Welcome to Friday Foto Flogging, a place to share your photos and photography news. We were inspired by the folks at European Tribune who post a regular Friday Photoblog series to try the same on this side of the virtual Atlantic. We also thought foto folks would enjoy seeing some other websites so each week we’ll introduce a different photo website.
This week’s theme: Hard and soft. Do they go together like love and marriage (or did I just want to sneak some Frank Sinatra)?
Website of the Week: Underwater World.
AndiF Hard and Soft
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Soft new life. Hard light,
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Soft spray. Hard splash
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Soft green. Hardwood.
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olivia’s hard and soft
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Soft feather caught on hard twigs
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Hard light on soft petals
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Before (hard) and after (soft)
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- Next Week’s Theme (as stated by wilderness wench in last week’s diary): “Open up the dictionary at random, point & shoot.” If you don’t have a dictionary at hand, feel free to use another book, or one of the words that wilderness wench found: involution (the detailed design), recollect (the web of memory), turbulent (rough seas, howling winds),
wanderlust (seek & ye shall find) or roof (a roof). This should be interesting! 🙂
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Previous Friday Foto Flogs
Hard
Soft
I love the turtles! They look like cars driving up onto a ferry.
Hey there stand strong. Those are great … LOL, love all those turtles and fuzzy ducklings.
This is at the Bio pond on Upenn’s campus. I guess freshly stocked for summer?! 🙂
lol, seems to be … 🙂
Bio pond eh … what other critters live there?
Oh I love the turtle shot — it’s not everyday you get to see turtles on parade.
oh I love both of these!
I just adore the turtles.
Hard.
Soft.
Hi LEP … 🙂
Glad to see you back from your trip (and getting your photo taken w/ Obama no less … 😉
Okay — I’m having trouble figuring out what the ‘hard’ photo is … it looks like a bird’s eye ………….. ?
Hi Olivia. Yes, It’s hard to get back to real life and have to deal with the ‘rif raf’.
Those two photos I took at an old friend’s house in New Jersey. His back yard is quite the nature preserve and I think the eye belongs to a decoy; I was just showing him my faux macro lens, and the photo proved somewhat interesting.
By the way, I was speaking to a friend of mine in Washington who’s quite a good photographer and photoshopper, and who’s taking a course in web building and has started a blog on “blogspot.” I told him that you had a great web site on “blogspot” and he agreed. I told him he could email you with any questions and mention my name. I hope that I wasn’t being too presumptuous.
That makes sense — I was wondering why the feathers seemed hard too … 🙂 Agree that it is an interesting shot.
Definitely not presumptuous – I’d be happy to help if I can. Feel free to give him the g/m address (I think I’ve sent you an e/m from that one). I’d love to see his work too.
I think I told him to use the yahoo.ca address. Do you look at that once in a while?
Yep … I’ve been checking it regularly. Not a problem. 🙂
The intensity of the top pictures is almost eerie.
I agree. I thought it was a snake waiting to pounce.
That is one hard eye.
Beautiful.
I really like the sense of movement in photo #2. Really quite wonderful.
Village of Harf Al Mseitra, Coastal Mountains, Syria
Perfect selection for the theme … 🙂
What a lovely picture. It’s sort of a renewal picture – that beautiful things can grow no matter how many stones surround them.
Harf Al Mseitra Village, Coastal Mountains
View From the Balcony in Harf Al Mseitra
The steps to the House
Hurria,
I love the green with poppies(?), speckled with purple next to the rock wall.
In the view from the balcony, are the dozens of horizontal lines across the hillside, agricultural terraces?
Yes, they are poppies, and yes, they are agricultural terraces. 🙂
Feral Cats, Old Damascus, near Bab Touma
Bizarrely, it appears that someone else on flickr photographed this same cat about 30 days before I did, and discovered my snapshot a couple of days after I posted it.
The Steps of Mariamieh Church, Old Damascus
Also very fitting Hurria.
The last shot reminds me of stand strong’s from a couple of Friday’s ago.
When I saw the man there it reminded me immediately of the shot you mentioned. It is such an unusual sight here, too, that it was quite startling to see.
I had some other shots, some on these same steps, that would fit the theme, but uploading the pictures can be very time consuming and a bit iffy here. There are a number of restaurants and cafes with free wireless, but the connection is slow, and not 100% reliable, so one has to be prepared to sit for some time and at the same time resist the temptation to use much bandwidth for anything else during the process. Still, this is a big improvement over the days of Hafez Al Asad, when the internet was very limited. Bashshar Al Asad is more progressive, and likes technology.
I think that top cat is one of my favorite pictures you’ve posted — the lighting sets off the cat against the wall and the angle of the framing draws our to the cat’s very expressive body language.
What is odd about that shot is that about 30 days before someone else took a very similar shot of what looks like the same cat not far from where I took it. Here is a side-by-side comparison:
The cat looks a bit thinner in my shot, but the attitude is similar, and the fur pattern looks identical.
Looks like the same cat to me, too. Apparently he knows that the camera likes him. 🙂
How neat! The internet sure makes the world seem a bit smaller, doesn’t it.
Thank you for more stunning photos, Hurria.
The difference in the 2 shots of Kitty may be a matter of light & angle, rather than a distinct physical change. At least I hope so, for the cat’s sake.
I was thinking the same thing about the difference in appearance. The cat certainly was not underweight or at all unhealthy looking, so I imagine it is the angle, and possibly the light that makes the difference. I have not seen that particular cat since that day, but that is not unexpected, so I am not concerned. Feral cats here do very well if they are lucky enough to be born in the right location. People in this neighborhood put out meat scraps for them just about every day. The luckiest ones are the ones who have staked out territories near butcher shops. The butchers give them all the scraps, so they are very sleek and healthy.
who went to today’s May Day’s march in Paris. (Nothing soft there.)
“The pandemic is him” (Sarcozy)
“The capitalists amuse themselves playing with the money”
estHer’s brother Raphael.
The crowd
Looks like you had a nice day for the march.
I’d take a rainy day if I could be in Paris.
Agree w/ you there Toni.
The picture of estHer’s brother is the stand-out, literally and figuratively, of this group.
The picture of estHer’s brother is the stand-out, literally and figuratively, of this group.
Hard yielding to soft (from Mt. Field National Park, Tasmania)
Hard bill, soft feathers
Hard shell, soft neck
Hard to understand, really
Mt. Field National Park looks like a great place to go hike.
I love “Hard shell, soft neck” — really good framing.
But “Hard to understand, really” won my heart with its ever so perfect title.
We’ll definitely take you to Mt. Field when you come visit. It contains one of the world’s finest temperate rain forests. Plus, Lyre birds. Btw, that hollow tree is large enough for me to stand inside.
Well that settles it — we’ve got to come. In the name of science. We’ve been to the temperate rain forests on the Olympic Peninsula so obviously we’re needed to do an accurate comparison. 😉
Love the Lyre youtube — the chain saw imitation was both fascinating and sad.
I’ve been to the Olympia National forest, and the pacific coast of the Olympic peninsula, but I won’t prejudice your scientific results by giving you my wholly subjective comparison of there to Tasmania (OK, Tasmania is waaaaay cooler).
At least the Lyre birds in Mt. Field are protected from habitat destruction. Lyre birds don’t naturally occur in Tasmania, but were introduce here from the mainland, and into the park in particular, as a way of ensuring their survival.
But we need us to do it too — otherwise is just anecdote, instead of data. 🙂
Indeed. In the name of SCIENCE you must come. I’m glad that’s settled.
Retirement year — which is either 2012 or 2013 (we’re discussing whether Jim would teach the 2012-2013 school year).
Love the turtle shot — lol, that’s perfect. The emu eye is fantastic.
Hmmm, that last one looks like Zsa Zsa Gabor threw up.
Lol.
I don’t know if anyone is familiar with the practice, but apparently they inject dye into the egg so that the chick, duck, etc. is born some wacky color. I remember it being popular around easter time.
I’m pretty sure it fades.
like silkie’s aren’t weird enough to begin with, eh.
someone had a couple at the county fair a few years back…people had a hard time believing they were real…needless to say, they attracted a lot of attention.
Silkies have become very popular as backyard chickens. Easy to keep in because they can’t see well enough to escape.
Frizzles seem to have replaced Silkies as the new funky chicken on the block.
Is the flamboyant fluff in the last photo the Tasmanian version of dyed Easter chicks?
luckily no, Jim. There’s a ‘wildlife’ park near us called Zoodoo that has a petting zoo for kids (it’s basically oriented entirely towards families with small kids), and they clearly injected some dye into the eggs of some silkies just to create a more interesting feature.
I’m glad to say they’ve stopped doing it now. To my knowledge it’s not harmful (the pink there would be cochineal dye, which is non-toxic) and they seem overall to treat their animals well, but I don’t like seeing this sort of human whim played out on animals nevertheless.
Once, across the alley
Hi ID.
I like the similarity in layout of the two images … Those are some tenacious petunias! (I think those are petunias.)
Yes, quite tenacious! I think it sneaked out of a planter on the deck nearby. Everyone managed to avoid running over it and it survived for an amazing length of time.
The cat obviously knows that asphalt brings out its best. 🙂
The top picture is the photo equivalent of a haiku — the whole story is there in one short but mysterious image.
The old “bloom where you are planted” thing immediately came to mind when I spotted it.
Sometimes ‘hard’ is coming up with a theme & ‘soft’ is how you interpret it.
Although I haven`t viewed the latest additions here, partially due to a moderate earthquake here, my daughter`s birthday visit with my two lovely granddaughters, my preparations for Teri`s departure for Scotland in the early morning, & my left coast hour, from what I`ve seen, it`s one more to add to the books of a successful Friday night Andi & Olivia, extravaganza.
So I hope you enjoy my opposites in imagery.
ARM OF THE LAW, HAND OF COMPASSION
HARD WATER, SOFT DOWN
HARSH PLASTIC, SOFT BREASTS
HAUGHTY, HEARTY
SHARP EYE, SOFT PATTERN
CRACKED NUT, BROKEN HEART
FIN FLICK, PILLOWED BED
CORAL ROCK, FEATHER DUSTER
ENDOSKELETON, EXOSKELETON
HARD FRACTURE, SOFT CLOUDS
OFF KEY, KEY WEST
BUSTED FLAT, BLOWN KISS
HUMAN VIEWERS, NATURAL VIEW
SPINES, GRACE
CARPET RANK, SPERM BANK
BLUE ROCK, BREEDER STOCK
BLACK HILLS, BLUES PILLS
CONTRAST, GLIDE PATH
IRON BARS, INNOCENCE
As always, lots of good stuff to look at but my favorite is easily the wonderfully titled and captured HARD WATER, SOFT DOWN. But BLACK HILLS, BLUES PILLS is a wonderfully perfect illustration of theme.
I like the way the breaks in the clouds echo the tree branches in HARD FRACTURE, SOFT CLOUDS.
HARD WATER, SOFT DOWN is my fav this week, followed closely by BLACK HILLS, BLUES PILLS (same as Andi) … 🙂
What caused the broken heart?
Milo is gone & Teri left. (for Scotland)
Your BLACK HILLS image is my favorite of the set, ‘Head. I like the relatively simple color palette, as usual. Such a nice balance between dark & light, too!
Hard and soft tree
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Hard bricks and soft in the head
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Hard water and soft rocks
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Hi Jim — lol, the photo of Bebo resting her head on the brick is funny and so fitting. But I really love your expression of the theme through the tree panorama. W/ the reflection … it’s perfect!
Thanks again to all for this week’s beautiful imagery. Can’t imagine what inspired this week’s theme, but I, too, will drag my mind from the gutter & behave myself.
I’ve had a lot of fun with our theme this week — reminding me that not all perceived qualities are strictly material.
Some, of course, just are.
lol, hi ww. 🙂
Beautiful selections this week — I love the photo of the primrose – delicate yellow petals – coming out of the ground. My favourite though, is the tree fungus. Fungus is just so interesting and artistic (in terms of patterns and colours).
I love how Sissy’s white whiskers pop off of the black fur.
I’m so pleased to see your comments, Miss O. As usual, very grateful for your encouragement.
Sissy’s whiskers really are quite amazin’.
🙂
The snow picture is my favorite — it sets the mood beautifully. But the cat picture is awfully fine too.
Thanks so much for your appreciation, Andi! I wouldn’t post pix as readily without it.
Well good because I love seeing your pictures. I like my new job of turning my enthusiasm for your pictures into a power source for your camera. 🙂
“Check Yourself Before I Peck Yourself, Fool!”
For your safety, I hope you shot that with a fairly long lens. 🙂
and it was shot at 55mm soooo…
…I was about as close as the photo implies.
You can also save that one in case we have a theme called “Big, Scary Mamas”.
the “Big, Scary Mommas” theme.
I’ll need to go hang out by my local McDonald’s and get some prime shots.
What a lovely shot — & quite an impressive subject. Wow!
One really doesn’t mess with Mother Goose.
LOL … great shot!