Tag Archives: stones

Bench, Wall With Fado Tiles

Bench, Wall With Fado Tiles
“Bench, Wall With Fado Tiles” — A bench on a slanted sidewalk and a wall with Fado tiles, Lisbon.

I love little off-kilter scenes like this one. In the center are two tile illustrations of the fado music tradition of Portugal. (The tiles were seen in an earlier post on this website.) They are aligned to perfect verticals and horizontals. But everything else tilts — the bench on the cobbled sidewalk, the pipe that frames the image, the wiring attached to the walls. A door at the left, barely intruding into the frame, is the only other thing that lines up.

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Woman With Blue Bags, Alfama

Woman With Blue Bags, Alfama
“Woman With Blue Bags, Alfama” — A woman carrying heavy blue bags walks along past weathered buildings along a curving Alfama street, Lisbon.

This photograph is a result of one of the quick, unexpected encounters that occur when doing street photography. Sometimes they happen so fast that there is hardly time to photograph. This one was brief, but not so quick that I couldn’t make a couple of photographs.

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A Boundary

A Boundary
“A Boundary” — Cracked dry mud meets ejected volcanic materials.

Speaking as a complete non-expert, I think that what we’re looking at here is a boundary between the low point of a small playa-like section of dried earth and a slightly higher area with black pebbles. The pebbles appear to be volcanic material from a nearby eruption that took place hundreds or thousands of years ago. (The particular feature may have erupted as recently as 800 years, though it has also possibly been longer.)

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Mud And Stones

Mud And Stones
“Mud And Stones” — Dark stones embedded in dry, cracked mud, Death Valley.

This little geological vignette intrigued me. While exploring an area in Death Valley featuring very dark, fine gravel that almost has the appearance of shallow dunes, I came across low flat areas where water has obviously collected in the past. Now there was a surface of old mud, cracked into separate pieces as it dried, a familiar desert sight. But here this surface was pockmarked with small black stones.

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