Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Historically it is a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

Dinky Hocker shoots smack!

It’s not even safe to go out and pick up 2 days worth of poop anymore.

Reality always wins in the end.

Naturally gregarious and alpha

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

This is all too absurd to be reality, right?

This blog will pay for itself.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Not all heroes wear capes.

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

The willow is too close to the house.

Let there be snark.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

… makes me wish i had hoarded more linguine

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

False Scribes! False Scribes!

You are here: Home / Archives for Photo Blogging / On The Road

On The Road – Mike in Oly – Texture & Pattern in Nature: Metal

by | 16 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Mike in Oly

In my wanderings about western Washington and other nearby areas I am always taking photos of the things I find. One of my favorites types of photos to create are what I call texturals, for lack of a better term. They are often macros, but not always. They highlight color, texture and/or pattern over scenery or narrative. I find them fascinating and beautiful. I hope you will to. Tonight’s theme is metal, featuring the many ways nature acts on the metal man forges to create unique imagery.

On The Road - Mike in Oly - Texture & Pattern in Nature: Metal 7
Olympia, WA

I am fascinated by rusting metal and old cement. This piece from an old fort on the WA coast is a work of art. Still solid and sturdy, with beautiful geometry.

On The Road – Mike in Oly – Texture & Pattern in Nature: MetalPost + Comments (16)

On The Road – Mike in Oly – Texture & Pattern in Nature: Stone

by | 9 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Mike in Oly

In my wanderings about western Washington and other nearby areas I am always taking photos of the things I find. One of my favorites types of photos to create are what I call texturals, for lack of a better term. They are often macros, but not always. They highlight color, texture and/or pattern over scenery or narrative. I find them fascinating and beautiful. I hope you will to. Today’s theme is Stone. With the sea on one side and the mountains on the other, we never lack for stone in all its variety. Stone by itself is rather static, but combined with wind and water it becomes a source of wonder.

On The Road - Mike in Oly - Texture & Pattern in Nature: Stone 9
Olympia, WA

Sea life and stone combine to sculpt tidal pools and flats into abstract imagery.

On The Road – Mike in Oly – Texture & Pattern in Nature: StonePost + Comments (9)

On The Road – 🐾BillinGlendaleCA – Inauguration Day

by | 26 Comments

This post is in: ,

🐾BillinGlendaleCA

Thirty years ago my wife became a US citizen, I promised that afterwards we would see her new nation’s capitol city.  A few months later we flew to Washington and spent 5 days there.  We saw the Capitol, the White House (including the tour), the Archives, and many other sites.  It was my 4th trip to DC and we even hit a few places that I’d not seen (the Zoo).

With today’s Inaugural, I thought I’d revisit some of the photos.  These were all shot with Canon Sure Shot Ace on 35mm film and scanned with a 35mm film/slide scanner.  All photo were reprocessed from the RAW scanned image with either Topaz Labs DeNoise AI or Sharpen AI to reduce noise and sharpen the photos.

On The Road - 🐾BillinGlendaleCA - Inaurguration Day 7
Washington, DC

Madame, with the east front of the Capitol behind her.

On The Road – 🐾BillinGlendaleCA – Inauguration DayPost + Comments (26)

On The Road – Mike in Oly – Texture & Pattern in Nature: Water

by | 15 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Mike in Oly

In my wanderings about western Washington and other nearby areas I am always taking photos of the things I find. One of my favorites types of photos to create are what I call texturals, for lack of a better term. They are often macros, but not always. They highlight color, texture and/or pattern over scenery or narrative. I find them fascinating and beautiful. I hope you will to. Tonight’s theme is Water.

On The Road - Mike in Oly - Texture & Pattern in Nature: Water 9
Olympia, WA

Moving water, light and forest work together to create an every-changing kaleidoscope of color and pattern.

On The Road – Mike in Oly – Texture & Pattern in Nature: WaterPost + Comments (15)

On The Road – ChasM – Beginning at the Beginning – Rustic Canyon 1980

by | 22 Comments

This post is in: ,

ChasM

Hiya! I’ve been a clicker of these pages since, as Tim F recently put it, the proprietor was a disgruntled warblogger emerging from the dark shadows of the right. I don’t comment or make myself known much, but we rescued our little one-eyed Sanders in NYC thru this Shabeen (Calendar: July), and I read and love y’all, so here we go.

In 1980 I signed up for high-school photography class, borrowed $200 from an aunt (my first loan! a lesson in capitalism!), and purchased my first big-boy camera: a Canon AE-1 kit with a 50mm lens. It was between that and a Pentax that had a nifty leaf shutter, but felt too small for my hands. This turned out to be ironic in the bad way as the ergonomics of that fucking thing haunted me for 20 years until I got a Nikon. You see, it was an aperture priority camera and they put the aperture ring on the top right in exactly the place I rest my forefinger when I’m carrying the camera (I don’t like neckstraps, and in the days before hand straps, I would wrap a thin leather strap tightly around my hand so that I could use a loose grip as I carry at my side). There is no more heart-sinking feeling as a photographer than pushing the shutter expecting f4.5 and the corresponding quick tick-tick of 125th of a second and hearing instead “Click” … … … “Click” meaning you just lost the shot because you accidentally set the f-stop to 22 while advancing the last frame because the designers felt it important to locate that dial and the optimum finger-leverage spot in exactly the same place. One can page thru my pre-2000 contact sheets and see the dark and overexposed images and go, “yep, I remember that shot I didn’t get. Fuck that camera.”

Anywho. These are photos from the first roll that I have the negatives and thus scans of, my fifth roll overall. The first four rolls were used in class assignments, and all I have from them are some bad, faded prints that I turned in for grades.

On The Road - ChasM - Beginning at the Beginning - Rustic Canyon 1980 6

Rustic Canyon is a magical garden for children. There are countless hidden routes and secret places that only the those who grow up there know. The creek which runs thru the center was the thoroughfare of fantasies for the kids of the canyon. These shots were taken in the uppermost parts of Rustic, north of the Sunset Tunnel, past the last houses of the horse-and-stable crowd, above the twisty rock section and the formidable waterfall that was no obstacle to the children of the canyon because they had been shown the way by the older ones.  Now, these places are overrun with joggers and hikers from the nearby homes and beyond, but back then, only the scouts visiting Camp Josepho and us, the explorer kids from the lower canyon, treaded thru these forgotten places.

On The Road – ChasM – Beginning at the Beginning – Rustic Canyon 1980Post + Comments (22)

On The Road – Mike in Oly – Texture & Pattern in Nature: Flora

by | 29 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Mike in Oly

In my wanderings about western Washington and other nearby areas I am always taking photos of the things I find. One of my favorites types of photos to create are what I call texturals, for lack of a better term. They are often macros, but not always. They highlight color, texture and/or pattern over scenery or narrative. I find them fascinating and beautiful. I hope you will too. I’ll start the series off with Flora, showcasing some of the beauty of patterns in growing things.

On The Road - Mike in Oly - Texture & Pattern in Nature: Flora 8
Olympia, WA

Mature trees in the PNW often host their own ecosystems on their bark. This is an alder carpeted with an assortment lichens. (Yes, not technically a flora, but close enough).

On The Road – Mike in Oly – Texture & Pattern in Nature: FloraPost + Comments (29)