Category: Photography

Photography

Plinkety-plink-plink-plink

Shelly

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Goldfish (and some other types, as well) suck up small rocks from the bottom of the tank and spit them back out again. Carp are bottom scavengers, and what they’re doing is looking for leftovers. That’s great, if the aquarium has gravel at the bottom. I use glass marbles though, instead of gravel. That doesn’t faze the fish a bit. They don’t care that the rocks they’re hoovering up are as big as their heads. They try to suck them up, anyway, sets off a ruckus of plinking as they root around in the marbles and try to inhale them.

Anyway, that’s what they’re doing in the two heads-down pictures. They’d just finished their supper, and were scrounging around for leftovers. Plinkety-plink-plink-plink.

Photography

Oh Fishy Fishy Fishy Fish

Shelly

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One of these days, I’m going to manage to get usable shots of them doing their gape-mouthed FEEDMENOW routine. They’re like two orange, aquatic piglets! Whenever they see me near their tank, they come to the front, near the waterline, to tell me their tale of never-been-fed woe.

It’s weird that I got several shots of just one of them alone, because they are usually joined at the, um, fin. They’re companionable, gregarious little guys.

Photography

More Rust

Shelly

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I leave little (and sometimes not so little) piles of junk on my coffee table, with the intent of sketching or taking photos of it. The most recent pile of junk is a bunch of humongous, rusty nuts and bolts and washers (frankly, I’m not sure what the square things are). I found them in the bottom of a closet in an old house I lived in.

Meta, Pets, Photography

Studio Cat

Shelly

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Pan was asleep on my drafting table, surrounded by journals and sketchbooks. I’d pulled them out, because I didn’t do a good job of including information for older images at Flickr. When recreating my Coppermine database, I had to go back to the original source for things like media and dimensions. So, there are stacks of books everywhere. I haven’t pulled out the canvasses yet, but I expect that’ll be even messier. I also expect that Pandora will insert herself right in the middle of everything, because that’s what she does.

Crankypantsing, Photography

Ur Colds, I Has Dem

Shelly

I woke up this morning with a sore throat and somebody’s wool blanket stuffed in my head. I am not amused. And worse, now that I’ve been up and out with the dog, I can’t get back to sleep. So I’m cruising Flickr, looking at other folks’ photos.

2. mc_light_rocks
Michigan City Lighthouse, Michigan City, Indiana

mcityduneslight
Michigan City Lighthouse seen from a sand dune on Washington Park Beach, Michigan City, Indiana

Credit: Tom Gill, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license

This was “our” beach, when my family lived in Michigan City. We lived on California Avenue, which was just a few blocks from Washington Park and the Washington Park beach. We could walk to the park via the beach, then cross the road and go to the Washington Park Zoo. The dune grass is sharp, and will cut you if you aren’t careful. We used to run around and play in the grass, and I remember getting long, razor cuts from it.

Sometimes we’d go to the lighthouse and walk the pier. There were usually old guys lined up on the pier, fishing. While the grown-ups were walking, us kids would scramble around. I remember climbing up on the center section, then down the far side. There was a narrow walkway there, and when the tide was out, it was easy to climb on the rocks. I was a chicken, though, so I only stepped on rocks that were right next to the walkway, and only those that were near the shore.

Frozen Shore
Frozen Shore by Meghan Linehan published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license

I remember going to the beach one winter and seeing, beyond the hurricane fencing, huge frozen waves. I was probably 6 or 7 years old, and I couldn’t figure out how water could freeze so quickly that it kept its wave form. Years later, I remembered those waves, and by then the solution was obvious. It really puzzled me at the time, though.

The photo doesn’t give a good idea of scale. These waves are enormous. And the ones I recall had wonderful, bizarre formations.

Meta, Pets, Photography

Sunday Cat Blogging

Shelly

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Pandora Rolling Around on the Studio Floor

Pan is not only the Queen of High Perches, but Empress of the Low Lying Lands, as well. Her motto: It’s all mine.

(Edit: And this is a good example of why it’s worth messing around with re-loading all those old images. The above picture is 23KB, but the same photo uploaded to Flickr is 113KB. That’s a significant difference, and with a blog that’s heavy on imagery, it’s a big deal.)

Meta, Photography

Rust

Shelly

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I found a sack of huge, rusty nuts, bolts, and washers at the bottom of a closet in one of the houses I used to live in. I’ve been dragging them around, with the intention of using them in an art project.

This is a test run of the new database. I’ve still got some aesthetic tweaks to make, but the basic structure is in place, and everything seems to be working.