Category Archives: Flora

Temple Row

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One of the odd things about visiting ruins is that the tour guide books seem to always give them short shrift when it comes to photography. The books will tell you that this set of ruins is more scenic than that one, and one or two things to see at a site — but they always seem to miss a lot of really nice stuff (possibly in the interest of fitting in more plugs for affiliated hotels and such). This is one of those missed things at the Maya ruins of Tulúm, México:

Temple row

If you walk down to the far southeast corner of the ruins (on an unofficial trail), you can sight up along the coast to get this nice composition. Much better than some of the other coastal shots you can make here (and the colors came out far nicer than I’d expected they would)…

Lindsey’s shadow

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When we were in Houston a few months back, one of the places we wandered through was the Mercer Arboretum and Botanic Gardens.

Lindsey's shadow

Funny thing — I took this shot of a waterlilly (Nymphaea x “Lindsey Woods”), but didn’t notice the shadow that looks like a face in profile until I was doing a little post-processing work on the shot this morning. Kinda’ spooky…

Echinacea, 7/09/11

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My first decent shot using an old Polaroid SX-70 camera I bought off eBay, and some Impossible Project film:

Echinacea, 7/09/11

Long-story-short, now that the Impossible Project folks are producing both color and black and white film for SX-70 cameras, I thought I’d take the plunge and start experimenting with low-fi analog photography.

Here’s a shot of echinacea in our front yard, taken with my used / new (to me) SX-70 Alpha 1 SE and Impossible Project PX 70 Color Shade film.

I think it’s going to take a while to get a hang of this — the camera works just fine, but the film is a bit… tricky. In particular, it’s REALLY light sensitive for a minute or so after it comes out of the camera — and it’s prone to over-exposure too.

Oh, and did I mention film costs about $3 per exposure? Definitely gives one cause for reflection before pushing the shutter release. Once I get this down to a more-nearly-repeatable thing, I’ll do a writeup on this film and the whole process of using it.

Time to climb back down

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Two women start their descent of Structure I (as seen from Structure II) at the ancient Maya (no, not Mayan) ruins of Calakmul, México:

Time to climb back down

Structure I (a.k.a. Pyramid I) is the highest at Calakmul (by virtue of its being built on a small hill), but not the tallest. Its neighbor Structure II (a.k.a. Pyramid II) is the tallest at the site, and the largest (in bulk) too — standing about 50 meters / 160 feet tall (these numbers vary depending on the source you’re looking at). Structure I is just a few meters shorter than Structure II, meanwhile Structure II’s base is some 120 meters (390 feet) square.

Translation: they’re both really big…

Palenque’s Palace

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Shot with a long lens from the Temple of the Cross, about 1/4 mile away:

Palenque's Palace

You might think I framed this shot the way I did to heighten the contrast between the structure and its background — but actually, I was avoiding a line of tourists just off the bottom of the shot!