Tag: photography

Recent Views

More photography here and on my Instagram.

Visited my alma mater for a meetup with friends and snagged this view, one I beheld many times as an undergrad:

Walkin’ in the rain:

Waiting for the darkness to descend on a Michigan beach ahead of the Independence Day fireworks (where I was stargazing with WALL-E):

Always a delight seeing my (and my son’s) favorite band, The Okee Dokee Brothers:

Anticipation in grandma’s backyard:

His first official haircut:

Bright spots during an evening concert in the park:

Came upon this leaf hitching a ride to work with me one morning:

Bummin’ around Boystown:

September 24, 2021 Add Comment

Recent Views

More photography here and on my Instagram.

Nice and clean newly painted line in a corner of my library’s under-renovation lower level:

We had some trees removed and the guy in the bucket truck looked like he was chillin’ on the roof despite actually floating through the air:

From our first time in Half Price Books without the stroller, where he definitely took advantage of his freedom:

While rock hunting at the beach I thought it’d be fun to throw one in the air and try to catch it on camera as it fell. This was the only shot that turned out, and it was kinda perfect:

Post-rain monkey bars at a local playground:

June 7, 2021 Add Comment

Recent Views

More photography here and on my Instagram.

This picture barely captures how cool the evening light was through these clouds at my local strip mall:

Remnants of winter:

Black Play-Doh + white Play-Doh = accidentally awesome marbled design:

“Aphyllous trees beneath cirrocumulus clouds” sounds like a line from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” but is really just what I caught here at our park:

Just doing domino runs with Jenga blocks with the 2 year old:

On the move in Pure Michigan:

Liked the colors and lines here:

Shout-out to the kids playing pickup baseball at the park who probably have never seen The Sandlot but nevertheless showed why it’s such a timeless classic:

April 21, 2021 Add Comment

Recent Views

More photography here and on my Instagram.

A dusting on the pier at our local park:

Just following in Little Man’s footsteps:

This is either a failed photo or the perfect encapsulation of Christmas morning with a toddler:

Liked the colors and light in our front bushes (which still have Christmas lights on them) while taking out the trash early in the morning after a big snow:

From the same early morning, the edge of the driveway’s snow blower path was very satisfying to behold:

One day while working from home I saw Almost 2 Years Old and my wife rolling around the snow in the backyard:

February 3, 2021 Add Comment

Recent Views

More photography here and on my Instagram.

Watching this little wanderer discover the wilds of Pure Michigan™:

Caught some nice evening light in our local playground’s jungle gym:

Technically this will be Mr. 22 Month Old’s third winter (he was born during a blizzard), but the first he remembers and appreciates. Hence his major surprise and excitement when waking up to the first snow of the season:

And finally getting to use his shovel:

December 2, 2020 Add Comment

Hand in hand

Did some hand tracing with Mr. 21 Months, which reminded me of a picture I took of us last year while on a walk. Using a crayon made our hands look chunkier than they really are, but little man’s hand in the picture was just as chunky as it looks.

November 17, 2020 1 Comment

Recent Views (in my kitchen)

We’re finally redoing the original kitchen in our 1956 house. Once the old metal Youngstown cabinets were removed, I noticed this collision of patterns on the unfinished wall:

I also discovered some old-school miscellanea:

September 8, 2020 Add Comment

Recent Views

More photography here and on my Instagram.

As much of a selfie I’m willing to muster:

From back in coat-wearing weather, the cover art for our future family band’s debut album:

Backyard greenery:

Exploring the tiny patch of wildness in our suburban backyard:

A fence post in the local park that’s seen better days:

Our backyard spruce tree showing signs of life:

The boy behind the curtain:

In the countryside, silos are the skyscrapers (that tiny white dot in the lower right corner is the moon):

August 7, 2020 Add Comment

Toddler view askew

We really try to keep our smartphones away from Mr. 13 Months. He’s elated when he does get his hands on one—usually just for photos or FaceTime—but then turns into Ring Withdrawal Bilbo when we take it away from him. And when he seizes the reins during FaceTime, he generates footage shakier than a Bourne movie, with occasional unflattering but funny shots of his chubby face from below.

Yesterday, though, while on the move with phone in hand, he accidentally opened the camera and managed to take a series of photos documenting his short trip from the hallway to the guest room:

Look at that natural progression from dark to light and from blurry to focused. Perhaps it’s meant to reinterpret common household fixtures in the abstract with askew angles as a comment on our uncertain post-COVID-19 world?

When reached for comment, he said, “*incomprehensible toddler babble*”

Genius!

March 30, 2020 2 Comments

Recent Views

More photography here and on my Instagram.

From our go-to park last fall:

Little man enjoying the ball pit at his cousin’s birthday party:

The inside view of Madison’s capitol dome:

Turns out kids love swings:

A few shots from probably the last snowfall of an extremely mild winter:

March 25, 2020 Add Comment

The Smoking Type

Love this photo by Adrian Borda, called “Under An Ocean of Words”, which captures the view from inside a typewriter looking up through smoke. I’ve seen this view plenty during repair and cleaning sessions, but never quite this dramatically. Perhaps I should take up smoking.

h/t Kottke

November 25, 2019 1 Comment

Recent Views

More photography here and on my Instagram.

The view of downtown Madison from a pontoon on Lake Mendota:

Some good reflection action at the park by our house:

You know I love a good “sunrise through the blinds” shot:

You know I love cider donuts and fall stuff:

Morning view from my hotel room in St. Louis:

Obligatory Arch shot (it was way bigger and closer in person):

The central branch of the St. Louis Public Library’s got it going on:

The field lights at my local park:

November 17, 2019 1 Comment

Recent Views

More photography here and on my Instagram.

Trying to take evening walks with the almost 6 month old strapped to me while the sun still allows it, so I get to enjoy views like this:

Also get to enjoy views like this from the Nap Cam:

Yet another baby view, this one from the family cottage in Michigan. I left my keys in the room he was supposed to be napping in but wasn’t, so I literally crawled to my bag so he wouldn’t see me and looked up to see this:

Some flowers ‘n’ stuff:

August 17, 2019 Add Comment

Recent Views

More photography here and on my Instagram.

My primary view lately:

More chubby baby:

My library shares a parking lot with a church (pictured with its wacky window placements), and the lot regularly floods due to crappy drainage. It’s annoying for parking but good for cool shots:

I liked the colors on the sign here matched with the sky:

Emo rain shot out my window:

May 15, 2019 Add Comment

Black hole stun from backwater bipeds

In case you haven’t been following the news (and who can blame you?), that’s the first-ever image of a black hole:

There’s plenty of writing out there on what it means, much of it going over my head, but here’s some grounding perspective from Scientific American:

It is also worth noting that in the two hours after the press conference, at least six scientific papers on the observation have appeared online. They almost certainly contain clues and new questions that will take more time to process than a 24/7 news cycle can tolerate. For now, though, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider the strangeness of nature, and the remarkable fact that these sentient, tool-using bipeds on a small world in a backwater solar system somehow managed to turn their planet into a telescope and take a picture of an exit chute from the universe.

April 15, 2019 Add Comment

Recent Views, not-recent edition

More photography here.

With a photogenic infant at home, I need to make sure my photo backup situation is solid. I decided to start using iCloud since my Dropbox is maxed out and because it so seamlessly integrates with my iPhone. Digging through my photo archive has brought back some nice memories, including photos from a photography class I took junior year of college, 10 years ago now. They might be the last photos I took on an SLR film camera:

March 21, 2019 Add Comment

My son, the audiobook

Just set a picture of the Boy as the wallpaper on my phone lock screen. The idea was to see him when I use my phone, but I chuckled when I realized what that looks like in practice:

March 18, 2019 1 Comment

Making Migrant Mother

You probably know of Dorothea Lange’s famous 1936 photograph “Migrant Mother” (aka Florence Owens Thompson), an icon of the Great Depression. Perhaps you don’t know, as I didn’t, just how much the photo was staged and later altered.

Evan Puschak of the video series The Nerdwriter breaks down the photo’s origin, the alterations (ghost thumb!), and the other photos from the session (h/t Kottke):

February 1, 2019 4 Comments

Recent Views

More photography here. And on my Instagram.

Pretty cool frost patterns on my car window (I call this one “Frozen Fractals All Around”):

A few shots of my building’s backyard in the snow:

Scraping off the car one morning, the snow shavings fell in a pattern that encircled the car. They contrasted well with the dark asphalt, and sorta looked like the Milky Way:

And a bonus GIF from when I was looking through microfilm at work for a patron. The zooming effect made it look like those whirling newspaper montages in old movies:

December 11, 2018 2 Comments

Paper Only! No TVs

This sign is posted in the parking lot outside my work. Why “NO TV’s”? A while ago someone left an old TV next to what they thought was a dumpster for trash but is actually a dumpster for paper recycling. But only people who had seen the TV there before it got picked up will understand the odd specificity of the sign.

It’s still a great sign without that context, because paper is the far superior technology.

December 5, 2018 Add Comment