I’ve always thought Praying Mantises are among the coolest bugs out there. I was sold the moment I saw The Deadly Mantis on Creature Feature as a kid. This stuff was pure gold!
So, I’m always thrilled when I get to see one of these creatures in my yard (thankfully not the 50 foot version). So, I braved a swarm of misquotes laying on the ground taking pictures of this increasingly annoyed mantis.
via Boingboing this is a great post about 11 beautiful train stations that were demolished and replaced various eye sores, empty lots or infrastructure designed to discourage mass transit.
Check out the ‘before’ photos and see what we’ve lost in our cities.
This past weekend I was invited to display some of my photos of Afghanistan as part of a local artist’s event which brought together a number of amateur artists. I have to admit it was quite fun, although I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been which meant that I could only show four of my favorite pictures.
The work of the other artists were very good and was pleasantly surprised to hear the musical performers ‘Sailors in Rags‘ (well, two of the four members) and Isabel Ruano who were both very good. So good, in fact, that I was planning on telling you to go out and pick up the CD I thought I heard Shelia and Jeff said Sailors in Rags had produced but I can’t find any evidence of it on their website. Sailors describe their style as ‘bluegrass/folk/pop’ and they’re just the group you’d like to see this weekend. Isabel is from Guatemala which is enough to make her worth listening to since Guatemala has got to be in everyone’s top ten most fun words to say but she also has a beautiful voice.
As for me, I’ve now sold one of my pictures for a videogame and had my first showing. I guess it’s about time for me to wear a beret (no, not that kind) and consider picking up a few more quirky habits before cutting off one of my ears and spending the rest of my life either in a drunken stupor or in an insane asylum.
Looks like I better get busy.
This website allows you to do a really neat trick with photographs. Tilt-Shift miniature faking is a process by which:
“a photograph of a life-size location or object is manipulated so that it looks like a photograph of a miniature scale model. By distorting the focus of the photo, the artist simulates the shallow depth of field normally encountered with macro lenses making the scene seem much smaller than it actually is. Many miniature faked photographs are taken from a high angle to further simulate the effect of looking down on a miniature.”
I know, I know…what the hell does that mean? Well, it’s better to demonstrate it than talk (or write about it) so here’s a picture I took a Reykjavik, Iceland a few years back before applying the tilt-shift method:
Reykjavik, Iceland
And here is the same picture after applying the method:
The website makes this effect wicked-easy to use and requires you to click just a few buttons to make it happen. In fact, if you found this blog you have more than the necessary skills to do it. Now, only some pictures really benefit from this effect. Some tips on good candidates:
A bridge over the Delaware River a couple of weeks ago.
Eleven and a half years old and the dog’s still got it…
When I want to go running he moves around like he wants to tell me about his rheumatism that he got in the winter of ‘04. When I get out the frisbee, he jumps around like a dolphin at SeaWorld. I think he’s just getting better at manipulating me.
Anyway, we (obviously) played a little frisbee and I got some great pictures. Check them out at my flickr site here.
Quite possibly the coolest thing I’ve seen in quite some time. If I had seen this when I was 12 I think you could have classified it as my ‘first love’. Whoa….
The zombie/vampire killing potential is through the roof! It does look like an Eastern Orthodox church with that onion dome. I wonder if this is what Putin had roll across the Georgian border?
More can be found here.
Whoa…It’s now been almost three months since my trip to Sweden and I’m still not done with my trip report.
I got to spend a couple of days in Öland, which has a lengthy history and fantastic views. The whole place has a rural feel, with the large towns having less than 5,000 people in them. The island is a popular tourist destination for Swedes but it was pretty empty when we got there. That happened to be a fairly lucky coincidence since the island was about to be packed with celebrations of the Crown Princesses’ birthday.
Two brilliant places to check out are the castles of Ektorp and Burgholm. One of the great things about museums and exhibits in Sweden is that most of them aren’t walled off and sterilized leaving you to view them behind a wall of plexiglass and crowd control barriers. You can actually touch the stuff which, to me, makes the experience much more interesting and informative.
Eketorp is an excavated iron age fort and the reenactors have done quite a good job of setting the scene. It’s a bit off the beaten track (you don’t have a car it’ll be a headache to get there and back) A number of homes (hovels?) have been constructed as well as working areas and the reenactors go about their daily business. They try to be interactive, allowing you to do a bit of archery, cooking bread, etc but probably the thing that was the most authentic about the place were the goats and pigs they had wandering around loose on the grounds. The sounds (and smells) of the animals helped to make it more of a historical and less of a theme park experience. It was also interesting to see how small these forts were. They guess that there were approximately 150 people living in the fort (including women and children) meaning you didn’t have tons of men-at-arms just hanging about doing nothing.
Borgholm castle is a a beautiful ruined castle that was used from the 12th to the 19th centuries before it was destroyed in a fire. Yet again, there is virtually no part of this castle off limits to those who want to explore every nook and cranny of the place. It’s got tons of atmosphere and you can even go check it out after the place closes down (I don’t know if you’re suppossed to or not but I’m one of those ‘If it isn’t strictly forbidden, it’s permitted’ type of guys).
These two alone make Öland worth the trip, even if you have to go a bit out of your way. But there’s plenty more to see, especially if you dig windmills. My favorite…the blue cow.
This one is kind of a cheat since some photoshopping was involved. I saw this weathervane in Estonia and erased the city of Tallinn from around it to give me this:
Enjoy!
I took this photo at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. It focuses on a huge warship that sailed in 1628 and promptly sank. The ship was raised and is now incredibly well preserved. Anyway, among the assorted flotsam and jetsam that was recovered were the remains of some of the crew.
I decided to play around a little with the settings of my new camera and ended up with this. It was a pretty dark place so I left my shutter up for a long time and it kind of makes the visitors look like ghosts. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll use this in the future but it’s a pretty cool effect.
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