Rose's Rose

It's Friday, so that means the theme is nature, in whatever form that happens to take. In this case, that means a picture of my sister Rose's rose, a birthday gift from her boyfriend. I really haven't got a whole lot to say about this picture, except that it was difficult to get a decent closeup...




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Millenium

I took this picture in Chicago's Millenium Park, under the giant...I don't even know what it is, a giant silver jelly bean that curves fantastically. There were all these kids (and plenty of adults) running around and beneath it, mesmerized by the way it warped their reflections. I didn't use any effect on this picture at all - that's what it looked like.

The girl in the corner is my sister Rose.

--The Internet is a wonderful thing. So this giant quicksilver bean is actually called the Cloud Gate, and it was unveiled in 2004, a bit late for the millenium but still pretty cool. It was the winning result of a design competition, and the idea behind it is that it's a gateway between earth and sky.


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Almost Summer...in February

I took this picture two days ago, in my backyard early in the morning before I left for my first class of the day. Even in the morning it felt warm and light-aired, like the first edge of summer, and it was only the first day of February. That's supposed to still be winter, right? We've had really crazy, inconsistent weather this year (at least, the portion of it I spent in California), from a latelatelate Indian summer to a sudden onslaught of wintry cold, which apparently skipped fall altogether, and then all winter we've had one day that's cold and appropriately wintry, followed immediately by a balmy spring-esque day. It makes it really hard to figure out how to get dressed every morning!

So I took this picture of the clear summery morning sky, and the telephone pole in the back corner of my yard, to prove that it's capable of being warm and lovely when, inevitably, the weather changes its mind again and goes back to being, well, Februarian.

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Arizona Winter

This photo comes from a recent trip to New Mexico, back in early January, or rather, from the trip back home to California by way of Arizona. My mother was driving, I was trying to get pictures of the snow in the Arizona desert through the car window on the way back. I love the way the desert looks at any time of the year, but it's especially pretty with snow.



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Pawn

Today's picture was taken during my father's impromptu chess marathon on Friday night, at my sister's 18th birthday party. One by one, each of her friends in turn challenged him...and one by one, all of them seem to have been routed. One boy did bring it to a stalemate, but my dad remains the undefeated chess champion of our house.

I took a few pictures while they were playing, but I think I like the perspective best in this one.





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The Winding Stair :: [full of firsts]

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This is a day full of firsts. It's the first of the month, it's the first day that my little sister is an adult, and it's the first post of this new blog, Photolumination, a daily photo blog... in progress.

I'm still toying with the idea of this, so we'll just have to see how this goes, but for now I like the idea of having some themed days -- say, Friday is pictures of/to do with nature, Saturday is portraits/people, and Sunday is photos inspired by a song lyric, poem, nursery rhyme, book passage, etc., that I feel like using. And firsts of the month may get a theme of their own. Today would have to be the theme of 'first'... And it's a Sunday to boot, so we get a 'first'-themed photo, and one inspired by the poem "The Winding Stair," by W.B. Yeats--

"My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
'Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul."

The 'first' theme comes because this picture was taken in my first week staying in Paris last spring, at the lovely Musee Cluny, the national museum of the middle ages, a couple of streets away from my apartment in the Latin Quarter.

See you tomorrow!