For the Week of Dec. 13- Christmas!

 Christians in Indonesia attend a Christmas mass in a stadium. I've been looking for a picture that FEELS like Christmas for a long time to make my desktop background, and think I may have finally found one. You don't see the volume of people in the stadium, but the candles are a beautiful testament to how many people have gathered. Take some time to look at people's faces; there are lots of little stories being played out all over the picture. Many are simply peaceful, and I love that.

 Christmas lights behind a tree branch in Seville, Spain. I noticed in my own pictures from Christmas that lights look like this when out of focus, but I've never seen such a beautiful picture made utilizing that phenomenon.

This is a tree decorated with battery-powered lights in Canada. I love the cold gray feel of it, with the only warm colors emitting from the tree and car lights. The first night star appears in the sky. It's just a wintery, beautiful scene, and that's that!

For the Week of Dec. 6- Unusual Silhouettes

At first glance, this eerie figure cuts a close resemblance to a KKK member. However, it is actually a  penitent from "La Sed" brotherhood, walking to the church to take part in a procession in Seville, Spain, during Easter week. I love the framing of the figure, and the almost perfect color matches in the dirt and window panes, and black windows and black figure. 

 This is a Muslim woman walking in an alley on her way to worship at a mosque in Palestine during Ramadan. It is such a figurative representation of Islamic women and the concept of identity hidden by veiling--here, the women is nothing but her white veil. It's ghostlike and beautiful, but sad.

 An Afghan man walks on the street as the sun sets in Southern Afghanistan. There is nowhere flat enough in the America I know to take a picture that makes it look like one is walking on the sun, or directly next to the sun. He looks like the last man alive on earth. 

For the Week of Nov. 29- Nighttime

 A beautiful fog lies over Hong Kong at nighttime, twisting and blending the colors and lights so that it looks like tie-die or a dream.

 Mosques in old Cairo during Ramadan...will I ever see a moon this size or a night sky framed by such exotic and elegant shapes? The building structures are not shapes we are used to associating with a city sky line, and that moon is simply incredible, lending more mystique to the Middle East.

A torchbearer carries a flame beginning a festival followed by 28 horse riders in Sioux Valley Dakota, Manitoba. Once again, we see a moon and unexpected silhouettes, although the moon is not as thrilling in this picture. The colors of the sky are far more brilliant, and the whole shadow procession from left to right in the frame tells a story that makes us wonder exactly what is going on in this scene.

For the Week of Nov. 22- Hajj part 2

 There are many photos on the internet of the Kaaba during the pilgrimage, but this one, because of the time of day and play of shadows, suggests redemption and judgment, light and dark, lost and found. By the way, I posted all these pictures of hajj because I am about to travel to Saudi Arabia over break, not because I am Muslim:)

 This man is praying atop Noor mountain at sunrise overlooking Mecca. How incredible are the silhouettes, sunrise colors, and city lights in this photo? It was just the right time of day and just the right exposure time to make it look like this man has arisen early even as the city has not yet gone to sleep. 

Muslims wrote and touch the Jabal al-Rahma pillar on Mount Arafat in Saudi Arabia. I have never seen anything made this black with writing. It's even neater once you realize it's in Arabic. The writing makes me want to unlayer the writing and look at individual names and religious messages, decipher what people were thinking as they came to this holiest of holy sites.

For the Week of Nov. 15- Hajj, part 1

 These photos are all from the 2010 annual hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. All Muslims who are able are expected to make the journey once in their life. Millions of people come into Saudi Arabia every year for it. Here, men stand from the top of Noor mountain, looking onto Mecca. I love the feeling of intimacy we get with the silhouettes of the men, framed by city lights. It's a highly mysterious and somehow still holy-seeming photo. 

 Sometimes, I tend to think of America as the epicenter of the world, downplaying all other regions and their religions subconsciously. This photo of Muslim pilgrims circling the Kaaba at the center of the Grand mosque in Mecca is a tiny percentage of the world's 1 billion Muslims, and yet you get a true feeling that this place and these people are at the center of the world.

Here, pilgrims move around the kaaba inside the Grand Mosque. The long time exposure gives you a sense of the movement and quickness with which the outer spectators pray, compared to the inner group, who is content to remain near the kaaba longer without moving. Again, it looks like the center of the world.

For Week of Nov. 8- More snow!

 This is a long-exposure picture of an annual torchlit ski run in Colorado. It's confusing, because at first it looks like car headlights, but they are fire-colored, and who could drive so safely on that snow?

 Street performers near a gate in Berlin. I like the whimsy in this picture, how it looks like a movie still at first, but you realize quickly that there is something distinctly un-American about it, despite the American subject. What Star Wars would look like if it was set in Pennsylvania...or Berlin.

"The sun breaks through the fog over the inner harbor as below zero temperatures grip Stockholm, Sweden." How crazy is this? Because you cannot see any other identifying landmarks, it looks like it might be a shot from the 19th century, and the sun sort of looks like the moon. It's like Never Land, where there are two suns and moons. The dim building outlines look almost like mountains, and the color is beautiful, pinks and grays. 

For the Week of Nov. 1- Snow!

 I am wishing for snow lately, and so this and the following post are going to be dedicated to some beautiful frozen condensation. I love this photo because it would be interesting enough with the mountain range and city lights in the valley, but the stars in time-lapse are incredible, and I've never seen a picture like that taken in this setting. Looks unreal.

 This looks a lot like what Mercer looked like last winter, with snow illuminated by the lampposts in a warm orange light. This photo gives the feeling of safeness, softness, of being outside in fresh snow at nighttime, which I used to enjoy when I lived in Pennsylvania. The backlighting is beautiful.

I can't remember where this is, but at first, it looks like waves or heat waves in the desert with a strange mist and mirage. Instead, it's strangely blown snow and fog in Switzerland. Very mysterious, symmetrical, and visually pleasing. The snow detail in the foreground is very pretty, looks like glitter.