"Car"cass III - Dawn of the Dead

I saw this wreck on Gulf Rd right after it happened Wednesday night during my evening walk. A black sedan took out this palm tree. The car must have been totally airborne when it hit, none of the little bushes hedging the median were damaged and there are no tire marks on the grass. So I woke up early the next morning and scurried down there right after sunrise...and the car was gone! Only some broken bits remained.

Carcass III - Kuwait

Frog Blog

During my visit back to Cincinnati, Shelby and I took a few hours one morning and visited the Cincinnati Nature Center (Rowe Woods) right down the road from us. Here is one of many good photos I got of a frog we saw on the Edge Trail (warning PDF). I got down on my belly on the boardwalk over a section of pond to get a lot of the shots.

Frog - Cincinnati Nature Center, Milford

Abstract

Haven't done one of these in a while...took this over the weekend and just messed with it in photoshop...I was too lazy to go out this weekend and take photos of some of the truly awesome carcasses I saw.

Stars, Bubbles, Drops ...

First Political Rant of the Season

As the political season ramps up, it is easier and easier to get me ranting...

It suddenly struck me from 5000 miles away how f(*&^d up everyone is back there...

I'm hearing corporations are people.

I'm left wondering if corporations are people, can they marry?
Apparently they can...but only other corporations, and multiple times at that!

Somehow everything in the U.S. seems stacked in the corporations' favor these days.

Gays still can't marry in most states, and I believe polygamy is outlawed in all 50 states...

Somehow I'm thinking that when the corporations get married they don't pay any more taxes (if they pay any to begin with) due to the marriage penalty...

The United States needs to re-establish The Rule of Law at home before it pushes such ideals abroad...anything else is hypocrisy...but that would begin a whole other rant.

...can corporations go to jail?

or better yet, get the death penalty?
(rare for the big guys but apparently they can, Lehman Bros must have been a minority whose public defender wasn't up to the job while AIG, Goldman Sachs, BoA and Citibank are all lily white with high priced lawyers, looks like maybe a fine here or there for them, but no hard time, much less the ultimate penalty)

It Is Nice To Feel Loved...

I thought of these after the S&P downgrade of U.S.A.'s credit rating.
Seen along my travels...

Someone Doesn't Like NATO - Split, Croatia



Someone Didn't Like Bush II - Sofia, Bulgaria

Patterns and Abstract

I like patterns and photos of the details of stuff such that you really can't tell much about the subject...like a blind man touching an elephant's tusk.

National Palace of Culture (NDK)Национален дворец на културата - Sofia, Bulgaria

Where I Was....

August 2007....

Beehives Near Lukomir, Bosnia



August 2008....

Water Frozen in Time - Sofia, Bulgaria

"Car"cass II - The Cremation

I saw this carcass today in a parking lot off Gulf Road near the Kuwait Towers. I'm thinking it was probably there for a couple days, the smell wasn't so bad.


Carcass II - KuwaitPhoto From The "Good Side"




Carcass II - KuwaitThe Not So Good Side




Carcass II - KuwaitWith No Make-Up




Carcass II - KuwaitFace It, You're a Wreck

Iconic Kuwait

When you see images of Kuwait, the Kuwait Towers are almost always included. They are only about 5 miles down the road from us but we took a little time and went up there today. Otherwise we'd probably "get to it someday" and still never have been when it is time to leave for good. It cost 2KD (about $7.20) to take an elevator to the top ball of the tower with two balls. The lower ball houses a restaurant and cafe, the upper ball houses a 2-level viewing platform and a gift and snack shop. The windows weren't very clean, but with the dust the way it is around here, I didn't find that very surprising.


Kuwait Towers - Kuwait City




Kuwait Towers - Kuwait City




Kuwait Towers - Kuwait City




Kuwait Towers - Kuwait City




Water Park @ Kuwait Towers - Kuwait City




You Can See! - Kuwait City

A Few More

These photos are from my visit to the Jewish Cemetery just before I left in 2009. I didn't have my computer at the time so at first I didn't post photos, but later I tried using what I had to work with on a laptop.


Jewish Cemetery - Sarajevo




Jewish Cemetery - Sarajevo




Jewish Cemetery - Sarajevo



Jewish Cemetery - Sarajevo

Jewish Cemetery, Sarajevo

Jevrejsko Groblje u Sarajevu
I don't know what made me think of these photos today...these were taken during our visit with Shelby in May.

According to the sign, the Jewish Cemetery in Sarajevo is the second largest in Europe. Only the Jewish Cemetery in Prague is larger. The Sarajevo cemetery dates to 1630. It was home to snipers preying on the residents of Sarajevo during the siege in the 1990's and was heavily mined. The cemetery is de-mined now, but much of it remains overgrown. Many of the headstones exhibit the wear and tear only a bullet can provide.


Headstone- Jewish Cemetery, Sarajevo



Overlooking Sarajevo- Jewish Cemetery



Birch Tree - Jewish Cemetery, Sarajevo



Restored Headstones- Jewish Cemetery, Sarajevo

"Car"cass

The wrecks around here are impressive in their destructive power. Friday and Saturday mornings especially, you can see "carcasses" as I call them, on the sides of the highways. Remnants of the high-speed shenanigans gone wrong the night before. I decided that I would take on the making of documentary photos of the destroyed autos as one of my projects while I'm here.

My first "car"cass shot is from an accident a hundred yards or so up the street from our apartment.

Toyota Corolla, RIP - Kuwait

Behind McDonalds

I took this photo back in March....we haven't seen many, if any, days as dust free since then...today was probably the closest. This sculpture, or whatever it is, is behind the McDonalds on Arabian Gulf Rd. I'm hoping to soon get and post a photo that is more typical of this time of year. The afternoon sun low in the sky with the dust and haze and the city sky line...

Doves - Kuwait

English Muffins

One thing you can't get here, but would be legal if you could (unlike alcohol, and pork) is English muffins. We've had family successfully mail us some packages during the cooler portion of the year, but the packages certainly wouldn't survive the current temperatures. So a few weeks back I started looking into making my own and found a promising recipe at Allrecipes.com. (I highly recommend the site, anything with 4+ stars has been very good)

Yesterday I tried the recipe out for Elesa's discriminating English muffin palate. She liked them...they aren't perfect, some don't seem to have the bigger "nooks & crannies". I'm sure that most of that is due to technique, which I'm hoping will get better with practice.


Homemade English Muffins

The Bench

Near the top of our apartment building's stairwell is a bench...maybe as a resting place for those of us that do the stairs for exercise?


The Bench

Out and About II - Kuwait

Another outing organized by the AWARE Center a few weeks ago was an evening with a guided tour through the "House of Mirrors". It is a residential house where the lady of the house, Lidia Al-Qattan, basically went nuts 20 or so years ago and started covering walls in bits of colored glass and bits of mirrors...grand mosaics to small little details: doorways, hallways, doors and floors, radiators, lamps, stove, the stairway to the 2nd floor. Basically the outside of the house and the entire first floor are covered in bits of mirror. She was a very friendly and animated hostess/guide and her stories about how it all began and the various rooms were funny and entertaining.

The second floor was more dedicated to the art work of her late husband, Khalifa Al Qattan and some of her other interests and her own artwork, planets, the universes...harmony ...all illustrated with colored lights, painted carpet and sculpture.

Here are a few of the photos I took. All 22 can be seen on photobucket...HERE.

Fish - House of Mirrors, Kuwait



Paint on Carpet - House of Mirrors, Kuwait




Reflections (Imagine That!) - House of Mirrors, Kuwait



Lights - House of Mirrors, Kuwait




Reflections II - House of Mirrors, Kuwait

Out and About - Kuwait

I'm trying to get/stay on top of things with regards to the photos I take here in Kuwait. Just a week or so ago we went on a tour of the Arab Organizations Building organized by the AWARE Center. It is a bland building from the outside (as all but a very few of the ultra modern glass towers are here) but the inside has art work and design work worthy of writing home blogging about.

Here are a couple of teaser photos and a link to a slideshow (as yet uncaptioned:)

Entrance Foyer - Arab Organizations Building, Kuwait




Screen - Arab Organizations Building, Kuwait




Water Fountain - Arab Organizations Building, Kuwait




Entrance to Sitting Room - Arab Organizations Building, Kuwait

I'm Famous...

or maybe obscure...

I was reading a photography forum and a reference was made to how you can use google to search for a particular image. (if interested, see http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searchbyimage.html)

The discussion centered around copyright infringement...basically stealing people's photographs posted on line and either claiming them as your own, or using them without attribution (and compensation) or the worst I guess, selling them. Being the curious type, I searched a few of my photos and was shocked...SHOCKED I tell you, to find that some of my photos have been used without attribution:

Possibly my favorite photo of all time, blogged HERE
Shows up at a travel site page about Kakadu HERE

One of my very recent photos taken while on a return visit to Sarajevo, taken from Shelby's balcony. Shows up in a thread "The Skylines in Eastern Europe"

One of my Plitvice photos shows up in a thread all in Cyrillic that I can't read.

A Lake Bled photo is linked on another travel site

And my blog entry about Sutjeska Monument has photos showing up a number of times including twice on this site.

Last, one of my earliest blogged photos is apparently "for sale" or for upload to your facebook account...it's making me rich!

The coolest part though, is how many people apparently look like an elephant....or a tombstone (see the "Visually similar images" :)

It is also cool how google tries to figure out where and what of the photo is taken.

A Day in Dubrovnik

Lot of links in this one...could keep the curious among my many readers quite busy...

Although we ended up going back a number of times, the first trip we took to Dubrovnik in late January of 2007 was one of our last as the original 5...the weather was great and we had a good time. My original blog entry was Here.
I took a huge number of photos that day as did Ryan and Shelby.

A later trip to Croatia that included a stop in Dubrovnik I also blogged Here and put a slideshow of our friends' entire visit on photobucket. At least one other trip to Dubrovnik didn't even warrant a mention in the blog.

I've been trying to organize things lately and when I started keywording the photos from that time period... (and ironically, I blogged about my lack of organization with regards to my photographs using a photo from this original trip Here) I realized how many I liked that were taken in just that one day. So I processed a bunch of them over the past few days and here is a sample of the results.... the entire slideshow can be seen on photobucket, I've still have a few to add, and the photos haven't been captioned yet....that may be asking too much of me...enjoy.

Silhouette and the Sea - Dubrovnik, Croatia




Water Drain - Dubrovnik, Croatia





Flag Above the Walls - Dubrovnik, Croatia




The Walled City - Dubrovnik, Croatia




Cross Above Dubrovnik, Croatia

"Bonsai" Tree

Every time I drive down Cemetery Rd past Greenlawn Cemetery I'd look at this tree and think it looks like a big bonsai tree. After a bit of a snow this past winter, I walked down and took some photos. They didn't really turn out like I'd visualized, but yesterday when I was sorting through things, keywording etc. I took another look. Here are four interpretations (or "moods" as you will" via Photoshop of the very same photo. You're always welcome to vote for your favorite.

Pretty much straight out of the camera, with minimal processing, no cropping...

Tree - Greenlawn Cemetery Milford, Ohio




A bit of a crop, sliding the "Clarity" slider to the negative:

Tree - Greenlawn Cemetery Milford, Ohio



Same bit of crop, Black and white, various color filters applied and sliding the "Clarity" slider to the negative:

Tree - Greenlawn Cemetery Milford, Ohio



Again same crop, Black and white, various color filters applied, Clarity slider left in neutral:

Tree - Greenlawn Cemetery Milford, Ohio