Cookie splash! is a series of photos taken by Siebe Warmoeskerken, Owner of De Vetpan studios and fellow flickrite. Each photo in the series features beautiful bokeh and huge, amazing, perfectly in-focus coffee splashes, with cookies, of course! Warmoeskerken created the splashes using chocolate easter eggs, but says that any tiny, heavy object will do. I love the beauty of the splashes and the fantastically colored backgrounds.
For the try-it-at-home types like myself, Warmoeskerken provides a quick step-by-step tutorial and also a “making of” video on Vimeo. If you try this out, let me know. I’d love to hear how it goes!
As not just a year but an entire decade comes to an end, there’s a certain feeling that one should look back on the last ten years and reflect on the highs, the lows and the changes. And while I have a lot of great memories with friends and family and I’ve grown immensely as a person in that time, I don’t want to spend time looking back. I’m looking forward to the next ten years, to finally getting back to the east coast and seeing all my friends out there (love you guys!), to exploring my new home state and region of the country and to making new friends and sharing new experiences with all my friends and family, old and new.
Cheers to all, wishing you health, happiness and inner peace in the new year and the new decade. May the best of your past be the worst of your future.
On November 30 the movers came and packed and loaded all our belongings, and that evening we got on a plane and flew to Seattle, Washington. In the last 3 weeks we found a new apartment in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle, moved in and started unpacking. We’ve barely had time to breathe let alone decorate for Christmas, but fortunately one of the radio towers in Queen Anne is decorated like a Christmas tree, so each night we fall asleep to the lights of a very tall and rather skinny tree sparkling in the sky outside our bedroom window.
This year the cards and presents that we’re sending are late, and all our decorations are in boxes waiting to be unpacked. We don’t even have a wreath on door. But we’re happy and healthy, and our family and friends are doing well, so I really can’t ask for much more.
In the immortal words of Dr. Seuss:
And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling:
How could it be so?
It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
It came without packages boxes, or bags!
And he puzzled and puzzled, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.
Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more.”
If you’re one of the few people that actually read my site on a regular basis (Hi Mom!) you might have noticed that I’ve been a bit absent lately. We’ll it’s been for a very good reason – I’m moving to Seattle! My husband, Jim, has taken a fantastic new job and we’re moving at the end of the month.
So starting on December 1st I’ll be blogging to you from the emerald city. I’ve only been once, last weekend, so I’ll have a lot of exploring to do. I’m looking forward to sharing this new adventure with all of you! In the meantime, feel free to peruse the handful of photos I took over the weekend in my future hometown.
Yesterday is ashes, tomorrow is wood.
Only today does the fire burn brightly.
-Old Inuit Proverb
My copy of Widdershins arrived today. Widdershins, by Charles de Lint, is the sequel to The Onion Girl, which I read recently and loved. This quote was on the inside, next to the table of contents, and when I read it I felt my eyes fill with tears. I’m not quite sure why. I think there’s just something about living in the moment, remembering that today is the only reality that we have, that makes me feel nostalgic. It seems like that’s the opposite of the reaction I should have, I should want to seize the day, but instead I get a sense of how precious this very moment is, and a strange sadness that we never truly get to experience anything twice.
Yesterday morning it snowed, the first snowfall of the year. The temperatures plunged below zero, and in one night some trees dropped all their leaves in a panicked attempt to keep up with the temperature change. It was amazing to see the blankets of green leaves covering the grass and snow and gathering in the street. My planned trip to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum took on a new twist, as I had to gear up for winter hiking, but I got some nice shots of fall of color with a bit of snow on it.
It was my first trip to the arboretum, so I didn’t really know what to expect. It was a lot of fun tromping though the trails, making first tracks on the first snow of the season, photographing flowers and trees with little snow caps and catching droplets of snowmelt in the sunlight. We saw little waterfalls, quick-moving streams and even quicker-moving wild turkeys (maybe the snow made them think it was November). We got a little lost, but it was nice to just explore without having to worry about direction. We went where the interesting photos were and it worked out just fine.
It seems wild to me that only a few weeks ago I was eating at Lucia’s outside patio in a tank and shorts. Yesterday’s snow had melted by lunchtime, but we got some light flurries today, and tomorrow we’re expected to get up to a few inches of accumulation, so it looks like winter is here. For me, I’ve got a log burning in the fireplace and a whole chicken roasting in the oven. Winter, bring it on.
This short, created by Olympus, tells the story of the Olympus PEN camera, which lives on in the new micro four-thirds digital camera, the Olympus EP-1. As you probably know, I’m a Canon girl, but I’m finding very hard to resist the pull of this cute little camera.
The video above was created entirely with stop motion, no video camera involved, just stills! As per the creators, they took all the photographs, developed them, and then arranged them frame by frame for the video, which is compiled of 1800 individual stills (outside of the stills IN the video!). To me, part of the beauty of stop-motion is the simplicity, but what really impresses me is the patience and time that goes into each individual frame. In a time where most everything we see is about time-saving and flash, I like the idea that a company is willing to take the time to sell a still camera with just that, the stills.
This phenomenal video was shot entirely with a brand new Canon 7D by filmmaker Dan Chung, just hours after he purchased the camera at a local retailer in Beijing. Chung used some top notch L lenses and a professional video setup to make the film, but because of the low light most of the video was shot in the ISO range of 1600 – 6400! I have to say I’m very impressed.
To read more about Chung’s experience making the video and working with the 7D, and to learn about the equipment he used check out his website, DSLR News Shooter. You can also view the video in HD and read Chung’s write-up on Vimeo.
The first year I lived in Minnesota, I heard a lot of talk about the state fair. It seemed like the Minnesotan event of the summer, the one thing that everyone seemed to go to. I was intrigued. I’d never been to a state fair before. Oh, sure, Michigan has one, and New York has one too. New Jersey even has a state fair (although I didn’t know until I looked it up just now)! And yet I’d never been to any of them.
Growing up, I thought only people who raised livestock went to the fair. I was slightly disturbed by the whole idea, having grown up reading and watching Charlotte’s Web. I didn’t want to see cute little(!) pigs and cows that would be eaten when they got home. My parents weren’t interested in going to the fair either, but for different reasons. It seems the Michigan State Fair is held in a somewhat sketchy part of town. Neither of my parents grew up going to fair; it just wasn’t the thing to do there. So I was pretty surprised to find out that it IS the thing to do here in Minnesota. So that first year, Jim and I hopped in the car and drove out to the fair to see what it was all about.
On that first visit we didn’t really check a map and headed north to see what there was to see. It seems the northern part of the state fair is where the farm equipment is displayed. I’d never seen so many tractors in my life, and was in awe of the size and variety of tractors and tillers available. Being a city girl, I didn’t even know what a lot of the stuff was used for! It was a real eye-opener for me, knowing that I truly was in the heart of farm country. We also got to see some of of the logging equipment in use, classic cars and tractors and the dog show. It wasn’t until we started to get hungry that we ventured over to the south end of the fair.
Continue reading Discovering the Minnesota State Fair »
January 29, 2010, at 4:20 pm
