every kiss begins with...

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jay...jay... (one of a blue jay's many calls)

Not much to say tonight about this letter. I'm actually very excited right now about a trip my photo class took to Time Square this evening. Created some beautiful portraits while there. Toward the end of our "class", a photo shoot came onto the scene. I sneaked in with my camera and fired off a few frames, too. Will post soon!


air duct
I spied this massive air duct at Chelsea Market last week during a visit to Google's NYC headquarters. (The first 'b' posted earlier in this project is also housed at Chelsea Market.) It's one of those things that I think most people walk by and never even notice. So profound is our ability to filter out irrelevant objects in our lives. It makes me wonder what might happen if our irrelevant filter goes awry, causing us to miss things that really are relevant?


simplicity
Sometimes beauty rests in simple elegance. This wooden umbrella handle certainly falls into that category.

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there's no "I" in team...

...but there is an "I" in win.

What a great saying, not necessarily because I think these are words to live by, but because I do enjoy the clever manipulation of an earnest lesson meant to emphasize the value of teamwork. This does highlight the conflict inherent in competitive endeavors, which often leads to a situation in which the individual's best interests are seemingly no longer aligned with those of the group. How do we teach children to deal with these challenges, for which there are no right or easy answers?

aitch

closed gate


wooden beams
These beams form the support for the stairs and small stoop up on the second floor of our apartment. I'm always amazed by how sturdy they are -- they have withstood lots of weight without fail. In some way, they remind me of those guys in the gym who lift a ton with their upper body but have skinny chicken legs. Somehow, those legs manage to hold up their brawny torsos.


broken fence post
A broken fence post at dusk steps in as a lowercase 'h'. I love the shallow depth of field, in which you can just make out the house in the background. I had some reservations about walking through the neighborhood, firing off flash photos in the direction of people's homes. Seems a little sketchy, if you ask me. I was waiting for someone to come running out screaming at me. Didn't happen, though!

g (clef)

As a kid learning to read music, I was fascinated by the beauty of the treble clef, also known as the G clef. Not only does the clef look like the letter 'g', but its center wraps around the second line of the staff, which corresponds to the G note. I saw the following atop a fence and immediately thought of my piano-playing days.


G clef


steamroller
The town of Dedham is finally repaving our road after decades of neglect. I have not lived here for decades, but the stories the neighbors tell corroborate the scores of potholes that litter our neighborhood.


tea kettle

f

Quality over quantity rules the day. "F"s were hard to come by, and though I ended up with 5 or 6 photographs, only these two made the cut.

I've been wondering about how children learn the alphabet, and whether they "see" letters in a way comparable to this project. I think that children, their minds malleable and their imagination much more willing to play along with their senses, will look around and just perceive things in ways we, as adults, would never think to do. At times the letters just jump out at me, as I imagine happens for children, while at other times, I actively scour my surroundings for any semblance of letters of the alphabet. The latter proves quite cognitively taxing.





fancy fence
The curlicue designs of railings, fences, and gates contain letters galore. Some of them are beautiful works of art!

the letter e

'E' is for exceedingly late, which is what my BoltBus was this evening. I ended up on the corner of 8th and 34th with over a hundred other would-be passengers, all of us eagerly shifting toward each approaching bus, only to recede in dejection upon learning that that was not our black-and-orange steed come to rescue us from citydom. My ticket was for 6:30pm. Finally, at 7:30pm, a bus arrived, but the 6pm passengers had to board first... Yes! The bus was that late!

But here I am, comfortably nestled in my seat, stomach full of Chipotle's chicken fajita burrito, blogging away. Today, day five, is that of the letter 'E':





meter maid, part II
I double-dipped on the parking meter, something I wanted to avoid as I began this project, but the opportunity to photograph both a "D" and an "E" was too tempting.


tail light
I forget which SUV I found this tail light on, but I've seen several since and, from now on, will always think "E" when I see one. This is a bit like one of those optical illusions, Escher-like in that the image is not quite possible. The E is formed from both the black and colored parts of the tail light. If you look at the colored segments separately, you only have the arms, and no body, for the letter 'E'. And yet if you look at the black portion only, the 'E' has a body and four arms. Oops. Somehow, in its gestalt, we have an 'E'.