This post is dedicated to my brother, David, who professes to like door photos. In late July of 2019, David, Cheryl, Kathryn, and myself headed over to Mesilla, NM to have lunch at La Postada de Mesilla and do a photo shoot in the picturesque area near the square in downtown Messilla. Here are five frames of doors.
Doors of Mesilla – 1
I was processing photos of doors from my various travels and planning a door post from cities around the world when I realized I had five frames just from Mesilla. So I went with that. Of course, this means that there are doors left over for another post!
The door in this shot is opening onto a courtyard. What’s in there? Should we go in?
The San Angelo Symphony gives a July 3 Pops Concert and Fireworks Extravaganza at the Bill Aylor Sr. Memorial RiverStage. This is a big thing in town. The symphony plays the 1812 Overture and a couple of real civil war era cannons provide the cannon noises. (These bad boys give GOOD BOOM!) After the concert, they shoot off fireworks.
Not to be outdone, the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts (SAMFA) hosts a little party for a few hundred of their favorite members (i.e., those ones who can afford the tickets, proceeds to the museum.) For the price of admission you get to hobnob with the cities finest, eat all the bar-be-que you can hold (brisket, sausage, chicken, biscuits, rolls, cole slaw, and cherry or peach cobbler a la mode with vanilla Blue Bell ice cream for dessert — triple yum!), partake in an open bar, and sit on top the top deck of SAMFA for the concert and fireworks. What a deal!
My wife and I go every year except last year when it conflicted with a meeting and we were out of town. The concert and museum festivities were cancelled this year because of COVID-19. Here are five frames of fireworks from 2018.
In August of 2018 I was in Boston again for, wait for it…, a scientific meeting. I was mostly loose for a couple of days when I wasn’t attending to the science. Here are five frame of arty stuff from around town.
Through a Window
I took this photo in the World Trade Center stop on the Silver line. I had ridden the “T” over from my hotel to go to the convention center where I was going, gasp, to actually attend some of the meeting that brought me to Boston.
In April, 2017 I was loose as a goose in San Francisco with my then new Canon 6D. I only had one lens, the Canon 50mm f1.8, so that’s what I used. Here are five frames of things you might recognize.
Transamerica Pyramid
This is the Transamerica Pyramid from Powell Street looking down Clay. When it was built in 1972, it’s 863 feet made it the tallest building in San Francisco and the eight tallest in the world. It has 48 floors of office space and a spire of 212 feet atop. It is way cool.
Today’s post continues the “bygone days of travel” theme. The county is opening up, but COVID-19 cases are soaring in some states, particularly in my home state of Texas. I don’t yet feel comfortable traveling so I can only dream. In the meantime, here are five touristy frames from New Orleans.
This is the Star of India, an iron-hulled sailing ship built in 1863 and currently home-ported in the Maritime Museum of San Diego. The Star of India was originally named Euterpe for the muse of music. She was built for the Wakefield Nash & Company of Liverpool for the Indian jute trade. She was renamed the Star of India in 1906 by the Alaska Packers Association while she was employed in the salmon industry. The Start of India came to San Diego in 1926 to be part of a planned museum and aquarium. Restoration wasn’t started until 1957 and the Star of India didn’t sail until 1976. The Star of India is the fourth oldest ship in the United States and the oldest to sail regularly. I try to drop by and visit the ship when I’m in San Diego. See also: Five Frames of Pipes from San Diego.
I recently came into a little extra cash by doing some book formatting work and I blew it all on the Canon EF 100mm f2.8 macro lens. I received the lens several weeks ago, but COVID-19 shutdowns and then some personal issues kept me from using it. The week before last, I was able to take it on an outing to San Angelo State Park. Here are five frames.
Fluffy
This looks like the head of thistle that has gone past its flowering stage. The other heads nearby look like thistles, but they were too small to be Texas Thistles. I confess, at the time I wasn’t worried about what it was, I was thinking “Oooh, pretty!” If you know what this is, I’d like to hear from you.
Remember travel? It wasn’t so long ago that we were free to move about the country or even the world. Now, thanks to COVID-19, not so much. In honor of travel, today’s post is five frames from five cities. So, in alphabetical order, here we go…
Barcelona – The Dona I Ocell – Woman with Bird
The Woman with Bird is a sculpture by one of Barcelona’s most famous artists, Joan Miró. Miró was a painter, sculptor, and ceramicist whose work was interpreted as Surrealism. I took this picture from the walkway at the top of the Plaza de Toros de la Arenas, also known as the old bullfighting ring. At the time, I only knew that it was large and colorful (I didn’t even know it was by Miró at the time.)
The Woman with Bird resides in the Parc Joan Miró, near the Plaça d’Espanya. If you are thinking that it looks a little phallic, then you’d be right. See the Wikipedia article on the Dona i Ocell for some enlightenment on the subject.
The Woman with Bird is the last of three sculptures commissioned by the city of Barcelona to welcome people to the city. The concrete sculpture is covered in tiles in primary colors. The tile work was performed by Joan Gardy Artigas, a longtime collaborator.
Today’s post is a guest post from none other than my brother, David, the same individual who is prominently featured in a previous post, The O Bros do Guadalupe Peak.
I am David Osterhout, brother of John Osterhout who owns this phlog. John is an excellent photographer and has been the finalist in three photo contests in the last twelve months. However, he has a penchant for taking pictures of pipes. “Pipes” in this instance is not a metaphor or simile for anything else but what it is, pipes. Gas pipes, water pipes, conduit, PVC, drainage, sewer, copper or steel, you name it and he has taken a picture of it. John has a computer file with nothing but pictures of pipes in it. I do believe the name of the file is “Pipes”. (Go figure!)
I recently spent some time with my brother on a trip to Alpine, Texas where we attended an outdoor play, went to a Pecos League baseball game, hiked up Hancock Hill, and hunted the elusive and mysterious Marfa lights. During the in-betweens, he took a bazillion pictures. Some of the pictures were of pipes. I’ve seen some of these pictures before but this was the first time I actually got to see him take the pictures. I’ve got to admit seeing a grown man kneeling before a gas meter in the back of the county courthouse to get the perfect shot was a little off putting but that’s what photographers do.
As a lark, while I was on Maui last summer (2019) I took some pictures of pipes and sent them to my brother. He took the pictures and did some digital photographic magic and the colors popped. A great improvement. I took the pictures on an old iPhone 6. Below are the photos with a comment from each of us. There is very little I can say about the photos besides, “Here’s a picture of some pipes!”
Blue and Red Pipes (New)
DO: These are the first pipes I passed on my walk. I have no idea what flows through them but they were new-looking pipes.
JO: These are ulana pōkole ʻulaʻula a me ka uliuli, red and blue lowland pipes. These are fully mature pipes in their prime. This pipe variety typically inhabits lush lowland regions where they hide in the vegetation, then ambush and consume smaller pipes. Their bright coloring is no handicap since most of their prey are color blind.
Some time ago, I began to imagine creating a stereo image that consists one image hidden inside the other. I had imagined hiding a face inside a cloud where the face wasn’t very noticeable until you looked at it in 3D, then the face would pop out. Initially, I’d imagined hiding a posterized face inside a cloud. I didn’t quite manage that outcome, but today’s post is about some stereo fooling around and the image I did create. The project started when I bought a focusing rail to use for macro photography. Then I realized I could use it for stereo photography, too
Focusing Rail
Here is a shot my Canon 6D atop the spanking new focusing rail I got for macro photography. As you can see, it has two rails, one to move the camera fore and aft for delicate focusing and one to move the camera side to side for composition. It occurred to me that the side-to-side rail could be used for stereo photography.
