Tag: mystery

Thursday Throwback – 16

A moment that shows the importance of observation in photography. Everyday objects take on a different view to the world around us.

As I’m looking for some older images that I still enjoy, there are always some interesting moments that I come across. Today’s offering is one of those instances from 2016.

Here’s what I noticed…

Fence Tunnel

I often get questions from people about where they can find something interesting to photograph. Typically, my answer is along the lines of everywhere you go, as that is the truth. A lot of photography is about paying attention to the world around us and framing part of what we see.

This image is a great example of this principle. As I was sauntering around a herding event, I noticed the shapes of the split-rail fence. Seeing the arch of the space and the lines of the rails gave me the idea for this photo. It’s a simple shot, which has leading lines, texture and something that is not our everyday view of a fence.

I hope you enjoy this photo, as I do.

The Wonderful Barn

The Wonderful Barn, built in 1743, can be found in Leixlip, Ireland. Its purpose remains mysterious, making it even more of an attraction.

In one’s travels, we sometimes come across a building or structure that makes you wonder about its purpose. Today is definitely one of those. During our trip to Ireland in 2019, my wife and I stayed outside Dublin in the town of Leixlip. In this town, the first of Arthur Guinness’s breweries was started in 1756.

This is the structure that we came across during one of our walks…

The Wonderful Barn

This barn was built in 1743 and it is not entirely certain what its purpose was. Whether this was built by the Conolly family as a folly, a dovecote or a granary, each theory holds some merit. As this was built shortly after the famine of 1740-41, the granary theory might be the most plausible.

No matter its purpose, just seeing this interesting building makes us wonder. At least we know, it’s not built by ancient aliens… If you come through Leixlip, look up the Wonderful Barn!

Down the Line

Capturing a familiar railroad crossing, with shooting decisions influenced by light and color.

I have to admit that part of going through this whole portfolio building exercise is guilty pleasure; it’s fun to rediscover images from ten to twenty years ago that have stood my test of time. It would be too grand to say ‘the’ test of time, as it is just my judgment of the work that I have done over the past couple of decades. Also, there is a sense of progression in my images, which is part due to learning my craft a bit more all the time and part due to pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

Today’s image contains a little bit of both of those dimensions…

Down the Line

This particular railroad crossing is one that I travel across almost every day, as it is close to home and on a main road. I remember that I sort of caught a little bit of the view out of the corner of my eye, which told me to park and take another look. It was both the color and the direction of the light that held something of interest.

When shooting this with my iPhone 5 (it was 2013), I noticed the significant amount of lens flare with the light coming in from the left; instead of covering the lens, I decided to leave it to see the effect that it would have.

As you can see in the image, the colors on the left hand side are more washed out and there is a clear demarcation of the sky, which coincides with the tracks in the far distance. I liked the sense of two worlds touching that this evoked with the mystery of what might be ‘down the line’.

Monday’s Portfolio Musings – v. 2.12

In a portfolio, how do I categorize the interplay between abstract and landscape imagery, such as when we capture mysterious reflections and shapes, evoking all kinds of ideas.

In last week’s post titled ‘Monday’s Portfolio Musings – v. .2.11’, I mentioned that categories and themes are emerging in looking through the volume of images from the last 20 or so years of my photography. At this time, I may not have descriptors for each of the categories yet, as they have me thinking that images are crossing boundaries between the categories.

One of these boundary crossings is between abstract and landscape, as might be the case for this particular image…

Floating Mystery

This capture from 2012 still intrigues me, as it has a combination of reflection, variation in light and dark, and unusual shapes that crop up in the pond. This gives a bit of an otherworldly sense, as one could imagine that alien creatures are arising from the pond, on a mission of exploration to find out what this Earth is all about. I can only think that humanity might confuse these aliens into either leaving in despair or taking pity…

As long as we’re not ending up the subject a Twilight Zone episode, we’ll be alright.

I’m curious how you would categorize this image.

Visit to Heru-deshet

Visiting an alternate planet might only be a few footsteps away…

During the past week, I had the enjoyment of visiting three magnificent parks: Zion and Bryce Canyon in Utah and Valley of Fire in Nevada. Of course, there were a number of photos taken during this trip and I will continue to process more of them in between work.

Among the three parks visited, Valley of Fire is the only one that I visited before and spent quite a bit of time exploring. As a result, our photo tour leader, John Slonina, offered me the opportunity to lead part of the group into Fire Wave area of the park, which was a lot of fun. The only gotcha was that during this Friday afternoon, the area was quite ‘peoply’, as many folks had to take their selfies in whatever ‘flattering’ poses they could think of.

So what does one do? Play on the wonderful abstract forms that are presented in the Fire Wave area and create some rather different shots that don’t have distractors of any kind, such as…

Footsteps on Heru-deshet

By shooting down into the descent of the hill, the waveform presents itself as a natural phenomenon that one might expect on a red planet, such as Mars (Heru-deshet to ancient Egyptians); the footprints are clear evidence of visitation by some bipedal life form.

Enjoy this moment of surreality!

Travel Tuesday – Ep. 7

A beautiful Spring day and a view!

Last week’s visit to the land of giants in Travel Tuesday – Ep. 6 was pretty easy to guess for some of you. Madurodam in The Hague is a popular place to visit, especially with children, as they get to feel tall next to the buildings.

For this week’s installment, I’m opting for something a little more challenging from one of my trips in 2018…

A Beautiful Cathedral

I think the style of this cathedral will help determine which part of the world this could be in. Let’s see who might pin-point this one!

Throwback Thursday

Do they float or are they submerged?

As I just went through a forced reconfiguration of all my storage, I poked around a bit in my back catalog to find something that for one reason or another never caught my eye.

Here’s a little bit of amusement that I came up with from an image captured in 2012…

Floating Pool of Mystery

As I used to have a sizable backroads commute to work back then, I made sure to always have a camera with me and frequently found something to catch my eye. In this case, I noticed a bit of marshy pond with a bit of nice light on the trees in be background. The result was a rather mundane image with not so wonderful composition; when that happens, I never throw away (aka delete) these images.

With a square crop and a bit of imaginative processing, it becomes more difficult to place the various components in the image and a bit of mystery appears in the image, as the marshy outcroppings might be floating, or are they lifeforms of an even stranger variety? Let your mind wander!

Sunday Snapshot

Simple objects made into art!

For this Sunday, I thought I’d share another snap from our visit to New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston, Massachusetts.

Jellyfish Afloat

The artful displays for the Night Lights event were everywhere and one of the indoor areas had us walking through an ocean of beauty, including this gorgeous creation.

What caught my eye is that most of the displays were made from everyday objects, including this one. Many recyclables were used to show how our simplest items can be turned into an imaginative display.

Glacial Enigma

Nature’s code lies in front of us; can we understand her?

As I was going through the significant numbers of my Iceland photos, something caught my eye, so I thought that I’d share it with you:

Structure: pressure and time.

The reason that this stood out to me might just be that my brain started finding additional, hidden images in this field created by time and pressure. Nature put additional information for us to interpret, giving us the challenge of reaching an understanding of the many mysteries that surround us.

What is the message that you receive from this glacial enigma?

Friday Mystery Location – 2020 #03

Where did it snow?

Here’s another mystery location…

The previous mystery location proved to be very difficult; I had hoped that the general in the statues (they are all of him in different fighting poses) would have been a clue to this interesting location outside Pune: the Sinhagad Fort.

This one is much easier, as I couldn’t resist capturing some of the nice snow!

Fresh snow in the morning…

Morning Sky

I expect that this one will get a quick bit of recognition!