Category Archives: photgraphy

Everyday Beauty

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There is a roof on this porch now; art to mark the passage of time.

I had an idea for a really deep comic; it took me about 45 minutes to write the script and another 30 to just figure out the storyboard, which source images to use. Since the comic itself is about symbols, there were a lot of choices to make. Most of the text would make sense with a variety of images, but the meaning would shift slightly depending on which image paired with it, and I wanted to draw some very straight lines, so to speak. Sometimes it’s easier to make an appeal to the present by talking about the past.

Now the concept of the comic is locked down, but it’s past midnight, which means this interesting idea won’t see the Internet until Tuesday. And all I have is a couple artsy photographs of all the construction work we’ve been doing around this place. That’s one great thing about photography; it helps you small the small, everyday beauty of things to people who haven’t got an artist’s eye.

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They came off the roof, and they’re going back on the roof.

These pictures aren’t color corrected or anything. The second one could probably benefit from a little red boost and some judicious cropping, but it also has some merits without any help.

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A little slow on this one; it could have been a picture of 4 hands in the window, one of which was holding a hammer. So the meaning changes a little. Perhaps it’s more ambiguous.

Everything has its lovely details if you know where to look, or if you’re compelled to look for small beauty because the ugly details are huge but hard to focus on.

Friday is the kickoff for the 4th Ave Winter Fair, which means I will see the Bear! And maybe buy some new prayer flags for my new porch.

Mountain Lions Love Babies

What the heck are *you* guys looking at?

What the heck are *you* guys looking at?

There is something, to me, unspeakably comical about this photo of a baby and a mountain lion. The mountain lion is real and alive, behind a thick wall of plexiglass. This mountain lion is relatively young; I remember he came to ASDM when he was still a cub, and he was very active, pouncing all the vegetation in his habitat flat. Once, a couple months ago, a dove flew into his enclosure and he stalked it for a good 5 minutes. He looked just like an enormous house cat: chest down, tail up, hips twitching. However, he didn’t have the slightest clue how to hunt. While a group of humans waited in anticipation, cheering him on (did you know in America it’s illegal to feed live animals to other live animals for spectators who have paid to be there?) he slowly crept forward and then, still a good 15 feet from his prey, pounced.

The bird flew away.

The humans sighed and laughed.

Undoubtedly, that mountain lion would pounce that baby if he found it in his habitat, but since it’s at the window, the mountain lion is used to just looking. Anyway, I know it’s not the best photo I ever took, but none of the other ones from that shoot really blew me away, even when I cropped them. This is the most interesting one from that day.

I think I’ve finally come through to the other side of this sinus infection. Hallelujah! I woke up this morning only slightly congested, took a handful of OTC meds, and was basically able to breathe all day. It’s a modern medical miracle. Last night I seriously thought I was going to have to live with impacted sinuses for the rest of my life. Although I have a zero percent chance of finishing my entire list tonight, I got through a good part of my week’s goals. There’s one more project I can squeeze in tonight.

Butterflies Are Pollinators, Too

Taking Flight

Taking Flight

Wow, am I ever having hardware problems. The computer is getting old and it gets weirdly sluggish at times. I deleted thousands and files just to make it work at all, but somehow Photoshop was having trouble with this image, so I wasn’t able to play with it much. Monarch butterflies in the pollination garden at ASDM. I’ve been trying to get this up for an hour and I’m all out of patience. I’m starting to really miss comics, but I have a few more things I have to accomplish this week before there’s headspace for that. So: butterfly. Maybe my sinuses will clear up, and then I can stop taking all this medication, and then my head will clear up, and everything will be easier.

I’m dizzy because I took Nyquil. Perhaps I should call it a night.

Bee Cool, People

She works hard for the honey, so hard for it, honey.

She works hard for the honey, so hard for it, honey.

Here’s a crisp little honeybee for your pleasure. Captured this image near the pollination garden at ASDM, which was simply buzzing not only with her close kin, but also her cousins, the solitary carpenter bees. Despite the fact that carpenter bees are unreasonably large and fairly slow moving, I was unable to get a clear shot of one that day. This is unfortunate, because they’re shiny and astonishing and people don’t seem to be familiar with them. At my old place, there was a particular one living in a dried agave stalk who used to always hang out when I was doing yoga. They’re perfectly comfortable with humans.

I did minimal color correction on this one. It was already pretty sharp. I like the little grains of pollen on her head. I guess bees don’t suffer from allergies.

Tonight, The Man and I attended a Yelp Elite event at the Tucson Botanical Gardens in conjunction with Natures Connects, which is a traveling exhibit of giant Lego sculptures. In addition to free nighttime access to the gardens (very nice this time of year) we got tamales from the Tucson Tamale Company, small batch paletas (a kind of Mexican popsicle, if you’re not from around here), much booze (a hallmark of Yelp Elite events), a chance to play with Legos (with an Instagram contest for best Lego tree), and a scavenger hunt (tied for first, winning 2 free passes to the gardens–usually we have a membership but ours has lapsed, so this is a nice bonus). There were also gift bags with nature-themed playing cards, a jigsaw puzzle, a tie tack, a highlighter that’s also a Lego block, and a coupon to the gift shop.

Last night I wrote a sonnet. Tonight I’m playing with fonts.

What Goes Up

Sometimes you have to land.

Sometimes you have to land.

This hummingbird lives in one of the aviaries at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum; this picture was taken last Wednesday in the late afternoon. It’s cropped pretty closely and then I played with the color until it matched my mind’s eye a little more closely. The brightness is correct, but I’m afraid the color at the bird’s throat might not be. If this is, as I suspect, an Anna’s hummingbird, the tone should be more purple than red. Still can’t trust the camera. But the untouched image doesn’t come close to demonstrating the brilliant dazzle of a hummingbird in sunlight and this is a little more indicative.

Like the hummingbird, I need to rest between flights. I have a couple more pictures like these, from that same day, which I’ll try to share this week, but I’m taking a little vacation from comics. They’re noisy in my brain and I need some space to think. I want to write a poem, and an article about comics, and finish at least 2 T-shirts, so it’s time to land for a few days. I think I’ll sit on the floor, with a notebook and a pen, and write.

::gentle weeping::

Even thought I started today’s post earlier than usual, I experienced greater than usual adversity, including a weird glitch in Photoshop that erased all the vertical images. I spent a long time repairing the database and rebuilding the thumbnails, which resulted in the return of a bunch of photos that disappeared last October, but did not fix my original issue uploading portrait oriented imaged. I settled for a landscape picture and tinkered with hand written text for a while before my everything crashed and I lost all my work. Meanwhile, my Internet is finking out so hard; pages are taking minutes to load and everything seems fubared and hopeless. So I give up for tonight, at least on this project.

Instead, please enjoy this recently returned image of the Colorado River along with some much appreciated words of wisdom.

Shot from the Navajo Bridge. We also saw 2 California condors at this site.

Shot from the Navajo Bridge. We also saw 2 California condors at this site.

This is really useful advice right about now.

This is really useful advice right about now.

ETA: my Internet is so wrecked that it took 20 minutes to upload these photos. I really hope you enjoy them.