…are worth taking:
Apparently the best part of making Christmas cookies is the mess afterwards.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ photos
Note to self: know when to put the camera down!
January 1, 2008
We went to family fav-place Longwood Gardens last night for New Year’s eve. It was cold but the lights on all the trees were beautiful and the fireworks were loud and fun. Going around I kept thinking about how many cameras were around. I took a few photos of course, but I realized I’m starting to develop a reaction to Obsessive Photography Disorder. How many fuzzy pictures of long-ago fireworks do people need to store on their hard drives?
A few weeks ago I took an eye-opening picture at a wedding. It was a quick photo of the bride and father walking down the “aisle” (it was more a space between tables in a small banquet room). I must have had squirming Francis in one arm, the camera in the other, because it’s all blurry. The light’s bad, there’s red eye, it’s totally not something to send up to Flickr. But what’s haunting about the picture is the background: behind the bride you can see four people. From left to right, they are: taking a picture, holding camera at neck level ready to take a picture, leaning back from the camera screen setting up a shot, and looking down at a display reviewing the just-taken picture. This is a wedding and it’s the dramatic part: the bride’s just entered the room and is about to be given away by her father (it’s a second wedding so I can’t take the symbolism too far, but still this should be a holy moment).
Many Friends Meetings ban cameras in wedding ceremonies and I shouldn’t have relaxed my standards to take my own photograph of the wedding-in-progress. There are times where our presence is much more important than any documentation. I dare say that none of the two-dozen or so walking-down-the-aisle photos taken that day are worth developing or printing. I use my picture-taking for memory’s sake and love looking at old shots of the family, and a few of the pictures I took that day are definite keepers. But us compulsive shutter bugs need to know when to put the camera down.
The ascent of Apple Pie Hill
September 30, 2007
Yesterday the kids and I took a road trip to Apple Pie Hill, a summit of loose gravel that towers over the South Jersey pinelands from a dizzying height of 209 feet above sea level. A fire watch tower on the summit adds another few dozen feet, enough to get a visitor over the treetops. On a clear day it’s said you can see the skylines of Atlantic City and Philadelphia. Fortunately for me it was an quintessentially beautifully fall day – clear and crisp. It was easy to spot the cities, both thirty-two miles away (mostly to the south and mostly to the west respectively) and here’s blowups of the two resultant photos:
More pictures, from left: Sand road to the hill, the fire tower, the view down through the steps of the tower (the kids were left in the car), two year old Francis eager but thwarted attempt to repeat Papa’s climb up tower. Click individual photos for enlarged and geotagged versions. More photos of this and out stopover at Atsion later in the day on yesterday’s Flickr page.
For those interested in repeating our journey, here’s a map showing our route up and back. I was mostly winging it, depending on these directions from NJPineslandsandDownJersey.com starting from nearby Chatsworth NJ, self-styled “Capital of the Pine Barrens.”
Other map views: View Larger Map | Satellite with Route Map
Scenes from a birthdays party: Theo (4) & Francis (2)
September 4, 2007
Photos clockwise: Theo blows out the birthday ice cream cake’s 4 candle; kids huddle around when box opens to reveal Thomas the Tank Engine related toy; independent Francis surveys the scene; cousin M. plays pattycake with Poppop while her mom looks on.
Francis turns two
August 29, 2007
Martin and Theo celebrated Francis’s second birthday with an afternoon outing to fav spot Batsto Lake.
Photos: Francis laughs by the lake, Theo making ripples, group shot, video speech.
Images from Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative
August 18, 2007
Here are a few photos from our trip to Barnesville Ohio for “yearly meeting sessions”:http://www.ohioyearlymeeting.org/. The panel talk on “Convergent Friends”:http://convergentfriends.org/ with C Wess Daniels and Ohio’s David Male seemed to be well received. In some ways I thought it was silly for _us_ to travel so far to tell _them_ about convergence, as OYM© Friends have been doing important outreach and renewal work for years, supporting isolated Friends with the bi-annual Conservative Gatherings and though their “affiliate member”:http://www.ohioyearlymeeting.org/discipline.htm#Affiliate program. One place to learn more about current outreach efforts is “ConservativeFriend.org”:http://www.conservativefriend.org/.
Publicizing your blog via Flickr
June 13, 2007
Integrating the Flickr photo sharing service
with your blog is a wonderful way to easily add photos to your site.
With a little extra effort you can get Flickr to work for you.
Flickr in your blog
When you want to embed a Flickr-hosted photograph into one of your
blog entries, first start by going to the photo’s page in Flickr. Click
on the “All Sizes” button on top (with the magnifying glass icon), and
then pick the size you want for your blog post – small and medium work
well for blog entries.
Underneath the resized picture is a box with Flickr’s coding (you have
to be looking at your own account and be logged in to see this). Simply
cut and paste this into your blog entry and the picture will appear
there. If you want your text to wrap around the picture you’ll want to
add a little coding to what Flickr gives you. Somewhere inside the
“img” text you need to add wrapping instructions. An easy place is
between the text that reads:
height=“180” alt=“whatever it says”
…now reads:
height=“180” align=“left” alt=“whatever it says”
Change left to right to have your photo align that way.
Your blog in Flickr
Many users don’t realize that people sometimes find your Flickr
photos and not your blog. Google indexes Flickr nicely and Flickr’s own
search is popular. In the description of your photos you should add a
link back to your own blog. If you have a blog entry concerning that
actual picture, link directly back to that entry.
You’ll have to hand-write the HTML link for this (sorry, Flickr doesn’t have a link button). It should look something like this:
Description of the photo. For more read, <a href=“http://www.site.com/blogentry”>What I know about Flickr</a>.
Here’s a screen shot of the editing screen for this Flickr entry:
Results
That post about my trip to a legendary South Jersey locale is one of
the most visited pages on my personal blog. A good bit of it comes from
the links in Flickr!
Remember to put a lot of desired keywords into your Flickr title and
all link text. Keywords are those phrases that you think people might
be searching for.
Tamspub.com
June 6, 2007
Vietnamese restaurateur and surf guru Tam shares photos and stories from one of Southeast Asia’s best surfing towns. Hands down this is the most handsome photo site in my portfolio! Visit Site.