Q's jury rigged

This is the door to my apartment's laundry room. Apparently it's easier to cut holes in the door for vents rather than the brick walls.

Next week : "Oops"

"Jerry-rigged" due tomorrow.

/rl

Ryan's "Vacant Lot"

I really looked forward to this topic, as I rather enjoy wandering around abandoned lots and buildings. Unfortunately I was struck down by "Fall Allergies v2.0" and really didn't get out to do much exploring.

This was once a lovely mobile home park (or perhaps a meth infested shanty town). A redevelopment project led to the eviction of the residents, but it has stood vacant for at least a year...





/rl

Cory's Vacant Lot

Out here in the Chicago suburbs, vacant lots are oddly common - there are a lot of small houses that are being bought, torn down, and replaced with houses that just barely fit on their lots. There's even one a block or two away that just became a "vacant" lot (really, a construction zone) a couple of weeks ago that I thought about taking a picture of.

But, I didn't.

This weekend was "clean up the garden" weekend at our house, which involved pulling up tomato cages, tossing some rotting cucumbers to the squirrels, and covering the garden in lawnmower-run-over leaves. Now it is just a big, vacant plot of land in our back yard, waiting until next spring to come along so it can be covered in tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, corn, pumpkins, and whatever else we try to plant next year.

There was one other vacant lot I would have liked to take a picture of near me a while back: in the middle of a big empty lot behind a strip mall, there was a single port-a-potty standing watch. Every time we drove past it I pointed it out to Lis and tried to convince her it was a TARDIS. Alas, she didn't believe me, and it traveled back to the land from whence it came before I could take a picture to prove it.

Mike's "Vacant Lot"

I think I came up with this topic one night when "The Sand Lot" was on TV. Sounded like something of character then, but a vacant lot is just that; vacant. I had to go in search of ones that people were finding uses for to have any interest at all.



This shot is around the corner from the Hot Shops. I think its just a dumping ground for art projects that went unattended. I found a similar shot on Jones Street. Looks like they tried to build a stalagmite or something?

Next week :"Jerry rigged"

"Vacant lot" due tomorrow!

/rl

Q's vacant lot

After a hiatus while I was moving/settling in/living without internet, I'm back.

Craig's Tempus Fugit

Like Cory, I was looking to capture the literal essence of time flying. Mine was less esoteric, and largely involved attempts to catch a nice photo of my pocketwatch flying through the air.

This proved too complex and likely to break my watch, so I went another direction, and tried to simulate the experience. This is the pocketwatch I got in Greenwich, England. It's a nice little pocketwatch, and I wind it every morning. This watch has flown with me everywhere I've gone since getting it.

Though now, looking at it in extreme closeup, I'm wondering why it appears to say "Royal Greenwich Obserbatory" at the bottom, but I'm hoping this is just a trick of the fancy-schmancy script they wrote it in.

Ryan's "Tempus Fugit"

I shot some family portraits for friends this weekend.

Ever try getting three kids (and two adults) to pose at once? Time certainly flees:

Several hundred exposures probably resulted in 2 photos where everyone is looking at the camera. I ran out of daylight before getting what I was looking for.

I actually had much better luck taking "kid" photos than "family" photos.

/rl

Mike's Tempus Fugit

The is a willow tree that my daughter helped me plant, around about the last year the Huskers beat Oklahoma. Its at my family's farm in Holt county.


It may even be that I transported it, but mom and dad planted it. What ever the case it was just a whip of a little twig. Now, in the flash of time, it has become something I can't get my hands around.

Cory's Tempus Fugit

As I mentioned in my last post, I was in Baltimore last week at a conference. Since I knew I would be on an airplane again on Friday, I spent the whole week trying to figure out how to set up an amazing picture that showed what time it was on the plane while it was flying. It turns out that's not so easy. In the end I said "Eh, fugit" and gave up.

According to wikipedia, this "tempus fugit" phrase really meas "time flees". And that's what we have above. It turns out the time flew while I was playing with taking this shot too - there's a 45 minute difference between the first shot I took and the last.

Next week's topic

Next week: Vacant Lot.

Tempus Fugit due tomorrow!

Connect the Dots

There are many approaches to carving a pumpkin. Some involve taking a pattern on paper, laying it atop the pumpkin, and poking holes through it. Then, you pull the paper off and connect the dots.

That's not what I did. I carved the pumpkin in the upper left freehand after attempting to draw a face on it with a Sharpie that doesn't like to draw on moist pumpkin skin.

Another pumpkin carver attempted the connect-the-dots approach, but this gourd did not make it through the procedure.

In any case, I didn't use gummy candy, and that should count for something. :)

Ryan's "Connect the dots"

Ok, now what?

I thought I was being creative and original. Looks like Mike was, too.

/rl

Mike's Connect the Dots

I had a little bit of trouble with this one because I found myself eating the dots as fast as I was building my little sculpture.


It was actually my wife's idea to incorporate the box into the picture. She figured that I had some relatives that would not know what "Dots" candies were. My mother also admitted to me today, that she has not always voted for me. She would not tell me who, but it was the "Don't Touch" week.

Cory's "Connect The Dots"

I flew out last night to Baltimore to spend the next week at LISA, and I carefully waited until the flight to take this week's picture. I love the little service maps that show up in the back of in-flight magazines. I'm cheap, so normally I only see a map with a few dots connected by a few lines, but last night I flew on United and got to look at oodles of dots connected by even more lines.

Next week: "Tempus Fugit"

Tomorrow : "Connect the dots".

/rl

Cory's Door

Back in 1926 they built this fine building for St. Joseph School here in Downers Grove. The building now has various new additions and renovations, but they were nice enough to keep all of the ornateness of the doors on the original wing.

Why don't buildings look like this these-a-days?

Ryan's "Door(s)"

These ones are one way - enter only:

From Omaha's Holy Sepulcher Cemetery.

/rl

Mike's "Door"

When is a door not a door? Answer: When its a jar. The old post office building in South Omaha has a side door that is bricked up.



I found this weeks topic fun. There are lots of doors. I never really thought before about how different they all are. I discovered that some back doors are more interesting than the front! Though a little more foreboding, they seem to have more character.

Craig's Doors

We've got a new building at work, it's got a lot of doors, and almost all of them look like this.

Seven floors of doors, all made of wood.
They slide and they glide, and close pretty good.

There, a poem. For my doors.

Next Week: "Connect the Dots"

Door(s) due tomorrow! (Please, no fat dead guys in bath tubs!)

/rl

Craig's Acronym

A pedant would say that an acronym requires that the abbreviated combination of letters be pronounced as a word. SCUBA. RADAR. FUBAR. U.N.C.L.E. And so on. I am not that pedantic, as I feel common usage has changed the meaning of the word to include things like IRS, WKRP, and TLA. Luckily, my submission works either way.

I work at a place that goes by the unfortunate three letter moniker of "ANL". Unfortunate, because even if you don't pronounce it like a word, you're still pretty much saying "anal".

This amuses me to no end.

That's the type of guy I am.

A former division of this ANL place was the Pulsed Neutron Source. PNS.

The ANL PNS.

Again, this amuses me to no end. Yes, I know. This is why I don't have children.

In an attempt to make the name less embarrassing, they called it the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source. This leads people who think like I do to go down one of two roads.

1) The Intense PNS.

2) The iPNS. New from Apple.

Regardless, I'm giggling all the way down either road.

I'm not sure what a sweating cylinder has to do with intense pulsed neutrons, but this is the logo found on a ruler that was some shwag from the now defunct division.

The ANL iPNS ruler. For measuring... something.

I'm sorry.

Cory's Acronym

To find a good acronym, one needs to look no further than the world of computing. My officemate was reading RFC 4391 (Transmission of IP over InfiniBand (IPoIB)) last week, and when he started complaining of ill-defined acronyms I knew I had found my winner. This isn't a particularly photogenic shot, but it sure is chock-full of acronyms.

Ryan's "Acronym"

SCUBA, or Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, is extremely useful when you need to work on the bottom of a pond.



One of the subdivisions I manage had a pipe in the pond that needed to be capped. At one point it contained electrodes for a depth sensor that controlled the well that fills the pond. That system has been removed, leaving a pipe that threatened to drain the pond.

I asked a friend who leads a nearby volunteer fire department's dive team to help me out. For some reason he and a friend were all excited about going swimming in 40 degree (F) water....

/rl

Mike's "Acronym"

This company in Millard always intrigued me because I could never figure out what the letters B.I.G. stood for. I even went to their website, and some others that showed up in Google to try an figure it out. Still. It has periods, it must be an acronym, or the joke is on all of us!



I also checked the German cemetery at 138 & Harrison for an R.I.P. given the season, but Germans don't seem to do tacky things like that on their markers. I did not realize how many old markers were in that cemetery. You should visit, and take a camera.

- M. Mueller

"Door(s)" next week!

PYAT! *

/rl

*(Post Your Acronyms Tomorrow)

Cory's "Trees for the Forest"

There are a number of trees that overhang my house, and sometimes I feel like I need to clean the gutters out every single time it rains. But here's a corner I haven't gotten to for a while - right up next to the house it doesn't really contribute to clogging much. These are the little trees that I've been growing all summer for the forest. I guess it will be time to transplant them soon.

Ryan's "Trees for the Forest"

Quentin and I went wandering at Heron Haven, a little nature preserve in Omaha. At times it was difficult to see the forest for the trees (although the snow played a part, too):




/rl

Mike's "Trees for the Forest"

I suppose I should be out taking pictures of fall foliage. My daughter and I are going to do that this week if the sun comes out.

Ideas for this one popped into my head all week. Like, the garage where I can't find anything. I decided to apply it to what I do for a living. I'm a computer nerd.



Sometimes, when you have worked on a project for hours, the answer is simple, but you can no longer see "The Trees for the Forest". The function only returns the word "Forest" because it has an error in it.

Craig's Trees For the Forest

We have a new building at work. It borders a forest preserve. Right outside my window, I see a giant oak tree (behind a chain link fence). It has these balconies on floors 2 through 6 that look out over the preserve to the north. It's quite a pretty view.

I had a hard time deciding which shot I liked best. In my runners up, I like this one because it shows the line between the forest and the building pretty nicely. And this one I like because it shows the leaves changing (and I love using my 300mm lens).

But I'm throwing in with this one. I think I like this one best because of the sky. Thus, I present my Trees for the Forest. Without them, Waterfall Glen would be a pretty weird forest preserve.

(Fun fact: Waterfall Glen is not named such because it has a waterfall. It was, in fact, named Rocky Glen, but was renamed in honor of Seymour "Bud" Waterfall.)

(Funner fact: I'm not making that up.)

Mike has taken control!

(but I know where he lives..)

Mike and I have discussed getting a hostname for this blog, but never followed through. From the email I just received, it seems he picked up weeklyphotography.org:

_____SNIP______
Its set up, and it looks like the DNS has populated... that does not mean it has populated everywhere yet, so if you hear of any problems, let me know and I will back the change off...

http://www.weeklyphotography.org/

http://weeklyphotography.org/

and

http://weeklyphotography.blogspot.com/

Should redirect here.


ha ha ha ha, I'm in complete control !!! (well, OK anyone with admin can change it back to the way it was)

____UNSNIP____

We didn't discuss this with anyone else, so speak up if you don't like it.

Thanks Mike!

Back to your regularly scheduled photo contest.

/rl

Next week : "Acronyms"

"Trees for the forest" due tomorrow.

/rl

Q's post-911

Much like Cory, I've got to make this a place-holder post. I've spent the past few days in Vancouver, B.C. and haven't been able to put any thought into my photo. Soon, though. Soon.

Craig's Post 9/11

I wanted to go take pictures of airplanes and trains, but that's been problematic for the past 8 years for some reason.

Cory's Post 9/11

Lis, Maddy, and I headed up to Minneapolis this last weekend to visit Mary, Sandy, and Will for a few days. On the way I saw this weird trailer go past, and on it was an even weirder sticker. I don't really know what it means: If you threaten us with a revolver, we won't call the police? We'll threaten you with our revolver instead of calling the police? If you have a heart attack or your house is on fire, we'll give you a revolver instead of calling for help? I just can't quite make sense of it.

Whatever the case, when I saw it and managed to get a picture, I turned to Lis and said "That's gonna be my 'Post 9/11' picture!" Had I planned ahead far enough I would have sent myself a postcard on September 11 and then taken a picture of the postmark (Get it? Ha!), but I think this little sticker nicely embodies the subject at hand.

Ryan's "Post 9/11"

I had planned to take a photo similar to this one, but with the Bill of Rights rights burning instead of the demonic Sudoku from hell. Unfortunately I forgot to take a copy of the Bill of Rights with me... so much for my political statement.

Instead, I give you a red tree. As much as the September 11 attacks affected the United States (and the rest of the world) life goes on. The seasons have continued to change.


/rl

Michael's "Post 9/11"

After 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security was formed. A division of that department is “Rural Addressing”. Counties were ask to replace their ambiguous “rural routes” with grid type street mapping based off the county seat or some other large city in the area. Even the dirt road leading down to our farm in the sand hills now has a street number.

The department has asked counties to use large legible green signs with reflective white lettering. Though not a mandate, this is their suggestion and what they will help fund. I do not know if I drove far enough to find a newly marked intersection for this picture, but I thought it interesting that a newer marker had been put up, yet the old remains.

Beware terrorist cells attempting your startup on some out of the way pig farm. We know your address.

"Post 9/11" due before bed tonight!

Many apologies for being late - I was out of the reach of the interwebz this weekend.

Let's do "Trees for the Forest" next.

/rl

Q's "on the verge"

I'm on the verge of moving and have this (and lots of other) paperwork to do.

Craig's On The Verge

I'm sorry I have nothing new this week, so I offer this from the archives.

At the top of Mauna Kea, almost 8:00 Hawaii time. It's on the verge between day and night, and you're on the verge of being able to make out my subject!

Ryan's "On the verge"

We're on the verge of fall in Nebraska. Trees are starting to change, nights are cool, and the sun is setting earlier and earlier.

I wandered around at Schramm Park today. This is the best I could come up with:


/rl

Cory's "On the Verge"

As you can see, we're on the verge of starvation in the Lueninghoener household.

Sadly, there's no exciting story behind this one. It's just a can of Quality Kraut in an empty cupboard. Mmm, Kraut!

Mike's "On the Verge"

The Sapp Brothers truck stop at Highway 50 and I-680 has an iconic water tower that has been around as long as I can remember. It looks like a large coffee pot. My first memories of it are from trips to Gretna to see relatives. It and Gretna seemed so far away then, but the city has grown. It's “on the verge” of a new look.



Most of us who travel by it, are used to its red, white and black colors. The last couple of weeks, it has been under this large paint curtain with a coat of white on it. It is an odd site. I'm sure the guy working on it, feels “on the verge” as well! I should mention that Sapp Brothers is a chain, and that there are many of these water towers in the mid-West.

Next week: "Post 9/11"

"On the verge" is on the verge of being due.

/rl

Q's "don't touch"

This is a sign I've always liked on a statue of a horse not far from my apartment.

Craig's Don't Touch!

I started taking ukulele lessons. Just because. Unfortunately, I have wide fingertips, which means I'm having the same issue on the uke as I was with the guitar -- dead strings. So I kludged up a solution!

I bought a baritone uke (it's *biiig*), and strung it up with tenor strings (since baritones have a different tuning). Now my fingers aren't covering more strings than they're supposed to be!

New instruments are a bear to keep in tune. I imagine my kludge-y stringing is even more so. So it's nice and satisfying when I can light up my tuner all green with perfectly tuned strings. But it's super-sensitive. Once you get it in tune, you don't want to touch those pegs. Example demonstrated here.

Ryan's "Don't Touch!"

Roses have an odd way of saying "I am soft" and "Don't Touch!" at the same time.

Incidentally, they are apparently tasty in drinks, too.



/rl

Mikes "Don't Touch!"

This week I found myself in all sorts of peril. I tried to take pictures of Wasps and Bees. I attempted to take a dog's bone away from him.

I imagine that I had found a rattle snake, I would have tried to milk it.

Cory's "Don't touch!"

We've been giving Maddy actual food lately: bananas, green beans, rice cereal - the normal stuff. In the above case she was "eating" apple sauce, which involves intercepting the spoon as it approaches her mouth and pulling the food off with her hand. After each "eating" episode, we have two parents with sticky hands and one baby with sticky everything. You definitely don't want to touch her after that.

On a side note, I believe that the cleanup of eating babies is a great study in exponential decay. If you clean the high chair tray first, she dirties it up again with her hands. If you clean her hands first, she messes them up again from the contents of the tray. Instead, you have to trade back and forth between the two, cleaning off one half-life worth of goo with each pass. Eventually the amount of mess remaining drops below ambient levels and she is safe to handle again.

Next week - "On the verge"

"Don't Touch!" is due tomorrow.

/rl

Craig's Fingerprint

I own a few computers, and almost all of them have glass screens. It's taking some getting used to, even though I'm approaching a year of use -- the matte screen is just better at hiding flaws. But the glass screens are so bright and vibrant. Honestly, I don't know what I prefer. It sure does attract fingerprints, though.

Cory's Fingerprint

"And friends, somewhere in Washington, enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints."

Ryan's "Fingerprint"

It seems there's always some jerk that can't look at the little map to figure out which chocolate is which:

The culprit left partial fingerprints. I need the CSI folks - but not CSI Miami. I can't stand David Caruso.

/rl

Mike's "Fingerprint"

I wanted to do some real CSI work, but I would probably just end up implicating myself that the prints on the garage light switch are mine.

We have a Family Video down the street from us, and what you see below is a common problem.



If your kid comes to you with a PBJ sandwich and wonders why his Wii does not work. Check the disk.

Next week: "Don't Touch!"

I think Cory came up with this topic after being inspired by Maddy.

"Fingerprint" due tomorrow.

/rl

Mike's "Fractal"

Sorry, I am late. I spent the weekend on the family homestead, though I took quite a few pictures there.

Being an aging techie, this should not have been so difficult for me. Having owned computers where the memory was measured in kilobytes, fractal generators were quite common for break time amusement. Very long breaks.

I too decided to look for fractals in nature. I explored pond scum, cow poop, blow-outs, anything with repeating patterns, and this is my submission.




I also considered using this picture of what I believe to be ragweed.

Q's fractal

My fractal is a stretch. It's along the same lines as Ryan's -- in that it's one that appears in nature -- but in this case it's one I'm depicting. This is a frame from a time-interval video that I'm putting together on an illustration I'm working on. In this part I'm cutting out a tree trunk.

Ryan's "Fractal"

A fractal often enjoyed with cheese:




/rl

Cory's Fractal

A few years ago, I was inspired by a picture I found in the internetses to build some Mega Lego: large-scale versions of normal Lego pieces. Luckily, I never took them apart and was able to pull them out for a quick fractal photo shoot. I also built a washing machine piece, but I sadly wasn't able to find it for this picture.

And yes, you can build stuff with the big pieces. Just not very exciting stuff.

"Fractal" due today!

Next week we will do "Fingerprint".

/rl

Q's questionable

Last week I borrowed a stamp set from my friend Casey for a project. On the night I returned them to her, I remembered hearing of a man on a bus with 'c-a-s-h o-n-l-y' tattooed on his knuckles, and I couldn't help but replicate that. I'd always wondered what line of work a man might be in that would prompt him to advise on his fists that his services are only available via cash payment. I'm sure it's questionable, though. Thanks to Casey for the help on it . . .

Ryan's "Questionable"

So I had the honor of attending a baby shower this weekend. Thankfully, scary games involving diapers and chocolate were only discussed, not played.

The father showed up wearing this shirt:


I though his chances of survival were pretty questionable.

/rl