National Trust
View allAll Photos Tagged Explains,
♥ MeHoney ( Sponsor ) - Peyton
♥ BONDI ( Sponsor ) - Tamabondi Drone
♥ RAWR! (Sponsor ) - Regina Nails
Thank you so much buddy, it's always a pleasure to take photos with you! Watch out for Edu's amazing version!
"A person who thinks all the time
Has nothing to think about except thoughts
So, he loses touch with reality
And lives in a world of illusions
By thoughts, I mean specifically, chatter in the skull
Perpetual and compulsive repetition of words
Of reckoning and calculating
I'm not saying that thinking is bad
Like everything else, It's useful in moderation
A good servant, but a bad master
And all so-called civilized peoples
Have increasingly become crazy and self-destructive
Because, through excessive thinking
They have lost touch with reality
That's to say
We confuse signs
With the real world
This is the beginning of meditation
Most of us would have
Rather money than tangible wealth
And a great occasion is somehow spoiled for us unless photographed
And to read about it the next day in the newspaper
Is oddly more fun for us than the original event
This is a disaster
For as a result of confusing the real world of nature with mere signs
We are destroying nature
We are so tied up in our minds that we've lost our senses
Time to wake up
What is reality?
Obviously no one can say
Because it isn't words
It isn't material, that's just an idea
Reality is
The point cannot be explained in words
I'm not trying to put you down
It's an expression of you as you are
One must live
We need to survive, to go on
We must go on!"
As I already explained in my previous image of similar title, this is what is going on in this Northern Paradise. We passed by watching in horror and pushing the accelerator to the very bottom to get away from this madness as fast as possible. ... Call me selfish, call me a friggin individualist, but I will NEVER stand in a line experiencing such places in a melee ;)
Needless probably to add that their two minibuses were almost blocking a very narrow road while about 500 metres further there was a parking lot! Gosh I hate this new photographic vandalism!
None of my photos are HDR or blended images, they are taken from just one shot
Cabo de Trafalgar, Caños de Meca (Cádiz - Andalucía)
Sony A900 + Carl Zeiss16-35mm + Cokin filters: X121S
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved
Folks let me explain that if I forget to comment, fave which I do not do without a comment, or invite it is because sometimes my pain is unbearable that I cannot sit here at the computer for any length of time, so please forgive me and try to understand, much appreciated.
All I did was ask this guy for a piece and he took off like a shot. Just trying to not post so so many Hawks, but that is all we've been seeing on every trip out.
Thanks for visiting and thanks for understanding.
Never explain yourself to anyone!! ,Because the person who likes you, doesn't need it v.v ,& the person who dislikes you won't believe it. ;)
Another eagle was approaching rapidly off frame towards this eagle with its meal pulled from the river.
"Birding is a three-dimensional pastime. It’s superior to, say, mushrooming, where the quarry is never higher than your shoelaces. And, of course, misidentifying a bird won’t kill you. Now, while all the mushroomers get busy writing angry op-eds, let me explain.
Birds fly. The sky’s the limit. One can’t go birding without looking up. The entire forest is stratified, from the treetop warblers to the ground foraging turkeys. And in the middle: thrushes.
Members of the thrush family spend much of their time on or near the ground. They forage on foot.
Males on territory might sing from a treetop, but they are often content to croon from a lower branch in the canopy. Birders sometimes complain about “warbler neck,” the pain that comes from looking high into the trees. Nobody complains about thrush neck.
Robins and bluebirds are thrushes. They’re easy to tell apart. The rest? Not so much. All the medium-sized thrushes are various shades of brown, with whitish, spotted breasts. So when walking in the woods, identification becomes easier if you start with a default bird: everything is a hermit thrush, unless it isn’t.
The hermit thrush is the most common and widespread thrush in Maine. It is comfortable in the understory of both hardwood and softwood trees. It forages through the leaf litter on the ground. When surprised, it may fly to a nearby branch where it can look you over and assess the threat, perhaps raising its tail or wiggling its wings. In other words, it’s easy. Its reddish tail contrasts with its brown body, confirming the identification at a glance. The whitish breast is lightly spotted.
Hermit thrushes don’t go far in winter. Most stay in the states. Some are even found on Christmas bird counts in Maine. They are the earliest of the brown thrushes to return, and start singing in late April.
Like their cousins, the song is an ethereal, flute-like melody, rising and falling. "
by Bob Duchesne (serves as vice president of Maine Audubon’s Penobscot Valley)
song
As I already explained, I only had my zoom lens on my camera when I visited Nancy. It was therefore impossible for me most often, to my great regret, to take overall views of the monuments I saw.
Here, I fortunately found a reflective half sphere placed on the sidewalk. You could admire a reflection of the cathedral there. By taking this sphere from afar, I was able to restore with my zoom lens an original overall view of this building.
_____________________________________________
La cathédrale de Nancy en reflet
Comme je l'ai déja expliqué, je n'avais que mon objectif zoom sur mon appareil photo lorsque j'ai visité Nancy. Il m'était donc impossible le plus souvent, à mon grand regret, de prendre des vues d'ensemble des monuments que j'ai vus.
Ici, j'ai heureusement trouvé une demi sphère réfléchissante posée sur le trottoir. On pouvait y admirer un reflet de la cathédrale. En prenant cette sphère de loin, j'ai ainsi pu restituer avec mon zoom une vue d'ensemble originale de cet édifice.
_____________________________________________
Nancy - Lorraine - France
Can't explain this wind of the moment , it made me smile while taking it . She seen me... smiled .... the wind .... i click .... and i smiled too :)
cute Lady
The wood wedding is, like the Silver and Golden Wedding, a jubilee day of the marriage. It is celebrated in the fifth anniversary of the wedding. It’s easy to explain why this day is associated with wood: wood, a natural and robust material, has always stood for stability and happiness. After all, it’s no coincidence that there is a rite of tapping on wood.
(www.bewooden.com/blog/inspiration/wood-wedding-A/)
This is looking back for the Macro Monday theme "Wood". The little wooden hearts were among the presents for my hubby then.
HMM to all participants 💙💙💙
IMPORTANT: for non-pro users who read the info on a computer, just enlarge your screen to 120% (or more), then the full text will appear below the photo with a white background - which makes reading so much easier.
The color version of the photo above is here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:
So far there's only been one photo in my gallery that hasn't been taken in my garden ('The Flame Rider', captured in the Maggia Valley: www.flickr.com/photos/191055893@N07/53563448847/in/datepo... ) - which makes the image above the second time I've "strayed from the path" (although not very far, since the photo was taken only approximately 500 meters from my house).
Overall, I'll stick to my "only-garden rule", but every once in a while I'll show you a little bit of the landscape around my village, because I think it will give you a better sense of just how fascinating this region is, and also of its history.
The title I chose for the photo may seem cheesy, and it's certainly not very original, but I couldn't think of another one, because it's an honest reflection of what I felt when I took it: a profound sense of peace - although if you make it to the end of this text you'll realize my relationship with that word is a bit more complicated.
I got up early that day; it was a beautiful spring morning, and there was still a bit of mist in the valley below my village which I hoped would make for a few nice mood shots, so I quickly grabbed my camera and went down there before the rising sun could dissolve the magical layer on the scenery.
Most human activity hadn't started yet, and I was engulfed in the sounds of the forest as I was walking the narrow trail along the horse pasture; it seemed every little creature around me wanted to make its presence known to potential mates (or rivals) in a myriad of sounds and voices and noises (in case you're interested, here's a taste of what I usually wake up to in spring, but you best use headphones: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfoCTqdAVCE )
Strolling through such an idyllic landscape next to grazing horses and surrounded by birdsong and beautiful trees, I guess it's kind of obvious one would feel the way I described above and choose the title I did, but as I looked at the old stone buildings - the cattle shelter you can see in the foreground and the stable further up ahead on the right - I also realized how fortunate I was.
It's hard to imagine now, because Switzerland is one of the wealthiest countries in the world today, but the men and women who had carried these stones and constructed the walls of these buildings were among the poorest in Europe. The hardships the people in some of the remote and little developed valleys in Ticino endured only a few generations ago are unimaginable to most folks living in my country today.
It wasn't uncommon that people had to sell their own kids as child slaves - the girls had to work in factories or in rice fields, the boys as "living chimney brushes" in northern Italy - just because there wasn't enough food to support the whole family through the harsh Ticino winters.
If you wonder why contemporary Swiss historians speak of "slaves" as opposed to child laborers, it's because that's what many of them actually were: auctioned off for a negotiable prize at the local market, once sold, these kids were not payed and in many cases not even fed by their masters (they had to beg for food in the streets or steal it).
Translated from German Wikipedia: ...The Piazza grande in Locarno, where the Locarno Film Festival is held today, was one of the places where orphans, foundlings and children from poor families were auctioned off. The boys were sold as chimney sweeps, the girls ended up in the textile industry, in tobacco processing in Brissago or in the rice fields of Novara, which was also extremely hard work: the girls had to stand bent over in the water for twelve to fourteen hours in all weathers. The last verse of the Italian folk song 'Amore mio non piangere' reads: “Mamma, papà, non piangere, se sono consumata, è stata la risaia che mi ha rovinata” (Mom, dad, don't cry when I'm used up, it was the rice field that destroyed me.)... de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaminfegerkinder
The conditions for the chimney sweeps - usually boys between the age of 8 and 12 (or younger, because they had to be small enough to be able to crawl into the chimneys) - were so catastrophic that many of them didn't survive; they died of starvation, cold or soot in their lungs - as well as of work-related accidents like breaking their necks when they fell, or suffocatig if they got stuck in inside a chimney. This practice of "child slavery" went on as late as the 1950s (there's a very short article in English on the topic here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spazzacamini and a more in depth account for German speakers in this brief clip: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gda8vZp_zsc ).
Now I don't know if the people who built the old stone houses along my path had to sell any of their kids, but looking at the remnants of their (not so distant) era I felt an immense sense of gratitude that I was born at a time of prosperity - and peace - in my region, my country and my home. Because none of it was my doing: it was simple luck that decided when and where I came into this world.
It also made me think of my own family. Both of my grandparents on my father's side grew up in Ticino (they were both born in 1900), but while they eventually left Switzerland's poorest region to live in its richest, the Kanton of Zurich, my grandfather's parents relocated to northern Italy in the 1920s and unfortunately were still there when WWII broke out.
They lost everything during the war, and it was their youngest daughter - whom I only knew as "Zia" which means "aunt" in Italian - who earned a little money to support herself and my great-grandparents by giving piano lessons to high-ranking Nazi officers and their kids (this was towards the end of the war when German forces had occupied Italy).
I never knew that about her; Zia only very rarely spoke of the war, but one time when I visited her when she was already over a 100 years old (she died at close to 104), I asked her how they had managed to survive, and she told me that she went to the local prefecture nearly every day to teach piano. "And on the way there would be the dangling ones" she said, with a shudder.
I didn't get what she meant, so she explained. Visiting the city center where the high ranking military resided meant she had to walk underneath the executed men and women who were hanging from the lantern posts along the road (these executions - often of civilians - were the Germans' retaliations for attacks by the Italian partisans).
I never forgot her words - nor could I shake the look on her face as she re-lived this memory. And I still can't grasp it; my house in Ticino is only 60 meters from the Italian border, and the idea that there was a brutal war going on three houses down the road from where I live now in Zia's lifetime strikes me as completely surreal.
So, back to my title for the photo above. "Peace". It's such a simple, short word, isn't it? And we use it - or its cousin "peaceful" - quite often when we mean nice and quiet or stress-free. But if I'm honest I don't think I know what it means. My grandaunt Zia did, but I can't know. And I honestly hope I never will.
I'm sorry I led you down such a dark road; I usually intend to make people smile with the anecdotes that go with my photos, but this one demanded a different approach (I guess with this latest image I've strayed from the path in more than one sense, and I hope you'll forgive me).
Ticino today is the region with the second highest average life expectancy in Europe (85.2 years), and "The Human Development Index" of 0.961 in 2021 was one of the highest found anywhere in the world, and northern Italy isn't far behind. But my neighbors, many of whom are now in their 90s, remember well it wasn't always so.
That a region so poor it must have felt like purgatory to many of its inhabitants could turn into something as close to paradise on Earth as I can imagine in a person's lifetime should make us all very hopeful. But, and this is the sad part, it also works the other way 'round. And I believe we'd do well to remember that, too.
To all of you - with my usual tardiness but from the bottom of my heart - a happy, healthy, hopeful 2025 and beyond.
DEAR SANTA, BEFORE I EXPLAIN, HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ALREADY?
FOR FULL CREDITS, PLEASE SEE BLOG POST HERE:
reignnoffashion.blogspot.com/2019/12/let-me-explain-swank...
♥
I'm wearing..
Newphe - Olli Shirt -
Fatpack came with a lot of colors and stamps.
Rigged for Reborn and Waifu - Lara and LaraX and PetiteX - Legacy and Perky and Bombshell sizes.
At Mainstore: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Maribella/50/202/2350
♥
I cannot. A double-exposure, the first thing one would jump to, is out. How could the second exposure on the same frame just selectively put in the three rectangular images without all the surrounding details? Very weird. I cannot possibly explain it but maybe one of you can. This was not taken through a window. I was standing out on our balcony in the open air.
Yashica FX-3 Super 2000 with Yashica ML 28mm f/2.8
Portra 400
February 9, 2021
How can I explain when there are few words I can choose
How can I explain when words get broken
Do you remember there was a time, ahaha
When people on the street
We're walking hand in hand in hand
They used to talk about the weather
Making plans together
Days would last forever
"Chains of Love" by Erasure
Photo Taken at Sunny Photo Studio.
Pose: Sassy Sweet Poses - Ariel Hoops 1
LM: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sunny%20Photo%20Studio/100...
It's really hard for me to try to explain how hard it is to motivate myself to do any photography these days whilst I continue to recover from my knee injury. Recovery has been seriously interrupted by lockdowns and closures of gyms...indeed, I've not even been able to see a physio for over 6 months. With all of that my fitness has suffered considerably and so even short excursions can sometimes feel like I'm hitting the wall at mile 22 of a marathon. Therefore, the thought of making the effort to climb a hill for photography when the conditions are less than ideal...well, it doesn't appeal.
When on the hill, a different fear now presents itself. Fear of another injury. I used to head out without a care in the world really. Sure, I might slip and fall, but I always felt that I was the master of my own destiny, even in those circumstances...but now it is different. My body just failed when I injured my knee, with very little in the way of warning, just a little knee pain like I've had for years anyway. The actual step I took when my tendon snapped was so incredibly innocuous, it's the type of step I've taken thousands, if not millions, of times before...it was just like going down the stairs at home...but in that moment, my tendon chose when I was alone, on a hill, in inclement weather and without a mobile signal, to snap...not at home, going down the stairs. And now, although the injured knee presents no pain, my other one does, so the fear is that that will someday go too, as so often seems to happen with people who rupture one tendon, eventually the other one ruptures too. Add to that a lack of strength in the injured knee, some balancing issues and a tendency to give way without warning...that all adds up to a heck of a lot of nervousness when going off the beaten track.
The day I took this photo was no different in many ways. I was solo. The weather was inclement. There was no-one really around. I did have some extra protection in the form of a satellite transceiver that enables me to send an SOS and I did tell my wife where I was this time. But with boggy conditions underfoot, it still meant my mind wasn't wholly invested in photography until I'd set up my tripod and decided to wait, in the cloud and drizzle, for things to happen. And so I waited...and waited...and waited. About 2 hours later I felt the subtle change in temperature on my neck as the sun tried to break through the misty conditions. Poised with my finger on the shutter just hoping for the mistiness to clear a little to reveal the landscape, the conditions brightened to the left of the scene you see here until not only were the two tress visible, but also the landscape beyond...and low and behold, a rainbow. What resulted was a stitch pano consisting of 7 vertical frames and 160 megapixels of Lake District loveliness. This scene lasted for all of 30 seconds...and then it was gone.
I don't tend to big-up my photography, especially these days. I tend to work behind the scenes, especially for anything from Snowdonia, where I spend most of my time, refining my project and building, what I hope will be, a quality book. However, when I go elsewhere, it is sometimes nice to share what I captured, and I think even I like this one enough to shout about it.
Normally, Jongmyo Shrine is only open for guided tours on most days. However, I was able to get in without a guided tour because it was on a Saturday which was the only day not needing a guided tour. Still, I got a glimpse on how much importance South Koreans put on cultural education to their kids.
Right over here in this photo was a guide in hanbok explaining to the kids what was Jongmyo Shrine used in the past. A really interesting thing to note is that despite fast changes and foreign influence over the decades, Korea has still managed to keep many of its traditions.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcm4BixLjeQ&t=219s
monologue from 'La nuit juste avant les forêts' by Bernard-Marie Koltès
forgive my translation:
we would have to be someplace else without anyone around, my friend
when I come to tell you what I have to tell you, feel good like lying on the grass, something like that
that one no longer has to move with the shadow of the trees.
Then I would say: 'here I'm fine, here is my house, I lie down and greet you'.
But here, my friend, it's impossible, never seen a place where they leave you alone and say hello.
We have to send you away, they tell you, go there, you go there
Go over there, take your ass off there
and you're packing your bag, the job is somewhere else,
always somewhere else you have to go looking for it,
there is no time to lie down and to let go, there is not
time to explain and say 'i'll say goodbye'.
Kicked in the ass they would send you away, the work is there, farther and farther, up to Nicaragua.
If you want to work, you have to move, never that you can say 'this is my house and I'll say goodbye'
so much so that when I leave a place I always have the impression that this will be my home,
more than the one I'm going to live.
When they kick your ass again, you go away again
Where you go, you're always more foreign, less and less at home.
And when they kick your ass, you go away again
when you turn to look back, friend, it's always the desert.
Let's stop once and let's say 'fuck you'
I do not move anymore, you must listen to me
if we lie down on the grass for once and take all the time
that you tell your story, those coming from Nicaragua
that we tell ourselves that we are all, more or less foreign
but that's enough now, we're going to hear, calmly, all we have to say
So yes, you understand that they do not give a shit about us.
I stopped, I listened, I said to myself: 'I do not work anymore'
as long as you do not give a fuck about me.
What's the use of Nicaragua's coming up here and I'm going over there
if on all sides the same story.
When I worked again, I spoke to everyone kicked in the ass that landed here
to find work and they have been listening to me.
I have been listening to those from Nicaragua who have explained to me how it is from them
Over there there is an old general, who stays all day and all night at the edge of a forest
they bring him food because he does not have to move
who shoots on everything that moves
they bring him the ammunition when he does not have any more.
They talked to me about a general with his soldiers surrounding the forest
everything that moves becomes a target
everything that appears at the edge of the forest
all they notice that it does not have the same color as the trees
and that does not move the same way
I've been listening to this and I've been told that it's the same thing on all sides
the more I get kicked in the ass and the more I'll be a stranger
they end up here and I'll end up there
over there where everything that moves is hidden in the mountains
I have listened to all this and I said to myself: "I do not move any more, if there is no work I do not work
if work has to make me crazy and I have to kick my ass, I do not work anymore
I want to lie down, once and for all, I want to explain myself, I want the grass
the shadow of the trees, I want to scream, I want to be able to scream, even if they then shoot at me, they do that anyway,
if you do not agree, if you open your mouth,
you must hide at the bottom of the forest. But then it's better this way
at least I will have told you what I must tell you.
This takes a bit of explaining. At the group We’re Here! we select a photographic challenge every day based on a new Flickr group we take turns picking. One of the most loved of our members is the funny, kind, clever, creative, and very talented Ruth Raymond, aka ruthlesscrab. Today’s challenge is to copycat ruthlesscrab and the group we are visiting is Ruthless Copycats. Ruth is the founder of yet another group, Fruits and Vegetables on a Tripod. Check it out!
So, all of that is the background for my photograph here. The photo I chose to copycat can be seen in the first comment box below.
I really don't like explore. Sorry not sorry. It's the same thing as with the Daily Deviation back on deviantArt - with the difference, I only once ever achieved one of those. But the concept remains the same. First of all, it goes on my nerves how it causes a notification like every five minutes. Also, since it's per definition a picture that's a few days old already, it seems to drag attention away from more recent uploads. That part I really can't explain, but it happens all the time. Something gets explored and keeps popping my inbox, while the two or three newer uploads published since get barely anything, as if there was a connection somehow. Which is especially frustrating when they carry some writing I really wanted to get out there.
Also, Explore is little more than a hot thumbnail contest. If enough people click on it, it ends up getting explored. Only, if all the people then decide, it's not such a great picture at all, that doesn't get accounted for at all.
In short, I wish one could disable participation in that with a checkbox somewhere.