Tag Archives ⇒ flickr

Note to self: know when to put the camera down!

January 1, 2008
· Martin Kelley

We went to fam­i­ly fav-place Long­wood Gar­dens last night for New Year’s eve. It was cold but the lights on all the trees were beau­ti­ful and the fire­works were loud and fun. Going around I kept think­ing about how many cam­eras were around. I took a few pho­tos of course, but I real­ized I’m start­ing to devel­op a reac­tion to Obses­sive Pho­tog­ra­phy Dis­or­der. How many fuzzy pic­tures of long-ago fire­works do peo­ple need to store on their hard drives? 

A few weeks ago I took an eye-opening pic­ture at a wed­ding. It was a quick pho­to of the bride and father walk­ing down the “aisle” (it was more a space between tables in a small ban­quet room). I must have had squirm­ing Fran­cis in one arm, the cam­era in the oth­er, because it’s all blur­ry. The light’s bad, there’s red eye, it’s total­ly not some­thing to send up to Flickr. But what’s haunt­ing about the pic­ture is the back­ground: behind the bride you can see four peo­ple. From left to right, they are: tak­ing a pic­ture, hold­ing cam­era at neck lev­el ready to take a pic­ture, lean­ing back from the cam­era screen set­ting up a shot, and look­ing down at a dis­play review­ing the just-taken pic­ture. This is a wed­ding and it’s the dra­mat­ic part: the bride’s just entered the room and is about to be giv­en away by her father (it’s a sec­ond wed­ding so I can’t take the sym­bol­ism too far, but still this should be a holy moment).

Many Friends Meet­ings ban cam­eras in wed­ding cer­e­monies and I should­n’t have relaxed my stan­dards to take my own pho­to­graph of the wedding-in-progress. There are times where our pres­ence is much more impor­tant than any doc­u­men­ta­tion. I dare say that none of the two-dozen or so walking-down-the-aisle pho­tos tak­en that day are worth devel­op­ing or print­ing. I use my picture-taking for mem­o­ry’s sake and love look­ing at old shots of the fam­i­ly, and a few of the pic­tures I took that day are def­i­nite keep­ers. But us com­pul­sive shut­ter bugs need to know when to put the cam­era down.

An Autumnal Halloween

October 29, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Butterfly Genus Theodorableus Butterfly Genus Francis Captured butterflies


The Bat­sto Vil­lage Hal­loween par­ty was­n’t quite so much fun this year: their web­site did­n’t men­tion that most activ­i­ties end­ed part-way through the after­noon so that the orga­niz­ers could sit in front of the old hous­es giv­ing out can­dy. We arrived on the late side so no face paint­ing or pony rides for the boys but­ter­flies. We still had fun in the first real­ly autumn day of the sea­son and Bat­sto was look­ing more bucol­ic than ever. More pic­tures (includ­ing some of the cool gear­ing in the old Bat­sto grist­mill) over on yes­ter­day’s Flickr page.

Right: rare video footage of a Genus Fran­cis­cus But­ter­fly in migration.

Railroad & farm weekend in Lancaster

October 17, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Our only full-group shot, outside Strasburg RR
This week­end we took off for a fam­i­ly trip to Lan­cast­er Coun­ty, Penn­syl­va­nia – Julie and me, the kids and my moth­er Liz. I won’t have time to do a long blog post, but high­lights were the Ver­dant View farm B&B (link) where we stayed; the Stras­burg Rail­road (link) whose line runs through the far­m’s back­yard, the Choo Barn mod­el rail­way (link); and the amaz­ing Cher­ry Crest Farm (link) with its corn maze and its sim­ple games for kids of all ages (who knew you could have so much fun with a hill and a piece of burlap?!).

See the See the pho­to set on Flickr for more pic­tures and sto­ries. Every shot is mapped, with links.

Large pho­to: Fam­i­ly at Stras­burg RR: Mar­tin, Liz, Theo, Julie, Fran­cis. Below: Julie and the kids walk­ing through fields at farm, Fran­cis play­ing kung-fu with the farm dog, Theo run­ning in ter­ror from said dog, Engine 90 ready to pull out.
Verdant View's verdant views
Verdant View Farm dogs
Verdant View Farm dogs
Locomotion

The ascent of Apple Pie Hill

September 30, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Yes­ter­day the kids and I took a road trip to Apple Pie Hill, a sum­mit of loose grav­el that tow­ers over the South Jer­sey pinelands from a dizzy­ing height of 209 feet above sea lev­el. A fire watch tow­er on the sum­mit adds anoth­er few dozen feet, enough to get a vis­i­tor over the tree­tops. On a clear day it’s said you can see the sky­lines of Atlantic City and Philadel­phia. For­tu­nate­ly for me it was an quin­tes­sen­tial­ly beau­ti­ful­ly fall day – clear and crisp. It was easy to spot the cities, both thirty-two miles away (most­ly to the south and most­ly to the west respec­tive­ly) and here’s blowups of the two resul­tant photos:
Trip to Pine Barren's famous Apple Pie Hill
Sand road to Apple Pie Hill Trip to Pine Barren's famous Apple Pie Hill Trip to Pine Barren's famous Apple Pie Hill Trip to Pine Barren's famous Apple Pie Hill
More pic­tures, from left: Sand road to the hill, the fire tow­er, the view down through the steps of the tow­er (the kids were left in the car), two year old Fran­cis eager but thwart­ed attempt to repeat Papa’s climb up tow­er. Click indi­vid­ual pho­tos for enlarged and geo­t­agged ver­sions. More pho­tos of this and out stopover at Atsion lat­er in the day on yes­ter­day’s Flickr page.

For those inter­est­ed in repeat­ing our jour­ney, here’s a map show­ing our route up and back. I was most­ly wing­ing it, depend­ing on these direc­tions from NJPines​land​sand​Down​Jer​sey​.com start­ing from near­by Chatsworth NJ, self-styled “Cap­i­tal of the Pine Barrens.” 



Oth­er map views: View Larg­er Map | Satel­lite with Route Map

Stepping up to the challenge

January 20, 2007
· Martin Kelley

==

www.flickr.com


==
C Wess Daniels has chal­lenged us all to become Clean Slate Posers and how can I pass it up?! Man, those Evan­gel­i­cals have all the fun…

Vacation from reality

December 5, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Okay, yes it’s insane to go on a vaca­tion when one is unem­ployed. But logis­ti­cal­ly, it’s the best time to go: no jug­gling work sched­ules, no fin­ish­ing up projects before you go, no tak­ing cell phone calls from har­ried col­leagues. Julie had saved up the mon­ey and start­ed plan­ning a get­away this sum­mer and reser­va­tions were all in place when I sud­den­ly found myself out of a job. We could have can­celed but Octo­ber brought us more than our share of dis­ap­point­ments and we decid­ed to go for it. Three guess­es where we are:
Walking right down the middle of Main Street USA Walking right down the middle of Main Street USA Walking right down the middle of Main Street USA Disney family
h3. More photos:

www.flickr.com


See “all the WDW photos”:http://flickr.com/photos/martin_kelley/tags/wdw2006/

Sharing our Quaker event photos

June 1, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Over on the pho­to shar­ing ser­vice Flickr, I’m notic­ing a bunch of pho­tos from this week’s Britain Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sion. One con­trib­u­tor has tagged (labelled) all her pho­tos with “britainyearlymeeting06” which means they’re all avail­able on one page. Cool, but what would be even cool­er is if every Flickr user at the event used the same tag. We’d then have a near­ly real-time group pho­to essay of the year­ly meet­ing sessions.

So this year I’m going to tag all my per­son­al pho­tos from next mon­th’s Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence Gath­er­ing of Friends as “FGCgathering06″. I invite any oth­er Flickr-using atten­ders to do the same. While I do work at FGC, please note this is not any sort of offi­cial FGC deci­sion, it’s just my own idea to share pho­tos and to see how we can use these online net­works to share and pro­mote Quak­erism. In a few weeks you’ll start see­ing entries via flickr and tech­no­rati. I’ll prob­a­bly start with a few pic­tures of the book­store truck being loaded for its cross-country trek. Update: one embed­ded below.
Blog posts:
If your blog­ging sys­tem does­n’t sup­port the use of tags, then sim­ply add this line in the bot­tom of each of your Gathering-related posts:

Update: here’s one: