sky first then shoes: haiku

Showing posts with label haiku. Show all posts

2012-01-12

2012-01-11

Getting this shot was pretty tricky - to catch the colours in the sky I had to go for the longest exposure I could manage hand-held(no tripod with me at the time), a fairly high ISO, and that fabulous forced flash to catch the snowflakes drifting past the lens...

2011-12-16

slices of twilight

2009-06-04

sei shonagon's wish list

(the week of ice haloes continues...)

2009-06-03

sunset dogs

Does anyone else see a sun pillar here as well as the upper edge of the sun dog (parhelion)? The 22 halo had been visible for a while - though faint - but the sundogs were pretty clear in the mixed sky.

(a week of ice haloes continues)

2009-06-01

46 degree blues

returning from the JR in february, the boisterous spring sky put on a show. streaming whips of cirrus tore across the sky in wide swaths, slipping in and out of a bright 22° halo. above it, a 'cloud smile' lit up a fleeting fibrous veil - its blue-green tones iridescing gloriously - only to fade and flicker away in under a minute. its hard to tell if the arc below was a 46° halo or a superlateral arc. the curves kissed at the zenith - but wouldn't you? all the way up there above the sun? wearing such fine clothes?

Oxford & Adis Ababa are almost 46 degrees apart.

(Looks like we're having a week of ice haloes...)

2009-01-20

two people

2009-01-18

haiku for a cold day

2009-01-03

apricot sky

2009-01-01

ice wind

2008-11-21

sasabeni the moon

I was fortunate enough to have a lovely chat to author Lesley Downer earlier this week, author of The Last Concubine, among other delightful works. Something which came up in our chat was the practice of 'sasabeni' (笹紅: bamboo rouge) a shimmering lip lacquer with an iridescent greeny tint, which was applied to the bottom lip by exquisitely dressed ladies in the late Edo period. We wondered whether the trend had originated in the court, the aristocracy or in the infamous Yoshiwara...

This moon has a touch of sasabeni about it.