Pic(k) of the Week: Wind-swept beach (for Thelonius Monk)

Beach dunes after a late afternoon storm.

St. Augustine Beach, Florida, USA. 1 September 2024 (18:39 EDT).

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• Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American composer and pianist, born on 10 October 1917; he died on 17 February 1982.
  
  Monk's performance, here, of Pannonica — a tune he composed and named for Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter, an English-born patron of late 1940s and 1950s American bebop jazz ('Nica' to her friends) — displays a compositional ethos and keyboard virtuosity distilled to its essence. Utilizing null time, rhythmic surprise, dissonant harmonies, 'wrong notes,' and tones seemingly coaxed from 'between' the piano's keys, he transforms a deceptively simple melody into a miniature gem of severe beauty.


• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of images posted on Saturdays.
• Photo 41 of 52, for year 2024. See a larger, hi-res version on Flickr: here.
• Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.


• Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10 II.
• Lens: Olympus M.40-150mm F4.0-5.6 R
• Settings: 45 mm; 1/640 sec; ISO 200; ƒ/5.6


• For more from YFGF:
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Pic(k) of the Week: Umbrella in foliage

Umbrella in foliage,

Under summer rain.

Tableau at the park.

Mason Mill Park: DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 25 July 2024.

On 12 August 2024, Flickr's editors selected the image (as one of five hundred) for inclusion in Flickr's daily Explore feature.

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• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of images posted on Saturdays.
• Photo 36 of 52, for year 2024. See a larger, hi-res version on Flickr: here.
• Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.


• Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10 II.
• Lens: Olympus M.40-150mm F4.0-5.6 R
• Settings: 150 mm; 1/200 sec; ISO 1600; ƒ/5.6


• For more from YFGF:
  • Follow on Flickr: Cizauskas.
  • Follow on Instagram: @tcizauskas.
  • Follow on Threads: @tcizauskas.
  • Follow on Facebook: YoursForGoodFermentables.

Pic(k) of the Week: Into the Privet Woodland

The gentle gloom of a dense thicket, in a 120-acre suburban Piedmont forest, during an end-of-summer's light rain.

Mason Mill Park: DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 14 September 2023.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Wary weather watcher

A storm approaches;

Warily, the dog watches.

Beach life.

St. Augustine Beach, Florida, USA. 9 September 2022.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Paddleboard morningtide

A woman paddleboards in the golden light of an early summer morning.

As seen on Salt Run, off Anastasia Island, in St. Augustine, Florida, USA. 5 July 2023.

In 1940, the St. Augustine Inlet was created by dredging a new inlet of Matanzas Bay. Then, during the 1940s, the severed land mass that was south of the new inlet channel merged with the intertidal shoals of the original natural inlet. This created what is now called Conch Island, which includes the ocean shoreline of the Anastasia State Park. The old inlet closed at its southern terminus leaving the lagoon, now called Salt Run.

— Florida Department of Environmental Protection

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Pic(k) of the Week: Open road, in town

Popping the top,

Into the center of town

Rode the Galaxie 500.^*

In the United States, this weekend, Memorial Day weekend —although astronomically a few weeks short of summer— signals, for many, the calendrical start of the summer season.

Coincident with it is a wave of vacation travel. The lure of the 'open' road —and its traverser, the automobile— has long been a quintessential American motif. A popped 'ragtop' —hair, free in the breeze— can only add to that.

Image taken in the town of Avondale Estates, Georgia, USA (in 2018), where, even if nowhere near Route 66, the urge remains as impelling.

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Pic(k) of the Week: ¡Cuidado!

I thought I'd sneak in a beach photo before the weather turns too cold. Here: a father and children at St. Augustine Beach, Florida, USA, on 7 September 2022.

Patience and chance choreographed this image. I noticed a man carefully introducing his newborn to the ocean. As I began snapping photos, his older son blithely ran by. It was a "decisive moment," as the French humanist photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson might have labelled it.

Of course, to paraphrase U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, I am no Monsieur Cartier-Bresson.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Sunday morning Adirondack

Sunday morning light.

A sense of summer's close.

Have a seat.

Decatur, Georgia, USA.28 August 2022 (8:40 am EDT).

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Pic(k) of the Week: Butterfly & zinnia

In a summer garden, an eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly pollinates a zinnia flower.

DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 11 August 2022.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Strip mall sunset

Who knew that the simple parking lot of a strip mall could provide the backdrop for a magnificent panorama of a post-summer-storm sunset?

Tucker, Georgia, USA. 10 August 2022. (8:14 pm EDT)

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Pic(k) of the Week: Crocosmia in Georgia

South Africa invades the southeastern US!

Orange crocosmia, blooming wild and creek-side, on the East Decatur Greenway, in DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 1 July 2022.

Crocosmia —also known as montbretia— is a small genus of flowering plants in the iris family, Iridaceae. It is native to the grasslands of southern and eastern Africa, ranging from South Africa to Sudan. The plants have colorful inflorescences of 4 to 20 vivid red and orange flowers on a horizontally branched stem, flowering from early summer well into fall.

— Wikipedia.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Pink coneflower

Echinacea purpurea —cooloquially known as the eastern purple coneflower, purple coneflower, hedgehog coneflower, or echinacea— is a North American species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. It is native to parts of eastern North America and present to some extent in the wild in much of the eastern, southeastern and midwestern United States as well as in the Canadian Province of Ontario. Its habitats include dry open woods, prairies and barrens. 1

The plant grows to about 3 feet tall. Its single terminal blossom has 15 to 20 purplish, drooping ray flowers and a central disk comprising orange bracts. ²

Photo taken in the Trailhead Community Park of the East Decatur Greenway, in Decatur Georgia, USA, on 1 July 2022.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Hibiscus mauve

In the forest
One, expected, returns
Mauve, too briefly.

A rose of Sharon blooms in Seminary Wood of Legacy Park, in Decatur, Georgia, USA. 31 July 2021.

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The more you know...

Hibiscus syriacus is a species of flowering plant in the mallow family, Malvaceae. It is native to south-central and southeast China but widely introduced elsewhere. Common names include the rose of Sharon (in North America), Syrian ketmia, and shrub althea (UK).

— Wikipedia

Mauve is a pale purple color named after the mallow flower. The first use of the word mauve as a color was in 1796–98 according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Another name for the color is mallow, with the first recorded use of mallow as a color name in English in 1611.

— Wikipedia

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Pic(k) of the Week: Dune fence down.

Dune fence down: desolation at/on St. Augustine Beach, Florida, USA.

Photo taken on 30 June 2021.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Inland Sea Oats

End-of-the-summer fecundity.

Inland sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium): not cereal grains but perennial grasses; ground cover for eroded shaded areas.

As seen at the Trailhead Community Park of the East Decatur Greenway, in Decatur, Georgia, USA. 27 August 2020.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Double Refreshment

Beat the heat, twice!

In the beer garden, at New Realm Brewing, in Atlanta (Poncey-Highland), Georgia, on 7 July 2018.

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Wistful, like summer departed.

Summer dies today. A monody for the occasion:

And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart.
High up in the sky, the little stars climb,
Always reminding me that we're apart.

You wander down the lane and far away,
Leaving me a song that will not die.
Love is now the stardust of yesterday,
The music of the years gone by.

Sometimes I wonder why I spend
The lonely night dreaming of a song.
The melody haunts my reverie,
And I am once again with you,
When our love was new,
And each kiss an inspiration.
But that was long ago.
Now my consolation
Is in the stardust of a song.

Beside a garden wall,
When stars are bright,
You are in my arms.
The nightingale tells his fairy tale,
A paradise where roses bloom.
Though I dream in vain,
In my heart, it will remain,
My stardust melody,
The memory of love's refrain.

—"Stardust" was composed in 1927 by Hoagy Carmichael; two years later, Mitchell Parish added lyrics. In 2004, Carmichael's original recording of the song was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.

The great Lester Young on tenor saxophone, in 1954 —with Oscar Peterson, piano; Barney Kessel, guitar; Ray Brown, bass; J. C. Heard, drums.

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Pic(k) of the Week: When the dew point tops 24 °C.

When the dew point tops 24 °C...

A beer not murky; not ugly; not fowled with chicken parts.

No.

A draught of pilsner-style lager.

Yes.

Dewdrops condensed. Such a lovely thing.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Street scene al fresco

A 'street photography' shot of the patio of a restaurant and the street beyond. No humans, but a high-contrast early-evening sky, bright primary colors, and phone-camera faux high-dynamic-range imaging.

And redundantly entitled.

In the East Lake neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, on 4 August 2017.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Sunset at Navy Pier

Taken with a cell-phone camera, and yet I like the (inadvertent?) capture of a gull close-by in flight, adding a sense of motion to the setting.

It's sunset on Lake Michigan at the Navy Pier, in Chicago, Illinois, on 12 July 2016.

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