Tag: Photography

  • Microcosmic Beauty

    I don’t normally post links.  Today, however, something brightened my day that seemed worth sharing.  With all the evil human deeds fouling our world, below is the link I found tucked far beneath a horrific news article.  My kudos to amateur photographer Alejandro Ferrer.  I hope you enjoy…

    A Whimsical View of Bugs

    –

  • Up in the Air

    I wanted to share with you some recent photographs I took while flying across the country to visit Rachel.  Many of the pictures don’t seem like pictures of land, more like textures or maybe even baked cookies on a sheet.  What do you see?

    I am thinking of sending this one in to Southwest, actually.  I love the way it came out.  You can see the horizon-line starting the sunrise.  The sun is over the plane on the right, as though it’s over my shoulder.

    I love this.  It looks like waves or something.

    Somewhere between Colorado/Utah.  Looks like the moon.

    Fuzzy horizon (actually think this goes with the first shot, just without the airplane wing).

    I’ve always wondered, do the squares down there form by roads, or just natural contours of the land?

    Clouds or landforms?

    Clouds?  Snow?  Water?  All of the above?

    This looks unlike land, to me; maybe a map?  Frosted cookies?

    More sugar-frosted brownies.  You can see those lines I mentioned above much more clearly in this image.  Map lines?  Aliens?  Roads?  Elephants?

    I have always loved planes.  This is the back-end of the jets on the wing.

    More mountains.  Haze in the air as the sun cuts across it.

    Much less snow here.  Utah, methinks.  The plane wing is more shadowed, I think we changed direction and are headed a little more northwest.

    Forest with the line of snow.

    There’s just almost a rainbow in the right side of the picture.  Weird how the camera interacts with the double-pane glass of the airplane window.

    Almost looks like clouds, but I think that’s actually snow.  Interesting, since the snow indicates elevation but the whole ground looks like it’s mountains of the same height.

    This looks like meringue, no?

    My knitting project with my notes.  (You know I had to get knitting in here SOMEwhere, right?)

    This is me playing around with the “effects” on my phone.  This one is the vignette setting.

    Looks like cloud froth, but is actually snow.

    This looks like ocean waves, but is actually mountains, valleys, and some cloud formation.

    This is the “negative” effect on my phone.  (Who knew negativity could look so cool, eh?)

    More meringue.  Anyone getting hungry for pie?

    What do you see?

    —
    “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
    – E.E. Cummings

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    Check out “Taking a Chance“, part of the Charity Sips 2012 to benefit NOH8, available from Torquere Books.
    Watch for COOK LIKE A WRITER, coming February 2013 from the Guerrilla Chicks.
    Watch for TIGER TIGER, coming July, 2013, from Samhain Publishing.

  • Spot the difference

    This post is in response to Ways of Seeing.

    #1 taken Saturday 19th early afternoon
    #2 taken Sunday 20th 8.15am
    #3 taken Sunday 20th 5.45pm

    The request is for mundane photos, and these sure do fit. I decided on these because of some interesting photographic possibilities and that gorgeous Peppercorn tree is right opposite our driveway! 

    Let me know what you see, if anything.  🙂

    love,
    Eaton

  • Ways of Seeing

    In college, one of our assigned books was Ways of Seeing by John Berger, based on a series of 30-minute films in the early 1970’s.  While I recommend the book, this isn’t a review of it.  Rather, the title is evokative of a state of mind.  It’s on my shelf in my line-of-site from where I do a lot of my writing, so it’s something that’s in the background of my consciousness and the words have become a phrase in the substrata of my mind.

    The way we see is unique.  Each of us could look at the same scene and come away with different impressions and imagery of what we saw.  This is valuable and necessary.  We don’t have to believe it for it to be true; we just have to see.

    Do you have a camera, even just the simple one in your phone?  (Granted, some of the smart phones out there have cameras that are anything but simple.)  Have you experimented with just shooting a picture series of what you look at every day?  Try this:

    Tomorrow, as you go about your daily round, take pictures.  If you drive, pause and snap what you see out your windshield before you start driving.  If you walk or take transit, snap pictures of stuff you see every time you go on your route.  The more mundane, the better.  Like a detective, we are after data and facts, not art.

    Do you dislike pictures of yourself?  Experiment by taking one picture of yourself every day this week.  Do not judge; just take the picture and record the date.  “This is what I looked like on Tuesday.”  Play with different expressions and poses.  If you find yourself with one particular expression a lot, make that expression (for example, the one you have on your face when the phone rings) and take a picture of yourself.  What do you look like with that expression?

    If you don’t have a camera, there are several good, inexpensive models you can find here, here, and here.  See if you have a friend who would loan you theirs.  If you have an affiliation with a school, they sometimes have them available for loan.

    The point here is to become acquainted with how we see the world.  A fun twist on this exercise is to do it at the same time as your kids and then compare notes.  See what you might learn about each other.  Be prepared – leave your expectations at the door.  When you open your eyes and look, you’ll never know what you might see.

    Have fun!