We cannot really explain the Star of Bethlehem, but when all is said and done, we have something better than an explanation. We have a mystery. We have a miracle. And the miracle of the Star of Bethlehem is one of the many wonders of the Christmas story that draws our hearts to worship the Lord each Christmas season.

It is written:

Matthew 2:1-9: Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, "Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him."

.............Merry Christmas ...... Bingee

Foldstream effect colony vessel. I'll explain how it 'works' more in detail later on. Digital Lego, render in 3dsMax with V-Ray 5 and Photoshop.

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I really didn't think I'd have time for Shiptember this year as I didn't have anything on sep 29th. Thankfully working in LDD (Lego Digital Deesigner) can be very time efficient (this is 8h modeling work over the past 2 evenings) Other advantages include endless bricks, unrestricted palette and emissive materials. Ideal when time is short, but it doesn't compare to actually building a Ship and putting it on a shelf. Many thanks to my amazing woman who encouraged me to push forward and do this in such a short time. More shots soon.

One of the things I've missed most over the past six months is access to fresh plentiful veggies. Yes, this is privilege. In less than a week I can feel my body saying "thank you" for the fresh produce. It's not that it doesn't exist in India.... I'll try to explain elsewhere.

Belen, New Mexico USA

lilrenieworld.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/i-can-explain/

I wish I can say this so bad to all the Jb haters, but in there a different way of course, lol

Do u like it?

The young woman from Greenland accompanied us to our local hosts.

Very interesting what she explained to us.

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Die junge Frau aus Grönland begleitete uns zu unseren örtlichen Gastgebern.

Sehr interessant, was sie uns erklärte.

...........explain it to you one more time, You're not on the guest list !!! " -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mexican Jay and Acorn Woodpecker

On a Spruce tree near my house

There’s no need to explain again what this character means to me. I hope I will be able to try this role on myself. But now I entrust this role to one of my favorite girls.

Explained the way of the painting.a is the drawing of me,bb is the texture selfmade with watercolor,c is a plus b.The advantage of working this way You can later paint the texture after seeing the results,thanks for the visit have all a nice weekend

Homily080423_18thOT

Today, if you feel like I do, that we are surrounded, except when when we are together, by individuals that have no use or interest in Jesus Christ. Recently, I was asked by a very close relative, why I believed in such stuff? We were interrupted before I had a chance to respond. But the question, has caused me to deeply reflect on possible answers. Today, in our Gospel reading, we had the opportunity to hear about the transfiguration of Jesus Christ. Our gospel acclamation states the purpose of the transfiguration quite clearly: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” So, we listen to Him. Listening, implies a deep and mature relationship with Jesus…and a love between us that motivates us to be like HIM. My answer to my loved one, would obviously include Jesus Christ, my guide, my companion, and friend. Who are they listening too?

This seems like a very difficult task for many of our peers. Recently, I was listening to a popular podcast, where an educated young woman had become disillusioned with her faith. She proudly stated that she was deconstructing her faith. Eventually, she chose a career as a spiritual director, where she gladly supports others in the process of deconstructing. She strongly avoids the name of Jesus Christ in her own spiritual journey and practice in helping others. She stated quite simply that too many people have been harmed by others under the banner of HIS name. It made me wonder who she is listening too now?

This reminds me of a similar situation in scripture: found in John chapter 6. Where Jesus is preaching about the Bread from Heaven-the Eucharist. He is equating that the bread is his body. “So Jesus said to them Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (53) ) “After this saying many of his disciples drew back and no longer walked with him.” Who were they going to listening too now? I thought!

Jesus then responds with a heart wrenching question to his twelve disciples: will you also go away? Peters' response is beautiful stated “Lord to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” Because we are sitting and kneeling in our beloved church...we have a similar response…like Peter, James and John at the transfiguration event…we have the attitude that…it is very good to be here. This is where we listen to Him.

What are the benefits of listening to Jesus? Anastasius of Sinai, in his homily on the feast of the transfiguration in the 7th century states what we receive, beautifully:

“Therefore, since each of us possesses God in his heart and is being transformed into his divine image, we also should cry out with joy: It is good for us to be here—here where all things shine with divine radiance, where there is joy and gladness and exultation; where there is nothing in our hearts but peace, serenity and stillness, where God is seen. For here, in our hearts, Christ takes up his abode together with the Father, saying as he enters: Today salvation has come to this house. With Christ, our hearts receive all the wealth of his eternal blessings, and there where they are stored up for us in him, we see reflected as in a mirror both the first fruits and the whole of the world to come.” (End quote)

Peter, James and John had the awe-inspiring encounter with the transfigured Jesus, and it strengthened their faith for the purpose of sharing “the light” with the world. They had to come down from the mountain and face the complexity of a messy world. They did!

To change is painful. To be a Christian, a follower of Christ means that we have a deep bond with HIM. All relationships that are worthwhile, require us to adjust our lives accordingly. The purpose of our church…is to help form us into being a light for the world. Our transformation takes a lifetime, and this transformation requires us to listen to our conscience… for this is how we are guided in every moment and decision we make. When we receive the light of the world in the Eucharist, we are challenged to take this light, as it is reflected in our acts of kindness, into a dark and divided world.

Now let us prepare to meet Him in the Eucharist! Are we listening for HIS quiet voice within our hearts?

Old man explain life to his future

Houston,TX. 9.17.2015.

Wait! I can explain!

You see, we've been working our tails off this past week getting ready for the pond guy to come and rebuild our pond and waterfall - which starts tomorrow!

Yes, the pond guy is going to do all the hard work, but I wanted to make sure the parts he wasn't working on are going to look acceptable next to his wonderful new pond.

Well, new waterfall.

We are actually ditching the pond - too hard to maintain and one can only fish so many Lacrosse Balls out of its inky depths before the glamour wears off.

Soo... after I'm not even sure how many years... 3? 5? (seems like forever) of having a dry rock pit, we are going to (hopefully) end up with TWO streams/waterfalls disappearing into cobbles.

No more lost Lacrosse Balls!

Soo... I just wanted to document what it looked like NOW, so when I post a shot of the boys posing in front of the finished product you can see how far we came.

When will it be finished?

The pond guy said a week to 10 days.

Finger's crossed!

Stop on by Henry and Toby's blog: bzdogs.com - The Secret Life of the Suburban Dog

As I explained before, for two weeks now I have been, if not bedridden, at least mostly housebound as a result of a crippling knee problem. I can still drive around and run errands when mandatory, but it is hurtful and I am definitely not up to lugging photo equipment and go shooting. Furthermore, when this struck, I didn’t have many photos waiting for upload, what with the Winter season coming to an end, the pandemic still with us that doesn’t really encourage outings (the one day I went out, on March 9, on a photo shoot for the Fondation pour la Sauvegarde de l’Art Français, I became a COVID contact case of someone I had brushed against during the day, luckily without any consequence as I never was infected)... not to mention ridiculous wartime gas prices!

The bottom line is, a couple of days ago, I simply ran out of stuff to upload...

So, today, I had the idea to turn to some older photographs of mine to which I had, in 2021, given a “new life” by creating black-and-white versions of them for the purpose of a photographic essay that had been requested from me by the Department of Mediæval Studies of a US university. The essay’s theme was the emulation, with the tools of today, of the gorgeous black-and-white photography found in the books of the Zodiaque collection La Nuit des temps, devoted to religious art and architecture of the Romanesque age in Europe, and in particular in France. I’m sure many of you have heard about those books and/or own some of them.

Anyway, since those black-and-white versions are available, I figured I might as well upload them to offer you, who are kind enough to follow my stream, something to look at while I recover and until I can resume more normal photo activities...

Thank you in advance for your patience, and I hope you will enjoy this “renewed” content à la Zodiaque! I will put in a short description of each photo below.

The grandiose ruins of the Saint-Hippolyte fortified church in the village of Bonnay in Burgundy. Long exposure, ND1000 filter.

Details

... to other approaching eagles ... STAY BACK

Every time that I see two or more people looking together at the screen of a smartphone, my guess is often like this - "They're most likely viewing some interesting video clips." Thus, when I saw these two girls in their early teens whose eyes are glued to the smartphone screen, the thought that readily came to my mind is, "They most probably viewing some nice and entertaining videos."

However, I found out later that my guess is completely wrong. This was when I talked to the girl holding the phone just after a few minutes of taking this shot. She showed me not any video clip, but a long series of color photos which, she explained, she wanted her friend to see. And those photos were taken not by other people but by herself with her phone camera.

I then thought that yet another photographer is born!

Captured in Subic, Zambales, Philippines.

London, shop window in front of the British Museum

I was explaining swing to a student. Drawing some diagrams. I've only played with front swing. But in that dim light bulb I call what's left of my brain lit up and I drew the back swing solution to focusing on something at an angle to the camera. I ran home and garbed whatever was at hand to make a demo shot.

Of course, in my haste, I forgot my bellows extension compensation so this is pushed 2 stops. Live. Learn. And then die. It's the photographer's condition.

Front fall: 20mm

Back rise 30mm (Totally unimportant but shows off the huge circle of this lens.)

20 deg BACK swing

Ilford FP4+ @ ISO 250

Xtol 1:2, 12 mins (should have been longer) rotary process (This means rolling a Paterson tank back and forth across the kitchen counter.)

Do I have to tell you what stop and fixer I use?

Scanned @ 2400 dpi, edited down to 6000 x 7500 px

Contrast and dust removal adjustments in CS6

Lighting: Natural light with a reflector pointed 90 deg to subject.

As I explained before, for three weeks now I have been, if not bedridden, at least mostly housebound as a result of a crippling knee problem. I can still drive around and run errands when mandatory, but it is hurtful and I am definitely not up to lugging photo equipment and go shooting. Furthermore, when this struck, I didn’t have many photos waiting for upload, what with the Winter season coming to an end, the pandemic still with us that doesn’t really encourage outings (the one day I went out, on March 9, on a photo shoot for the Fondation pour la Sauvegarde de l’Art Français, I became a COVID contact case of someone I had brushed against during the day, luckily without any consequence as I never was infected)... not to mention ridiculous wartime gas prices!

The bottom line is, a couple of days ago, I simply ran out of stuff to upload...

So, I had the idea to turn to some older photographs of mine to which I had, in 2021, given a “new life” by creating black-and-white versions of them for the purpose of a photographic essay that had been requested from me by the Department of Mediæval Studies of a US university. The essay’s theme was the emulation, with the tools of today, of the gorgeous black-and-white photography found in the books of the Zodiaque collection La Nuit des temps, devoted to religious art and architecture of the Romanesque age in Europe, and in particular in France. I’m sure many of you have heard about those books and/or own some of them.

Anyway, since those black-and-white versions are available, I figured I might as well upload them to offer you, who are kind enough to follow my stream, something to look at while I recover and until I can resume more normal photo activities...

Thank you in advance for your patience, and I hope you will enjoy this “renewed” content à la Zodiaque! I will put in a short description of each photo below.

We step outside the borders of the “France romane” again, as there are so many lovely Romanesque churches in Sardinia! This one, another chiesa campestre lost in the fields with nothing around for kilometers, is simply referred to as San Antonio. I thought it deserved its humble and unassuming place in the portfolio.

The wine was pretty tasty, which may explain why I don't remember more about the meal.

A tour guide in the Hungarian Parliament Building uses a microphone to explain the building and its history to her group

Me...and himself! Now just let me explain... this was a very impromptu shot as this mirror is actually positioned inside the gents toilets at Chatsworth House! So we were passing by and the door was open, I spotted the mirror and hey presto...me and himself! :))

Then off again on the 4.5 mile walk through the grounds of Chatsworth in sunshine, rain, sleet and hail...thankfully far more sunshine than the other stuff! Got back to the car and removed our waterproofs and then the heavens opened and the roads were running a river by the time we left.

If you zoom in you can see it's starting to sleet through the mirror.

8. Rainwear - theme for 116 pictures in 2016

Let me attempt to explain why this image holds a special place in my heart.

On set for this, i was assisted by my dearest Magnus. I cant stress how much i appreciate him.

Also, this dress was made sometime late 2015 by one of the best people ive had in my life called "Akin". He also happens to bear "Cornelius" 😂😂 which by the way I think is a super-badass name. 500px , Instagram

At the public audience with Sebastian Kurz, the Chancellor of Austria, in the Bundeskanzleramt on today's national holiday. Fortunately this wasn't a political speech - he just explained the history of the room, where he had expected us, the so-called Kreisky-Zimmer.

My father once taught me a much more beautiful tie knot.

Näyttelijä Virpi Byring I describing the tragic death of a non-player character.

I do believe in magic, in things we can't explain.

I do believe in love, that it will not be in vain.

I do believe in you. Do you believe in me?

-

Eu acredito em mágica, em coisas que não podemos explicar.

Eu acredito no amor, que não será em vão.

Eu acredito em você. Você acredita em mim?

Picture made by Omnologue Cosmos. Merci :-)

The Saatchi Gallery Scene

The Karlsson family posing on the porch of their new red cottage home in Hallsberg (Örebro County, Central Sweden) in 1913. My restoration and digital hand colorization of Samuel Lindskog´s image in the Örebro County Museum archive. (We only know the first name of the husband, Samuel.)

The red paint -. called the Falu red - is produced as a by-product of the Falun copper mine.

"The original red paint—bright, and almost luminescent in the afternoon sunlight—was already popular, due in part to the whimsies of the rich and royal during an architectural period known as the Brick Renaissance. Even though it wasn’t commercially manufactured until 1764, it was used as early as the 16th century. “The king of Sweden in the 1570s ordered that the castle in Stockholm and in Turku, Finland be painted red from material from the mine here,” says Nybelius. Back then, the grand Gothic brick buildings of the Netherlands were especially popular among northern European nobility. “When Sweden was a great power, we wanted our buildings to look like the bricks in Holland. But we have a lot of wood, so they just painted it to look like brick,” explains Anna Blomster, a PhD in Scandinavian studies from UCLA who wrote her thesis on Swedish red cottages. It was thus that red became a symbol of Swedish royalty, and, ironically, a nod to the pomp and grandeur of faraway kingdoms.

It was only in the early 1900s that the red paint became recognized as the archetype of Swedish country life. “We had a bad housing situation and had very high rents,” says Blomster. There was a shift to the countryside from the cities, due to a national recession that caused mass unemployment and evictions. By 1900, the rents in Stockholm were the highest in Europe. In 1904, a bill was passed to provide loans for people to build their own houses in the country. “If you were working class and sober, you could get financial aid to build your own house,” she says. “Somewhere in this process they started to talk about the red paint as the Swedish color and started to connect it to Swedishness.” In short, if you had a home and didn’t know what color to paint it, red was the recommended hue.

From then on out, the red cottage in the country has become an irreversible part of the Swedish identity—a perpetual motif on postcards, in storybooks, and in real estate agent listings. “If you ask a child to paint a house, it’s always painted red. The red house is the heart of Sweden,” says Nybelius."

(Smithsonian Magazine)

You darkness, that I come from,

I love you more than all the fires

that fence in the world,

for the fire makes

a circle of light for everyone,

and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything;

shapes and fires, animals and myself,

how easily it gathers them!—

powers and people—

and it is possible a great energy

is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, On Darkness

The picture is a combination of 2 shots. One 18mm shot of the main content and one 200mm shot of the moon to bring forwards details in the moon.

Converted to B&W to strengthen the composition.

Made for the weeks challenge in #TwPhCh - TwPhCh034 : Mystique (mystikk)

Comments are welcome

To see surroundings, click here: www.flickr.com/photos/oddsmedsrud/4486569608/sizes/o/

Here is a calculator that might help taking better pictures of the moon: www.adidap.com/2006/12/06/moon-exposure-calculator/

In a comment futher down I explained why I used 2 shots to make this picture:

Thank you for your comment. Not only does this make it possible to choose the size, but it also makes it easier to get correct exposure, both for the moon and your landscape. You have a PS job to do afterwards on selecting the moon and adjusting the moon as you like it in your picture, but it is good PS-training.

Have a nice and focused day :-)

Life Sciences Building, Royal Fort, Bristol.

Afternoon 'tea' at the Salling warehouse.

While on a family birthday visit in Aarhus, Denmark we went on a couple of walks in the city - February 29, 2020.