PAD06 - Curses

This local Mayan woman in Santiago Atatlan was very upset that nobody purchased anything from her. As our boat pulled away from the docks, she stood their and bestowed a curse on us!


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PAD06 - Making Corn Tortillas

These women are making corn tortillas at a local restaurant between Antigua and Lake Atatlan. The brick stove burns wood for heat. Making the tortillas is not as easy as it looks as one member of our tour learned the hard way.


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PAD06 - Living Beneath a Volcano

Antigua is surrounded by volcanos, one of which had a minor eruption just after we left. This is Volca Fuega as seen from atop my hotel.


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PAD06 - Angelic

As part of the tour, we had the opportunity to have lunch with a local family. It was by far the most memorable part of the trip. This little girl was extremely shy but stood in that angelic pose for me while I snapped this photo.


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PAD06 - Horse Drawn Carriage

Antigua Guatemala was one of the more picturesque cities I visited during my tour of Central America. The streets are all cobblestone and the buildings quite comfortable. Horse drawn carriages can be hired to take visitors on a tour of the city.


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PAD06 - The Green Pig

Pulling into Copan Ruinas, Honduras, a couple of us noticed an old house with the green truck overgrown with weeds. Thinking it would make a great photo, the following day we set off in search of the house and car. After two hours of wandering Copan Ruinas we came up blank. I spotted a small group of people standing on a corner and thought they might recognize it. Now, my Spanish is pretty rudimentary, but I knew enough to ask, "Donde es una casa con un muy viejo verde coche?" In English it's "where is a house with a very old green car?" They all looked rather amused and responded "No lo se." (I don't know.) I repeated the question for several other people all with the same result. Finally, we spotted the house - about a block from the hotel, of course - and we got our photos. But the story doesn't end there. You see, it turns out that "un coche" does mean "a car" in Mexico. Unfortunately, in Honduras and Guatemala it means "a pig"! So here you have my photo of a house with a very old green pig...


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PAD06 - Cashews

The cashew nut is actually the seed of this large fruit. The nut is the green hook at the bottom of the fruit. The fruit itself is edible, although it has a pretty sour taste. Surprisingly, the cashew is poisonous until it is roasted.


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PAD06 - Map of Boston

Today was a travel day and I had to be at the airport long before sunrise. There wouldn't be much opportunity for photography given the prospects of spending the entire day in airports or on a plane. Fortunately, there was a very interesting 19th century map of Boston in my hotel room at the Hilton Logan Airport


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PAD06 - Johnston Memorial Park

In the center of Johnston, Rhode Island, amid miles of strip malls, shopping centers, and car dealerships, sits this very small and peacefull memorial park. There are walking trails around a small pond, ball fields, playgrounds, and an exercise course, making it an extremely popular location in all seasons.


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PAD06 / PC0206 - St. John's Cathedral

Today's theme was "absent". I thought this shot of an historic cemetary next to St. John's Cathedral in Providence fit the bill. The Cathedral was built in 1722 and is the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Providence. This is also the fifteenth and final photo in the February 2006 monthly challenge.


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PAD06 - Point Street Bridge

Today's theme was "Bridge". Well, RI has plenty of them, but I've been saving a lot of them for night shots. This one is the Point Street Bridge which crosses the Seekonk River in Providence. The three stacks on the right belong to the electric company. As an interesting side note, I lived not too far from here when I was a toddler. When I was three, the water in the foreground was the temporary home to a stranded pilot whale that the locals named "Willie". Crowds lined the shores for several days watching Willie swim back and forth in that narrow inlet. Unfortunately, he never found his way out to sea and died there. I remember being very disappointed at seeing Willie because he didn't look anything like the whales I'd seen in cartoons.


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PAD06 - How Not to Install a Stove

It looks like any other house in the neighborhood, except for one minor detail. Notice the stove on the steps. Not only is that a very odd place for a stove (it's been there for over a year) but look carefully at the stove pipe. Yes, it vents INTO the house! Perhaps it's a family of aliens visiting from a planet with a carbon monoxide atmosphere...


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PAD06 - Disappointment

Today's theme was "Chocolate". I went to check on my Halloween stash, only to find nothing but empty bags. Disappointment, indeed!


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PAD06 - Boxes

Today's theme was "boxes", and I certainly have plenty of candidates in my basement. I opted for this stack of Diet Coke 12-packs, my drink of choice since they switched from aspertame to Splenda. I'm not a big fan of diet soda's but since I went on Atkins two years ago, I've avoided the non-diet ones. The box of green beans on top belongs to my dog, Princess, however. She's a 13 inch beagle that at one point weighed 37 1/2 pounds! The vet put her on a strict diet and limited her treats to string beans and carrots. She's now down to 26 1/2 pounds, which is a good weight for her size. She loves the string beans and carrots, though!


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PAD06 - Cookie Cans

Today was another day where I wasn't able to take an outdoor shot, so I decided to work on my Photoshop skills. This is simply a photograph of three different cookie cans manipulated in Photoshop to add a simple frame and change the foreground to diffused glass.


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PAD06 - Plastic

Today's theme was "Plastic". I don't know why this was lying around my house, but here's a plastic squirrel photographed in my light box and edited in Photoshop.


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PAD06 - Wine

Today's PAD theme was "Wine". Here's a view of my somewhat pathetic excuse for a wine rack. Most of the wines on the rack are from Pennsylvania and Virginia. I actually prefer them to foreign or California wines.


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PAD06 - Tool

Today's theme was "Tool" and this is by far the most frequent tool I use. That's a Dell Inspiron 700M and is the laptop I use to edit all of my photos. The background was added in Photoshop Elements 4.0.


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PAD06 - Blacksmith

Today's theme was "antique". Up until a few years ago, this was Mahoney's Forge, the last blacksmith shop in the state of Rhode Island.


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PAD06 - Childhood Memories

Today's theme was "childhood memories" so I went in search of a playground. I was actually hoping to photograph a set of monkey bars - those huge cube structures made of iron bars - only to find out they no longer exists. Neither do see-saws (teeter-totters) or merry-go-rounds. Apparently, some city official that spent half his childhood getting stuffed in school lockers determined that these apparati were too dangerous for today's youth. Fortunately, I found this swing set before it was removed. (Don't laugh, they ARE replacing all the swing sets with versions that have the equivalent of seat belts.) Anyway, to capture the "childhood memories" aspect, I chose to render the image in black and white. I also chose a perspective that emphasizes the size of the set, giving the impression of a small child looking up at the swing set.


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