3 weathered Beijing doors (friday foto finder: door)

Here are 3 of the many doors that caught my eye while walking around Beijing during my all-too-brief visit there last May. While there were plenty of doors that were freshly painted and well-maintained, I found that the weathered paint of these interested me more.

This week’s friday foto finder challenge was to find a photo of a door. Once again, my biggest challenge was choosing from among my options! To see what other doors have been found this week, please pay a visit to the friday foto finder blog!

Also, if you (like me) find that run-down and weathered things make for interesting photos, please check out my friend Magpie‘s Decay and Desuetude blog.

photos of exclamation points

I happened to look at the search terms people used to find my blog today, and saw that someone had come seeking “exclamation point photos.” I found this rather surprising. Perplexing, even. For one thing, I haven’t posted (or hadn’t yet posted), to my knowledge, any actual photographs of exclamation points. (I did once compose and post a rather nice graphic of an exclamation point made of punctuation marks, but it’s not a photo.)

For another thing, I was surprised that someone out there would actually be looking for “exclamation point photos.” That is, someone out there who is not me. As it happens, I have found myself noticing exclamation points in the wild for the past several years. They are elusive and rare creatures, but happily, once spotted, they tend not to run away. Many of them will even consent to having their photos taken.

First, my earliest wild exclamation point sighting. This little guy was seen at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in March of 2009.

It seemed to be made out of green tea, which is common for wild punctuation marks in the area. Sadly, shortly after this photo was taken, the little exclamation point was squished and smeared across the table by the fingers of a curious nearby preschooler.

This rather startled looking specimen was seen on the ceiling tiles in a lab at MIT. I think it was trying to run away. (Spotted March, 2011.)

This cute little guy was on some steps of the Great Wall of China, near Mutianyu. It posed for me in May, 2012.

And most recently, this timid creature was seen at a zoo in Massachusetts in August, 2012. It was trying to hide under a few leaves, possibly out of concern that it would be stomped on. (And it may have had some reason for concern, as I believe that the feet in the photo belong to the same individual who smushed the green tea exclamation point of the first 2 photos back in 2009.)

As you can see, my blog will now be THE go-to place for photos of exclamation points. Perhaps one day I will write a guide book on the subject.

above the patchwork fields of middle America (friday foto finder: high)

The photos I’m sharing today are of a much loftier sort than the ones I posted on Wednesday. While dumpsters are rather down-to-earth, these photos are taken while looking…down to earth. From a plane.

Much like the abstract compositions that I find in the small details of peeling paint and rust, I love the giant-scale abstract compositions formed by fields, roads, rivers and other features of the landscape when viewed from above.

Many of the fields of the Western and Midwestern United States use a system of irrigation that leads to fields that are circular, or segments of circles, which are then interspersed among more traditional rectangles. These geometric shapes arrange themselves in a surprising array of colors: hues arising from different soils, different crops, different stages of growth, and likely other and sundry factors that are better known to those who farm those fields. Flying in a plane above, if you are lucky enough to have a window seat and the right weather and lighting conditions, not to mention the right flight path, you are presented with an ever-changing gallery of these wonders of shape and color.

These photos were taken on 3 different trips. The first 6 are from August 2004, taken en route from the East Coast to Colorado (or vice versa), or from some connecting flight in between. The next 3 are from a January 2006 flight from Albuqueque, New Mexico. The last two are from a May 2008 flight to Houston, Texas. I don’t recall my specific itineraries, so I don’t remember where I was in each case. (I mean, other than in a plane. I remember that much.) They were all taken with point-and-shoot cameras.

This week’s friday foto finder theme is “high,” another that offered many choices from my photo archives.¹ I’ve mentioned it before, long long ago, but I really love heights. I therefore have many photos from high places: tall buildings, hikes, ferris wheels, and gondola rides. I considered posting something from each of these. However, I figured that seeing as I haven’t had the opportunity for space travel, views from a plane are about as high as I can manage.

I’ve posted a few of my other window-seat pictures before. And I probably will again. And if ever I have the chance to travel into space, I promise to share the pictures.

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¹ This theme also offered much opportunity for playing with words. You were very nearly given a post with the title “getting high in Barcelona.” But I decided not to go there. I mean, I *did* go to Barcelona. And I visited a fairly elevated spot. But I decided not to go that direction with my post…or my title.

ships in Hong Kong Harbour (friday foto finder: ship)

Seriously, I thought I’d manage to get my friday foto finder post up by the end of Friday this time, but clearly that ship has sailed. Here we are on Saturday Sunday Monday¹ once more, and I am finally getting around to posting for the theme of “ship.”

I do welcome the chance to dig through my archives and see what I can find to fit themes chosen by Archie for friday foto finder. A ripe period in my archives to find ships was from my August, 2011 trip to Hong Kong for a conference. That trip was amazing and varied, and I still haven’t yet shared all my stories and photos.² Below are photos of ships in Hong Kong Harbour from 4 different vantage points, and showing quite a variety of types of ship.

First, the view from the plane as I arrived:

Well, you can’t see many details of the ships here, but you can see that there are lots of them. But I just really like this photo. (I posted it before.)

Second, the view from the convention center where the conference I attended was held:

A view of Hong Kong Harbour from the conference center. (This was from day 3 or 4.)

Another view from the convention center.

Third, views of the harbour from Victoria Peak, visited during a rather irritating guided bus tour on my fifth day:

The bright colors of the shipping containers and loading cranes remind me of toys.

Another view of the cargo ships.

Fourth, views from the harbour itself, taken during an evening harbour cruise:

Many large cruise ships can be seen in the harbour.

When the sun goes down, the bright lights of these ships compete with those of the skyline.

Finally, here is one the red-sailed junks that are so iconic of Hong Kong.

¹ Time does get away from me. At this point, I’m racing against Tuesday.
² Well, I’m not likely to share *all* my photos, given that I took many hundreds. But I haven’t yet shared even all the ones I find worth sharing. My last recap post was over a year ago, with the recap of day 5 (part 1), and I have stories from the later part of that day, plus 3 more days before I flew back home to the US. A number of my photos, including some from above are posted on flickr. (Here are the photos from the 5th day of my trip.)

railway by the railway (friday foto finder: railway)

My photo library is loaded with railway-related photos. I love to travel by train, frequently commute by train, and as a parent of young children, we have many toy trains and rails in our home. I have many years worth of photos of railways of all sizes. So when I saw that Archie had picked “railway” for the friday foto finder theme, I figured I was golden.

What I hadn’t really taken into account is the trouble in making a decision when I have too many options. A couple of days later, and I’ve finally chosen share some of my more recent photos on this theme. (Not that I’ve been doing nothing else other than deliberating over train photos, mind you. I also had to do things like deliberate over what to wear and what to make for dinner.)

The week before last, I had a workshop to attend in New York City, and I opted to take the train down. I first took the commuter rail into Boston, and then took an Amtrak down to New York Penn Station. I had a couple of hours to wait in Boston between trains, and spent part of the time wandering around taking a few photos. Here are some photos of the model railway that is an annual tradition of South Station. This one is apparently a newer and bigger one than has been there in previous years.

(This is a crop of the photo above, but I wanted to show the two very serious-looking men in dark suits.)

As I hadn’t wanted to be weighed down with a lot of luggage for only a couple of overnights, and since my schedule was going to be too tight for any sightseeing, I had decided not to bring my real camera. It turned out to be a bit of a shame, because there are some times when having more options is a good thing. I did find myself wishing that I could adjust my settings to better deal with the bright light. On the other hand, my phone is handy to have in my pocket, and is easy to whip out for snapping a few shots reasonably unobtrusively.

A Sunday Afternoon on a Saturday afternoon for a Friday endeavor (friday foto finder: art)

Post-holiday sluggishness has set in, likely fueled by too many holiday treats.¹ In any case, I am slow to post. My photo library is full of photos of all kinds of art this week’s friday foto finder theme. Here it is Saturday afternoon, and I am finally getting around to posting some photos of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. This famous painting by Georges Seurat is located in The Art Institute of Chicago, which I visited during my May, 2010 trip to Chicago for a conference.

I hadn’t seen the painting before in person, though I had seen various reproductions, as it is one of the most famous works of pointillism.²

I know some people would find that these people are in the way, but I like photos of people interacting with art

The painting has lots of interesting details to explore. Click on the photos to embiggen them a bit.

A monkey! (Also a little dog.)

There is also this pointillist border all around.

To see what art others have put on display, please check out the friday foto finder blog.

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¹ Can sluggishness be fueled?
² I also remember the painting from its noteworthy role³ in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. [youtube]
³ It was not a speaking role.

3 butterflies

Here are 3 butterflies I’ve encountered in the last 3 years.¹

Butterfly in the butterfly garden at the Boston Museum of Science, Boston, MA. June, 2010.

Butterfly on a window, in The Butterfly Pavilion outside Denver, CO. April, 2011.

In the wild on the grounds of the De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, MA. August, 2012.

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¹ I don’t come across butterflies in the wild nearly as often as YTSL of Webs of Significance, whose photos of her hikes around Hong Kong regularly include butterflies (among her other critter sightings).²
² I looked back at my photos from the hike we had together when I visited Hong Kong in August of 2011, but it would seem that I found no butterflies that day!

Photos from the Musée D’Orsay (friday foto finder: station)

The Musée D’Orsay in Paris is a remarkable building. It was built as a railway station around the turn of the (last) century, but only used as a rail station for a few short decades. The large and impressive building was converted into a large and impressive art museum in the 1980s, and it houses, among other works, a very large and impressive collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces. (Most of which are impressive, but not very large.)

When we visited Paris in 2007, I made my first visit to this museum. It might seem surprising that I had not been there before, especially given my love of art and the fact that I had lived outside of Paris for 2 years. However, the first year I lived in France was 1980, and the museum would not yet be open for another 6 years. I’m pretty sure I heard of the museum when I lived in Paris again in 1988, and I’m not sure why I never made it there then. I certainly remember going to other museums. (I particularly remember the Rodin Museum and the Orangérie.)

In any case, I was very taken with the museum, as much (if not more) for the building as for the art. I loved the grand arches, interesting use of glass, and many other details.

I love the tunnel-like effect of the main hall.

This gigantic clock faces inward.

This gigantic clock faces outward, and can be seen from inside the café.

People and sculptures.

Looking up.

Multiple levels.

High vantage point.

My rosy-cheeked little one in front of some of Renoir’s famous rosy cheeks.

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This week’s friday foto finder theme was “station.” Given my love of rail travel, it might not surprise you that I have many photos of train and subway stations in my photo archives. However, this was the station that came to mind first.

To see what other stations are being shared, please visit Archie’s friday foto finder blog. Won’t you consider participating, too?

basket (friday foto finder)

This was one of the first photos I took when I arrived in Macau, an excursion I made on the last day of my trip to Hong Kong in August, 2011. These large baskets were stacked near the sidewalk under a pedestrian ramp. I’m not sure what they were for.

I do wonder if they belong to some sort of produce vendor, as they look similar to the baskets in the photo below, which were in use at a Hong Kong street market.

This week’s friday foto finder theme is “basket,” which led to me rummaging through my virtual basket of photos. This time, after much rummaging, I did end up going with the first photo that came to mind.

To see what other baskets others have shared, and to find out how to participate (it’s easy!), check out the friday foto finder blog.