When was the last time you went driving? No real destination or purpose — just taking in the scenery and using your intuition as guide.
6/365: Big Sky
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Tag Archives: photography
5/365: Low Profile
Sometimes it’s okay to go incognito, lay low, turn down the blinking neon glow.
4/365: Still Blue
One of those ‘whoa’ moments.
Kevin said the eerie blue brilliance just before a big storm reminds him of the saying, “The darkest hour is just before the dawn.” Because it’s the opposite, the otherworldly beauty that sometimes fills the calm before the storm contrasted with the deepest dark that inks its way toward the soon-to-break dawn.
I took this picture with my DroidX through the windshield of our van as Kevin was driving up Highway 29 and, believe it or not, it hasn’t been altered a bit. 🙂
Amber Is Forever
It was Wednesday night, July 21st of last year, during our annual NYC pilgrimage.
We’d just left Zinc Bar on West 3rd, where we got to know (part-time) bartender and photographer Jacob Murphy while the Alex Stein/Matt Brown Quintet played.
As we headed back westward and along West 4th toward the Christopher Street station, we came across the smallest shop in the Village at 184-3/4 West 4th: The Silversmith. We had to take a look.
Owner Ruth Kuzub didn’t warm up to us immediately, but she suffered us to ooh and aah at her jewelry, and by the next afternoon when we returned with cash to purchase the two rings we’d fallen in love with, this amber and Kevin’s turquoise Mr. Blue, she was definitely opening up to us a bit.
She told us that she’d been in the original Broadway cast of Fanny in 1954 (with Florence Henderson in the lead role), which was why she’d come to New York in the first place. She told us about working for The Silversmith since 1960 and eventually buying the store later that decade. She told us about living in the Village through the decades, the changes she’d witnessed.
And she told us about this amber ring.
Amber is petrified tree sap; this particular piece is from Poland. The dual tones of the stone, darker and lighter, are extremely unusual, and the whitish pieces inside the stone are seeds that were trapped in the sap as it hardened millions of years ago.
Millions. Whoa!
We left Ruth’s shop that day, the 22nd, and went over to Washington Square to hang out and play some music for an hour or so before heading uptown to Radio City to see Widespread Panic.
As usual in the City, it was a day to remember.
I took this picture with the Retro Camera for Android app by Urbian.
Mary, Mother of God
Mary at Sacred Heart's entrance
Today marks the first picture in my picture-a-day project, and there’s no better day to start it because today is not only the first day of the new year — 1/1/11 — but it’s also the Solemnity (or feast day) of Mary, Mother of God.
If you’re not Catholic, this may sound weird to you. It did to me not too long ago. As a matter of fact, calling Mary the “Mother of God” was one of the big things that hung me up about becoming Catholic. (We started the RCIA program to convert in August 2009 and were confirmed in June 2010.)
The only time I remember my Protestant churches spending much time on Mary at all was around Christmas, and that was mostly relegated to the kids’ nativity skit. I never even wondered why.
I really had to analyze what it means that Mary is the Mother of God. As a Christian already, I believed that Mary is Jesus’ mother and that Jesus is not only the Son of God but IS God, as well. So the fact that she’s Mother of God is simply a logical deduction.
In this new year, I hope to be able to weed out any more subconsciously ingrained beliefs I may have and be inspired to understand more about my faith through this project.
Filtered Lucas
I took this one at our church picnic two weeks ago. He was peeking at me through the grated floor of the playground set thingy. 😉
