I absolutely adore train stations. I’m not sure why – perhaps I traveled by train often in another life. Anyhow, one of my favourite places to visit (as you may already know) is Kingston, Ontario, and downtown there is an out-of-commission station, now used as a tourist shop and information booth.
The doors, in my opinion, are spectacular. Please click on the images for a closer look.
The front of the old Kingston Train Station, located on Ontario Street
At the back
The front door, through which you can see the back door, and vice versa
The back door, where the travelers came out to board the train.
Bonus: a secret side door going into the basement
And finally, behind the train station there’s an old engine sitting on an unused length of track. I tried to take a picture of its door, but it’s kind of squashed in where you can’t see it well.
The door
A wider shot
And a wider one yet
Thursday Doors is brought to you by the great Norm Frampton here. Click the link to read the rules and add your own post.
In response to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge prompt this week, which was shadows and silhouettes, I decided to use a picture I took in May. I was standing under a cherry tree and for some reason or another, took a picture of the sun through the branches.
Here is the original:
I thought first to see what my new phone could do with it. I was quite happy with this version, which I did nothing particular with except change the filters available. I like the way the branches stand out, giving it a skeletal look:
Then I decided to play around with that. This version, I think, has a bit of a Dystopian feel to it:
And finally, here’s what I ended up with when I played around with the original. I was trying to bring out the prism of the sun’s rays. It certainly shows off the actual brilliance of the pink blossoms:
As I was wandering around Kingston on the weekend, looking for metal, (because that’s the theme of this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge) I came across a gate with some nasty looking needles. It’s like they put them in there just to make a point… so to speak.
The first is close to the original. I washed out a bit of the colour to age it a little:
But then I thought what the hell. I just got a new phone today and the camera came with a few editing goodies, so why not make it look like I took the photo when the place was built?
As promised, I did some more research on the wall (with a hole where a door used to be that I discovered on Ontario Street in Kingston), when I was there last weekend. Upon searching the library, I came up with two addresses on the adjacent street: 221 and 223 King Street. I still couldn’t find any information about the wall, except that it seemed to stretch across the back yards of these two homes. So off I walked to check it out. Handily, it was only a couple of minutes from the library.
Here is 221 King Street
and attached to it is 223 King street.
Here is the wall from both sides,
You can see the door at the bottom of the garden, below the branches of the small tree.
and the “front” door of #223.
All this still didn’t give me any clue as to what the wall might have been part of, however. So I came home and did some more research. I came across this site: http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=8265 which goes on to say that #223 was built in 1834 for a lawyer, John Solomon Cartwright as an addition to #221. (If you click the link, you’ll see a much better picture of the wall than mine: in 1991 it had ivy growing on it.) The only real mention of the wall is this:
The property on which the building stands is also of interest, containing a carefully groomed lawn, plentiful gardens and a ten-foot limestone wall at its rear.
which indicates that it might have simply been built as an aesthetic piece. I’ll continue to keep my eyes open; I kind of hope, in some strange way, that it used to be a structure.
This post is part of Thursday Doors, brought to you by Norm at Norm 2.0. Check out his post (by clicking on his name) for the prompt and join in!
For this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge, the prompt is “architechture.” Since I don’t have a lot of fancy tools at my disposal for altering photos, I decided to choose a building and pick it apart. I thought what better place to look than Japan, where aesthetics is everything.
Here’s a picture I took in December of 2014, of the Disney store in the Shibuya section of Tokyo. Click on the pictures for a closer look:
The whole building, for perspective
Who wouldn’t want to go in? Note the sign that says 7F… that means the store is 7 floors high.
Above the entrance The store inside is tiny in square footage. It’s all upwards, via a skinny circular staircase, on which you have to squeeze past the people going the other way.
This is where you come out – the cash registers in most stores in Japan are at the back.
Above the exit is all interesting textures – for no particular reason. There are no windows in the store.
Fancy frontage, but not part of the store. It’s all between the entrance and the exit.
And finally the roof, with the obligatory plants. The Japanese grow things anywhere they can – and it’s all beautiful.
It was 2009 and I’d already decided to buy my house. During the inspection, the real estate agent and I were poking around in all the nooks and crannies when we discovered that the inside of one of the closet doors had been used, for decades, as a place to record the growth of the children who grew up here. Click on the pictures for a closer look.
Some of the dates go back to before I was born
This is the oldest one I found. Judging by height, “Peri” was a baby.
Of course, I had to add my own.
It’s fun to find history displayed in public places. It’s even better when you come across it in your own home.
This week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge prompt is “Quest for Fire.” I decided to go with a picture I’ve posted on my blog before, except this time it’s modified. At the time I shot it, I actually shot three as I often do, so I can be reasonably sure one of them is good. The first is a modified version of the one you may have seen before. I heightened the saturation to bring out the colour of the fire.
In the second one, the camera, for whatever reason, picked up the flame’s aura above it. I’m guessing it was due to the angle of the lens. I kind of like the black and white version.
The third and final one was out of focus. I call this the drunk version:
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