A summer sensory triptych: Warm sand, warm breeze, and warm colors from the July 4th fireworks.
Tag: travel
Sandy View
The school year has started and now summer travels are memories. The fuzzy, insubstantial people of this long-exposure photograph kind of match the feeling of fading reminiscences.
Along the River in Old Town
This expanse of dramatic clouds, Petrin Hill, and the Vltava River was across the street from our hotel in Prague. While always a gorgeous view, most evenings brought rain instead of this kind of skyscape. I was lucky to find this scene on the final night of the trip.
Consequences of Cold Wars
We visited Prague more than a year ago, arriving (without perhaps fully considering it) on the thirtieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. Strolling between the shops of Wenceslas Square, my brain worked overtime to connect the place with the images of protests in 1989 and the great changes that had come about in the time since.
Kafka Statue
There is more than one statue of Franz Kafka in Prague, but this mirrored head with rotating segments (see the motion blur at the jawline) was the most dramatic I visited. At the time, the head was, naturally, the most surreal aspect of the location. In the present, the crowds of people on the night street (also visible in the reflective base) are perhaps more shocking.
Photographing Prague Castle
It turned out that, after a week of bland gray skies, I wasn’t the only person attracted to Prague Castle on a beautiful afternoon.
Stairs Beyond Prague Castle
While Prague Castle’s position on a hilltop is apparent from the south side, the opposite side of the fortress is equally isolated from its surroundings by a steep and wooded hillside.
Greenhouse
This greenhouse was adjacent to the Royal Gardens in Prague Castle. Though I assume that its mission is to nurture and prepare specimens to join the garden, the exotic incongruity of a geodesic cylinder amid centuries-old castle grounds makes it a far more exciting find than I expected.
Rainy Day at Multnomah Falls
Evoking superhuman scale in photographs really requires a human scale bar, and the tiny people on the bridge were obliging enough to wear rain jackets in red, yellow, and turquoise that stand out from the natural hues.
Preparing in Prague
This corner of Prague Castle is in an area historically home to women of the castle; I can’t imagine the experience, a couple of hundred of years ago, of dressing in the morning with the view of Old Town across the river.
Prague and Petřín
Much like Manhattan’s Central Park, Prague’s Petřín is (in part) a demonstration of the will and effort required on the part of a city to maintain green spaces. Once they become part of the city’s identity (as in those aforementioned cases), they exist in a space orthogonal to modern real estate development.
Charles Bridge
Prague’s Charles Bridge is centuries-old, covered in statues, and seemly perpetually mobbed. We visited during the off-season (November) and never saw the bridge without plenty of company. Perhaps the best part of the visit, though, was staying adjacent to the bridge in the Smetana Hotel, looking out over the Vltava (and crossing the bridge on many of our adventures around the city.)
From up close, the hotel is easier to find, but small triangle park across the street from the hotel is still not visible from this angle, making the the geometry of the ground floor and the street outside escheresque.
Finally Daylight in Prague
After a week of overcast November days, the emergence of Rayleigh-scattered blue in the skies above Prague meant I hurried to the top of St. Vitus Cathedral to get the pictures of Old Town of which I’d been dreaming.
Verticality in Prague
The compactness of European cities, particularly ones like Prague that are situated in valleys, leads to these kinds of spectacularly vertical spaces. Each street seems to be stacked nearly on top of the next.
On the hilltops above those city streets, inside Prague Castle, the space continues to be used efficiently.
Above the castle structures, the spires of St. Vitus Cathedral continue the verticality.
Square Building on Vltava
Bright stone buildings on the banks of Prague’s Vltava River contrast with the deep blues and greens of the surrounding nature.
Decaseconds 