Canal Reflection

I spotted this reflection of a building in a canal in Amsterdam.  It reminds me of an impressionist painting.  I’m quite smitten by Impressionism, and walking in the footsteps of some of the most famous impressionists in The Netherlands and France last April was incredibly inspiring.

Shortly after I got back to the US, I went to San Francisco to see the “Impressionists on the Water” exhibit at the Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum.  There are over 80 water-themed paintings on display by artists such as Monet and Renoir.

Most of the paintings had reflections in them, which is a favorite photographic theme of mine.  I loved seeing how each artist painted the subject and then rendered the aquatic reflection of that subject in their own style.  The reflections of boats, bridges, buildings,  trees, etc. varied from almost mirror images to barely recognizable, depending on the size and amount of ripples in the water.

I can’t help wondering how different painters would have rendered the reflection in the image above…

The Used-To-Be Church

The exterior walls and front steps are all that remain of an old church in the Halawa Valley on Moloka’i.  Trees grow around it.  Trees grow inside it.  It still provides shelter and sanctuary, but no longer to a human congregation.  In addition to the trees, bushes and vines, birds and insects call it home as well.  The choir consists of chirps, tweets and buzzing.  It’s still a peaceful place to linger, to commune with nature, and to be reminded that our presence here is temporary.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing…

Yellow Fellow

This is another person I spotted on an early (read:  predawn) walk through Havana.  This man was standing carefully balanced on the second to the highest step of a six-step a-frame ladder, painting the front of his apartment building.  I actually noticed his bright yellow shirt from about a block away.  Who wouldn’t have?  On closer approach, I could see that the yellow bucket and paintbrush were an almost perfect color match to his shirt.  I love the way the bright yellow stands out against the soft blue wall.

I noticed during my visit last month, and while looking at my images afterwards, that bright yellow is a popular clothing color in Cuba, among the men as well as the women.  It’s a color that not many American men would wear, but the Cuban guys pull it off with aplomb.  It happens to be a shade of yellow that looks fabulous against darker skin.  Someone with pale Caucasian skin would look putrid in this same shade!

I also love this gentleman’s pastel blue and lilac shorts (which harmonize wonderfully with the wall, did you notice?)  Again, not clothing colors most American dudes would select, but they look great on this guy, don’ t they?

So I realize that people don’t wear their best clothing for painting, but I was very happy with this gentleman’s wardrobe selection for the day.  I’m sure he put on old clothes that he didn’t mind getting paint-splattered, and didn’t give a moment’s thought to matching his shirt color to the color of his bucket and paintbrush, or the color of his shorts to the color of the wall, anticipating that an American photographer would come stumbling down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street before sunrise to take his picture.  Which makes this image that much more delightful to me.

Tomorrow:  a yellow outfit that will make this shirt PALE in comparison…

Color-Coordinated

Stroll through Havana and you’ll come upon scenes like this that make you do a double-take:  a car whose color so closely matches the color of the trim of the building it’s parked in front of that it looks like both were painted with the same paint.  Of course I know that building paint and auto body paint are made differently, but it sure looks to me like they could’ve both come out of the same can…

 

Tile We Meet Again

Most of Havana’s once stately buildings are decaying to varying degrees.  Whether built of limestone, cement or stucco, the marine environment combined with decades of neglect have taken their toll.  Crumbling facades, peeling paint, rusting iron and decaying wood mar most of these lovely structures, but each building’s character and former grace always seem to shine through, even when the exterior walls are all that’s left.  It makes for a somewhat surreal setting, and some neighborhoods have an almost postapocalyptic ambiance. At times I felt like I was walking through a movie set and not a real city.

One building material that has held up well over the years is ceramic tile.  The buildings that still had tile on their exterior had a vibrance that made them stand out among their faded neighbors.  The image above is a close-up of the tile veneer that lines the bottom of the building in the image below.  The entire building is actually one of the better preserved examples:  the glass is intact and all the shutters and doors close.  Even the iron bars covering the windows seems relatively rust-free.

The bright colors and patterns of the tiles brighten up even the darkest alley, and lend a cheerfulness to the otherwise-bland limestone facades.  They don’t build ’em like this anymore…

Rust Never Sleeps

In fact, I’d say it’s been working overtime in this building, judging by the appearance of the wall and roof…and this is the interior!  Notice how much better the cinderblock walls held up by comparison, and the concrete floor.

I can’t help but be reminded of the fairy tale about the three little pigs…which building material would YOU chose?

I’m thinking cinderblock and/or concrete win hands down over corrugated steel, at least in this climate!

An Equine Outlook

If you’ve been with me for a while, you know that I love to shoot abandoned buildings and horses (among many other things), so imagine my delight when I chanced upon a horse IN an abandoned building.  And what’s more, it was standing at the (broken out) window with its head hanging over the sash and looking right at me, ears perfectly pointed forward and posing for a portrait without even being asked.  How could I resist?

The fact that the horse appears to be hiding behind the bushes while looking out adds another element to this image. It reminds me of the person who peeks through the curtains or the blinds when the doorbell rings to find out who it is before they decide whether or not they want to let on that they’re home.  Don’t we all know at least one person like that…perhaps several?  If only doorbells came with “Ringer ID!”

Anyone want to guess in which state this image was taken?  The answer may surprise you…

YAY!!! I Got “Freshly Pressed” Today!

The astute editors at WordPress selected one of my recent posts–“Defying Gravity” from August 10, 2012–to be one of today’s “Freshly Pressed” posts.  Thank  you Cheri and the rest of the WordPress staff.  This is indeed an honor, and I’m very proud to have been selected from a field of so many eloquent and creative bloggers (and talented photographers too).

For those of you non-Wordpress bloggers who are reading this and wondering what the heck I’m talking about, today’s 20 Freshly Pressed posts are “The best of 465,513 bloggers,1,185,909 new posts, 1,399,798comments, & 297,464,084 words posted today on WordPress.com.”

So while not as rare as winning the lotto or getting struck by lightning, the odds of getting Freshly Pressed are still high enough that I’ve been glowing all day.  Kindof like the backlit sunflower I picked for today’s image.  (We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.)

One of the neatest things about today has been all the great comments and compliments I’ve received from old and new readers alike. It’s been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, and I’m checking out EACH of your blogs (and subscribing to a great many of them) before I answer your comments.  I’m going chronologically, so if I haven’t gotten to yours yet, don’t fret.  My dreams of going viral are still just that–dreams–so I can still find out who each of you brilliant and discerning folks are.

The “Defying Gravity” post featured images of the Skeen School in the Palouse region of Washington state.  I had hoped to be able to write more about it, and thought there would be plenty of information online, but when I went to research it, I found precious little.  If anyone reading this knows more, please leave a comment.

The Skeen School is on most serious photographers’ Bucket List of Palouse images.  Like wheat-covered hills, dilapidated barns, grazing cows, and harvesting machinery, it’s an iconic image of this beautiful and unique region.  Which makes it all the more astonishing to me that there isn’t more information about it readily available.

One thing that surprised me as I was reading the comments on that post is that some people thought I had either played a trick with lenses and/or image editing software to deliberately create the leaning “look” of the building.  It honestly never occurred to me that people would think that, but I guess we’re all getting used to seeing manipulated images all around us and are taking it for granted that trippy-looking buildings aren’t real.

Folks, I assure you that the Skeen School is indeed twisting and leaning as depicted.  In fact, it twists and leans a bit more every year, which will unfortunately lead to its eventual collapse.  I did make what I consider to be “minor” adjustments to the images in that post, specifically things like color-correction and contrast, which I make to almost all my images since I shoot exclusively in RAW format.  But the distortion of the building is real.  That’s why the post is titled “Defying Gravity.”

One final comment about the comments.  It seems like there’s a disproportionate number of “grammar geeks” that liked that post.  I’ll take that as a compliment on the writing as well as the photography.  I’m also a grammar geek, so the term is NOT a put-down.  Grammar geeks of the world, I love you!  And I love reading your blogs.  Y’all writes real good!

The Leaning Lean-To

The lean-to is leaning, but then so is the original building.  I’m not an expert, but I think you’re supposed to build the lean-to smaller than the support building, and not larger.

But then if these buildings were both square, it wouldn’t be as interesting an image, would it?

An Old Building Tells A Story

On the side of an antique store in a small town in the Palouse, I found a perfectly arranged “still life.”  I pulled over to take a closer look.

I must confess to finding the outside of the building so interesting (and photo-worthy) that I never even got around to setting foot inside the store.  And I like antiques and vintage goods!

I was fascinated with the story the outside of the building told.  For example, what do you think had been next door?  A staircase, a door on the second floor…and yet another door who’s opening changed shape!  I wonder if the door below still opens…

In the image below, you can see the ghost of where a door used to be (on the ground floor, just behind the street sign post).  I love old unreinforced masonry buildings.  They have so much character!

It also appears that both electricity AND indoor plumbing were added AFTER the building was completed.  You can tell a lot by studying a building’s exterior!

The image below shows the front of the building.  This appears to be the least changed side of the building.  I imagine it looks pretty close to how it did when it was built.  I don’t know the year it was constructed, but I would guess over a hundred years ago.  They don’t build ’em like they used to, do they?