View allAll Photos Tagged stems
For Our Daily Challenge: Spiky
For Bokeh Wednesday
The rose bushes at our local conservatory are shooting new buds on thorny green stems even amongst last year’s dead growth.
HBW!
The Stem. I loved how this stem seemed so alive as if it was just cut yesterday. Still green - still fresh.
I visited Lisbon, Portugal in December, 2019, shortly before Christmas. It's a fabulous city full of local character and colour. These local vendors sell amazing, high-quality produce with a smile. Fast forward half a year of world-turmoil due to Covid-19, I hope they are still surviving and making a living.
Looking down the stem of a small sipping glass. Taken with a Canon 60mm USM Macro lens. Type L for a better view.
Our Daily Challenge - Fill the Frame - 2/17/12
Flower stems and leaf stems, that all stemmed from the garden, all sitting in a long stemmed wine glass.
A couple of white lights from
below.
bedankt voor uw bezoek , commentaar of favoriet maken .
thanks for all your visits, favs or comments .
I hereby officially conclude my first round of photographs of 100 Strangers!
Meet Katherine, my 100/100 strangers. We met in Albuquerque on a Saturday morning outside the Centennial Engineering Center on the campus of University of New Mexico (UNM). Katherine was facilitating event logistics for participants in the MATHCOUNTS® NM State Chapter tournament for middle schoolers who compete individually and as part of a team.
I dropped off my mathlete with his teammates and then had time to fill. The UNM campus was devoid of people because it was spring break. It was easy to spot Katherine standing outside a nearby building; it turned out to be the location of the MATHCOUNTS Countdown Round for later that morning. I observed her using her mobile phone. After ending the call, she did not leave her waiting place.
Opportunistically, I approached her. Katherine was indeed meeting a custodian to unlock the building door. She had several minutes to spare and was an easy enlistment.
We were in an area with open shade. I made several fruitless attempts to direct light on her using a light reflector, and even had her hold the light modifier. Eventually, I set it aside and we continued on while she sat patiently for the photographs.
During this project I encountered numerous subjects wearing eyeglasses. Many individuals removed them at my gentle suggestion. Katherine was disinclined to take them off, which gave an extra challenge of avoiding undesirable reflections and haze on her lenses. I moved myself around her to find a better position with diminished lens glare. In Photoshop post-processing, I created a “lenses only” layer, and tweaked the light levels to remove the majority of the unavoidable reflections. Our strangers present and we have to sort it out.
We spoke for a few minutes. Katherine was born in Dallas, TX, surrounded by her mother’s family. Her father, born and raised in New Mexico, decided to raise his children in his home state; they moved west.
“Long ago, I was interested in Mechanical Engineering. I didn’t do well enough in math. I was much better at writing and communications and found my way to science writing. That’s how I got to be part of science. Now, I work at the School of Engineering at UNM. I coordinate community outreach to middle and high school-aged students to get them interested in STEM learning. We want to show them possibilities and excite them about science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Events like today’s MATHCOUNTS serve as a portal for these young people. At least that's the hope.”
I asked if there was anything she wanted viewers of her portrait to think about when looking at her. Katherine paused thoughtfully. After a few moments she said the following, which I captured verbatim:
"Dream. I remember a painful time of my own life, from way back as a child. Some adult told me, 'Your problem is that you dream too big.' Don't let anybody tell you that. I was only a child, but I knew there was something wrong with that. This applies to any aspect of life. Just follow those big dreams and don't let anyone tear them down."
In this shot of Katherine, her head is tilted slightly upwards at my camera. The subtlety of her posture conveys her message of encouragement and self-confidence.
I thanked her for the important job she was doing: influencing and encouraging young minds to pursue STEM education. It was a pleasant, meaningful encounter. A few days later, I emailed to her a high resolution file that she could print as an 8x10 or share with her friends and family.
My now complete catalogue of 100 Strangers is here.
Project participants share their 100 strangers in the group pool here.
This is my 28th submission to the Human Family Group, an ongoing Flickr project for photographers who enjoy meeting and photographing strangers, any time, any place, with explicit permission, and a Joie de vivre.
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Thank you to all the generous human beings who participated as my subjects for this personal project. Thank you to everyone who followed or dropped in to experience my journey. A special thank you to all who offered me critique and constructive feedback, submission commentaries, private and public words of encouragement and even some favorites along the way.
I joined 100 Strangers to challenge myself to build photographic confidence, act with expeditiousness with my equipment and apply learned technique in my efforts. The end result of having photographed 100 Strangers means that I actually experienced the humor and humility of many more interactions with strangers than the aggregate in my catalogue.
In addition to my photographic growth, the project succeeded at humanizing the world and allowed me to recognize and value individuals. Photographing strangers brings people into close contact that otherwise may have no other impetus for doing so. I endeavored to reveal and acknowledge the strangers and render them with insights into what lies beneath their surface.
100 Strangers may be daunting for some, but I enjoyed and welcomed the unexpected. I proved to myself that I can maneuver my equipment quickly and effectively so I do not miss a perfect moment. This project has influenced how I see, what I look for, when I decide to make my shot, and how to manage and edit images after I click the shutter. This has been a very fulfilling experience. It feels good to cross this finish line.
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Orion plants his left, then swings through with his right as he executes a turn while running free at full speed on scent in the forest near my home...
Weather-wise, the day was nice. While January was mostly cloudy and gloomy with drizzle, we've been remarkably snow-free, so far. I'll take it. One good day is one less chance for a bad one. The rest of the week looks more like a typical February, our worst Winter month for cold, snow and ice storms.
All rights reserved. Please do not use or reproduce this image on websites, blogs or any other media without my permission.
Made with Processing, Lee Byron's Mesh library and ProXML library.
This little program looks for photos on flickr by a given search word. Afterwards, the colors of the photos are analyzed. The color itself gets detected and how often each color is found. This data is the foundation of every stem. Each segment represents one color of the photo, the diameter shows the quantity. The cell resolution in all segments is based on the brightness of the color.
Surely one of the most alien-looking plants on the planet!
This is in the Temperate House at Kew Gardens.
Painting my kitchen today, "French Blue", which is probably an inappropriate color for a kitchen, but we like it.
Have a good weekend, and I will check your photos soon!
Last night I was privileged to attend a lecture by prominent African American educator, advocate and mathematician Freeman Hrabowski III. His appearance was part of a yearly lecture series sponsored by the wife of the late Senator Mark O. Hatfield.
Hrabowski spoke about his journey as a young child in Alabama listening to Dr. Martin Luther King speak, marching for civil rights and being jailed at 12 years old. How his first name stems from the first "free man" born in his family and his last denoting the last name of his families ancestral Polish slave owner Hrabowski. He is now President of one of the most successful research universities in the country, served as the chair for an Obama advisory committee, and speaks around the world about bringing diversity and equality to STEM (Science/Technology/Engineering/Math) research. He's a rare mix of supreme intelligence and personality to match.
The lecture and the stats he provided made me think about my trip to South Carolina and my first encounter with that dark part of US history. This photo is of the historic slave cabins that still reside at Boone Plantation in Mt. Pleasant. We heard unfiltered stories about the brutal living conditions, inhumane treatment, and how many slaves didn't even survive the arduous trip to the US. A lot has changed since then, but the systemic problems still exist....even in institutions of higher learning.
Hrabowski ended his lecture with this, "“Watch your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your character, and your character become your destiny!” Inspiring words from an inspiring person.
Image with my Hasselblad 500cm