bodhi tree swaying

This was the view from my rear porch a few weeks back on one misty morning.

To be honest, I could keep milking my Ethiopia photographs for several years’ worth of Wordless Wednesday posts. This one is of some kids who were fishing off a pier in Awassa, not far from from the motel (more like a hostel) where we were staying. Our driver was very wary about us going for unescorted walks, but we always felt completely safe in Ethiopia. The people there are very friendly and respectful and very few people beg, with the exception of the children. The kids, to their credit, usually start by asking for pens, which they need for school. Next time I go back to Ethiopia I’m going to buy a big box of pens locally so that I can hand them out. Many of the children know a little English — enough to ask for a pen, and maybe to explain that they are very poor and need …

I thought about posting a nice jolly sunflower or some lively kids playing in Ethiopia, but then I remembered it’s Halloween and I thought this rather gruesome image might be most appropriate.

My parents and I had just got back from a whale watch in the Gulf of Maine a couple of weeks back, and as our boat pulled into Rye Harbor a few people started pointing towards the dock. It was the shark, which was hanging from a crane by its tail, that was drawing their attention.

I’ve had my parents visiting for three weeks and because I was chauffeuring them around I didn’t have much time for blogging. But they left on Friday and I’m back!

This picture doesn’t need much introduction. It was a little out of focus when I took it so I used Picassa to sharpen the edges and I also bumped up the saturation for effect.

As usual, if you want to see a bigger version, click on the pic.

This is a picture of some kids I photographed in Ethiopia. This was taken in a small town south of Awassa, where another couple, Stacey and Eric, were meeting the surviving family of the two girls they were adopting. People in Ethiopia generally are very leery about getting their pictures taken. The children are an exception! Even kids who’ve never seen their picture before are natural posers!

Yeah, yeah. I know I’m early. But I was late last week so I’m making sure I’m on time.

Anyway…

Twilight. Rocking boat. Low light levels. Long lens. No tripod.

It can only add up to one thing. Impressionism!

Click on the image for a larger version.

Happy Wordless Wednesday! (If you’re wondering why there are words in this post it’s because the home page format doesn’t really favor purely pictorial posts).

This is a stained glass window from the same monastery that last week’s beetle and the week before’s priest hail from.

If you click on the image you can see a larger version.

This one’s a beetle I shot at the same church I mentioned in the last Wordless Wednesday post. He was a handsome fellow.

You can click on the image to see a full-size shot.

This was taken on a Konica-Minolta DiMage Z3, which had a fantastic zoom and macro capacity, and which I was sorry to lose when my car got flooded a few weeks after this picture was taken.

My blog seems mostly to be wordless these days! Once I clear a backlog of work that built up over the summer I plan to get back to ranting more regularly, but for now it’s nice to put something more visual out there. This pic is an Ethiopian Orthodox priest at Debre Libanos, a couple of hours north of Addis Ababa.

Click on the image to see the full-size version.

For this contribution to Wordless Wednesday I’ve chosen a picture of a humpback whale that I took a couple of years ago off the coast or Rye, New Hampshire. It was a rough day and the boat was being tossed around so much that it was hard to hold a camera straight. It also doesn’t help that the whales don’t give any warning of where they’re going to resurface, and so you have to wait for them to appear, point, focus, and shoot in double-quick time while your body is crashing against the hull of the boat.

The white pach you see under water is a lateral fin. What looks like blurring over the body is actually spray from the blowhole. I’d suggest viewing the large image to get a better impression.

Click on the image for a larger version.

This blog doesn’t lend itself well to wordless posts, so I’m having to write a short intro for the benefit of the (imageless) excerpt that appears on the home page. The picture is of a Canada goose and four goslings, taken May 26, 2007 at Pawtuckaway State Park in southern New Hampshire.

Click on the picture for the full-sized image (1.8MB).