Sometimes, if you look very closely at the commonplace or mundane, you end up seeing the spectacular.
Seeing the Spectacular
Bindweed Blooms
Beautiful Transformers
If you live in a neighborhood without overhead power lines, you likely live in a neighborhood with big, ugly, green transformers popping up out of cement pads. It’s not uncommon to have one every three or four houses.
Now, I understand the necessity for electrical transformers. I love electricity but even I know that 13000 volts is more than my toaster needs. But why do these utilities have to be so, utilitarian? Why do they all have to be the same olive drab green?
A nice alternative color scheme to mimic the neighborhood feel would go a long way toward removing these things as eyesores. I don’t blame the electric companies for not doing this. Sticking with one color is cheaper and easier to maintain. But I’d love to see them allowing customers to spruce them up.
So here’s an idea. Why not manufacture removable skins that can be stretched right over the top of one. Imagine the decorative possibilities. And it could be a great business. There are probably hundreds of thousands of these things in the U.S. alone and more are being put in all the time.
Overhead lines are coming down and being replaced with underground lines in many cities. In some ways, we are replacing ugly poles that everyone’s used to with ugly boxes right in people’s yards. It’s a ripe situation for a cosmetic solution.
Of course this will never happen. Anywhere there’s a warning sticker (like on every transformer ever installed), there’s absolutely zero chance of having any fun. That’s just the world we live in today. But I might start coming up with some designs anyway.
Through a Fence
I always see interesting things when I go on my morning walks. This time it was a vine growing through fence slats. The vine had produced this beautiful purple flower and the fence was a stark background for it. The scene offered brief enjoyment but I decided to stop and capture an image of it for both of our future enjoyment.
Blue Flower
Not sure what this flower is. Whatever, it’s blue. At least I got that part right.
Garden Flowers
Photo Challenge Day 25 – Avocado
It was late in the evening when I remembered that I hadn’t taken my photo of the day. So I grabbed my camera and went out back to photograph the local wildlife (my cockapoo who had rolled in the dirt and was causing dust clouds every time she sneezed).
As soon as I tried to take the first picture I realized I hadn’t charged the battery and it wouldn’t even take one picture. By this time I really wasn’t feeling like thinking and trying to take an interesting picture anyway. So I got my old phone and used that camera to take a picture of the first thing I could see, which was an avocado. I took the picture, turned it balck and white and called it a day.
While I’m enjoying my 30 days of photographs challenge, I’m also definitely ready for it to end. I want to keep taking pictures on a daily basis but I want the option to skip a day when I’m just not feeling it. On the other hand, pushing through your desire to quit something or avoid an unpleasant situation is how you make great things happen. I wouldn’t have taken some of the fun pictures I have over the last month if I hadn’t forced myself to think and come up with interesting subjects and compositions. Rather than look for a way out, maybe I should be looking for a way to continue this daily routine and see how far it takes me.
In the meantime, here’s an avocado.
30 Days of Photos – Day 25
Photo Challenge Day 10 – Fairy Light Bottle
I thought I would take a crack at long exposure photography for day ten of my photo-a-day challenge. This bottle of Avocado oil takes on a magical look with wisps of light trails surrounding it. The light source for the entire image was a single mini light from the dollar store.
30 Days of Photos – Day 10
Oh, Today’s a Holiday?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how holidays in the US have shifted so radically to be meaningless. What were once celebrations of people and events of meaning and consequence have turned into excuses to eat and drink to excess.
Today is Saint Patrick’s Day. Saint Patrick’s Day has historically been a celebration of the life and work of Patrick, a 5th century Christian missionary and Bishop in Ireland. But if you asked most people today who St. Patrick is, they’ll probably tell you he was an Irish Brew Master or something. For most, this holiday is merely an excuse to drink green beer and eat corned beef. Grocery clerks wear stupid, tiny, glittery top hats and threaten to pinch anyone not wearing green. I’m considering making a line of t-shirts. The first one will be some color other than green. It will say “A punch for a pinch” or something to that effect.
Look at any of our major holidays and you’ll see the same pattern. On Easter we now celebrate rabbits that poop chocolate eggs. How do we celebrate this? By making our kids search for plastic copies of the chocolate scat while the adults eat ham and scalloped potatoes and drink too much wine. Thankfully, most people don’t color their wine green.
Thanksgiving’s become nothing more than a frenzied marathon for cooking a glut of carbohydrates and hormone injected turkeys. Then we eat way more than we know we should but still wash it all down with any beer containing the word fall, wheat or ale in the name.
Christmas now consists of cookies smeared with food coloring, lots of candy and presents that nobody needs or wants after January first. Oh, an you should start drinking hard liquor because, you know, it’s cold outside.
I know I sound bitter. I’m really not. I love the holidays. I just wish we would (as a society) pay a little more attention to the real meaning behind them. That, and stop pinching people.