Bent symmetry

I spotted this scene late at night in New Orleans:

Bent symmetry

I’ve taken to paying attention to what ceiling light fixtures look like from below — it’s not how they’re intended to be viewed, and you’ll often see an interesting geometry as a result. This one just made me laugh — it started as a nice symmetric six-sided thing, but has lost any pretense of regularity (as seems to be typical of New Orleans). Meanwhile, over on the left, where two bulb holders are a bit spread apart from where they originally were, an alarm bell sits between them and balances the composition.

So, crooked but still balanced. The sepia tone, by the way, was naturally there — about all I did to this shot was correct a little pincushion from the close perspective.

Make a lovely face, Roxanne

In spite of fitful weather, we headed downtown yesterday for the 2012 Denver Chalk Art Festival. This was one of our favorites (reminds me of our kiddo’s response to a camera):

Make a lovely face, Roxanne

Normally the weather’s pretty cooperative by this time of year — it’s generally hot, but dry. This year, for some reason, we’ve had alternating hot & dry / cool & wet weather for the past few weeks. Saturday night, we got nailed by some fast-moving thunderstorms.

So most of the chalk artists lost Saturday’s work (in full or in part), and had to do major repairs on Sunday. Pretty impressive for a day’s work, I’d say…

Gridded reflections

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is a fun place to skulk around in, should you ever be in town. Aside from all the great natural history material on display, the building itself has been added on to more times than I can count — leading to some interesting interior architecture.

Gridded reflections

I made this image in one of the building’s atriums (atria?), that once was a courtyard but since has been closed in and covered with a glass roof. Polished metallic wall tiles lead to interesting reflections and intersecting geometries.

Been places, seen things

I saw this on my most-recent trip to New Orleans, and just had to capture the scene:

Been places, seen things

This is one of the horses employed in pulling tourists around the French Quarter in carriages. I took this shot early (for NOLA) in the morning, which seems to be the best time of day for non-crowded street photography there. The sidewalks and streets have been washed, most visitors are sleeping off the previous night’s revelries, traffic hasn’t really started — a great time for a stroll.

At any rate, I still can’t decide if this is the horse’s “world weary” look, if he’s pondering the upcoming day’s work, or if he’s just lost in horsey daydreams of grassy fields and running free. In any event, a fitting subject for an environmental portrait…

Across the street

A scene in New Orleans’ French Quarter:

Across the street

I took this out of a conference room window in a hotel I stayed at a few weeks back — and thought this was a fun composition, even though (maybe particularly because) it’s got a little secret.

That nice-looking wall in the background? It’s not a fancy hotel or luxurious home — it’s actually a well-disguised parking garage. Makes a nice background, though…

Landmark

It’s tough coming up with a “different” way of photographing a landmark like the Golden Gate Bridge. Making life more challenging for me was the fact that on our recent trip to the bay area, it was overcast and wet most of the time.

But as luck would have it, we were headed north from San Francisco during one brief window of time in which we had actual blue skies and sunshine. I’d found some roads on the north end of the bridge via Google Earth, so wound up at an old artillery site called “Battery Spencer” in the Marin headlands. It was windy as can be, but I managed to hold my gear still for long enough to get off a few good shots like this one.

Landmark

There are other spots further west along the road that will give you good views of the bridge, but Battery Spencer is the best one I could find to capture both the bridge and the city in one frame.

Xaibe

You may not realize it, but this is a particularly odd structure in the Mayan world:

Xaibe

It’s a pyramid called Xaibe at the ancient ruins of Cobá in Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. The name comes from a Maya term for a crossroads, since it’s at the junction of four Maya roads — and it’s nearly unique in being a Maya pyramid with an elliptical (vs. rectangular) footprint. It *may* have been used as a lookout tower, but I’ve never seen anything resembling an authoritative statement on that.