Posts Tagged ‘reflections’

For the first Lens-Artists Challenge in February, Patti’s looking for shadows a/o reflections but in monochrome. Although we tend to think of monochrome as photos in black and white, strictly speaking:

A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color. Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale or black-and-white. ~Wikipedia

So let me start out with an example of monochrome that isn’t black and white/greyscale. It’s also an example of both shadows and reflections.

I love reflections so let’s start with those. Reflections can show a true picture of the thing being reflected or a distorted one, something to remember when reflecting on people and situations. Here I’m reflecting on the reflections experienced in Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Room in Chicago’s WNDR Museum, a museum filled with experiential exhibits. It was a mind-bending experience to be surrounded by so many reflections and I would have loved to have spent more than the minute or minute-and-a-half each person or group was allowed in the room.

I often enjoy reflecting over a cup of tea. Coffee with friends is a wonderful time but you don’t get reflections when the barista has created a work of beauty on top of my mocha. 🙂

A lake in Wyoming, one of my summer pleasures, provides both reflections and shadows, the latter from trees outside the photo.

Black-necked stilts continually supply wonderful reflections and they’re already in black and white. 🙂

This reflection in downtown Chicago illustrates one of my favorite things about skyscrapers. When we were in New York City some years ago, despite all the things there were to do and see, I was reminded once again that I prefer my canyon walls to be made of rock, not buildings!

You can’t leave Chicago without a look at the most interesting, iconic reflections in The Bean, as Chicagoans fondly call Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate. The Bean is endlessly engrossing. If you’re inclined to be helpful, you can, as I did, offer to take photos of people with The Bean behind them. I always enjoy doing that wherever I go.

Since it’s hard to top The Bean, both literally and figuratively, let’s switch to shadows, the first a winter view from my bedroom window in Illinois. The shadow in the middle/on the right is from part of the deck in the back of the house, the one on the left from our neighbor’s fence and trees.

from “Shadows” by Thomas Durfee

How much of earth’s beauty is due to its shadows!
The tree and the cliff and the far-floating cloudlet,
The uniform light intercepting and crossing,
Give manifold color and change to the landscape.
.

I’ve shared this photo before but in color, a special capture where the deer and rabbit lined up just perfectly. I have so many photos of this view but none that ever were quite this good.

“My Shadow” ~Robert Lewis Stephenson

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

Patti, thanks for letting us have fun playing with shadows and reflections. Enjoy the weekend, everyone.

This week I’m sharing random photos I’ve come across again while browsing through files. Just haven’ some fun. This photo was taken on a foggy day in Wyoming at one of the three lakes on the (shared) property. The perfect reflections fascinated me. I used the Holga-ish edit in Picasa and then lightened it just slightly, which I think gives it an other-worldly feeling that I really like.

Six-Word Saturday 4.9.22

A single bird making a landing in the reflecting pool at The Barnes Museum in Philadelphia (an odd number.)

An odd reflection of that same pool.

SquareOdds 2.25.22

I like sculpture but find this one a bit odd, looking to me as if some sci-fi digging machine dropped a claw into downtown Chi Town. There’s a mini version of this in Naperville where we lived. Hopefully this one didn’t snatch up the man in the photo after I left!

I do love reflections, especially odd ones like this with lovely distortions of the original stately building. Chicago reflections ala Gaudi perhaps?

for Becky’s wonderful Square Challenge which this month is SquareOdds

Six Word Saturday 11.27.21 and Life in Colour: black/grey

Some of my favorite things about downtown and high-rise buildings are the reflections you can catch in them. Mostly I prefer my canyon walls to be made of rock, but they don’t reflect nearly as well. 🙂

Life in Colour: black/grey

Monochrome and black and white are often confused, but although black and white is monochrome (one color), monochrome might be a photo with a range of color that’s not black. Grayscale is a monotone image made of only shades of grey/gray. Hence all grayscale images are monotone but not all monotone images are grayscale…or black and white. This is just like whisky, where all Scotch is whisky but not all whisky is Scotch…at least until you’ve had plenty of one or the other. 🙂 Happy Friday!

Life in Colour: black/grey

We don’t get lots of falling leaves in autumn colors here but we do have some lovely orange flowers, even when upside down. 🙂 This beauty is formally known as Caesalpinia pulcherrima , a member of the pea family, and more familiarly as Pride of Barbados, Barbados Flowerfence, Peacock Flower, Mexican Bird of Paradise, Dwarf Flamboyan, Caesalpinia, and Dwarf Poinciana.

“Orange strengthens your emotional body, encouraging a general feeling of joy, well-being, and cheerfulness. Orange vibration foods are: oranges, tangerines, apricots, mangoes, peaches and carrots.”
~Tae Yun Kim, The First Element: Secrets to Maximizing Your Energy

Orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow. ~Wassily Kandinsky

Life in Colour: orange

I like to walk down to this lake, walk around it, and reflect on this, that, and the other thing but the lake does its own reflecting as well. Pick up sticks, anyone?

It also provides a nice bit of bokeh.

Up close and personal with a butterfly? Alien? Somethings look different when you get this close, don’t they?