By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is Hands.
It’s all about the hands! (Well, and a few other body parts…) Here’s Joe the Guide (guess which one he is) showing a bunch of newbies the proper forward stroke.
It’s amazing how expressive the hands are, and how much we are drawn to look to them for clues—especially after we’ve cut off the heads!
Posted in Kayaking, Photography
Tagged Hands, Kayaking, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
The Daily Post‘s Weekly Photo Challenge is usually posted on Fridays. It’s now mid-day Monday… Over the weekend, I, and many other people who have been trained to eagerly anticipate the challenge, were almost giving up. In fact, to fill the absence, on Saturday night Ailsa on her blog Where’s my backpack? proposed her own alternative challenge on the theme of “Reflections“, and has been getting a very lively response indeed. My two “Reflections” posts are here and here.
Still, better late than never! This week’s official Photo Challenge is finally here, and it is Blue.
… And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
Philip Larkin, High Windows
That’s it: Blue means opening up, spaces without limits, endless possibilities…
Actually, some of the photos from my “Reflections” posts, here and here, would also have fit the theme very well…
Posted in Literature, New York City, Photography
Tagged Blue, Manhattan, New York City, Photography, Poetry, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
OK, I can’t resist having another go at Ailsa‘s Alternative Photo Challenge on the theme of “Reflections“…
More photos from these places, along the Hudson River and in Long Island Sound, are here, here, and here.
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Some other nice “Reflections” posts:
Posted in Kayaking, Nature, Photography
Tagged Hudson River, Kayaking, Long Island Sound, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Reflections, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
WordPress has not yet posted a theme for this week’s Photo Challenge… So photo-bloggers addicted to a regular weekly Challenge have impatiently begun taking matters into their own hands. Over at her blog Where’s my backpack?, Ailsa has proposed a Photo Challenge of her own, which everyone is invited to join, with the theme of “Reflections“.
“Reflections” is a perfect theme for me. Kayaking, or just walking around after the rain as Ailsa did, inverted reflections in water are everywhere, often more intriguing and mysterious than the scenes reflected. I’ve already posted some of these water reflections here and here and here and here and here…
But “Reflections” also brings to mind our recent visit to the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan. The surfaces of the memorial, and the glass walls of the towers now rising all around, are full of reverberating reflections: of each other, of the clouds, of the visitors, of memories…
More photos are here.
And my second take on “Reflections” is here.
By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is Unfocused.
Returning home after a few drinks, it’s sometimes hard to get the eyes to focus.
Supposedly, it was in such a state that Li Po died trying to embrace the reflection of the moon in the water…
Posted in Nature, Photography
Tagged Moonlight, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Unfocused, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is Together.
And even though I’ve posted them already, not too long ago, I just have to use these—
The full series of photos is here.
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Other nice “Together” interpretations:
Posted in Nature, Photography
Tagged Birds, Pelicans, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Together, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is Sun. I’ve already posted one response, but here’s another one.
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
But you never see the same sun twice…
Two successive sunrises at Amelia Island, Florida. More photos are here.
Posted in Nature, Photography
Tagged Amelia Island, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Sun, Sunrise, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is Sun.
Suspended lion face
Spilling at the centre
Of an unfurnished sky
How still you stand,
And how unaided
Single stalkless flower
You pour unrecompensed.The eye sees you
Simplified by distance
Into an origin,
Your petalled head of flames
Continuously exploding.
Heat is the echo of your
Gold.Coined there among
Lonely horizontals
You exist openly.
Our needs hourly
Climb and return like angels.
Unclosing like a hand,
You give for ever.
Philip Larkin, Solar
(Cape Cod Bay, July 2011; more photos are here)
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My second interpretation of “Sun” is here.
Other nice “Sun” posts:
Posted in Literature, Nature, Photography
Tagged Cape Cod, Philip Larkin, Photography, Poetry, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Sun, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is Two Subjects. I’ve already posted one response to this challenge, but I can’t resist having another go.
A few days ago we had occasion to take the Circle Line boat ride around Manhattan. The boat was packed. I came ready with my camera. But I couldn’t decide whether to focus (figuratively as well as literally) on the magnificent sights of the city coming into view one after another, or on the activities of other passengers. They, too, were snapping photos of the sights but even more of each other…
You just know what is to the left of the frame in the next photo, don’t you?
That’s right—the money shot!
Posted in New York City, Photography
Tagged Boat Cruise, Circle Line, New York City, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Two Subjects, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is Two Subjects.
Irresistible force meets immovable object!
Two of my favorite subjects, the ocean and the city, come head to head: huge storm surf batters San Juan, Puerto Rico, in March 2008.
More photos as here.
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My second interpretation of “Two Subjects” is here.
Other nice “Two Subjects” posts:
Posted in Photography, Travel
Tagged Ocean, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Puerto Rico, Storm Surf, Two Subjects, Weekly Photo Challenge
... kayaked the waters around New York for more than 15 years in his red Feathercraft folding kayak. He was originally from (the former) Czechoslovakia and lived in the U.K. and California before settling down in New York. He was a neuroscientist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He died in 2016.
... is a kayaker and technology researcher at Nemertes Research. She's an erstwhile engineer, particle physicist, and science fiction writer. She was born in California and has lived in Italy, Norway, Hawaii, and a few other places. She currently resides in New York City.
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