Bugging Out

On a business trip a couple of years back, I skipped out of the conference I was attending for a couple hours to tour a fancy home. That is one of the secrets of career survival by the way, sneaking out. My eyes began to glaze over as the tour guides’ spiels dragged on, but just in the nick of time, I saw this giant insect out of the corner of my eye, and wandered over to check it out. It was mounted in a glass covered shadow box. I had to work quickly in case the docents caught me, but luckily, I was able to get a decent photograph of this 20 cm long monster.

One step away from garbage...

I don't lead a glamorous life, yet I always try to be receptive to the opportunities around me! The other day, a large mirror in the hall detached itself from the wall while I drank my morning coffee. Despite the loud noise, nothing actually broke, for which I am more than grateful. On the other hand, the displaced mirror did not reveal the hoped for cubby stuffed full of wads of cash. Instead, what was learned was that ages ago some pinhead had glued the mirror to the wall with large globs of black goo. With no adventitious appearance of cash, I settled for some quick photo opportunities as I planned a better way to remount the mirror.

Planned or adventitious, I hope your weekend is full of interesting photo opportunities.

 

Fall Monsoon Season

Sometimes I think the weather here in the Southeast is becoming en extension of the tropics, especially this time of year when it seems that we are increasingly battered by large and powerful storms from the Gulf of Mexico that circulate slowly, often for days, bringing humid air, warm temperatures, and excessive rain to our area well into the Fall. The cold fronts from the north and west that used to characterize the Fall are deflected, leaving us with flash floods, falling trees, rot and decay. It reminds me of the first few pages of One Hundred Years of Solitude -- everything is covered with a layer of something deeply funky. Sometimes you can actually smell the mold and fungus in the air when the rain does eventually clear. I find it rather depressing. On the other hand, if they don't fall on your head, dead limbs are interesting to photograph, interesting to photograph, interesting to photograph. 

Carpe diem

You just never know what you are going to discover when you go out photographing. We were in a pretty remote location, meandering along a country road toward our destination for the day, when we came across a large industrial complex of butler buildings and what appear to be huge piles of railroad ties. The towers made from these utilitarian pieces of wood are quite amazing, a kind of sculpture in the landscape in the middle of nowhere in particular. We spent about ten minutes or so photographing these objects, which were as mysterious to me in some ways as the statues on Easter Island.