Know what “moun­tain” this is? Don’t say but you can still leave a com­ment. I’ll try to post the answer on Mon­day.

Yes, this is “The Thinker” by Rodin. If you are good with Wikipedia and Google Maps, you could pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fy the loca­tion from the see­saw sign in the back­ground. Scroll down for more.

Orig­i­nal­ly named “The Poet”, the sculp­ture por­trays Dante con­tem­plat­ing his poem about the gates of hell  depict­ed below at the same loca­tion.

These pic­tures were tak­en at the Rodin Muse­um in Philadel­phia. There are 10 full size bronze ver­sions of The Thinker in the Unit­ed States, 2 of them in the bay area at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and the Legion of Hon­or in San Fran­cis­co.

The muse­um in Philly had a large col­lec­tion of hand sculp­tures. I knew lit­tle about bronze sculp­tures before this vis­it. The orig­i­nals were carved in wax which are then used to cre­ate molds which in turn were used to cast the hol­low bronze stat­ues. A com­plex series of levers is used to exact­ly dupli­cate a sculp­ture into oth­er sizes. The orig­i­nal wax ver­sions are even­tu­al­ly lost.

The Ben­jamin Franklin Park­way in Philadel­phia hosts a great num­ber of excel­lent art, his­to­ry and sci­ence muse­ums. Check­’um out.

There are 10 of these full size bronze sculp­tures in the Unit­ed States. I left a clue or 2 in the pic­ture to help you locate where this one is. Don’t say here. I’ll pro­vide the answer on Mon­day.

Any idea where these trees are? Scroll down for more.

These trees are locat­ed in Fer­n­dale, Cal­i­for­nia and are local­ly known as Coast Cyprus or Gum­drop Trees. I have found lit­tle infor­ma­tion about that species on the inter­net but they were fun to look at and must be quite a trick to main­tain. Fer­n­dale is a great lit­tle town filled with Vic­to­ri­an style houses.We stopped by on the 4th of July dur­ing a wind­ing tour of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia back in 2006 (I think). Thanks for play­ing!

Do you know where this tree is? Feel free to say so but don’t reveal the answer. I’ll do that on Mon­day. click the pic­ture for a larg­er view.

Did you rec­og­nize the reflec­tion in this pic­ture? Scroll down for more.

Fort Point is a Nation­al His­toric Site and part of the the Gold­en Gate Nation­al Recre­ation Area. It was built between 1853 and 1861 to pro­tect San Fran­cis­co dur­ing the Civ­il War. It is the brick build­ing in the bot­tom pic­ture in the fore­ground under­neath the Gold­en Gate Bridge.

The fort is open to walk around Fri­day through Sun­day and is free. The entire fort is also a muse­um host­ing a recre­ation of civ­il war era life. Climb the gran­ite cir­cu­lar stair­cas­es to the roof for spec­tac­u­lar views of the bridge, the bay and the city.

The bridge was spe­cial­ly engi­neered to save the fort from demo­li­tion and is a “must see” stop on my tour of the city.

It was rain­ing dur­ing my last vis­it. Thanks to my sis­ter for sug­gest­ing reflec­tion shots in the pud­dles. I received sev­er­al cor­rect answers this week. Thanks for play­ing.

Know where this is? Leave a com­ment but not the answer, I’ll pro­vide that on Mon­day. Click the pic­ture for a larg­er view.

Did you know how this image is gen­er­at­ed? More details fol­low the pic­tures.

Mon­keyLec­tric from Jade Ajani on Vimeo.

I’m all about the light. Mon­keyLec­tric is a com­pa­ny that makes an LED imag­ing prod­uct that you mount on the spokes of your bicy­cle wheels. It takes advan­tage of our brain’s per­sis­tence of vision abil­i­ty and cre­ates whole pic­tures using lin­ear rows of lights.

You can see the cir­cuit­ry, bat­ter­ies and rows of LED lights in the sec­ond pic­ture.

I took these pic­tures (not the video) at the 2009 Mak­er Faire where you where able to draw your own pic­tures which can pro­grammed and appear on this spin­ning wheel.

Check out their web site at:
http://www.monkeylectric.com/index.htm

Thanks for play­ing.

Did you guess what this is a pic­ture of and where it is? Read more details below the pic­tures.

If you guessed Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s eye­ball, you are cor­rect. You can hike up very close under­neath Mount Rush­more and take pic­tures from a dif­fer­ent point of view, one that brings out the detail in this enour­mous sculp­ture.

I find the impor­tance of a “catch light” in the eyes trans­lates to all forms of art. The artist here took great pains to carve out the eyes in a way that left a block of white gran­ite to cre­ate the illu­sion of a reflect­ed light that makes eyes come alive, a very impor­tant fea­ture to con­sid­er in por­trait or ani­mal pho­tog­ra­phy.

It was­n’t quite the right time of day to get that Rem­brandt light­ing por­trait pho­tog­ra­phers strive for. They all have racoon eyes or look like they are wear­ing masks. Next time.

Mount Rush­more is a US Nation­al Memo­r­i­al in South Dako­ta. It is worth a vis­it along with many nat­ur­al and man-made curiosi­ties in that area of the coun­try.