Fort De Soto, FL
Bird of the Day: Wilson’s Plover
Fort De Soto, FL
Nature Photography
Bird of the Day: Grey Indian Jungle Fowl (Thekkady, India)
Marketable Faces: Part One (Men in Blue)
Throughout Kerala, colorful trucks unload tons of produce and commodities every morning. Wholesalers, warehouses, and markets all maintain a steady flow of goods – and the cycle begins anew each morning. I occasionally venture into central Cochin’s main market (Broadway) to photograph the process, and the colorful people that are washed about by the endless tide of fruits and vegetables, fish and fowl.
Bird of the Day: Red-tailed Hawk
Great Swamp, NJ
Bird of the Day: Hill Myna (Thekkady, India)
Bird of the Day: Red-crowned Parrot
Weslaco, TX
Bird of the Day: Burrowing Owl
Salton Sea, CA
Crepuscular Forest
Elusive, elemental, and extremely beautiful – this natural phenomenon is breathtaking and actually quite simple to explain. Commonly known as light beams, crepuscular rays are caused by an effect similar to Rayleigh scattering, and are rare to see in a natural environment save near the twilight peripheries – hence the name. Steam, smoke, and dust during the rest of the day makes these beams visible to us from all angles, but short of these mediums, angle and hour are the most significant factors for seeing them.
Holier Than Holi?
After noting several reasons, big and small, that we trust The Guardian, I kept looking at those photos. When I showed Milo, as usual he already knew much more about the topic of Holi than I (not a major feat in this case because until seeing those photos in The Guardian I knew precisely zero about Holi), so today when those photos caught my eye again it occurred to me that The Guardian might just have some more. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Red-headed Woodpecker
Point Pelee, Ontario
Bird of the Day: Indian Roller
Parambikulum Tiger Reserve, Kerala
Bird of the Day: Swallow-tailed Gull (Galapagos Islands, Ecuador)
Photographic Parlor Games
Perhaps to close a recent string of links to interesting items on photography, which began here, continued here and here, and then extended just a bit here, there is an item in the Photo Booth feature on The New Yorker‘s website that:
asked Lyle Rexer which five photography books he would want to be stranded on a desert island with. Lyle is a photo critic, curator, teacher, and author of numerous books about photography, so I had a feeling he would take the challenge seriously. My suspicions were confirmed when, after three hours in our library, he was still deliberating. Knowing Lyle’s selections and his reasons for making them, I would gladly trade one of my five desert island photo books for a volume of Lyle’s photo criticism.
Click the image to above to go to the International Center of Photography’s website; they carry one of the choices mentioned in Rexer’s response. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Scarlet Minivet- Female (Gavi, India)
Photo: T.J. Varghese
Bird of the Day: Lilac-breasted Roller
Mpala Research Center, Kenya
A Photographer’s Photographer
Another interesting word or two on this exhibition (click the image to the left to go to the source) to add a different critical perspective:
Last Tuesday, The New Yorker commissioned Jessica Craig-Martin to photograph the opening of Cindy Sherman’s MOMA retrospective.
Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Long-eared Owl
Amherst Island, Ontario
Photographer: Artist Or Celebrity?
In two recent posts linking to stories about two very different photographers, there may have been an implied answer to the question raised in the first and repeated in different words in the second. Art critic Peter Schjeldahl– who has a good track record of mixing insider knowledge, smart observation and common sense — weighs in with his own answer:
Starting in 1982, Sherman countered a popular clamor to discover “the real Cindy,” as if she were the latest shtick-wielding show-biz celebrity.
A Dry Periyar
Kerala is dry. The places I’m used to seeing so green and vibrant that they practically drip are now dry, brown and crackly. What are normally torrential waterfalls are reduced to sunbaked rock faces. Clouds occasionally float through the sky, mostly in early morning, but they haven’t shed tears throughout the season. The native plants are geared to survive this climate, as the year seesaws between dryness and enormous moisture. In the forest, untold thousands of dead leaves cover the ground, crackling with glee as trekkers pass under the trees. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Bohemian Waxwing
Ottawa, Ontario
