Photography

Dear diary,

A great tit flew into our house today. It probably landed on the sill below our bedroom window and found itself on the wrong side of the glass when trying to leave. Maybe it followed a tasty insect inside, or maybe it was a juvenile, too young to have learned that houses are scary places.

In any case, it came crashing through the living room while I was playing with our 7-month old. I rushed to get the veranda door open, while it fluttered from a curtain to the sofa to a hanging lamp cord. Door finally open, it chose a potted cactus on top of a cabinet as the perfect spot for an emergency landing and a bit of a poo.

I suspect tits are unfamiliar with cacti, but it showed a remarkable ability to avoid impaling itself, even in a panic. By now the bird was exhausted, so I gently lifted the cactus outside, took a quick bird portrait, and left it alone. It sat there for a while, petrified, but by the third time I peeked outside it was gone.

Stay safe, little great tit.

Hitting tumblr in search of storefront reference images. Here are a few good ones:

• street signs & storefronts
• London Shop Fronts
• Liverpool Shopfronts
• Once Upon a Town is a fantastic collection of historical city photos
• Beauty and Neglect has a lot of empty scenes with decaying buildings (plenty of brutalism)
• Creative Boom feature about Ben Hassett‘s L. A. liquor store photos

Also, Colossal has featured some great illustrators drawing Korean and Japanese storefronts:

• Lee Me Kyong, part one and two
• Colorful storefronts by Angela Hao

Such a dramatic sky today, had to snap some pictures out of the car window.

What causes those flowing, sharp edges? Is it some kind of lenticular variety? It's been pretty windy, I bet it has something to do with turbulence, at least.