In keeping with the “Best of” lists we’ve been doing last week and this at A Traveler’s Library, I decided to take a look to see what 12 Travel Thursday photos were the most popular in 2012–judged by traffic to the page and by comments. (See, your comments are IMPORTANT!)
So here are the READER’s CHOICE TRAVEL PHOTOS from A Traveler’s Library. (You can click on a picture to get a bigger image). Continue reading Reader’s Choice: Best of Last Year’s Travel Photos
I can’t resist a photo challenge. This one asks for photos that portray “smile”. Of course I have loads of smiley grandchildren pictures, and me or Ken smiling in front of famous landmarks, but this one is a bit more unique. What do you think?
The Crown Sculpture, created by Jaume Plensa, features glass tiles, and shows digital videos of faces of actual Chicagoans, changing throughout the day. Two towers face each other across a shallow reflecting pool. That alone would make it special, but the faces change expressions. Wait, there’s more….every few minutes the mouth becomes a fountain (à la the gargoyles and fishes spouting water that you’ve seen around the world) and happy people have more smiles as they get doused by a fellow Chicagoan spitting on them.
You can see more in several YouTube videos. I thought this was one of the best.
Millennium Park in Chicago overflows with interesting things to see and do, like the Bean reflective sculpture (Okay, okay, the name is really Cloud Gate, but nobody calls it that), but the interactive fountain towers really stole my heart.
If you want to see more “smiles” and maybe even enter the challenge yourself, go to 2 Away and check out Photo Roulette.
(This photo is my property, and although I don’t mind if you Pin it, please identify where it came from, and do not use it otherwise without permission. THANKS!)
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I was inspired to post a few pictures of fog and mist by this lovely misty Ireland photo at Music Road, and a memory of a foggy day in Chicago (left).
It also is a challenge to myself, since I tend to leave my camera in its case when the weather turns misty. I need to learn to experiment with the special effects that can be found on a rainy, foggy day. I wish I had more of these. My normal reaction is to wait until I can see shadows on the ground before snapping.
We have been blessed with good weather on our travels. Our only day on Macau was a rainy day, and we spent some of it searching for a shop that sold umbrellas, and finding expensive antique furniture, delicious Portugese food, postcards to make up for the lack of photo ops, and FINALLY umbrellas. We wound up ducking through puddles and wearing the throw-away raincoats during our three days in Florence, Italy with off-and-on rain. Consequently, we have very few pictures from that gorgeous city.
And then there were these: Continue reading Travel Photo Thursday: A Foggy Day