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A Butterfly in Ironbridge

May 3, 2016
Wildlife
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A very quick post. I’ve been up all night trying to finish a dress and now I’m totally bleary eyed. However, there is a photo I’ve been meaning to throw up for a while now. Arkenaton, if you are not already aware, has quite a talent for capturing bugs. Ark lives in South Africa now, but he is originally from England. I like to take pictures of bugs myself, and it just so happens that on my first trip to England I took a photo of a butterfly. A few weeks ago, I organized my photos, so I now knew exactly where it was and intended to post it. (“My first trip” – I better ‘fess up now, I’ve only been twice.)

Then, today, or yesterday, or sometime recently, Daz put up a post about Ordnance Survey Maps. As it happens, shortly before that first trip, I read an article in the paper about them and how they showed, among other things, rights of way, and you could order some maps and take some fascinating walks. I am exceedingly fond of walking and to my mind this is the best thing to do if you go to Britain. In the end, I didn’t order any of the Ordnance Survey Maps because I didn’t really know where to go and I happened to find a book of recommended walks, although the walks in that book were based on those maps.

So, I took a walk from a town called Ironbridge, best known for a bridge made of iron, and walked along the river to a place called Buildwas Abbey. Along the way, I took this photo:butterfly-in-england

Blown up, it looks like this:

butterfly-in-england-croppedIf anyone knows the species, please leave a comment telling us what it is.

Now, I need to get a little nap before I start typing very strange things.

Old Photo of My Mother and Grandfather

April 6, 2016
Photos
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Regarding my organizing – I haven’t scanned most of my old photos. Just a couple that looked as if they might crumble. Otherwise, I’ve just put them in boxes according to year. I also have a box of old slides. Those are totally disorganized, but that will have to wait for another day. However, I came across a small photo frame. Part of my organizing has been to either use something or get rid of it. For those who worry about waste, you can relax. Nothing is going in the garbage. If it’s still in good shape I’m either giving it to someone who wants it or putting it in a garage sale my mother’s neighbor is having in a week or two. Still, it can’t stay in my place because I’m too messy to hold onto little things I don’t use. So, I figured I had to either put something in the frame or get rid of it. I searched through the slides looking for one of my parents as teenagers. Instead, I found one of my mother and grandfather which I thought looked nice. Since the frame is small I cropped it.

Grandpa-and-Mom-croppedHere’s the original, which shows the whole kitchen. You can see that I cleaned up the dust.

1950s kitchenMy mother saw it the other day. She said, “My father used to help me with my math homework. He never finished high school, but he could help me with classes he never took.” My grandfather had an abusive step-mother and he ran away from home as a teenager.

Old Photos

February 19, 2016
Photos
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One of the things I did yesterday was transfer some of the photos I’d taken while traveling. For some reason, I thought I had done that in the past. Apparently not. I’ve posted a few of them on my French blog that were taken mostly on one day in December about three years ago.

 

Someone Has a Sense of Humor

February 3, 2016
Wildlife
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I was going through some of my old insect photos. One of the time-consuming things is trying to identify what type of bug something is. I came across a photo of a butterfly, well, two photos of the same butterfly.

Eastern-Tailed-Blue

Eastern Tailed Blue Female on a clover, underside and top.

I’ve seen quite a few of these around, so I figured it shouldn’t be too hard to locate. The photo was taken in Maryland so I looked on a site about Maryland butterflies. There are plenty of pictures of most of the butterflies there and the site even has a couple of pictures of two of these mating. (The blue in the name refers to the color of the males.) On one of the mating photos, there is a conveniently placed flower petal. The caption says: “Censored mated pair.” It made me laugh.

More Vacation Photos

September 1, 2015
Photos, Wildlife
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Again, I’m not going to write much. Here are some more photos, also taken on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. For those of you who don’t know, the Eastern Shore is a penninsula. The Atlantic Ocean is on the east and the Chesapeake Bay is on the west. Along the bay, the land is very irregular with lots of little inlets.

Another Old Picture of My Sister

August 6, 2015
Photos
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I really liked the dance studios at Bennington college when I saw them. I was pretty young then, so I don’t feel any confidence in my judgment. Still, they struck me as a great space for the purpose for which they were intended. The clerestory windows filled the space with light without having windows get in the way of workspace. I’ve always been fond of clerestory windows. I took a few pictures of my sister. The focus wasn’t meant so much to be on her as on the space itself. Although so much of architecture is about creating space, it’s very hard to communicate the feeling of being inside a space in a photograph. At least I’ve found it hard. It’s easier to photograph the exterior of a building, treating it like a form of sculpture. I wanted my sister to move about the space while I photographed because it was the space’s functionality that I enjoyed.

Unfortunately, I was a pretty inexperienced photographer and the photo is more than a little underexposed. I’ve been able to correct it somewhat in Photoshop, but the result is a little grainy. Teenage girl in overalls dancing in a studio space.

Sis in the Dance Studio

August 5, 2015
Photos
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When I was in my early teens, my grandfather gave me his camera.  Around the same time, my sister went to a summer dance program at Bennington College. I took a bunch of photos of her. Not long before, she had transitioned from ballet to modern, so I think the program at Bennington may have had a big influence on her.

dance-studio-2-altered

 

WordPress’s overly helpful spell check underlined ballet. “Did you mean ‘ballot.'” As it happens, my sister is one of the most level headed people I know. If she were to run for anything, I would certainly vote for her. I hope she doesn’t. Then I’d wind up being that liability sibling than some politicians seem to have.

June 30, 2015
Photos
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Here’s more pictures from Sunday.
Woman-in-Pink-WigSine the post is so has so many pictures but I didn’t want to use the WordPress gallery format, I’m putting more below the fold. Consider the first one a tease.

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