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Places

My grandfather's garden

My grandparents on my mother’s side always had a garden, no matter where they lived. They were city folk, and even when they lived in an apartment, they managed a nice little plot of land in the back of the building, where they grew fruits and vegetables. Later, they moved in a house with a big garden, and my grandfather’s obsession with gardening was finally given free rein. He planted everything in there: grapes, tart cherries, cucumbers, tomatoes, rhubarb, berries, parsley, onions, garlic, salad, potatoes, apples — the list could go on, but I can’t find the English words for some of the things that grew (and still grow) there.

Just a few short weeks ago, I visited my grandfather and got to walk through the garden once more. It was bittersweet this time. My grandmother has passed away, and the place is lonelier and more melancholy. But it’s still beautiful, and it’s full of memories for me, since I practically grew up there.

Shortly after taking this photo, I took a pair of scissors, cut down a few bunches and ate them. They were delicious, of course.

Ripe and ready for the picking

This flower shone so pure and white with the rays of the falling sun passing through its petals, that I just had to photograph it.

Pure white

The name of this plant in English escapes me at the moment. In Romanian, it’s “busuioc”. Not so long ago, women in the countryside would take bunches of dried up “busuioc” with them to church. Its fragrance would fill the place.

Busuioc

I believe this flower is of the same kind as the white flower pictured above, but its petals are red. I’m terrible with plant names (actually, I’m terrible with names of any kind), so I don’t know what it is. But I really liked the shape and color of the petals. If passion could be photographed, I think it would look like this.

Passionate

I’ve got so many beautiful photographs from Romania — many more from my grandfather’s garden, the various cities and places I visited — but so little time to process them. Oh, how I wish I had a few months to spend curating my photo library…

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Thoughts

Busy, busy, busy

It’s a bit unusual for me that I can’t find the time to write posts, but that’s just what’s happening. I left home shortly after noon on Friday with Ligia to go camping with close friends of ours in the Blue Ridge mountains. Had loads of fun, and we visited Natural Bridge. I’m afraid I wasn’t very good company. My eye was pretty much either glued to the viewfinder of my 5D, or looking for reasons to stay glued to it. Took lots of gorgeous morning, evening and night photos and I can’t wait to post-process them.

Came back early afternoon Sunday and got ready for a photographic gig that same afternoon. Finally arrived home for good around 7:30 pm, exhausted. I’ve been using my spare time since to work on those photos. They get top priority since I got paid for them, which is very nice indeed. In between bouts of work, I also need to spend a little quality time with Ligia.

When you count it all up, it adds up to no spare time whatsoever — short of a trip to “Spare Oom”, where time runs on a different schedule… Perhaps I’ll get a little more time in a couple of days. Till then, I suppose.

Afternoon delight

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Thoughts

Falling upwards

I got home one afternoon just as a summer storm was about to break the heavens open. I had a choice: do some consulting work, or set up my camera and get some photos. The camera won.

Got all sorts of great photos of the clouds wrestling with each other during the prelude to the wet show. As the rain started, I decided to do some high speed photography as well. Set my 5D to 3200 ISO, put it in Aperture Priority mode and the aperture to f/2.8 (the largest my 100mm lens could do), and had lots of fun capturing raindrops in mid-air. It helped that I knew my 5D would go all the way up to 1/8000 secs on the shutter speed…

It looks as if I’ve photographed a wet window pane here, but trust me, those raindrops were caught in mid-air, as they were falling downwards.

Caught mid-air

I thought it’d be fun to process this photo differently, and to turn it upside down. So the raindrops are falling upwards here. 🙂

Falling upwards

Photos taken in North Bethesda, MD.

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Places

Sunburnt

This past weekend, Ligia and took a trip out to the countryside. Our favorite haunt is River Rd, way out in the fields hugging the Potomac hillsides. There are so many beautiful places out there, and trails galore. You can bring your bikes along, park your car, and push the pedals around all day, exploring the C&O canal trail or the country side roads.

On our way back home, I noticed this field and the reddish hue of its earth. I had to make a U-turn and photograph it. To help give you a sense of scale, that green line at the horizon is made of full-size trees.

Sunburnt

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Thoughts

It snowed today

We had a beautiful snowfall today — just gorgeous. Big, fluffy snowflakes kept coming down for what seemed like (and probably was) hours. When it was done, we had a thick, white blanket of fresh powder everywhere. Tree branches and leaves were heavy-laden with the white stuff. It clung to everything, weighing it down, bringing it closer to eye-level so we could enjoy it more. Ligia’s piano lessons were cancelled, but we couldn’t stay in. We took the MINI (which has snow tires) and went out for a drive.

We stopped at Cabin John Regional Park, which is a favorite of ours, and walked through the forest, taking photographs of everything that caught our eyes. I took my tripod along, and an umbrella that acted as a protector for the lens. Snow powder kept falling off the branches, and it wouldn’t have done to get the lens wet. Then, on a whim (but oh, what a welcome one!) we stopped for lunch at Momo Taro Sushi, inside Cabin John Mall. We had miso soup and sushi, of course: California rolls, tuna rolls and salmon rolls. They were delicious, as usual. Then we drove out some more, but it was no fun this time. The trucks had already cleared the road of snow. It’s not a lot of fun for me to drive on a clean road in winter. It’s much more exciting when there’s snow on it. That extra element of unpredictability adds extra enjoyment to an otherwise regular drive. Yes, I realize it detracts from the practicability of it all, but by gosh, I like it when things are sometimes impractical.

I tried to look away from the clean, black road to the postcard views that lined it: houses covered in a thick quilt of white snow, little picket fences barely visible, bumps where shrubs used to be, cars covered in their entirety — everything quiet, beautiful and relaxing. I’d love to find a long, winding country road that never gets plowed, and drive on it for hours, with a good camera in hand, lots of memory and plenty of battery life. I think I’d drive slowly, stop just about every minute or so, and take photos, lots of them. Gosh, I’d love to do that for a living, just go around taking photos, all day long…

We’re home now, and I’m post-processing some photos I took a while back. Now that I’m done with a pressing project of mine — that thing plagued me for more than a month — I have a little more free time and can catch up with my backlog of photos. That’s a wonderful prospect, and I look forward to it with joy.

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