Friday, January 21, 2011

Wells Dug In Our Hearts

It's no secret .... I love houses and old buildings.   Here are a few local ones that have captured my eye ....  (click on photos to enlarge for much better detail)

This old house sits in front of the marina, just before you cross the bridge onto Taylor's Island in Dorchester County, Maryland.   My sister Bonnie and I were there in late Autumn, and we watched the sun set over the river.



This is a Victorian home that is under renovation in the Newtown District of Salisbury, Maryland ... I love the lace curtains hanging in the windows.



Another house in the Newtown District .... anyone in the market?   I love the sun porch and the balcony and the dormer windows on the top floor.



This house sits in Dover, Delaware.   I love the wraparound porch.   I was visiting my niece and she took me to the downtown historic section of Dover to capture a few photos.   When we neared this house, we noticed a squirrel running along the porch rails.   He scampered to and fro for some time.   I really like the shadows in this shot.



Gary and I rode to Laurel, Delaware yesterday afternoon, in search of fences.  I belong to a group on Flickr called "fence friday" ... so I am always on the lookout for old and unique fences.   We parked in the church parking lot next to this old house and were taken with the architecture of the place.   It's for sale, too.  I'm actually not finished with this edit ... I will be adding a texture before I post it on Flickr.



And lastly, we spotted this old chicken house last Spring while we were traveling the back roads near Whitehaven.   One of the few old surviving chicken houses that made it through last year's winter snow storms.   Many, many of them died their deaths from the weight of the back-to-back storms.  This one hasn't held chickens for a long time, I don't believe.


"On any given day, something claims our attention [literally "grabs our hearts"]. Anything at all, inconsequential things. A rosebud, a misplaced hat, that sweater we liked as a child, an old Gene Pitney record. A parade of trivia with no place to go. Things that bump around in our consciousness for two or three days then go back to wherever they came from... to darkness. We've got all these wells dug in our hearts. While above the wells, birds flit back and forth."
— Haruki Murakami

What kinds of wells are dug in your heart?

Hope everyone is having a beautiful January ....




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Monday, January 3, 2011

More Memories of Philadelphia

Sharing a few more photos from our trip to Philadelphia ...

Little birds on a bush ...

Pink Bicycle ....

The First Continental Congress met in this very spot ... these Windsor chairs are the original chairs used at that time

Colorful Doors ...

A museum in the historic district ....

When we left the museum, this horse was pulling a carriage full of tourists ...

Beautiful architectural detail ....

Red Berries ....

Beautiful windows ...

"But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, "Courage, dear heart" ... and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan's, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face."


— C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)

Wishing everyone a New Year filled with Courage ....

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Saturday, January 1, 2011

My Prayer For The New Year

"Give me Yourself, O my God, give Yourself back to me. Lo, I love You, but if my love is too mean, let me love more passionately. I cannot gauge my love, nor know how far it fails, how much more love I need for my life to set its course straight into Your arms, never swerving until hidden in the shelter of Your face. This alone I know, that without You all to me is misery, woe outside myself and woe within, and all wealth but nothing, without my God."


— St. Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)

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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Perspective Correction

I wanted to show an example of the difference it makes in a photo to correct the perspective distortion.   Many of the pictures I take with my lens at 18mm produce photos where the right and left sides are horribly leaning inwards.    I use the Perspective Tool in Paint Shop Pro to correct that distortion, and then I widen the width to compensate for the scrunching that results from the perspective correction.   Here are "before" and "after" examples from one of my photos of City Hall in Philadelphia .... (click photos to enlarge)

Original photo .... notice the terrible leaning buildings


"After" .... buildings are no longer leaning.   I processed the photo with Akvis Sketch and Filter Forge.

This building is the second tallest masonry building in the world, according to Wikipedia.  I normally try to have space on either side of a building, but I just could not get far enough away from this one to capture the entire thing.   I was standing way across the intersection, among crowds of people.   And when I tried to get farther back, other structures were getting in the way.   So, this is not the best shot in the world.   But my aim was to capture as much of City Hall as I could.

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