Category Archives: Pictures

In Focus with Alan Taylor

Alan Taylor created The Big Picture at Boston.com when he was working at the site. He’d been monitoring the wire services for photos for years, finding them a rich source for telling stories of the day in a dense and moving way. The site agreed, and he built the feature, assembling wire (and some other) photos into essays that are beautiful but also thoughtful and honest.

The Atlantic, a old media publication that has been embracing the Web with stunning effect, has been assembling an incredible team of voices for its site, and it wisely snapped Taylor up this year.

Now Taylor’s new home is live. I think you’re going to want to follow it.

In Focus with Alan Taylor [web]
In Focus with Alan Taylor [Twitter]

Lazarus Hen

And what’s not to love? There’s something intrinsically happy about a chicken. The name: a little hiccup in the mouth. The shape: a jaunty upswing of feathers, a grin. The ceaseless bobbing, scratching, pecking. It’s nearly impossible to feel melancholy in the company of chickens. They are a balm for the weary urban soul….

Imagine our dismay last June, then, when Gertrude, a Rhode Island Red and our prize layer, was stolen.

Chicken Vanishes, Heartbreak Ensues

I’ll Take Three

My Staircase is a shelving unit that combines a bookshelf with a pullout stair system in the bottom three shelves. The shelving unit is 2.6 meters high and the top shelves are accessible by using the bottom shelves as steps for accessing the higher shelves. —Danny Kuo

More

Artificial Tree Stands

Dutch photographer Gerco de Ruijter has taken a series of photographs of tree nurseries and grid forests in the Netherlands using a camera mounted on a fishing rod. They are both hard to recognize and unlike aerial photographs. I like this one, but most of them have a very different sense, exploiting the wide angle of the lens and shadows thrown by the trees.

“On top of this rod is a 2.5″ x 2.5″ camera with a wide-angle lens. A self-timer is adjusted to give me enough time to telescope the rod and manoeuver the camera above the subject. The frame of the image begins in front of my own shoes and measures roughly 30′ x 30′.”

More about these photos and an exhibit of them

Welfare Queen

She’s still there.

A Cooper’s hawk flew into the Library of Congress last week. In a series of blog posts, the LoC recounts the efforts to identify this bird and form a plan to retrieve her and help her out of the building. She has since stolen bait food that was intended to lure her into a trap (for relocation), and I wonder if she’s planning to settle in. After all, it’s a pretty nice gig – weather protection, some gorgeous clear sight lines I’m guessing, and free delivery.

Watching Our Researchers Like a Hawk
And Watch a Hawk Makin’ Lazy Circles in the Dome
Time for Another Hawk Update

Update: She “finally got evicted”.