More Rome. Pantheon door. It's the original, installed during the reign of Roman emperor Hadrian. Bronze.
Pantheon ceiling. That's all concrete.


Edited: 11/19/2021 at 08:46 PM by ww

Spiny tree in the Bonsai Gallery at Heathcote Botanical Gardens. No one wanted to get poked, so I volunteered to light it.

Rain Forest.

Blue tree. Main lawn, lots of lighted caladiums

Edited: 11/29/2021 at 09:16 AM by ww

Heathcote Garden of Lights 2021

Heathcote main lawn

Edited: 03/18/2023 at 11:36 PM by ww

Some magical images there ww, please keep going.

I love the skull for a bookmark in the Caravaggio and the wonderful lighted banzai tree with the hint of purple in the background.

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I was right.

The bonsai tree is a Pithecellobium from Brazil. The big P. dulce was a popular street tree in PR when I was a kid, but it fell out of favor for being really vulnerable to wind, or just plain falling down. There's a couple of small ones native to the Keys.

Probably the most beautiful tree in the Gallery is a jaboticaba, the tree famous for having grape-like fruits on its older branches. It took me a long time to appreciate that its crown is shaped a lot like a cloak, with the front open so you can appreciate the tree's body.

The skull is with Saint Jerome, who "revised" the old Latin version of the Bible. His biggest decision was to translate the Jewish Bible from the Hebrew rather than the Greek translation that the New Testament writers used. His project was well financed and he set up a sort of Bible institute in Bethlehem. The Latin Bible gets official revisions, but it's basically Jerome's words that Catholics used for many centuries. Getting to see top Caravaggio paintings was worth the trip. I really enjoyed walking the streets.

The lighting technique the masters used sets them apart from all others in my opinion. It gives a haunting, yet appealing touch to the already exquisite craftsmanship.

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I was right.

Caravaggio almost single handedly invented dramatic lighting. He was a sensation, Rome's best-paid painter until he killed someone and had to flee.

That Madonna of Loreto showing off her huge baby Jesus (above Jerome with the skill) is very highly regarded. After it, he kept getting more theatrical/dramatic, which some like, others not so much. The painting was in a church around the corner from my little hotel room. Some construction work was going on next to it, lighting was awful, and I could see the painting better through my camera's electronic viewfinder than I could with naked eye. My photo probably doesn't have quite enough contrast, but just having it (no flash, no tripod) is something of a miracle.

I

saw the Colonna palazzo, which was exquisite with very good art. Then the Borgia villa. They had the Caravaggios and incredible Bernini sculptures. Those works have been in the villa ever since they were made. Here's Bernini's David with someone else's painting of David with Goliath's head.

Caravaggio's David. The head is said to be a self portrait of the artist.

Laocoön and his sons. He was a Trojan priest who offended Apollo (in Virgil's Aeneid, by warning about the Greeks' wooden horse), so he and his sons were done in by Apollo's serpents. The statue group is supposedly ancient, but it was restored by a young Michelangelo. No one knows exactly what Michelangelo did.

Edited: 07/30/2023 at 02:53 PM by ww

Fun with caladiums. They shouldn't be up at the end of December, but the weather was warm. This is at night, with small colored floodlights aimed upward from under the leaves.

The flamingo started life as a welded metal flower pot holder. It was transformed with white LED lights, carefully painted coral pink or yellow. One remains white, as the flamingo's eye. The caladiums in back have little floodlights shining up through the leaves. Heathcote Botanical Gardens, Fort Pierce, December.

Another Wedge, June 3 2021. Not a great photo but the ominous color seems apropos.

Video grab. 60º water, about 60º air, this guy was skinning it. Old school: DaFins not Yucca.

This video was taken a few mnutes earlier. The yellow-tipped fins disappearing into the top of the wave are the same bodysurfer. BTW, the wave was not ridable. The swimmer at bottom (I think a lifeguard on break) ducked under.

Recent re-edit of a fuzzy old photo from Wabasso (currently closed for beach nourishment).

Edited: 02/09/2022 at 07:11 AM by ww

Southwest at sunset

About the only charming buildings at Big State U, dorms from 1920s and after WWII. The one at the center of the photo was built with generous donations as Big State's Athletic Dorm. Once it was built, the faculty voted to not allow athletic dorms. There's never been an official one since, but I lived across the stair landing from a basketball guy and above a gymnast who made it to the Olympics.

Edited: 04/26/2022 at 11:23 PM by ww

Lego model of a new rowing and water education center for Norfolk Botanical Garden.

Annapolis, Naval Academy at the far edge of town.

Patuxent River, Maryland. East of Washington DC

Nags Head, First Colony Inn late at night. A certified Historic Building.

Edited: 11/18/2022 at 04:01 PM by ww

New toy. Yellow Hand Job with an older Taylor's Mistake. Photo taken on Balboa Island

Desert mountain stream, N side of I-15 near Whitewater in eastern California.

Newport Beach. Not a flat day, but not much for photos.

Edited: 04/06/2022 at 04:36 AM by ww

Phoenix suburbia.

Edited: 11/18/2022 at 04:12 PM by ww

The round windows are Nagakin Capsule Tower. The idea was that the frame of the building would be permanent, but capsules, each with a round window, could be removed and replaced as needed. It was intended to be a sort of elegant crash pad for office workers who were expected to be in central Tokyo, late, but whose homes were way out in the 'burbs. It's now being demolished.

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More Newport Beach. Waterfront promenade going through backyards.

/BULLET]

Edited: 04/21/2022 at 08:15 PM by ww

Wabasso, May 2021. lots of Sargassum

Nice to live close to the Air Show.

A cat photo was inevitable.

Edited: 05/05/2022 at 11:35 AM by ww

Good stuff!

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I was right.

Thanks, Cole.

This, oddly, is my most popular Flickr picture right now. Yucca fins seem to attract.

Beach flowers near the Wedge

Late afternoon light in the yard. The shorter palm at left center with spreading leaves is Dypsis plumosa, which received its scientific name a few years after it was planted. Red fruits behind the Dypsis are on Archontophoenix tuckeri from northern Queensland. Lots of seedlings.

Edited: 06/03/2022 at 08:14 AM by ww

Matt Buchanan of Wrightsville Beach skimming at Newport Beach. Brad Domke was there, too.

moon with planets, April 27 2022

Edited: 01/31/2023 at 08:38 PM by ww