Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

Where: Arlington, Virginia (specifically Roslyn)

When: July 2012

Architecture is frozen music -Goethe

Why: Weekly Photo Challenge theme of reflections.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Thankful

What am I thankful for?

I am thankful I have lived in a metropolis (in this case, the Washington DC area) that is big enough and intelligent enough to host a smart, challenging, and puzzling event such as the Washington Post Hunt.

Below is a picture I took during the 2009 version of this event.

It’s a clue – if you know how to look

The statues in this picture – actually, people dressed up as art objects – and a card with five sentences which was handed out to all the participants were meant as clues.

Sadly, I missed the 2012 version of this event and most likely will miss the 2013 staging of this contest.

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For M

The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.

But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

–John Boyle O’Reilly, “A White Rose”

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Travel Theme: Foliage

The calendar marches on and brings us to Friday, which means the day is a’popping with photography challenges from across the Intenet.

For today, I am hanging with the site Where’s My Backpack? and its theme of foliage.

My submission comes from my digital shoebox – the 2007 version to be exact – when the family and I enjoyed a fun afternoon berry picking during an August in Maryland.

Raspberries, I believe

That’s my daughter, Ophelia (at least the version of her from five years ago) doing her best to deposit as many raspberry stains as she can on her clothes.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Solitary

This is my response to the theme of solitary from WordPress’s Weekly Photo Challenge.

From my shoebox of digital photos comes this snapshot taken during our family’s January 2009 vacation in Cancun, Mexico.

I mostly remember this trip because it got us out of the nation’s capital during the Barack-alypse, when traffic and crowd levels were going to be off the charts with the inauguration of President Barack Obama. I was able to enjoy the sun, surf, and sand while my neighbors were shivering in the winter of Northern Virginia.

Anyway, back to the theme, and while “solitary” can mean a person being all alone in a room, I offer up a person engaging in a solitary pursuit.

Hunting solo

I had seen people with metal detectors before combing the beach for keys and lost nickels, but I had never seen one in the tide before. Best of luck to him. I wonder if he had any one to share his bounty with.

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Photo Friday: Texture

Texture is the theme of the week from Photo Friday.

Once again, I am reaching back into the photos from our family’s summer vacation back in the States.

Once again once again, I offer up a snap from my visit to one of the buildings that grace the National Mall. That building would be the National Gallery of Art…the East Building to be exact.

One of the installations that exist on the outside of the building is Roof by Andy Goldsworthy.

Roof

I have always enjoyed viewing this piece of art because I am amazed at the amount of work that must have gone into placing all the individual stones into the eight (nine? ten?) domes that comprise the installation.

In this picture, I only captured fragments of three, but the texture of each piece is unique.

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Photo Friday: Interiors

It’s the only day of the week that begins with an “F”, which means it time to break out the theme from Photo Friday…which on this fourteenth day of September is “interiors“.

I’ve dug into the shoebox for this 2009 photo taken during a Mannski Family trip to Luray Caverns.

Cave interior

From the interior of the cavern, this is not a picture of stalactites reaching down towards stalagmites. Instead, what you are looking at are stalagmites (the rocky croppings on the ceiling) being reflected in a pool of water.

I thought it was a neat effect.

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Photo Friday: On The Horizon

I’m late, but here I am anyway. On The Horizon is the theme from Photo Friday.

Once again, I am delving into the photographs from our summer stay in the United States. Part of that trek took us into Virginia where, after a sudden summer squall (and that’s a lot of anxious alliteration from a brilliant blogger), I took this picture.

Sadly, not a double rainbow

It’s the Potomac River and the Jefferson Memorial is that little white blob in the lower left.

But wait…what’s that amber smudge to the top and right of the Jefferson Memorial?

What is that thing on the horizon?

Call Mulder and Scully (or Project Bluebook depending on your age)

Did I actually manage to capture a digital image of a UFO? a sprite? a super-secret military plane?

No.

Turns out it was only the ceiling light from the kitchen behind me being reflected image in the window in front of me.

Drat!

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Travel Theme: Red

It’s the first color when describing the hues of a rainbow and it’s the topic from the website Where’s My Backpack?. I speak, of course, of the color red (or the true chromatic geek, #FF0000)

My photographic selection comes from the Alaska portion of our summer vacation in the United States. One day of our cruise around the Inside Passage took us to Skagway. After a day of viewing sled dogs and panning for gold, we were walking back to the cruise ship when my wife spotted this curious item.

Room for six

To answer the question posed by the name of the blog hosting this weekly challenge, “There it is.”

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Near and Far

Near and Far is the theme this week from WordPress.

During our family’s summer vacation back in the States, as I have mentioned before (here and here are some examples), I spent a good deal of time at the collection of museums run by the Smithsonian Institution. These places of knowledge and discovery surround that grassy area of our Washington, D.C., known as the National Mall.

While there in this July, I took a rest on of the many park benches that dot the area and brought out my camera.

This is what I am offering for this week’s theme…

It’s all in the perspective

Enjoy.

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