View from the balcony of the church in the center of town. Taken with Hipstamatic with the Zytlus wide angle lens attached.
Category: Photography
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Nothing fancy today. Just a perspective shot of Target from the Starbucks embedded at the front of the store. -
“What are you looking at?”We recently got a dog. She’s still a puppy, somewhere between 11 and 12 weeks. Normally she doesn’t stand still long enough for pictures. This morning I caught her looking up at me, doubtlessly wondering what the hold up is for heading back inside.
Paitence. For both of us.
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Sometime you’re standing there, minding your own business, waiting with your kid for the morning bus, and you look up and see the trees and can’t believe how tall they are, especially compared to the kids waiting for the bus, and you get that sudden feeling of just how tiny we humans are in the world.This was one of those mornings.
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In honor of the warmest March 9 in Boston’s history, I bring you a picture of a Christmas light.Well, sort of.
Today was in fact historic for Boston weather, as the temperature hit 75 degrees today. Which is fine by me. We’ve been fairly fortunate this winter, having not had a lot of snow. Then again, given last winter and the winter before that, we were kind of owed a milder winter. And with today’s temps, we’re starting to feel like maybe spring really is right around the corner.
One of the ways we decided to survive this winter was to embrace a Norwegian concept called koselig. It loosely translates as “cozy”. It basically involves making your home as warm and friendly as possible. This can cover a lot of ground. From extra blankets to candles, from warm slippers to wine, from friends over for dinner to fireplaces. One of the many ideas is to have as much warm light as possible. Makes sense if you think about it. Norway is pretty far to the north, and the days get super-short up there. So more light is a great way to ward off the long dark nights.
This year, in an attempt to survive another long New England winter, I strung white Christmas lights around the ceiling of the downstairs. I also hung a string of the “icicle” lights in the front window. The effect has been noticeable for us this year, making the downstairs feel a little more magical than in years past.
So today, in honor of the coming end of winter (and hopefully we’ll avoid any late season snowstorms that we’re prone to), and in anticipation of the coming spring, I’m offering up a close-up shot of one of the lights.
Taken with the Ztylus macro lens, cropped in Snapseed.
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I love how this one turned out. This is simply a shot of some trees along a path where I work, with the sun partially obscured by one of them. What makes this one different is that I used my sunglasses as a filter. Literally, just holding up my sunglasses in front of the iPhone camera lens and “snap”. The result is a strangely lit, almost ghost-like quality to the trees. Completely unedited or post-processed. -
I’ve started re-reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It’s an utterly enthralling book and this is my fourth or fifth time through it. I read it for the first time about seven or eight years ago and it surprised me how much it stuck with me, especially since I’m pretty ambivalent about some of Gaiman’s other works. I was “meh” about Neverwhere, couldn’t get into Anansi Boys, and thought the Graveyard Book was good if not ridiculously derivative. (Then again, Gaiman made no bones about how the Graveyard Book was heavily inspired and influenced by Kipling’s the Jungle Books, so I should be more tolerant–but I’m not.)But American Gods? One of my favorites of all time. To a certain degree, I felt I learned more about America than I had ever known just by reading an Englishman’s fictional account of a road trip taken by a couple of guys, one of whom may be a god.
The cover of the book is a highway stretching off to the horizon through the plains, touched by the fire of a lightning strike during a storm. As I went for a walk today, I took my book with me, as I usually do. I read while I walk, but pay attention to where I’m going as well, trying to make sure I don’t end up like Stephen King. I look up occasionally to check where I am, that I haven’t veered into the street, that I’m out of the way of the passing cars.
Today, I looked up at one point and saw the above picture. It’s a stretch of road bending down a hill. There were two guys walking along it. I quickly took my phone out and snapped the picture. I tinkered with it about in Snapseed (cropping) and Hipstamatic (filters). The result is a picture that reminds me of the book I’ve started to re-read. I’m good with that.
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As promised, two for today.The building where my daughter takes ballet is one of those old repurposed brick warehouse buildings that you find all over Worcester. It’s got some great brick work, and has all the issues you’d expect an old brick warehouse to have (leaks, drafts, etc).
I snapped the entrance to the building, which is up a short flight of stone steps and into an alcove of sorts, embedded in which is a large heavy wooden door. One of the things that really caught my eye was the use of stone at the top of the columns before the brick continued up into the arches.
I toned down the colors uses the Formulas app to give it a muted, vintage feel.
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It’s not that I didn’t take a picture yesterday, I simply didn’t have time yesterday to post it. So you get two today!This is a gas station down the street from where I live. It was a nice bright day, so I used Distressed FX to give it a rougher feel.
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Hipstamatic released a free film recently called Arjan BW. It’s in honor of a member of the Hipstamatic community, Arjan van der Horst, who recently suffered a fatal stroke. He was know for his black and white street photography.I am not know for my street photography. I don’t work in a city, and I don’t get out of my office building except to go home. So that fact that I went to Panera to pick up dinner gave me a chance to take some street photography pictures. What I found was that the film probably works best in outdoor environments.
In this case, I used the Arjan BW film, the Lowy lens, and the Spiro Gel flash.
Scott Lyerly 