Wild impatiens

[Atash Hagmahani]

This was an interesting day for dealing with system breakdown.

I live in a part of town all of whose buses from downtown have to squeeze past the sports stadiums--both of them (a monument to overspending on the taxpayer's bill).

The bus stops have signs warning of "service delays", but those "delays" are potentially many hours. The buses just stop running. No idea why this is--there are buses labeled "shuttle" that get past the stadiums, but the regularly scheduled buses don't.

Not realizing that there was a game going on, my son and I worked on an apartment that needed some last-minute cleaning and repainting. We walked to the bus stop, and realized after a while that the bus would never come. We eventually took a "shuttle" as far as it went, and walked the rest of the way home.

Which is quite a long stretch on foot.

And inexplicably, there are no sidewalks along a short stretch, despite being an old urban post-industrial (used to be heavy industry in the area) neighborhood such as usually have sidewalks. And it is the only feasible route home--I live on what is sort of a penninsula cut off from the rest of the city by a bay and a river. 3 bridges go across, and at least one does not permit foot traffic.

I have walked home from downtown from my former house in another neighborhood, so I knew what that was like. This was my first time doing it after having moved to my current neighborhood. I knew that the route was bottlenecked so wasn't absolutely sure what to expect.

It's doable, and relatively bicycle-friendly. There were a lot of bicyclists on the route.

Got to see a lot of stuff I normally would not see, as the vehicle routes are all intentionally funnelled onto a freeway-like bridge. By foot, once you get over the low bridge, there are more choices available. We ended up on a park-like footpath I never knew existed, passing by the "dragonfly pavillion" and the "fishbone bridge". I'll have to post some pix if I can spare some time to go back and shoot them.

Along the stream were growing feral Impatiens. I think it was Impatiens balfourii. Some people know them as "touch me nots" for their explosive seed pods. Not really native, but introduced a long time ago. In the eastern USA there is a native species, I. capensis, that looks very similar (we might have a few gone feral here too).

There are still a lot of foot-paths and stairs going up the hills...long neglected but still useable...from an earlier age when there were a lot fewer cars and more foot-traffic. Not much foot-traffic anymore, but increasingly a lot of bicycles. It was a beautiful day and would have been nice for bicycling, but many people now doing it more for practical transportation than just for fun.

[Atash Hagmahani]

Now with pictures.

Here is the dragonfly pavillion:



Fishbone bridge:



Wild impatiens:



Some water plants (the tiny one is Lemna minor, reputedly the world's smallest flowering plant):



Teasel:



Oregon Grape (Mahonia):



Feral Lemon Balm (a very common escapee here):



The picture was badly out of focus so I had to tweak it with unsharp mask and gaussian blur. There seems to be a very common bug in the focusing algorithms of most digital cameras.

I have another one of the port nearby, to show just how urbanized this area is, but I forgot to resize it. Maybe I'll add it later.

[opsec]

I've got to hand it to you Atash, you are really quite good with a camera. These pictures of yours are good enough that they could be in a magazine. Have you thought of selling them as stock photos to any gardening magazines?

[Atash Hagmahani]

Thanks, Opsec. No, never considered turning pro, but I have taken some of my better pix and had them printed, then framed them myself, to sell at fundraising auctions associated with kids' school.

And I have considered selling them, complete with a watermark(!), as downloads to someone willing to print and frame their own, for cheap/quick apartment art. I could send you some for that purpose for free, if you like.

I shoot my pictures on higher-end "prosumer" point-and-shoot types. Easier for me than trying to lug around a bunch of lenses and filters. But I keep wishing I had a polarizing lens for dealing with glare on sunny days. I used to make sure my point and shoots had filter threads, but almost none of them do anymore, being considered superfluous (OK, so where is my auto polarization feature?).

"Digital darkrooms" make some optical accessories somewhat superfluous by giving more total control over the picture. For example, suppose you were taking pix of 16-year-old sweathearts, and you wanted to soften the girl's complexion, which is flattering to young women. Using a soft-focus lens would soften both their faces, making both of them including the boy look softer and more feminine. What I would do is select just the skin of the girl's face, avoiding edges that define her face, do a slight gaussian blur, and fade it onto the original.

One thing I would like, is a tiny pocket-sized camera to bring with me all the time, so that whenever a "Kodak Moment" hits, I would always be able to capture it if I chose. While lacking in as many features as the bigger cameras, they can still take some remarkable pictures if you know how.

[opsec]

I used to be into photography back in the SLR days before all this digital photography hit the scene. It's been almost 20 years since I've even owned a camera.

[Dame]

May I use these as screen savers in the dead of winter?

[Atash Hagmahani]

For personal use, sure.