By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is Down. “We spend a lot of time looking ahead, looking from left to right before we cross the street, looking into the sky for Superman, but not a lot of time looking down. What do you see?”
As it happens, Johna recently posted some thoughts on that theme, and I added a few photos that could serve again here…
But what first popped into my head just now was quite a different sense of “Down”.
So here is “Down” in both senses!
Posted in Nature, Photography
Tagged Birds, Canada Geese, Down, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is Regret.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth…
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Posted in Literature, Photography
Tagged Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Regret, Robert Frost, Weekly Photo Challenge, Woods
By Vladimir Brezina
Every week, I see many WordPress photographers take part in The Daily Post‘s Weekly Photo Challenge. The challenge is to present an image that captures the given word, idea, concept…
I feel a bit ambivalent about a challenge framed in this way. It certainly develops one’s skills as a photographer—certainly the skills that a professional photographer needs when handed an assignment. On the other hand, it’s almost the opposite of Johna’s project of developing the faculty of pure seeing, seeing whatever is at hand…
Having said that, this week’s Photo Challenge is Ready.
And I do have the perfect “Ready” shot! It involves, of course, a kayak.
This was the launch of a perfect trip…
Update February 8, 2012: It’s very interesting to see how other photographers have interpreted “Ready”. My interpretation is perhaps not all that different from this one :-) But it is quite different from this one…
Posted in Kayaking, Photography
Tagged Kayaking, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Ready, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Johna Till Johnson
(Addendum and photos by Vladimir Brezina)
I’ve never had much of an “eye”, in the sense of being able to relate to things visually—or even notice them in the first place.
The opposite, in fact. I’m one of those people who can walk by a large object—say, a 60-story building—every day for a month before exclaiming, “Has that always been there? I’ve never seen it before!” And I’m perfectly sincere: I really haven’t noticed it. I think in terms of narratives, not pictures—and I often fail to see what’s literally right in front of my nose.
Posted in Life, Nature, New York City, Photography
Tagged Central Park, New York City, Photography, Seeing, Visual Sense
By Vladimir Brezina
The popular paddling site Paddling.net runs a Photo of the Week contest. Over the past several months, I’ve submitted a few of my photos. Two won—
Kayaking under the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, East River, New York City
Festive paddle in New York Harbor
(see here and here on the Paddling.net site)
and one was runner-up—
Kayak swim support, Lower Bay, New York Harbor
Looking through these and other photos that won, it seems that what’s required is not so much a technically great photo, but rather a photo of a compelling paddling scene—as it should be! All three of my successful photos show paddling situations that, to most Paddling.net readers, will be a bit out of the ordinary. As it happens, they are all urban photos, taken in New York Harbor. But if ever a seal hauls up on my kayak deck, or an eagle perches on the bow, I’ll be sure to submit that photo. And you should too!
Posted in Kayaking, New York City, Photography
Tagged Contest, Kayaking, New York City, Photography
... 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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