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Messages: (23) 1
I take a lot of pictures. Most of them don't come out very well! I think the people shots are pretty good, and I do a decent job with birds and plants.
Anyway, the shots that I think are worth including, and that I have the time to upload and which are already in digital form, will be listed here.
Steve's & Penny's Wedding (August, 2008)
Jed's & Alycia's Wedding (June, 2007)
Herbophilia (plants and outdoorsy-stuff)
Birds of a Feather (avian imagery)
Creepies & Crawlies (bugs and such)
Blizzard 2001 (Pictures of snow and snowscapes. Polar bear in a snow storm?)
Riverbanks Zoo, Columbia, SC (1999)
2002 Tri-State Sea Coast Century (100 mile bike ride in MA, NH, and ME) with Jim Boyko and Steve Davis
2004 Tri-State Sea Coast Century with Jason Cicero, Steve Davis, and Steve Harper
I've also taken hundreds of pictures of our Birmans for the Elpis Birmans web site.
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One of my favorite photo-subjects is plants. Weird plants, beautiful plants, flowering plants, even dead plants! The macro-lens is my friend, it lets me take shots that would otherwise be impossible.
Here's a selection of the shots that I prefer.
If you want more detail on a specific picture, you can usually just click on it, or a link next to it, to see a larger version.
Please tell me if you see something that you like!
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Finally, my Manchurian Lilacs have bloomed!
Click on a picture, to see a much larger and more detailed version.
This is the headiest, most intoxicating and addictive scent I've ever experienced. It's been over an hour since I took these pictures, and I still get a little dizzy just thinking about it.
I'm not exaggerating. I seriously wonder if the scent isn't literally intoxicating.
When I opened these these pictures to size them for this page, I could smell them all over again. Whoosh, what a rush!
Here are a couple of shots that almost show the whole bush. I've only had this bush (actually, two of them) for about 9 months, and it's approximately two feet tall. I take very good care of these babies.
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Finally, my Manchurian Lilacs have bloomed!
Click on the picture to see more.
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I'd never have guessed this. If someone had asked me, I'd have said the most common reason that people would find this site in a search engine would be related to cycling.
Nope. The most read message on this site is about my Manchurian Lilacs! All of those hits come directly from a search on one of Google's many incarnations. I can see why... if you search for lilacs, Manchurian Lilacs, or pictures of Lilacs, it's always in the top three results. That's sort of weird, but I like it.
Speaking of the lilacs, they're almost ready to bloom. I'm trying to find some more bushes, though, because one of mine is slowly dying.
I have some new pictures of the buds, as well as pictures of some of the other interesting stuff around the yard. I guess if that's why people come here, I should make sure I post them.
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With everything in our yard starting to come back to life, I decided to try for some "bud shots", and see what I could come up with. What I got was one of my best shots ever, in my opinion. This looks like it was painted, especially at the larger sizes (click on one of the links to see more details). This picture is of a bud on a young "Miss Kim" Manchurian Lilac, at least two weeks before it opened. The buds look like grapes, or raspberries, don't they? Weird. I didn't do anything to it (no manipulation in PhotoShop, or anything like that) to get this "painted" effect. It's all natural. |
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Jim
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Click on a picture to see a larger version of it.
This is the red/magenta azalea right outside our livingroom window.
The detail in some of these shots just amazes me... and I took the pictures! I think that photography is my only (or my best) artistic talent. I'm usually just logical, but sometimes I get a powerful urge to take some artistic (or at least "pretty") photos.
These pictures actually start out at 1600 x 1200 pixels, so the versions on this page are 1/16th the size of the originals (400x300). I take the best of the big ones, and shrink them down to exactly the size of my desktop... and then, of course, use them as desktop images.
I'd been outside for about 30 minutes, waiting for the sun to set so that I could get this picture! I knew that when the sun hit the petals from the back, they'd light up quite nicely... and I'm pleased with the result. I hope the deeper reds and the lighter pinks, that are just starting to open, look this good!
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Our neighbor across the street, Herb (how appropriate, eh?), gave us three tiny seedlings of red maple trees, in the summer of 1999. They're Japanese Red Maples.
The bizarre space-alien-looking creatures you see here in the first picture are actually the leaves of these small trees as they're being 'born'.
I used to call these the "babies" of my yard. I won't be able to do that for much longer.
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August, 1999 What do you think? Is this a bizarre space alien? A deformed lobster claw? Nah, it's just a "Japanese Red Maple Leaf Nubbin". It's actual size is only about 1/4 of an inch. |
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This is what the "tree" looked like just a couple of weeks after it was planted. This was shot at the same time as the "nubbin", above. The arrow in this picture is pointing at a small red dot, which is the "nubbin" seen above. |
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April 27, 2001 This year I took another series of shots, showing new leaf growth on the same tree. |
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Bizarre looking, isn't it? These are the first leaves on this tree in 2001. Thankfully, they don't look like this for long (see the next picture). |
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May 5, 2001 Here's the whole tree, as of today. It's about two feet tall, and growing steadily. That's pretty good, compared to its five inches of just two years ago. It's two younger siblings, not pictured, are each about 18 inches tall. |
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Saturday I bought about 48 Marigolds at Holdridge's. Marigolds are very cheap and colorful, which is exactly what I was looking for.
Flip just told me that they're called "soucis" in French, which means "worries", but neither of us can figure out why they'd call them that. Anybody have any idea, or know how to find out?
(I'll have more to say about Holdridge's later. No time right now, except to say that I love that store.)
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Flip just told me that they're called "soucis" in French, which means "worries", but neither of us can figure out why they'd call them that.
BTW, we have another flower with a "funny" name. You call it "pansy", and we call it "pensée", which means "thought". Some others have "meaningfull" names, like the snapDragon that we call "Gueule-de-loup" - "wolf mouth") but "soucis" and "pensées" are the only I know that refer to feelings and brain activity.
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This is probably the second best picture of a bird that I've ever taken, but it's the only one I have on disk (at least, that I could find).
His name is AJ, and he's a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo. I bought him for my wife as a wedding present (she already had three other parrots, all different kinds), but he ended up being my bird. It was his choice, not ours.
This photo wasn't silhouetted in PhotoShop or anything like that. I just had very good lighting... AJ was so bright from the flash that everything behind him went totally black.
I'll put the rest of my (at least halfway decent) avian imagery in replies to this message eventually, but I wanted to start it off with the best shot I could find. Unfortunately, most of my better shots were taken with traditional flim before I had a digital camera, and I don't really want a scanner.
Make sure you see my lonely dove shots!
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In the summer of 1999, I found this dove sitting in our backyard. It appeared to be perfectly healthy, but it didn't fly away when I approached it with my camera.
I took about a dozen photos, some extreme close-ups. He didn't fly away until I was done! These are the best three shots.
| Unfortunately, this first image is a little bit over exposed. | |
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Larger Versions: Large Medium Small |
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This next one is better. Its exposure is decent, and you can see some of the detail that I was trying to capture. If you have time, download the Large or Medium version, to see the feathers (the large version is the best, but it's about 500K.). |
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My favorite shot! This close-up of the Dove's head looks good even at the small sizes, and the detail in the larger sizes is excellent. This is the shot I was really going for. |
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Sean
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I'm just a little nutty with my camera sometimes, I'm always looking for interesting pictures.
Bugs seem to be one of my favorites subjects, probably because there is such an endless variety of them. Really, if you can get over the revulsion, you'll find that many bugs are beautiful in their own way.
Even if you can't find them beautiful, I hope you can at least admit that some of these critters are very interesting to look at (from a distance).
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Corinne pointed out that we had some very strange looking moths on our kitchen screen... so, of course, I got out the camera!
| Tree-Bark Moth? | |
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| This first moth looks like it's intended to hide on treebark. I haven't seen any hiding on any local trees... so I guess that proves it, right? | |
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| A closeup of the same moth. It has hair! OK, not exactly, but it definitely has a fuzzy head. (Look at the largest version for the most detail, if you have time.) | |
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| Wooden Moth? | |
| I really think this moth is beatiful. It appears to be very carefully carved out of wood, maybe mohogany, and then highly polished. | |
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| Salmon Colored Mohawk Moth | |
| This is the third moth that was on the screen... it was very strange to find three such 'exotic' looking moths in the same place, at the same time. | |
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| This time you can really see the moth's salmon-colored "mohawk" - and yes, those massive metal bars that it's clinging to are really just the wires in the kitchen screen. | |
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I remember reading a story in gradeschool about an ant named George Ichabod Ant. He moved into a new home and painted his name on his mailbox, G.I.Ant.
One day someone knocked on his door, and George found there a young man weilding a club. "Who are you, and why are you carrying such a big club?" George asked nervously.
The other replied, "I can't tell you who I am, because I don't have a name yet. I'm trying to make one for myself! To do that I must become the greatest giant killer that ever lived. You're a giant, so I'm going to kill you. Sorry about that! (It's funny, I thought you'd be taller.)"
"I'm not a giant, I'm just a tiny little ant!" said George.
The would-be giant killer pointed to George's mailbox and said that he's never seen a giant before today, but that he's known many mailboxes and they're yet to tell him a lie.
Unfortunately, I don't remember how the story ended! I think George finally convinces the giant killer that he is not, in fact, a giant, and tells him to find someone bigger to pulverize.
George obviously was not as big as this giant we found traversing our kitchen floor, or he never would have convinced the giant killer to leave him alone.
This ant, which I first assumed was a queen (until someone pointed out the obvious: no wings), was more than 1.25 inches long, and neither of us (Corinne or myself) had seen one this big before. (I know, they probably grow them bigger in Texas, but everything is bigger in Texas!)
If you think you can handle it, click on the pictures to see larger, more detailed versions.
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More seriously, if it's a queen, where are her wings?
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>More seriously, if it's a queen, where are her wings?
Um, duh! Obviously, it's not a queen. My mistake.
I'm glad I haven't met the queen yet, she must be truly gigantic.
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Ahh yes, the big blizzard of 2001! We were supposed to receive between 10 and 18 inches of snow, but only about 8 very wet inches actually fell in our yard. (Maybe they meant "the difference between 10 and 18 inches of snow").
Other parts of New England, like Massachusetts and New Hampshire, are hibernating under as much as three feet.
Spring will be here soon!
Click on the links next to the pictures to see larger, more detailed versions.
300 x 400
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600 x 800This certainly isn't the best shot of the day, but it shows how deep it was (or wasn't, depending on your perspective). This is the deck on the back of our house, as seen from the Dining Room window. The horizontal line is a clothesline, and the green thing is a large bird feeder. |
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Pretty close to the same shot. The bush at the bottom is a Burning Bush, but I think it should now be called the Freezin' Cold Bush. The tracks at the bottom left are definitely not from one of our cats. There's a family of feral cats in the area, and tracks like these can be seen around all of the houses in the neighborhood after a snow storm. |
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600 x 800This is a closeup of the branches in our back yard. Normally their horizontal, but the wet, heavy snow has many of them pointing at their roots. |
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The view out of our Living Room window, at the front of the house. Those bushes line our driveway, and are: Java Red something-or-other, Manchurian Lilac, two emerald green arborvitae's (shivering under their winter coats, they are actually columnar rather than round, as they appear here), and a burning bush (er, Freezin' Cold Bush) at the very end against the road. That's Herb's house, across the street. Hi Herb! |
This is the Java Red thing-a-mah-whatsit from the previous picture, but up close and personal. I liked the... bleakness of it, I guess. It really looks wintery! Come back and see this plant in the late spring (I'll definitely have another picture up). You won't believe your eyes! Hopefully I'll have remembered it's real name by then. This is my second favorite picture of the day. |
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This is my favorite picture of the day! I talked Corinne into going for a drive with me while all the snow still clung to the trees. Out on a back road West of our house, I found this rather idyllic scene. The dilapidated fence in the foreground and the tiny (and probably fake) covered water well in the background really make this picture. Incidentally, if it weren't for the tiny bit of color on the well (see the largest version), and the ever-so-slightly warm tint in the sky, you'd never know this picture's not taken in Black and White. |
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This was taken after all the others. It's exactly what I saw when I looked out of my office window! Kinda spooky, huh? |
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