Monthly Archives: July 2016

Weekly Photo Challenge – Details

Posted on July 17, 2016 | 1 comment

Never mind the big picture. This week’s photo challenge is all about details, so let’s consider the details of what that might mean.

Closeup of flowersSome pictures take a superclose look at something that was already small.

Young quail crossing gravel trail, Upper Peninsula of Michigan, July 2014Others zoom in to consider part of a picture, like this bright-eyed fledgling quail who’s small enough to hold in the palm of your hand. Yes, we’re looking at the entire bird…but it’s a small detail cropped out of a larger picture. Oops, I guess we’re back to the big (and not very interesting) picture after all.

1 Comment

Posted in Photos, Weekly Photo Challenge

Tagged ,

Weekly Photo Challenge: Look Up

Posted on July 14, 2016 | 1 comment

Just one photo here encouraging you to look up, but you’ll have to look WAY up – all the way up from the base of the Space Needle in Seattle, a relic of a long-ago world’s fair.Up Space Needle Seattle

That’s not a flying saucer way above you – that’s the base of a rotating restaurant designed to give views of the whole Seattle area. Not hungry? Well, there’s an observation deck even higher up. From the ground to the tip of the tower, it stands 605 feet tall (about 185 meters).

1 Comment

Posted in Vacations, Weekly Photo Challenge

Tagged ,

Travel theme: Indoors

Posted on July 14, 2016 | 1 comment

You may find it a little hard to believe that these pictures were taken indoors, but it’s true. They aren’t just indoors; they’re indoors of indoors. This is the butterfly exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History – to get to it, you have to go through a sort of air lock at both the entrance and exit. After all, nobody wants butterflies all over the building – do they?

1 Comment

Posted in Travel Themes, Vacations

Tagged ,

Opposites

Posted on July 5, 2016 | 3 comments

This week’s Photo Challenge asks us for a single photo containing opposites, and this one – taken about ten years ago in Williamsburg, Virginia – is full of them.

OppositesWilliamsburgTwoCenturies

There’s the past and the present, of course; the eighteenth century meets the twenty-first. But not really; there’s also fact and fiction, since the colonial-era uniform is a reconstruction, as modern as the little boy’s stroller. And then, the child is perfectly serious about what he’s doing, while the man is engaging in a kind of playacting – but it’s serious make-believe; it’s what he does for a living, and it’s meant to be as close to real as modern historians can make it.

It’s enough to make me dizzy, so dizzy I’ll try to spin in opposite directions at the same time.

3 Comments

Posted in Photos, Vacations, Weekly Photo Challenge

Tagged ,

Pleasure

Posted on July 1, 2016 | 6 comments

CapeMayGiraffe

Pleasure. Everybody likes it, right? Even this giraffe, who looks contented enough in New Jersey. (What does a giraffe enjoy? Juicy grass, familiar surroundings, other giraffes to wander around with – I suppose that pretty much sums it up.)

Well, we humans are harder to please; then again, we can think up a lot of pleasurable things to do that would never occur to a giraffe. We can also, alas, get ourselves into situations that don’t leave much time for our favorite pleasures. That’s been the story of my life for the past few years.

I’m not sure whether things are easing up at last, or whether I’m just adjusting to being overloaded. Anyway, I get a lot of pleasure out of making things that weren’t there before, and I’ve missed writing. Including writing blog posts.

It’s a pleasure to be back.

 

6 Comments

Posted in Daily Prompt

Tagged