Monday, October 15, 2007
More Graffiti from Blanchard Dam
Here are more photos of graffiti from Blanchard Dam. Thanks for indulging me.
Btw, the last bit of graffiti says, "Nature Thru a Fence," in case you're having trouble reading it. Notice that Hubby artistically took the shot to show the fence in the foreground.
Labels: art, blanchard dam, graffiti, husband, photos
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Centennial Olympic Park
I'm still playing catch-up after our trip to Atlanta, so to make things easy tonight, I'm going to post more pictures. Across the street from our hotel was the Centennial Olympic Park, which as a fun fountain of spray jets that issue forth from the Olympic rings embedded into a large brick plaza. (There are memorial bricks all along the plazas and walking paths in this park.) Atlanta is hot and people are encouraged to enter this particular fountain, but not the others in the park. Unfortunately, the evening we had our camera, there were no people in the fountain. Watching little kids in it was the best. The spray jets do a variety of things - sometimes going full bore, at other times spraying in bursts or patterns. Before they blow, you can hear a hissing sound and then a phoomp! Here are photos showing several views.
Labels: atlanta, centennial olympic park, fountains, hotel, olympic park, park, photos, water, weather
Monday, September 10, 2007
The View from Room 636
Lucky you! I'm going to subject you to photos from our trip to Atlanta. We stayed at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center in Room 636. I'm going to see how Blogger sticks these photos in. They look a bit wonky while I'm in the screen to write this post.
The first photo is a shot of the back side of the Omni Hotel looking straight up. I love taking photos from this sharp angle. It makes the building loom. The second is a distance shot of the hotel and CNN Center taken from the Centennial Olympic Park (more about the park in a later post). The CNN Center and Omni Hotel are connected, which may not be readily apparent from the photos. The third shot is of the view out of our room, which was on the sixth floor of the hotel. Quite a bustling intersection down below. Very touristy area.
You're not going to see this in any of my pictures, but there were cops everywhere. Cops on motorcycles. Cops on bicycles. Cops in cars. Probably because there were so many tourists and this is CNN's headquarters.
Labels: atlanta, blogger, cnn, cops, hotel, olympic park, photos, tourists
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
The Mind of Young Son #2
Young Son Number Two is currently out and about with the digital camera. Flick, flick, flick. I love that thing. We can take pictures 'til our heart's content and delete with impugnity those we don't like. Over the weekend, Young Son took well over 100 photos, of which five are above. He's got several self-portraits, like the first picture above, including close-ups of his hair, his eyes, and his feet. He likes odd angles and close-ups, which give his photos an artistic quality. Note the ladder in the window well, the trees masked by the window frame, and the mixing bowl sink. As for the pants, Young Son liked the juxtapostion of the wet upper portion with the dry zip-off sections.
In an unrelated note, I just stepped outside and was hit with a gale-force wind. It's gray and cold today and I do suspect that we're in for some rain.
Labels: artistic endeavors, minnesota, photos, self-portrait, weather, young son
Friday, April 13, 2007
Tag - You're It!
After Pi left a comment on my blog, I cruised on over to his blog to check it out. Interesting commentary there. I found a post on tagging, which got me to thinking about my philosophy of tagging. When I tag my blog posts, I do it first for myself. Tagging the most obvious subject of a post is easy. It's the secondary and successively smaller topics that I mention that I'm never quite sure of. Working in a museum doesn't make this any easier. In fact, it makes it harder because when you look at an artifact or document, you automatically start cross-referencing it with the other subjects people might be looking for. An example: You have a photo of a train next to a depot. Do you file it under train, or depot? What about all those people in the picture? How about that water tower or bridge in the background? See? It gets complicated. Filing copies of the same photo under all of those topics gets to be excessive. We only have so much space. We really can't be taking it all up with 50 copies of the same photo. Same as with tagging. Once I tag the obvious topic, I tag the other sorts of things that I'm interested in following - husband, children, writing, creativity, blah, blah, blah. The one thing I won't do is tag for a topic that is not included in the post. Believe it or not, some bloggers do this in order to get attention for their sites.
As an aside: Did you know that tagging developed from metatags? (I think I learned this on Pi's website.) Metatags are built into the hidden part of website code and they allow search engines to find your website by topic. Good metatags are critical for raising your ranking on search engines, which is why there are people and companies that'll play fast and loose with both metatags and tags.
Another aside: Neil Gaiman is known for his unusual tags. Check out his tag cloud. (Tag clouds are just the coolest thing ever!)
As an aside: Did you know that tagging developed from metatags? (I think I learned this on Pi's website.) Metatags are built into the hidden part of website code and they allow search engines to find your website by topic. Good metatags are critical for raising your ranking on search engines, which is why there are people and companies that'll play fast and loose with both metatags and tags.
Another aside: Neil Gaiman is known for his unusual tags. Check out his tag cloud. (Tag clouds are just the coolest thing ever!)
Labels: blog, children, creativity, husband, metatags, museum, neil gaiman, photos, pi, tag clouds, tagging, train, website, writing
Friday, March 23, 2007
Are We Meant To . . .
I'm still thinking about this whole photograph thing, but in a more philosophical bent today. Are we meant to see ourselves the way others see us? In a similar vein, are we meant to hear ourselves as others hear us? I've been self-conscious about my voice, more so in the past than now, and often wondered why we evolved so that we hear a different voice echoing around in our heads than other people hear coming out of our mouths. Other than clear pools of water, there is not much in nature that reflects us back to ourselves. We've invented mirrors and cameras in order to see ourselves. Perhaps it's unnerving to see photos of ourselves and hear our voices in recordings because we weren't necessarily intended to experience ourselves the way other experience us.
Part of the reason I'm messing with the camera and taking a bunch of photos of myself is to lose that oogy, disembodied feeling that comes from seeing myself. A desensitizing exercise. It's working a bit. And the photos are getting better. A few secrets I've learned for decent photos: 1) Seek kind lighting. 2) Profiles work well. 3) If you've got to do a full-face-forward shot, smile, but don't force it. Have someone make you laugh.
Part of the reason I'm messing with the camera and taking a bunch of photos of myself is to lose that oogy, disembodied feeling that comes from seeing myself. A desensitizing exercise. It's working a bit. And the photos are getting better. A few secrets I've learned for decent photos: 1) Seek kind lighting. 2) Profiles work well. 3) If you've got to do a full-face-forward shot, smile, but don't force it. Have someone make you laugh.
Labels: camera, how others see us, how we see ourselves, mirrors, photos, recordings, self-image, voice
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Looks
I've been practicing with my camera, being a real narcissist, taking pictures of myself. I've gotta tell you, I'm not photogenic in the least - me with the closed eyes or goofy expression when the shutter trips. Ugh! Most of the time, I hate seeing myself in pictures. I look all wrong, not the way I see myself in the mirror. Every once in a blue moon, someone catches me unawares with a natural smile on my face and I like the way I look. So my practice is about posing in a natural way in order to get a decent photo for my blog. Some of the photos I've taken aren't bad. The beauty of a digital camera is that I can delete the yucky ones. However, concentrating on how I look is also giving me a complex. I'm picking apart my features (okay, one particular feature) as though I was a teenager. Not fun! I saw a Christina Aguilera video this morning, and boy is that girl a looker! Gorgeous in her air-brushed beauty. As a grown woman pushing the big four-oh, I thought I was over this comparison. It's not healthy, no sir. I know better than to let myself spiral into self-loathing, so I gave myself a stern talking-to. I said, "Look, self, no one runs screaming from the room over your hideousness when you walk in. In fact, most people rather like you, so you can't be a total woofer. Besides, your husband thinks your gorgeous and he has excellent taste, so just knock it off already, won't you?" All better.
Labels: beauty, blog, camera, christina aguilera, husband, looks, photos, ugly
