First things first

Here’s an amazing time-lapse video of Yosemite. The nighttime shots are especially stunning.

I need to go out west again.

Photos of everything one man ate during 2010. Everything.

It’s an overview of one person’s diet. Judging by the the appearance of the tag cloud (with things like “chocolate” and “tortilla chips” feature prominently), it doesn’t look particularly extraordinary. But seeing everything laid out, especially in the monthly views—that is pretty amazing.

An artist stuck a high-speed camera out the window of a high-speed train as it passed through a crowded train station on a Saturday morning. The result is something that looks like a dream:

The filmmaker describes how he made this film here.

The three of us spent the first weekend of October in New York City. My brother and Jan’s brother both live there, as does one of my oldest friends (we’ve known each other since high school), who let us stay in her apartment while she and her family stayed with her parents a few floors up in the same building. Not only is her place huge by NYC standards (two bedrooms and free parking in the attached garage), but it’s just one subway stop from Grand Central, right across the East River from Midtown. Not having to deal with driving around and parking in Manhattan = lovely.

Here’s the view from the park right next to her building, in the morning…

…and at night.

We weren’t in Serious Tourist Mode this weekend, preferring to focus on hanging out with our families and friends. The weather was fabulous–we lucked out in that our visit took place during the two-day lull in NYC’s heavy rainstorms–so we spent a lot of time outside.

In addition to playing in the park near my friend’s apartment (a park which had some of the coolest playground equipment I’ve ever seen–climbing! spinning! what fun!), we walked around the city a bit. I am especially fond of being in NYC before 10 a.m. or so on weekend mornings, when everything is quiet and it seems that the city has just gone to bed.

We spent pretty much all of Sunday in Central Park, a place so huge and varied that even an entire day isn’t time to begin to explore it. We’d been there before, though–and Jan grew up in the NYC area and knows the park pretty well–so we knew which parts we wanted to visit. Sylvia wanted to visit the “sisters and brothers playground” (jump to 2:26), and then we hung out at the Central Park Zoo with our friends. After they went home (naptime for their kids), the three of us headed to the Alice in Wonderland statue.

What an amazing sculpture! I love seeing which parts have been made shiny by the touches of countless little hands. And I love seeing children crawl and climb all of it–totally in keeping with the sculptor’s intent. We spent a good half our there ourselves. The only thing that persuaded Sylvia to leave…

…was the promise of a ride on the Central Park carousel. This thing is over 100 years old and features handcarved wooden horses. It was originally set up in Coney Island was but moved to a covered pavilion in Central Park a few decades ago. It’s also huge, has a real calliope inside, and offers the longest carousel ride I’ve ever experienced: for two bucks, you get to go around (at a good clip, too) for about seven minutes!

A couple of months ago I heard about Worldwide Moment 2010, “a not-for-profit simultaneous photography event to create international peace, art, and cultural awareness.” This year’s date-and-time combination: 10.10.10 at 10:10 a.m. GMT.

What an awesome idea.

I signed up right away and last night set my alarm for 6 a.m. I went downstairs in my dark house, set up my shot, and took the photo at exactly 6:10 a.m.

I wanted to minimize my use of artificial light, but because it was predawn (but only just–sunrise was only a few minutes away), there wasn’t any natural light available. Today is also happens to be the day after John Lennon’s birthday. So what I came up with thematically seemed appropriate to me:

This was fun. I think next year’s event will be 11.11 at 11:11 a.m. I’ll be there.

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(I’ve posted this photo to Twitter and Flickr, but I’ve decided not to post it to the Worldwide Moment website because I’m uncomfortable with the terms in their Material Submission Authorization and Agreement. I realize that WWM is a nonprofit, and I don’t expect to get paid for my contribution. But I’m not going to grant them a “perpetual” license and let them use it “for any purposes whatsoever, through any forum or media possible,” with only the possibility that they “may attribute my submission to me.”

Jordan Matter’s Dancers Among Us photography project takes professional dancers from several companies and puts in NYC locations, in everyday settings. The results are amazing.

The deluge is just around the corner!

Look at all that pollen!

Two and two are fourFour and four are eightEight and eight are sixteenSixteen and sixteen are thirty-twoInchworm, inchwormMeasuring the marigoldsYou and your arithmeticYou’ll probably go farInchworm, inchwormMeasuring the marigoldsSeems to me you’d stop and seeHow beautiful they are

During our get-together in Pigeon Forge, my friends and I focused mostly on hanging out together. We did some shopping, did a lot of eating, threw a surprise baby shower for one person (at which I gave her the recently completed baby cardigan), watched some movies, and talked a lot.It was all great fun, but I couldn’t be so close to mountains and forests without going for a hike. So I spent a morning with one of the friends (the other three weren’t interested in getting up at 6 a.m. to catch the good light and beat the crowds) hiking in nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park.By arriving early, we managed to see some of the rising mist that gave the mountains their name.We spent a few hours on the AT and met several volunteers who were working on the trails that day. One of them, Pete, looked to be in his sixties, and when he stopped to chat I realized that, in addition to the loaded pack on his back, he was wearing a full tool belt and carrying in his hands a pickaxe, a sledgehammer, and an axe–and he was cruising along at a good clip and barely out of breath. Wow.On the trail, I always see lots of interesting things that I try to photograph……but the pictures never seem to do them justice. I think you need to smell the air and hear the sounds around you, too, to get a good sense of the place.In the visitor’s center, I kinneared this girl who was taking her Junior Ranger oath. I was struck by her seriousness about the whole thing. I wonder if, once she gets home, she’ll forget the interest in nature that motivated her to complete this program, or if she’ll grow up to be a tree hugger.