View allAll Photos Tagged Afloat,
sunrise launch at the Prosser, Washington hot air balloon festival.
best viewed large.
Help me choose!
I want to enter a photo from this set into the Prosser Hot Air Balloon photo contest. Please help me by indicating enthusiasm for the shots you like. I will select one based on overall enthusiasm (comments, favs, etc.) Thanks everyone!
Dream on, my pain
My scar
My blame
You’ve been a part of me
Unless and until
Dreamt by the night
Under your skin
I run through the wind
Unless and until
Dream on, my pain
My scar
My thorn
You’ve been a part of me
Let me stay afloat
photo by Claire
Goblin is lighter than air.
Part 2 of my 61Syx photoshoot.
You can check them out at J. Gardella's Tavern at House and Breaks Night.
Lake Union Wooden Boats Festival. Dozens of mainly vintage boats were on display, most were available for boarding! Although the clouds came rolling in, it was a very nice, Seattle day!
Happy Sunday morning my friends!
Hope all is well with you!
It is a beautiful and peaceful morning here . . . I am enjoying the quiet after a crazy-busy week!
I spent most of yesterday (11 hours) shooting my first Quinceanera / Sweet 15. More elaborate than some weddings I have shot! It took three of us, two photographers and one videographer to capture the entire day - they were still partying when we shuffled out the door! It was definitely fun and a wonderful experience but 11 hours is about the max. I need to spend in one day behind my lens! That means today I will spend most of today in front of my computer editing LOL!
I will be playing catch up with all of you as soon as possible!
Have a wonderful day!
Hugs ~ e
Gerroa for fish n chips tonight .. yeah I know "what the ?? it's Wednesday !!" well what can I say ? Whales and waves were needed.. and Gerroa had both :-)
Olympus OM-1 w M.Zuiko 40-150/2.8 Pro
ISO80 f/5 79mm -1.3ev
Single frame raw developed in DxO PhotoLab 8, colour graded in Nik 7 Color Efex and finished off back in PhotoLab.
Blackhead, Gerroa, NSW
Two Army National Guard Ch-47 Chinook helicopters from Company B, 1st Battalion, 168th Aviation Regiment, 40th Combat Aviation Brigade, touch down aboard the USS Ponce, an Afloat Forward Staging Base, in the Persian Gulf March 14. The 40th CAB practices landings aboard Naval vessels every month. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Ian M. Kummer)
These flowers are only about 3/4 inch across, and cover the low bush they grow on. They are very pretty when blooming.
I cut some to bring in to shoot, and Skip suggesting I float them, so I cut them shorter, and played around with a few shots. This is my favorite.
Day 254 - only 111 days left to go. That means only about 105 days until Christmas?
Also for Macro Mondays theme of "transparency" September 14.
It is wonderful what you can do with a washing up bottle and some sticky-back plastic. (UK 1960s joke).
1965
n
Ladies and gentlemen. We are floating in space.
This was my first levitation picture back in 2011. I still kinda like it, the colours, the toning, the weirdly wrong composition. Of course I'd do many thing different now, but back then, this was the best picture I'd ever taken.
these pictures, and any other media created and displayed, may not be copied, edited, redistributed, or displayed with out expressed written permission from me. if I do permission, credit must be given. any unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. © Kasey Karaktin. All Rights Reserved.
Part 13 of 14
In 1994, two weeks after graduating high school, my brother Greg entered the United States Military Academy at West Point. We waited with him in a line that meandered around buildings, up staircases, past statues and plaques. He was 18 years old with a small red dufflebag in his hand limply filled with a pair of underwear, a razor and a toothbrush. The line dragged slowly, ominously. I was wearing a lime green t-shirt and denim shorts, with black sandals and a pair of sunglasses I bought at Sports Authority. Like I said, it was 1994.
The line eventually reached to a small gymnasium and we filled the seats, other families accompanying other young men and women minutes away from becoming new cadets. Some brass gave a speech or two, I can't remember a single word except for the last sentence:
"Alright, this is it. New Cadets, say goodbye to your families, and exit the gymnasium at the top of the steps and enter the hallway."
We only had the awkward space between the rows of seats to convey with hugs the words we didn't have time to articulate. And just like that, he slipped through our fingers, went up the stairs and the doors slammed shut.
I cried myself to sleep that night. And the night after that. And the night after that. I was thirteen, and from that moment on, everytime I said goodbye to my brother, I thought I was never going to see him again.
Imagine that heart of yours beating in your chest right now.... and imagine a vise. Take that vise, put it around your heart, and tighten it, and tighten it, and tighten it. And feel it year after year after year. This was, for me, the next 12 years of my life.
He graduated.
Flight School.
Apache Helicopter Pilot.
Kosovo.
101st Airborne Division.
9/11
Afghanistan.
And then this government of ours decided to go into Iraq.
2 months before the 101st Airborne Division and Greg's unit were sent to Iraq, Greg was rotated out and sent to the Advanced Course for Apache Helicopters down in Alabama. I don't know how it happened, whether it was an act of a higher power, or just his time to be switched out, but Greg stayed behind while all his men, the unit that he commanded and took responsibility for were sent to war in Iraq.
He was devastated. He was down. He felt guilty.
A few months later, he was sitting next to me on a beach on the panhandle of Florida. It was the off-season and we were the only ones on the beach. The Gulf of Mexico was unusually rough, with red caution flags flying high, but no rougher than a regular day on the Atlantic Ocean. Jason and Meredith had flown down from Vermont, which was still under a few feet of winter snow... their bare feet itching to get into the water. And so they came down to the beach and went in... and I followed a few minutes later. Greg stayed on the beach, buried in his book.
The waves were spectacular. We dove into them as they crashed overhead, we floated around and laughed, and then got pommeled again. It was exhausting, but absolutely perfect. I wanted Greg to join in the fun so I started making my way back to shore. But then a huge wave hit me from behind. When I finally got my footing I looked around and saw that Jason and Meredith were a good 25 feet behind me, which was odd because they had been right beside me before this particular wave. I turned back towards the white sugary beach, dominated by 20-feet dunes beyond it, and started walking towards Greg, only.... I couldn't.
There was a river of water rushing against my legs. I was leaning into it as hard as I could, but I simply couldn't make headway. It was an incredible struggle. It then dawned on me that we were in a riptide. I turned back around to check on my brother and his girlfriend..
but
they
weren't
there.
My pulse skyrocketted.
One wave went by. Another wave. A third wave. On the top of the fourth wave, I saw Jason, his left arm outstretched toward me screaming "HEEEEEEEELP!!!!!!!!" The waves were so loud, I couldn't even hear him.
So there I was, exhausted, standing in a powerful current of water, stuck between Jason and Meredith getting sucked out to sea and Greg reading his book on shore.
Greg looks up. He drops his book. Stands up. He puts his arms in the air and puts his thumbs up, and then puts his thumbs down. I answer his question with thumbs down. I see him bolt down the beach. I turn around, stick my hands up as high as they would go and wave towards Jason to acknowledge his distress call, hoping he can see me so he and Meredith can conserve their rapidly dwindling energy. Back on the beach, Greg finds three life preservers, throws one on himself and makes his way to the water. By this point I've gotten out of the riptide and pass him as he dives in to crashing, violent waves and starts making his way out to them swimming with one arm, the other arm holding the 2 life preservers.
The waves were daunting, refusing to grant Greg easy access to his little brother and Meredith. He turns back to me, a man used to difficult, stressful, life-threatening situations as his profession, and with a look of panic on his face, he screams out to me to call 911. I turn and bolt to the stairs, knowing that I had a 20 foot dune to get up and over to get to the nearest phone. Taking the steps 2 at a time, my heart pounding out of my chest, I couldn't look behind me. I was so scared that I was about to lose my family.
Out in the water, Jason tried to keep Meredith afloat, but as thin as he is out of water, is as heavy as he is within it. In trying to keep her up, he pulled her down. He had maybe 60 seconds left.. maybe 90. He was sure they were going to drown.
And that's when Greg got to them.
That guilt that Greg had felt when his men went off to war and he got left behind? Gone. He knew then why he didn't get sent to Iraq. There were 2 important lives that he had to save, and save them he did.
2 weeks after his last day in the army this past August, Greg gave one hell of a toast at Jason and Meredith's wedding. I sobbed through the entire thing. And remember that vise around my heart? It had released completely.
Close-up of the massive chains used to anchor these concrete ships, which act as a breakwater for the Powell River pulp mill.
The first one, the "Peralta," is the oldest in the line-up of 10; its been afloat since 1921!
The rest were built amid material shortages late in World War II, but being horribly inefficient thanks to their concrete construction, most joined the breakwater in the late 1940s.