Modular origami, as it's sometimes called, is much more popular in Japan than here in the US. You can actually buy kits, which are filled with pre-cut little squares of paper. You then individually fold these hundreds of pieces of paper and then fit them together, like a 3d puzzle to form shapes. I had to cut my own small squares of paper, about 500 hundred of them to make this piece. I found the instructions for putting them together online (there are many slightly different variations on the swan, and many other designs as well).
It's not very difficult to make something like this, just time-consuming. It takes several hours of cutting paper into smaller squares, then folding all the individual squares, and then piecing them together. Because it's very repetitive work, it can be very calming and relaxing.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Origami Swan
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Hearst Castle Roman Pool
This is the so-called Roman pool at Hearst Castle in California. This is part of the gigantic Hearst Mansion, built by the wealth media baron, William Randolph Hearst. The Roman pool was designed to look like roman baths and is decorated with eight statues of roman gods. This is the last stop on the rather pricey tour that my wife and I took of the Hearst Mansion when we passed by there a few years ago.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Milwaukee Snowstorm 2
Here's another picture of the heavy snowstorm at Marquette, taken on February 6, 2008. This picture is looking in the direction of the Marquette Library, which is not visible, though it's about a block away. It snowed constantly from about 4pm on February 5, to about 10pm on February 6, unleashing about 16 inches over that time. In this picture there are probably several billion snowflakes floating in the air, blocking the view to the library just a hundred or so feet away.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Milwaukee Snowstorm
This picture was taken on February 6, 2008. We got a huge storm in on the night of the 5th which continued into the 6th, dumping over a foot on the city. Unsurprisingly, classes at Marquette were canceled that day, and I took advantage of the free time by going out with my camera and taking some pictures of the heavy snow and white out conditions. Many students took advantage of the snow by having snowball fights, which is what these two were doing, hiding behind the snow drift and making some snowballs.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Fatma Nap
This picture was taken on the N train while returning from Coney Island. That's me on the right and my future wife Fatma. This was only the third time we had met and before we started dating. We met through a mutual friend Hande, who was a fellow student of mine at Stony Brook, and knew Fatma from Istanbul.
Hande had decided she wanted to visit Coney Island which she had never been to, and invited Fatma and me along. It was in early April, when it was still a bit cold and windy out on the beach. After walking around and taking some rides, we returned near the end of day. Fatma was tired, and I let her nap on my shoulder while we rode the train back. I snapped this picture myself, holding the camera and arms length and taking a couple shots. I sent the picture to Hande to forward to Fatma, which initiated an exchange of emails, eventually leading to our first date about a week later.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Socrates Sculpture Park
Socrates Park is a unique sculpture garden along the East River in Long Island City, Queens. It's a former landfill that was transformed many years ago into this venue for emerging artists to display large scale works. I has an odd, but always interesting and always changing, collection of sculptures.
At the time when I took this picture, the park was closed since it was late at night. I had approach from just north of the park and sneak along the rocky shoreline to get into the park. The view is of Roosevelt Island and Manhattan from across the East River. The silhouettes on the left are some of these unusual large scale sculptures that one can see in Socrates Park.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Woodside Courtyard
This is nearby where I lived in Woodside in Queens New York. I lived in a small house a few blocks from the Woodside stop on the 7 with four other people. I would walk around this quiet, almost suburban neighborhood at night, which had a series of apartment complexes with these nice courtyards. This was taken with my small point-and-shoot camera sitting on a bench, since I had no tripod.
Friday, April 1, 2011
St. John's College
St. John's College is located in the hills north of the city of Santa Fe, situated in a beautiful stretch of Juniper forest. Behind the college itself is an even taller high mountain that looks down upon the college and out over the city. I climbed up there this day to take a break from studying and took this picture of the setting sun.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Maymont Park 2
Maymont Park is a massive 100 acre estate in Richmond, Virginia along the James River. Major James Dooley and his wife Sallie gradually built and developed this estate from 18866 when they first bought this stretch of uncultivated farmland until Sallie's death in 1925, after which they left it to the city of Richmond. James Dooley fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederates, and made his fortune working as a lawyer and later as an investor in the burgeoning southern railroad. There is a stream which flows down into their Japanese Garden, and along the way the streams forms a beautiful waterfall, as seen here. The people in the picture are just a random mother with her kids that happened to be there when I took the picture.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Maymont Park
My sister's husband decided to change careers a few years ago, from a career in business to a medical career. Unfortunately, since med schools don't normally let people in with undergrad degrees in finance, he pursued an MA in Public Health as a stepping stone. He was accepted to Virginia Commonwealth in Richmond, and they promptly moved there together. When I went an visited them, I got to see the city of Richmond, which I hadn't seen before. They left me to explore on my own on the day I took this picture, and I simply stumbled upon Maymont Park with no prior knowledge. It's a sprawling estate, which now belongs to the city of Richmond. As for my sister's husband, he did get into med school after completing his MA, and is now working on that degree in Vegas.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Bobst Library
This is Bobst Library, the main library of the NYU campus in Manhattan. This twelve-story, Phillip Johnson-designed building has a grand ten-story atrium in the center, and a person can be dizzied looking down the huge atrium from the top floors. Since I was attending Stony Brook, and Stony Brook's library was quite a distance away from where I lived in Queens, I would usually go here. This picture was taken one of those lonely nights of studying ancient and forgotten books of philosophy. I didn't have a tripod, so I set the camera down on a mailbox to keep the camera still for the relatively long exposure. This is the result.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Gantry Plaza 2
I mentioned in my previous entry about coming across Gantry Plaza quite by accident. What makes it most interesting is the evident history behind it. You can see in the sitting area, around the benches, the remnants of train tracks that the Long Island Railroad used to use to ride the train cars up to the water's edge. The buildings you see are gantry cranes, which would lift the train cars onto massive barges, so they could be ferried back and forth from Manhattan. It was cumbersome work, so when it could be done more efficiently by bridge, these gantries went out of use and mostly were just left to rust. In the late 90s, the state decided to restore the area and turn it into a park. The gantries are just a part of the Gantry Plaza State Park, which extends up the East River coastline to the famous Pepsi sign.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Gantry Plaza
Gantry Plaza was an accidental discovery for me when I lived in New York. I was simply looking for a good view of Manhattan, and thought a picture from right across the East River would work well. I took off from my apartment in Woodside, Queens late in the day because I got caught up with other things. Then I got off at the last stop before Manhattan on the 7, Vernon-Jackson, and then walked a couple of blocks until I arrived at this place. The view of Manhattan was nice, but the park itself was really quite beautiful and so hidden. I then took a few shots of the sunset with Manhattan.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Niagra falls in Winter
My uncle Peter, who had worked for many years as a French literature professor at the University of Toronto, had his 65th birthday a few years ago and my parents and I went there to visit. As a side excursion, we journeyed to see the Niagra falls, which are not too far from Toronto. It was winter, giving the falls a unique look, since much of the vapor thrown up by the falling water creates various ice formations around the falls, for example on the railing around the walkways near the falls. And that vapor also creates a much more opaque cloud around the falls than can be seen in summer. Afterwards, we stopped at a few wineries on the Niagra Penninsula, since my mother'd had read that they the specialized in ice wine, which none of us had ever tried before. The whole trip was a real treat, including the falls, the wineries and time spent with my uncle.
Monday, March 21, 2011
The Elevator Shaft
The Pecos Wilderness is a huge swath of protected wilderness in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains which extends down pretty close to Santa Fe. Reaching some of the trails in the southern edge of it from Santa Fe is easy, and I once took a hike with a few St. John's College friends there when I was living in Santa Fe. It was a nice pleasant walk down into a beautiful meadow called "La Vega" with gorgeous scenery. After the meadow we followed the Lower Nambe Trail, which seemed like a good choice since it led us directly back to the trailhead. Unfortunately, what we didn't know is that most hikers usually don't climb out of the valley on this trail. The path we took back is referred to as the "elevator shaft," because it's just nonstop straight up (an 1800 foot ascent in 1.8 miles according to what I read elsewhere). While walking on this trail it's hard to see too far ahead because you're in the middle of woods, so you have no idea how much further it could be, and every time you see another ridge, you're thinking "this has to be the last ridge; this trail can't keep going straight up like this," and then you find out you're wrong. All of us were dead tired by the end of it, and none of us were exactly lazy slouches. This picture was taken near the beginning of the elevator shaft.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Santa Fe Self-Portrait
At the time of this photo, about 8 years ago, I shared a casita with my roommate Will, an easy-going twenty-something about my age who made a living selling vintage western wear. I took this photo one day in December, home alone on a cold day. I took it with a small point-and-shoot digital camera, sitting upon a table, which was sitting upon a chair. I didn't have a tripod, so I stacked furniture to bring the camera to the right eye-level. Then I ran back and forth taking pictures: starting the timer, sitting in the couch, trying to look relaxed nonchalant, waiting for the picture, then running back to the camera for another. I haven't done many self-portraits, since they really are a lot of work. But on the plus side, the models work for cheap.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Hidden Lake
This picture was taken in Yosemite National Park when me and my parents and sister were backpacking on the shores of a lake called Hidden Lake. The name is rather appropriate, since the lake is difficult to find. It's nestled in a sharp valley hidden in the trees. it's an easy hike there, since it's only about two miles from the trailhead, but finding it is difficult. My family and I wandered through the area, bushwhacking through the undergrowth before it came upon us. And then the trees opened up and there it was. We camped for a few days and used this base camp as a launching point for hiking to viewpoints on the crest of the Yosemite valley.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Wishing Steps
This photo was taken a great many years when I was in high school, taking a class trip to the British Isles. Blarney Castle was one of our stops, and, as you probably know, there's a stone at the top of Blarney Castle that you kiss and it gives you the "gift of gab" making you eloquent and loquacious (two verbs one would hardly ever use to describe me, even after I kissed the Blarney Stone). But Blarney castle is also surrounded by a nice garden, and in one section are the so-called "wishing steps." It's a small tunnel cut through this really nice looking rock formation, and apparently as you walk down the steps in the tunnel, if you make a wish, it'll come true. The girl descending the steps is just another student like me, and I've always wondered what she was wishing for. I can't remember what I wished or whether it came true (I think I'd probably remember if it did), but it's still something you should walk through if you're there.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Rossville - Tugboat Graveyard View
Continuing the story of my photos in Rossville fr the last post, I walked to the other side of the oil tanks to see this view. It gives you the best perspective to see what the whole tugboat graveyard looks like. A satellite shot via google maps also gives you a good perspective (Rossville). Way in the distance, just peaking over the horizon is the Manhattan skyline, which shows you how far this place, though it's still part of New York City, is from the heart of New York City. It's amazing how some areas at the edges of the city limits of New York City, can seem like there in a whole different place.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Rossville - Oil Tanks
Continuing to describe my exploration of Rossville from my last post I can say that the tugboat graveyard is not the only spectacle of urban decay there. Right nearby were two massive Mobile oil tanks, large cylindrical drums about 100 feet high and just as wide. I climbed a fence to enter the grounds of the oil tanks, where a few cement buildings still stood, though now the whole area was completely overgrown and mostly reclaimed by nature. The tanks were old rusted monstrosities that were undoubtedly very unsafe to climb, but seeing as it looked like there would be a nice view from the top, I climbed them anyways. On the side were a set of stairs, and I climbed the ten stories worth to the top. The floors of the stairs were metal grates, permitting a few of the retracting ground below. I won't deny that I was very nervous climbing up. When I got to the top, I snapped a picture of this old winch