of easily overlooked beauty. Thanks for coming along for the ride…

Oh, and before I forget, this is a photoblog — so it’s got nothing to do with the bluegrass band of similar name.

Group shot

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On a trip to the Westminster Butterfly Pavilion a few weeks back, we saw this interesting crowd on a cluster of branches:

Group shot

I’m not sure why it was such prime real estate for the little critters, but they were all putting in a good effort to chase their neighbors off the twigs. At any one time, at most 4 butterflies were on the branches while 3 or 4 were hovering nearby, trying to take their places.

City ablaze

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One of the fun things about night shots is that you can get some interesting “free” effects from the different color temperatures used in street and building lighting. This is a shot of downtown Seattle, taken from the Space Needle late at night — shortly before they chased us all off the observation deck.

City ablaze.jpg

Here, the white balance is set to make the building lights look right — resulting in orange streets. I particularly like how the monorail line is silhouetted from beneath.

Originally posted to the old blog on May 5, 2009; on Flickr over here.

What’s the buzz?

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Another shot from the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, Colorado — this time of some honeybees in an indoor display case:

Whats the buzz.jpg

You’ve probably seen them, those honeybee cases in botanical gardens and such. The honeybees get to build their hive indoors, with a tube leading outside to an area with flowers. Meanwhile visitors get to see them hard at work.

I discovered something on this visit — regardless of the temperature indoors, the honeybees seem to be far less active when it’s cold outside. Even though I had my ring flash, I think the bees’ slow motions helped me get a nice, sharp image here. Unfortunately, you can also see a little bit of a smudge on the glass over on the left side of this shot.

Originally posted to the old blog on January 5, 2009; on Flickr over here.