A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

This is an image that was four years and 30,790 miles in the making.

In Scotland, the placement of the country in the northern hemisphere is high enough so that there is a drastic difference between the summer and the winter in length of the day. In the winter (now) the sun rises at roughly 8:45 and sets at 3:30, giving us about six hours of light. In the summer, however, the sun sets at roughly 11, and though it technically rises again at around 5 am, it never fully sets. The light can still be seen seeping over the horizon, shrunk to a corner of the sky.

My graduation from college was a strange affair. From the Harry Potter robes, to being slapped on the head with a cloth and having a silk hood flung around my shoulders, it was unlike anything I experienced. Every element represented a tradition that was time-honored and long beloved, every color had a meaning and every thing was wholly unlike any graduation I had ever been to.
My family took me out to dinner in a restaurant over the water in a nearby town, and a huge rainbow cut across the unfailingly bright sky.

Later, after the Graduation Ball, I gathered with my friends in the wee hours of the morning to go down to Castle Sands, the tiny beach fellow St. Andrean Alex Chase spoke about last week. Someone had built a fire and there were loads of graduates milling about, staring off over the ethereally calm waters, dappled with the light of the subdued sun even at two, three in the morning.

This picture is the nearest I came to capturing it, that strange sky, the strange moment of being on the brink of a new phase in your life without fully wanting to leave the first one behind you yet. Like the half-faded light, I wanted that night to last forever, stretching on and on against all reason, all rationality. I wanted to not have to move on to the bright light of morning and the dawning of an entirely new life, a life that wasn't in Scotland, that didn't find me a student, that forced me to grow up, and conversely, go home.

This picture will always hold that sense of breathless, unrealistic hope for me. Just looking at it and remembering, knowing that it barely touches on the reality of my memory, that the true beauty of that moment didn't fully come through to the camera but will always stay inside my heart makes this a photo worth far more than a thousand words.

Best of the Weekend and Thanksgiving!

Well it has been a crazy weekend here in Scotland. Thursday I cooked a massive dinner (with a few friends) to feed 16+, with a 33lb turkey. Yes, you read that right. We had a lovely night, and then over the weekend was St Andrews Day, Scotland's national holiday. Since I live in St Andrews, it's a fairly big to-do. All the historic sites of Scotland are free on that day (Nov 30th) and so my friends and I went into the ruined castle and took pictures at sunset. Then we walked back into the town to see none other than Sean Connery switching on the Christmas lights at the festival.

Here are some of my favorite photos from MY weekend walk:








And here are some of my favorites from yours!


my friend's garden, by stanpacz

I love this shot primarily because it is so much fun to remember as the cold winter sets in that A) it is summer somewhere, and B) it will be warm again soon, and the flowers will bloom, and the triumph of spring will resound. And plus, the colors are just gorgeous.



Bear and Firewood box next to fireplace, by Police370

How much more Christmasy can you get? My little brother had a bear like that when we were kids. The Christmas decorations against raw wood against polished wood against stone and iron is just so elemental and yet so very festive. Plus, take a look through the rest of the album; it makes me want to go rent a cabin with the fam for Christmas!





Beach 1, by thewise000

First off, I think this is really interesting because it uses collage to bring together a lot of different photos, something that I think more people should utilize for the sheer artsiness of it. This is a great example because colorwise, there is incredible balance and flow between the shots, rotating clockwise from the awesome snap of people throwing a ball into the ocean. I like how the lower left hand corner's pictures look like they could be connected, and the mirroring of the red sun and the yellow sun in the lower right hand corner. Great collage!




P11900721 by atipapa

First of all, I think this is a great shot of a two dimensional piece of art; it can be very hard to get a good photographic rendering because you cannot use flash in a museum. Second of all, what a stunning piece of art! I know art is subjective, but I totally love this piece. Third, I really like the idea of sharing art on a weekend walk, it's kind of like a two-fer!!



Santa Claus Festival Mahone Bay 042 by concreteartist

The best part about this picture is its very existence on the weekend walk, because that means it's almost the holidays! If you're a repeat reader you'll know that I'm a big fan of local festivals and community interaction, and using photography to both appreciate and document that, so this definitely falls into that category of love. In addition to which, this roll features some cute Santas, my favorite of which is the picture above. Great photo!



6332-FW-12a by Anonneymouse1

And, keeping with the spirit of the holidays, this is a picture Anonneymouse1 took at a lighting ceremony that also included fireworks! (How jealous am I? Well, at least I got Sean Connery...) Fireworks are incredibly difficult to shoot, and whether this was blind luck or tremendous skill, this is a wonderful shot.

Hope you all enjoyed your weekend walks!

Happy Almost Thanksgiving!

I genuinely love this time of year. First off, I'm an avid cook, and though it doesn't always work out to my advantage or that of my innocent victims, I love to experiment and play around. There is one time of year, though - Thanksgiving - that I pride myself on resurrecting recipes I know from heart (or occasionally the back of the can...Campbell's Green Bean Casserole is just too good...). I love inviting as many people as possible and adopting a "more the merrier" mentality, even if it means eating a significant chunk out of my wallet.

And though I'm more about how the dish tastes than how it looks, I do have an eye for presentation, and there is nothing more exciting than when I see all my favorite faces around the table, laden with perfectly presented food and still-empty plates, blank with anticipation of delicious flavor.

But how do I preserve that moment forever? It's a great option for a holiday card or a photo gift, but first I need to snap the perfect picture.

Well, first you need to decide on the scene. If you're taking a picture of the feast itself, several cameras (like my Olympus FE 340) have a "Cuisine" mode, which will automatically tweak the settings to up the color saturation and use a level of macro mode. If you don't have one of these settings on your camera, try these options for food pictures:

1. Set your lighting. Choose either direct light or shade; shade will necessitate you using the flash, while direct lighting will allow you a little more control over the lighting scheme and where the highlights of exposure hit. Usually the best option for a quick snap is turn on the over head lights; for the food, candle light is not ideal.

2. Try different modes. Macro mode is very effective for food photography because it will show a lot of detail, texture, and color for the closest parts, and then show depth for the rest of it.

This is an example I just took of the brownies I've been baking for tomorrow. You get texture and color on the first one, and then the rest of them are behind and slightly out of focus. I did this using macro mode, rather than the "Cuisine" setting. The only difference was the cuisine setting yielded a slightly lighter brown, and I preferred the darker color.

3. Consider contrasting colors or mixing up the background so that you really get a stunning effect in the foreground. Check out Digital Food Photos tips for some of the insider tricks, like how to get those little droplets on vegetables (spritz glycerin and water) and how to make food shiny (brush with oil).

4. Check out more information on food photography, like The Ten Tastiest Food Photography Tips.

Now, if you're less interested in the food and more interested in those smiling, drooling faces above the food, here are a few tips for getting the perfect snap:

1. Have everyone sit close together. This sounds silly, but squeezing people around the table will not only enable you to get the most detail as possible (you can get in closer if they're less spread out) but it also gives off the air of warmth and familial togetherness. Tres Thanksgiving!

2. Advise people to put their chins down. Again, it sounds silly, but you would be shocked how many family and friends will veto a picture based on a fleshy neck or an unappealing shot. Simply putting your chin lightly downward is a professional trick to instantly looking better in photos.

3. Light it. Candle light (with an accompanying "candle" mode on your camera) can be very forgiving and warm. Flash, however is neither forgiving or warm, so avoid it if you can. A great idea is to set the table with lots of tea lights that stay low and out of the way but give off a lot of light.

4. Keep snapping. Snap pictures when they don't think you're snapping pictures, and you might just end up with that super natural, beautiful keepsake shot.

5. If you have a "smile shot" mode on your camera (for those who have not experienced this phenomenon yet, the camera can tell when your subjects smile and will wait until they all show teeth) you can use this to tease Uncle Frank or your family curmudgeon until he smiles.


I hope these tips help, and I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving full of warmth, smiles, and laughter. It's the start of a beautiful holiday season, everyone. Enjoy it, and be thankful!

Alex Chase: A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

This week, Adventures with Photos invites Alex Chase, graduate student and avid photographer, to discuss the story behind one of his favorite photos. Thanks for joining us, Alex!





You're probably thinking: "Why would you ever want to swim in the North Sea at 5:20am on May 1st?"

And it's definitely a fair question. You might even append a "when you've been up all night?" to your original query, and still you'd be justified in wondering.

Well, in 1528, Patrick Hamilton became the first man in Scotland to be burned as a martyr. The site of his execution is commemorated in St. Andrews by cobblestones forming his initials paved into the sidewalk. According to local legend, stepping on these cobblestones will cause any student to fail their degree, and so they are avoided by all - but if you are unlucky enough to forget, your slate can be cleansed by taking The May Dip: a swim in the North Sea at dawn on May Day. And that's the traditional reason for the plunge.

Not satisfied?

You might want to Dip, then, because it's a red letter day for St Andrews students: marking a time when it is acceptable to stay up all night drinking and partying with friends. On the night this photo was taken, I stayed up watching the Red Sox beat the Blue Jays 2-1 at Fenway before venturing to a friend's house to drink mescal and coffee: the former to hearten us to the eventual cold of a morning that felt more like March 1st than May 1st, and the latter to keep us focused in the crucial final few hours before sunrise. It was undoubtedly an exercise in commitment: when it came time to actually venture to the beach, a party of more than 30 had dwindled to 4, and we had a long walk in pouring rain to vocally muse whether this soaking excused us from having to enter the choppy waters (consensus was that it didn't). Peeling off our clothes to reveal already wet swim wear, we made a neat pile and ran for the water.

The shock isn't soon forgotten. As much as I'd love to tell you that the adrenaline, accompaniment and alcohol you ran in with immunised you to the effects of sudden immersion in frigid water, it's simply not true. You can't help but let out an exclamation (and perhaps an expletive) in anguish, and it will all but certainly be drowned out by the chaotic surroundings of hundreds of your peers sharing your pain.

Leaving the water, though, is an amazing feeling. The cold air that you had once cursed and suffered in suddenly doesn't feel so cold. Once you are no longer dead set on the water, the spectacle around you is now fully appreciated, and last year was the first time I chose to bring my camera along with me to record the aftermath. This is one of the shots I came away with that morning, and - for me - it sums up the real reason to do The May Dip.

It's not about staying up all night. It's not about drinking with friends. It's not about tradition, and it's not about Patrick Hamilton.

It's about those moments - be they personal or shared - when you stop and take the time to get back to what's really important to you. It's about sitting down, taking a deep breath and facing stormy waters with utter serenity. It's about the long walk in the cold, cursing your own poor judgement that has brought you to a Scottish beach just moments before sunrise in only your trunks, the painful realization that all your mental preparation hasn't made the water feel any less cold - and then walking out and thinking "hey, it's actually not that bad out here. Let's stay a while."

So go on, get some friends together, find a body of water and take an icy plunge at sunrise on May Day. We'll all be with you in spirit! (And why not take some pictures and send them to Annie while you're at it?)

More of Alex's photos can be found at his flickr page [http://www.flickr.com/photos/aechase], and you can keep up with his blog Slackademia [http://slackademia.wordpress.com], or you can follow him on twitter [http://twitter.com/aechase]!


If you would like to be featured on Adventures with Photos, contact me at acgaughen@gmail.com!

Best of the Weekend, Nov 24th

It's another Monday morning, and I know that you are just dying to look through the most lush and beautiful pictures of the weekend! Well, I am. And I had a pretty fabulous weekend walk myself; it was the first snow in St Andrews, and I had one of the most refreshing and exhilarating walks through town I've ever had. Here's my personal favorite snap:

,

or this:



It really was a beautiful weekend. And other people were having beautiful weekends as well! Check it out:

Walkway to Râşnov fortress by ykarelic4:

I never knew I wanted to go to Romania, but after browsing through this roll of film, it is possibly the next place I'm going to travel to. Who knew Romania was so ruggedly beautiful, so uncompromisingly colorful and gorgeous? Not me, but I'm very glad that little misunderstanding has been cleared up, because this is quite literally a whole other world of beautiful.

Terrace Hill, by tigerlady96


I love people who use photography to not only share their adventures, but also share their prides. It's common enough to snap our families to proudly show others, but what about our local landmarks? This one weekend walker dedicated her weekend to that, with really impressive results. I love this house. Doesn't it look like it has a story just begging to be told? TigerLady, if you read this and know, I'd love to hear it!

Sunset on the Lake, by veikkosu


This is the second week in a row I've featured a photo by veikkosu, who photographs his/her native Finland. Maybe this "Best of the Weekend" idea isn't so good for my wallet--I'm quickly building up a list of places I want to visit. Its amazing how Webshots has managed to attract such an international community all excited to share photos of their native world.


Framed Photographs, by albertsville


I am so swooning over this picture, for many different reasons. First of all, I'm a sucker for a well-framed snap; a picture within a picture within a picture is just too good for me to pass up. Throw in some architectural lines and I'm a goner. But what I like best is that this entire album was snapped at a local artisans fair. I'm a huge supporter of local artists, and I think any time you can combine your passions with supporting your community is a total artistic homerun. Well done, albertsville!

La Roque in Autumn by gene30210


This is so beautiful! From the azure sky, cheekily caught by the cut-out cross, to the earthy warmth of the stone building, to the total non-existence of people in a culturally protected site... it all makes this picture a dream. The blending of elements is really what makes this picture so special to me, and I just love the light and the colors that Gene30210 managed to capture.

Walkin' Zip by balishc


Oh how could I resist that mug? I love this picture because I think even I get a little too caught up in the seductive snaps of Finland and France to appreciate the basic values of the Weekend Walk: to appreciate what's going on around you. And I know one little pup that gets very upset when she thinks she's not being appreciated... Love this picture of Zip!

Well that's all for this weekend. Did you have any favorites from the Weekend Walk? If you're on Webshots, leave your name; you could just end up on Adventures with Photos next week!!

Photo Blogs to Check Out

Happy Friday-before-Thanksgiving! I don't know about you, but it's my favorite time of the year when the winter holidays start. Loads of good pictures to be had by all (and good times and good cheer)!

For today, I thought I would give you guys a sense of what else is out there on the web, besides the Webshots blog I always talk about. While I wish I could fulfill all your photo blogging needs, I'm not quite that omniscient, so here are some great blogs and a little bit about them:

• Digital Photography School -- DPS is a great site that features lots of tips on how best to use your equipment; not just how to frame and snap your shot, but what all the nitty gritty parts of your camera really are and the best way to take advantage of everything that you have. It's a great place to pick up some solid tips.
  
• PhotoCritic --Photocritic is an interesting hodgepodge of all things photo, from a compendium of current contests going on, a little bit about the history of photography, and reviews of every camera I've ever heard of or considered (and then some). Come for the barrage of information, stay for the great how-to guides and knowledgeable posts that reflect years in the biz.
• Catchy Colors PhotoBlog-- This one is a photo blog in the actual definition of photo blogs; rather than rambling on in posts with words, this photo blog posts pictures. Perhaps one of the most famous (though not strictly within this category) is the sensation PostSecret, but Catchy Colors caught my eye for, well, it's catchy colors. Scroll through and you'll see what I mean. Great snaps equal great inspiration.
• Photopreneur-- My guess is that most of my readers like to take pictures. Some might call it a hobby, some might class it a passion. For those of you who ever wonder if it's possible to make money from your spare snaps, check out Photopreneur. Whether you're looking for a new career or you're just interested in what a profitable pursuit photography could prove to be, it's worth a look.
• DIY Photography -- Just what it sounds like. An entire Internet archive full of tips, how-tos, and tricks for the amateur to take professional photos. It's one of the best resource websites out there, and often features guest bloggers to round out the already knowledgeable ranks.
  
• Beyond Phototips -- I feel like this is perhaps the most technical of the ones I've recommended so far, but don't let that throw you. Lots of amateurs can get sidelined by a few too many SLR this, aperture that, and shutter speed oh my's! Don't let the techno talk fool you; this is an easy to understand website full of great information. Expect lots of good info and tons of links in every post.
• PhotoWalking -- Have you become obsessed with Webshots' Weekend Photo Walk? If so, this site has loads of photowalks all over the US, and is an entire community of die-hard photo walkers. If you want to get into the habit of mindful, soulful photo walking, this site is first on your bookmarks.
• Camera Porn -- No, this is nothing risque. This is simply a site that gets a little geeked out over everything fabulous and photographic. Everything from camera equipment that you lust for, lighting effects you love and the knowledge to put your digital camera to hard work is all on Camera Porn, with an awesomely obsessive attitude. Definitely a fun read!

Well, that's all for this round, but that should definitely offer up some good distractions for the weekend. As always, let me know if you get out and about for your Weekend Walk. I'm going to be pounding the pavement (or rather, cobblestones) around St. Andrews this weekend - look for the photos on Monday!!

Have a good weekend!

A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words #3

While I think this is a beautiful photo in and of itself, the story behind it is much more fascinating to me.

This is a statue in Budapest (pronounced boo-dah-pesht, interestingly), Hungary, and it is pressed into the hillside of what is technically the "Buda" side of Budapest, a city that was originally two cities separated by water that became bridged into one. It is almost at the summit of a fairly high hill, and looking out from it, you can see the famous Széchenyi Chain Bridge.

My older brother and I walked up to this statue on our travels to Budapest, and the day we did was very special, very significant. You see, Budapest has a remarkable, violent and tumultuous past. From the invading Huns right up to the Communists, Budapest has always been occupied, until about 50 years ago. Every time a new regime came in to occupy, Budapest was scourged of its culture, statues taken down and banished, streets renamed, the national culture redefined.
I've never been some place so new. The United States is supposed to be a new country, but it's still been around for 200 some odd years. Budapest hasn't even had 50 years of rest, 50 years of government, of order.

And every April 4th, the Hungarian Independence Day, things get a little out of hand. There can be riots and there can be injuries and deaths, but in some ways, it's just the day the people gather to celebrate their national identity.

When we stood at the statue and looked out over the bridge, we saw this scene:
It was literally hundreds of thousands of people marching across the bridge, bearing the Hungarian flag, moving and singing and calling to one another, celebrating their right to gather peacefully, something most Americans take for granted.

My brother and I walked down from the hill top and we joined in the masses (mostly because they were going by our hotel) and I was shocked. Around me were mostly older people, no young zealots, and they were quiet, just walking along, facing forward, not smiling. They weren't having difficulty with the walk, they were just quiet, absorbing the importance of this day.

Everytime I see that photo of the saint with his arms outstretched, I think of that day, that march across the bridge, and the shock I felt at being faced with a history that was so heartbreakingly fragile. The generation above my own had seen Budapest roll over upon itself, it had witnessed the changing and reidentification of a nation. What hopes and fears did they have for their youths? They cast their eyes to their government with suspicion and caution and more than a little apprehension.

Looking at these photos reminds me of the rights and securities we take for granted as Americans; we have earned the right not to look at our government as if it were a house of cards. We have earned the capability to look at our peers and our children and not wonder if they'll riot (except if the Red Sox lose...I'm a Boston girl).

Every time I see that statue my breath catches, I hear the thunder of a thousand feet, and I am honestly, truly, genuinely grateful for my life. I hope you can see the same sense of hope in it that I do.