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Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Arlington 911
I was working on some documents in my study last night when I heard the unmistakable sound of a car accident. Bang, long
skid, big BANG. I headed out to the back porch to see what I could see. The accident itself was on Warren Street and all of
the cars and people were obstructed by houses. Since my back porch looks out over back yards, I really couldn't see anything.
Emergency vehicles started to arrive. I could not believe my luck.
I had been thinking about a shot involving exactly this scenario. You see, when an emergency vehicle goes down Warren
Street with the lights on, it 'paints' the nearby houses with the color of that light. I have been wanting to experiment with
using that as a creative technique. But obviously, it's really hard to know when an emergency vehicle will go down a particular
street with the lights on. But now, since the accident was less than a street away, I was going to have police cars and fire
trucks parked up and down Warren Street - much more than I had originally been thinking about.
So there's the basic effect. I wish I had brought out my film camera - I still have a few shots left on a roll of Velvia,
but anyway, no matter. These things tend to happen pretty quickly. I also wish I could have gotten a little wider on this
shot because there was more action to the left of the frame.
But things get really interesting when you zoom in a bit.
Now to be fair, this house is already an orange/reddish color, but it had a fire engine in front of it. There
was a police car just down the street illuminating the next house blue and the house lights create a band of white, since
the colored lights can't get back there. Kind of a French flag, if you will.
There's another house next door that has a really interesting shrub/tree that leans over to create a gate.
I'd thought of taking the photo before, but now I had a really interesting backdrop for it.
So I'm shooting this thing, experimenting with exposures, and during the middle of one of them, the wrecker
shows up.
I love traffic trails, so I got a blast out of this one. This being Arlington, it's not any wrecker, it's
a Mal's wrecker. How do I know it's a Mal's wrecker? Well, let's just say these things are hard to miss.
By the way, I could actually hear the police and the voices of the folks involved. No one was seriously hurt.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
First Snow of 2008 Winter Season
Yes, that's right, it's snowing out this morning and it's the first official snowfall of the season. Actually, it snowed
yesterday too, but it was so light it didn't count. Not even trace, really.
And this won't amount to much today, except it makes everything seem a bit more pretty and romantic because the fall
leaves are still around. It's supposed to turn to rain and then warm up a bit. That will be nice for Thanksgiving, I guess,
although there is a bit of tradition around it being cold and raw at this time of year.
My back porch is a great vantage point for the snow because it affords some protection from the elements and an elevated
view of the surrounding area. There is a stunning set of trees down the block, for example, that I can just see from
one side of the back porch. Shot through the snow, it's an abstract jumble of snow, color and branches. I love shooting in
these conditions because you can create wonderful textures from the falling snow.
And if you put the camera in manual focus, back up the focal point a bit, you get amazing abstracts of snow and color:
Update: it turns out the picture I should have up here, that I missed, was my wife wiping the snow off the
car with a mop. Ah, first snow, gotta love it.
11:46 am est
Monday, November 19, 2007
Strange Cyrillic Sign?
Hey, sorry about that. I can't resist a good alliteration. OK, a mediocre one. What you will be looking at
below is a sign located on Route 16 at the intersection of Medford, Somerville and Arlington - a very high traffic area. Specifically,
the traffic circle where Mystic Valley Parkway veers off of Route 16 by Dilboy Field and the pump station. I was running errands
this morning when I noticed this sign:
Me being me, I stopped to take a closer look. Here's a closer look at the sign.
I have no idea what this means, but first, let's get to the bottom of the ' Э'. Microsoft
Character map seems to think Э is a Cyrillic letter, capital E, to be precise. Unfortunately, there are seven major languages including Russian that use the Cyrillic
alphabet and probably dozens of minor ones, so if it is a Cyrillic character, we can only narrow it to a
couple of sub-continents. There is also the notation POP. 1 in the lower right corner. My first reaction was that
this was actually a sign complimenting some kind of social activity, online or off. Perhaps a car rally checkpoint, or a land
claim for an online fantasy game.
The most obvious reason to have a sign here would be to direct people to either of the work sites
adjacent to the road on several sides. But this doesn't really look like that kind of message.
Once again, me being me, I decided to move around and see if there wasn't a better way to isolate
the sign. It's been my experience that when you decide you'll come back for the better shot, the thing isn't there anymore.
So I went across the street and managed to isolate the sign in the foliage. There are still some nice spots of color here,
although it's mostly, well, November. It was 28 (like, -2 C) when I got up this morning. Ouch.
So in the end, I really have no idea what it's for. Probably something pedestrian, but I'd like to think there
was a more interesting explanation. If anyone knows what it's all about, send me some feedback.
New England Baptist Church Sign - November 19, 2007
Such a positive, uplifting message this week. Unusual, but welcome.
It's too bad these things don't have spell checkers, eh?
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