This is how my day begins—with morning webs draped across cacti like necklaces tossed off by flappers, the many strands tangled after a night’s revelry (certainly explains the dew),

or hovering like white noise,

catching stray new light as though a cornet,

and often working from underneath, the spiders tool coded strands,

attentive only to the attached lines, while I am easily distracted by the circular and hexagonal bokeh that imprint the air like softened measures from celestas…

Related posts:

1. still seeking bokeh
2. the fastening points
3. examining life

I liked the center of the photo with the red salt heart against the leaves, so I drew the lens closer for less plate in the shot below.

The greens looked alive, but almost too green, so I turned the plate for more purplishness and less light bouncing from the left side.

Then, I moved back to reconsider the shot, kneeling to capture the height against a blur of the backyard behind,

and finally, the salt started the sparkle—not in the center, but (geek out with me for a moment) at a bottom corner of the center quadrant using the Rule of Thirds.

Only the best I can manage for you, delightful kthread readers, as I explore the complicated world of shutter speeds and sunlight.

To make this, sauté one clove chopped garlic in a tablespoon of oil or other fat; add chopped stems of one bunch of baby chard and one head of bok choy. Cook, stirring, for three minutes over medium-high heat. Add the chopped leafy parts, stir one minute longer. Season with finishing salt or Tamari.

Or wander over to the Magic Cottage and join me for a very belated lunch…

Related posts:

1. sunday supper at salt water farm
2. sainted yogurt, salted chard
3. conducting your own experiment

As I have a peculiar habit of changing the wallpaper every few days, I thought I’d share with you a set of Flickr photos that are in rotation on my monitors (I’ll continue to update this set in coming months).

This is especially for my friend, the poet Jessica Smith, who often leaves lovely comments on Flickr, telling me she’s using one of my photos as her new wallpaper:

Any I missed that you particularly like? How often do you change your wallpaper?

Related posts:

1. year three: there was a star danced
2. so I know she can dance
3. of leaves and light

Organized by the great online photography community of JPG mag, the cult camera purveyors Lomography, and my inspiring friend Amit Gupta and the wonderful Photojojo newsletter crew, fifty people arrived at dusk to paint the park with lights of varying sizes and shapes.

I freestyled for a bit on my own (hidden behind the light above and below),

and then Amit took this of me,

before writing his name (this is difficult to do and Amit, of course, managed it on the first try).

A little later, as the sky darkened further, Kelly of Photojojo (she’s great) came over and wrote her name,

and then more people I had just met stepped in front of my camera, Christian forcefully writing pi,

gracefully scrawling a nickname (Crystal is my friend David Sasaki‘s sister and this is his nickname for her),

and carefully drawing the three letters in Crystal’s friend Zon’s name.

LED lights were shared; ambitious group photos were attempted; small groups clustered across the park, helping each other tweak camera settings and exposure lengths, appreciatively admiring the results of the photographers around them.

The streaks of light last night made visible the way I see the beautiful energy of this city—swirling above and around those who live here, who also make space for those of us who pass through as often as we can—

More photos in my Flickr set; explore more Flickr photos on lightpainting and thanks again to Amit for letting me borrow his tripod and generally bringing the awesome—

Related posts:

1. of leaves and light
2. transformative light in Miami
3. sun light, Ms. Albright, first spider I see tonight

As though woven by chlorophyll artists, I noticed the slight tears and small holes in many of the leaves the other day. Perhaps part of the tropical storm weather, perhaps an inevitable consequence of their longevity.

They seem to tell stories–this one bruised by an old memory, that one letting parts be eaten away.

And then, I started to look through the gaps, thinking about the leaves as the negative space surrounded by the light.

It is the tears of these native leaves, then, that I’ll lean in closer to see, that beckon me into the end of the week…or is it the beginning?

Related posts:

1. very certain slants of light
2. transformative light in Miami
3. painting with light in dolores park

I bought a camera on eBay, I told her, opened the box, attached the lens, and went outside. The first thing I saw was a spider’s web, and I developed that first image of the first roll in a dark room later that week as part of a photography workshop.

Soon after, kthread was born, in May of 2004 (I started blogging later, so we celebrate those anniversaries in January). That first spider image became the background of the first kthread, a conceptual Flash site where a spider figures heavily in the navigation. More details on kthread design and cyberfeminism in the colophon.

Another spider hovers in the current header image of this blog, and the universe continues to place webs in my path.

With so much still to learn about photography, I’ve found webs difficult to capture (perhaps it’s the challenge I enjoy so)—the strands are too slender for the camera’s viewfinder, and it all dissolves into a beautiful blur.

(Read the rest after the jump.)

Late afternoon sun often throws webs into focus, though, and Ziggy-zaggy (yes, that should explain my profile image and Halloween costume) patterns dazzle while the spider continues her work, climbing up to patch a section,

back down to command the center of her strung architecture.

Behind and beyond the web, I now attempt to make the background into colored bokeh circles (swimming to the right in the image below).

Even from the side, as I stealthily draw closer to a still and silent web,

it begins to dance, gifting light,

industriously sending vibrating lines of work down, up, and out—

Related posts:

1. b is for bokeh
2. the fastening points
3. silvery spinnings