The approach of a thunderstorm reminds me in a way of the ball drop sequence that plays out on New Year's eve. There's such anticipation for the ball to drop and the clock to strike midnight. However when the moment is realized, the energy largely dissipates into thin air. There's no excitement for 12:01 am. It was all about reaching that point, the stoke of midnight. From a visual perspective, the intensity of the storm peaks in the seconds before it actually hits. I've witnessed this time and again, and the energy and pure adrenaline never seem to leave me. The purest form of storm atmosphere occurs in places like this...outdoors and out in the open. Better to witness the cloud structure from places with a wide vantage point. I arrived here last evening just ahead of a storm with which I had been driving on a parallel course. Pure luck put me here in the minutes before driving rain. I parked the car and ran out to the edge of this meadow. Menacing clouds rolled in from the west, quickly eclipsing the clear sky off to the east. Always an amazing sight to witness this squeeze play. Outflow winds raced out ahead of the rain, creating an eerie chilling effect on a day that had reached well into the 90s. I could feel alternate gusts of cold and warm wind, depending on the wind direction. The same winds created a frenzy of motion before me as the tall grasses and trees swayed. The clouds were spitting with lightning bolts and crackling with thunder. In the distance I began to hear the approaching rain. It arises as a soft hissing sound that gets louder as it draws near. All at once the rain arrives, and the proverbial New Year's eve ball has dropped. The brooding clouds morph into featureless gray cotton. The clarity of vision is occluded by raindrops. The storm will rage on for another twenty minutes. But photographically the show is over. I make my way back to my car. Soaking wet but still filled with the adrenaline of being here.

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The fantastic sunset last night looking from Great Sca Fell towards Skiddaw & Bassenthwaite Lake in the distance. On an otherwise featureless fell, I managed to find this wonderful set of rocks to photograph.

A small section of Markarian's chain of galaxies.

The two brightest objects are M84 and M86 both elliptical galaxies. An elliptical galaxy is a type of galaxy with an approximately ellipsoidal shape and a smooth, nearly featureless image.

Askar 120APO: 840mm f/7

ZWO ASI533MC Cooled Color Camera at -20C

Guided on ZWO AM5

20x180s with UV/IR cut filter

Processed with PixInsight, Ps

It was wet, cold and miserable at Lake Glenmaggie in Victoria, Australia when this photo was captured whilst sitting in the back seat of a car.

The photo shows a section of foreshore, water, a tree which is growing in the water about 30-metres from the shore, the other side of the lake and a grey overcast and featureless sky.

Some may question why the rain drops that are sharp are those in the centre of the photo and why are they in a band that crosses the centre of the photo diagonally from the top to the bottom.

The reason for this is the Plane of Focus that I used, more often referred to as the Focal Plane.

If you were to cut a circular piece of cardboard with a diameter greater than that of the end of your lens and on this cardboard mark the points of the compass N, S, E and W. Then place the cardboard flat against the end of your lens, the cardboard represents the Plane of Focus, thus wherever you point your lens and if you were to focus at that point, then the Plane of Focus at the time of focusing extends from N to S to E and W and all points of the compass in-between out to infinity.

This is now where the Focal Plane comes in – the width of the Focal Plane depends on how far the focus point is from the camera and the f-stop being used, and this is known as the Depth of Field.

As I mentioned, I was sitting in the back seat, and I focused on the area where the window glass meets the B pillar of the car. I then switched from Auto focus to Manual focus to lock in this focus point, this Plane of Focus, and being closely focused the Depth of Field was very shallow despite using f/9.

I then rotated my camera thru 90 degrees to frame the tree and take the photo and the diagonal band of sharp focus passing thru the centre of the photo is where the Plane of Focus was at the time of focusing which had been locked in by switching to Manual focus, being careful not to touch the manual focus ring.

This capture was taken for maximum effect as I wanted the tree to be blurred as much as possible whilst having only the central area of the rain drops as sharp as possible.

If you were to place your cursor on this photo and Left click, you will see an inverted image of the scene in each of the raindrops, even in the out of focus raindrops assuming they weren't blurred.

Another sandy bay on route to Sandwood and it gives you a picture of the path to follow. We reached here after about 40 minutes walk and we still had some way to go. People say it is a long featureless path but for me this was my first time and I enjoyed it very much.

By this time, only Lee and I were still here, in the company of our new friend Brian, who for avoidance of doubt among regular readers was not the same Brian who accompanied us on our previous visit to Iceland. This Brian was a human being rather than a yellow VW campervan, touring the area on a five night visit from Chicago. Somehow, and despite having a young family at home, he’d been given clearance by mission control to fly to Iceland and spend a few days alone taking photographs. When my children were the same age as his were now, I could barely make it down to the shop at the end of the road to pick up a pint of milk without company, never mind climb aboard a plane bound for somewhere across the Atlantic Ocean. And here he was, sitting alongside us on this far flung Icelandic beach. The crowds had long since departed - not that you really get crowds at Hvalnes, hidden away from the madding hordes as it is. Last time we’d been here, three years earlier on that gloomy grey morning, we hadn’t seen a single soul as the rain endlessly coated our cameras and foiled our intentions, whilst hiding the landscape in featureless clouds.

Now as autumn kicked in, things were rather different. We’d been here since the middle of the afternoon, absorbing the views, wandering over the beach and the headland by the squat, square orange lighthouse, planning compositions. The shot I’d come for three summers earlier was hopefully somewhere on the SD card, and there was a general feeling of contentment. Despite the increased number of visitors in comparison to last time, it was still very peaceful here. Eystrahorn had put right the wrongs of 2019 when moodily I’d perched on the slippery rocks, barely removing the protective plastic sandwich bag from the camera as it sat unused on the tripod. Everything was visible, from the emphatic bulk of Eystrahorn rising at our side, a symphony of bumps, crags and ridges adorned with heavy skirts of scree, to the distant Brunnhorn that sits back to back against its neighbour Vestrahorn. In between lay a hinterland of forbidding mountains that cloaked the monstrous Vatnajokull glacier, and before them, volleys of white surf danced across a narrow spit of black sand that stretched away beside the huge tidal lagoon into the distance and out of sight. Elemental joy, in whichever direction you chose to look.

There are no cities, towns, nor even villages here - you’d need to drive more than thirty miles in one direction before finding yourself at Djúpivogur, nestling among the south eastern fjords, home to five hundred hardy Icelanders. If instead you decide to head west, you’d travel pretty much the same distance to arrive at Höfn, a veritable metropolis in these parts with almost two and a half thousand inhabitants. Apart from that, there are farms, the odd shepherd’s hut, and an ever increasing number of cabins and bunkhouses to accommodate us tourists. All other compass points lead into the vast ocean or the mostly impenetrable mountains at the edge of the largest glacier in Europe. It’s a long way to go if you forgot to pick up that pint of milk, that’s for sure. You’d have to go and knock on a farmhouse door carrying an empty jug, unless you like your coffee black.

With all of that grand vista spreading away in front of us, the long lens offered possibilities beyond the capabilities of its companions in the bag, and in the golden hour it came into its own, especially in these unforgettable minutes when the pinks began to fill the sky, while the golds continued to linger. On the darkening sand, maybe half a mile away, a small group of visitors roamed the shore, taking selfies, playing beach games, gazing out towards the sea, totally oblivious to the three photographers lurking on those distant rocks. A rare moment when the colours of the golden and blue hours seemed to overlap one another and produce a sky that glowed with heavenly fire, drawing a frenzy of shutters rapidly opening and closing. These are the moments that stay with you, a timeless reminder of why you fell in love with landscape photography. A reminder of why a place like this gets inside of your senses and never leaves.

Our first full day in the southeastern corner had been a good one. We said farewell as Brian headed east to Djúpivogur, while we went the opposite way towards our rented chalet at Stafafell. And little did we know that just a few hours later we’d be out of bed, taking photographs of the Northern Lights. But that’s another story. And another unforgettable one at that too. Iceland keeps on making the stories write themselves.

This image was taken almost 10 years ago, in June 2011, the location is Grassington, North Yorkshire, this bridge goes over the River Wharfe. The original image was a little drab with a featureless sky. I removed some of the distractions such as a car and people on the bridge. I used the sky replacement tool, boosted the colours and also added a tilt-shift effect to focus more on the bridge.

I don't think I need to explain this too much. I like seaweed. I think it adds some much needed detail to a bare and featureless plane of sand. Everything else in this environment is so dramatic and eye catching that there is something melancholic, almost pitiful about this seaweed which I really appreciate.

For this shot, as opposed to the last shot of the same subject, I have used a very wide field of view so as to really make the landscape appear vast, and give grant even more character to the isolated subject of the shot.

I love the creative spontaneity of working with models in outdoor settings. I used to adopt a much more structured approach to these sessions. That's great insofar as I had a good concept. But more often than not I could not fully realize the look I had preconceived and my takeaway was some level of disappointment. I've gone more free-style lately. Things feel much more natural and less forced. I'm much more focused on including the model in the creative process rather than regarding her as simply a subject. The synergy of two minds leads to results simply not attainable by mine alone.

Late in a session with Carol near a drab soybean field, I happened to notice the field was suddenly aglow in the long rays of the autumn sun. The completely parched and featureless soy plants that had greeted our arrival here were now alive with warmth and brimming with light and shadow. I had Carol enter the frame, standing between me and the sun like a human eclipse. Instantly her physical form morphed into her shadow. The effect was an eerie silhouette cutout. I shared my review screen with her so she could understand my excitement over this eerie vision. She moved back into position and twirled about gracefully. The shutter clicked and this image was born.

Even on a muggy day with featureless clouds the summit and ridge of Liathach is a stunning and rugged place. Its locality is equally beautiful and thankfully totally unspoilt.

Yet another result of my masonry mania in Santa Fe. Why was I so taken with these walls? I think it started with seeing the hint of form and texture in what at first glance seems so completely smooth and featureless. But here there's some rather evident form in the dripping blue color and the dark shadow. Even more to follow.

During a period of dark and dismal winter weather, no colours grey winter skies rain and blustery winds I set out with Black and white photos in mind .

With this image it was all about the Seagulls playing in the windy conditions against a dark featureless sky . Embrace the weather no matter what it throws at you.

After seeing this picture elsewhere, the pilot contacted me to get a copy - so that's good!

A kōlea strolls down the shoreline at dawn. Returning collectively with a flock from its annual breeding grounds on the Alaskan tundra, kōlea, or Pacific golden plovers, disperse on arrival and reestablish their solitary territories in the Hawaiian archipelago. Superb navigators with territorial fidelity, Pacific golden plovers, use the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find their way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of island ground every year. They may use the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in their retina. The return trip to tropical Hawaii of approximately 3,000 miles of open ocean is an exhaustive, marathon effort of 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight at elevation ranging from 3,000 to 16,000 feet. Popular migratory birds in Hawaii, watch parties are held by birders in anticipation of their return.

This was another image that I actually 'saw' in black and white whilst I was on location. This image looks pretty flat in colour, but in black and white I was able to boost the contrast between the bright froth and the darkening weather. Strand lines can make for excellent lead-in lines in otherwise quite featureless sections of beach and the way this one evolved just begged to be photographed. The distant Embleton Dunes served as a strong anchor at the back of the image.

In the mottled shade under a beachside ironwood tree, a weeks-old Laysan albatross awaits its next feeding. This mōlī nestling will grow much larger over the next couple months, lose its fuzzy down to resilient flight plumage, and be abandon by its parents. It will unfold its 6-foot wingspan and learn to fly by its own genetically encoded primal urge. It will traverse tens of thousands of miles of pelagic ocean, yet rarely rise above 75 feet into the air; its world flat and visually featureless far from land. Its acute olfactory sense will guide it to ocean upwelling sites where it will surface forage for squid and fish eggs. In 3 to 5 years, it will find its way back to the tiny terrestrial colony of its birth and began prospecting for a future mate through an elaborate courtship ritual of interactive visual displays, sounds, and scent. Beginning at 5 to 8 years of age, it will co-nurture its own nestling for several months with its monogamous mate, then return to nomadic, solitary soaring over the North Pacific. If all goes well, it will return to find its mate and produce an egg most nesting seasons for more than 60 years.

Bit of a flat lighting day with a featureless sky, but the ND1000 filter from @srbphotographic helped to bring out a bit of movement in the clouds and whilst the sea was relatively calm it managed to capture some of the movement there.

Image taken on a Fujifilm X-Pro2, using a XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS lens.

The exposure details are:

ƒ/18.0 - 18.0mm - 30 Seconds - iso200

The image was imported into Lightroom and tweaked a little (ie got rid of a few dust bunnies!) - then exported to Photoshop and run through Nik Efex / Viveza filter to bring out detail using the structure slider. I think the overall output is better in Monochrome than colour, hence what I've added to Flickr.

Maybe I still haven't quite yet, although I think we're gradually getting there with this woodland lark. I don't know about you, but it's not quite the same as working at the coast or in the mountains is it? Getting an image from the trees is an altogether different game. You see the thing is I love being in the woods. During lockdown, our daily exercise was through our local woodland just across the road where we would be soothed by the endless birdsong and the gentle sighing and creaking of timber. There weren't really any leaves of note to whisper back in February, but it didn't seem to matter - we were in the woods and for a moment we were lost in time as the traffic noise was lost somewhere on the distant breeze.

That's what being among trees does for me. They create an unparalleled sense of wellbeing, even if trying to make pictures among them is a bit of a struggle. It's certainly an environment where I hope to develop and improve in the coming years as my free time expands with the eagerly awaited retirement that gets ever closer - less than five months to go now. I'll be free just in time for the autumn colours.

Those of you who've been kind enough to read the meandering tales that accompany my posts may remember that I'd spent five years thinking I'd been visiting Pendarves Wood near Camborne, when in fact I wasn't. I only learned I'd been labouring under a misapprehension for so long when Katie and I were discussing our weekends over morning coffee one Monday and she described her visit to the woodland, with its lake, its rhododendron arch and its duckboards. I'd seen no such things despite my own regular excursions, and when we looked at the map we established that the unnamed nearby woodland I'd been visiting was not where she'd just been to. She'd been to Pendarves Wood.

The bluebell season is amongst us now, although the driest April in a gazillion years hasn't helped them. However, it was the wild garlic that I was really hoping to capture, and this narrow glade had already been identified as a likely subject on a visit two days earlier. It was a visit where the conditions were ideal, but my focusing skills left much to be desired. Consoling myself that I'd rushed to the scene after a day at the office and not properly focused (in both senses) on the task at hand, I knew the opportunity to return would come quickly with the bank holiday weekend upon us. And so on Saturday I was here again, leaving the full frame at home in favour of the crop body, with what should have been the obvious choice of lens to me all along. To think I came close to selling my Sigma Art lens last summer - it still makes me shudder.

I left the scene happy, and confident that a shot worthy of sharing with you was somewhere on my SD card; a confidence that suffered a temporary setback on first view of the results. Sixty odd raw files later at home (via an impromptu detour to Godrevy which may result in another post later) and I began to learn what was working and what was creating far too much noise and distraction to the viewer's eyes. This one was taken quite early in the session, and I liked the hint of the curving path in the centre of the image.

It's Bank Holiday Monday here in England, and the warm sunny weather of the last few days has vanished into featureless grey skies, chased by a chilly westerly wind. It seems strange to be sitting inside with the heating on, when yesterday afternoon we were dozing in our sun loungers in the garden. I'm hoping the accompanying rain might enliven those bluebells a bit. After all, my next lesson under the trees awaits. I love that there's still so much to learn.

Apologies I've been a bit quiet recently. The excuse is pathetic. Good weather. You have to make the most of it in this part of the world.

Lots of squirmishes overhead...it was hard to see who was who or what was what for that matter...a featureless sky made me think of going over the top with the contrast in mono to create some interesting silhouettes. Not sure if it works...but it's different😁 I think these were Buzzards but there were around ten different raptors all kicking off with each other at the time so it was hard to tell!

Car light trail at sunset. the sky was featureless due to Forest fire smoke

Tigers Clough Falls, Rivington, Lancashire.

Yesterday was so poor weather wise I was resigned to not bothering even trying to go out taking pictures, despite having the day to myself and a new tripod system I'd been dying to try out.... rain, featureless skies and wind, just about as poor as you could get although I'd promised myself (is that a thing?) that I was going to go out and do something regardless of the weather so in the afternoon I set out with no real plan except to get into the outdoors somehow and to hopefully come back with one image, afterall there's only so much Youtube you can watch...

I very rarely shoot local to me for a few reasons, mainly that there really aren't that many decent places to go that flick my switch photography wise, and also because I've usually got something else planned further away, in the end due to the poor skies I figured I could come here into deep woodland where the sky doesn't matter, the falls should be good after the rain and I figured I'd probably get some decent Autumn colour before it all vanished,

Ended up with a great walk out to this little tucked away location in Rivington, just a quick 20 minute drive from me, it had been several years since I ventured down here on the way here I saw a huge Deer run right past which was great to see and a first for me around this area, it was worth it to see that alone, sometimes it's just good to get out., I think that's me done with Autumn for this year. Roll on that snow now.

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This was the second time visiting Thor's well. I didn't dare to get close to it during the first trip because I was the only one at the site that day. This time there were more visitors, so I went with the crowd. I was still awed by the sheer power that the wave created, and I was even more scared to get suck into the hole.

As for the photo, the sky was pretty featureless, but the current formed a really nice whirl, leading the attention to the mighty Thor's Well.

Even when visiting the prairie you can forget the colors of the prairie. There seems a bright yellow and dull brown, a dusty and muted pall draped over the landscape.

The grasses are green. The grasses are brown. And your eyes can only notice the reds and blues at glances, if at all.

Apart from dawn and dusk, the sky shifts endlessly from white to blue to white while clouds build across the parching afternoon.

In summer there are few flowers, but even those come missing more often than not.

The colors in this photo are at once surreal and hyperreal. They exist in that uncertain light between the lens and the film.

The colors on the prairie are few, but giving into it feels more colorful; allowing yourself over to the prairie, scrambling with life, overcome with place and being, there exists an endless color spectrum of light.

This is how the prairie can feel.

I will often say something like "I try to make my color photos express how a place felt rather than how it looked," and that is what is happening here - though I cannot imagine it so for everyone.

Most see these nearly-desert places as empty, featureless, and ultimately colorless: the beauty is show through black & white, if at all. But here, in this photo (and with any luck in most of the prairie photos), our notions and expectations are merely the foundations for possibilities. Even this is little more than a starting place.

This photo shows nothing that wasn't already there. It invents nothing. It imagines nothing. It rearranges no design. What it does (I hope) is simply show you what is possible.

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'A Poet Without'

Camera: Mamiya RB67

Film: Agfa Color XRS 400; x-90s

Process: DIY ECN-2

Nebraska

July 2023

A male kōlea in breeding plumage fattens up for migration. Kōlea migrate from Hawaii to Alaska for a five-month breeding season. The trip spans over approximately 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring a rigorous, energy intensive effort of 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight at elevation ranging from 3,000 to 16,000 feet. A superb navigator with territorial fidelity, kōlea use the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find their way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of territory every year. They may use the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in their retina. This one winters in Hawaii. Some will migrate north from the southern hemisphere. Pacific golden plover, kōlea, Pluvialis fulva.

Thursday brought another one of those evenings which reminded me that when it comes to this location, you can never have too much of a good thing. Every single low tide brings a different landscape with it and so often it's a case of trying to find that bit of foreground that leads to the distant focal point. Even when the sky is flat and featureless, as it was on Thursday evening, it doesn't really seem to matter - in fact a dose of cloud drama that so often makes the image here might even be a distraction when the lines in the sand are the most compelling (well hopefully you agree) feature in the image. I'm beginning to think of the place as the beach of endless gifts.

Lee and I had arrived relatively late, although we're already having sunset hour not long before 9pm. It seems funny to think that a couple of years ago we'd converge on almost exactly the same square yard - we still joke about this - and posting very similar images from an outing. As his specially sharpened elbows are famed in local five a side football circles, I'd inevitably lose the battle for the prime spot. At the moment I have little idea where he's got to of an evening out, somewhere up on the cliffs taking minimalist shots with his long lens as he is. Meanwhile my camera is at the opposite end of the focal length on tides like these; evenings when the wide angle lens, if it could speak would say to me "You don't need anything else tonight my old son. I'll do the job you need. You might need to do a focus stack, but it'll be worth the effort."

As so often happens here, I'd arrived with the intention of photographing another section of the beach entirely, but the clouds needed to make the reflections I'd planned on had vanished with the final hours of daylight. For a while I sat on the clifftop with Lee and talked about all things photographic as he trained his telephoto on surfers as they finished their sessions and carried their boards across the big patch of wet sand I'd been planning on using. As I watched, not for the first time recently the area of sand just to the right of the place where the Red River neatly dissects the beach as it makes its final journey to the sea came to my attention. From the clifftop I could see that there were promising patterns where a volume of seawater had escaped from a rock pool and made its way across the sand. Save for the distant inhabitant of a camping chair, nobody else was on this section of the beach and it seemed I might find a composition unsullied by human footprints.

I pretty much always wear my wellies here for low tide shots and I approached the scene via the river, intent on preserving the pristine landscape in front of me. Unfortunately I'd chosen the shorter wellies (so much easier for driving) and was rewarded for my oversight by a boot full of the Red River for my pains. To my right I could see a young lady was also wandering in the same direction, which hastened the camera out of the bag and onto the tripod. Fortunately she veered off across the centre of the beach and I could breathe and focus on the foreground options in front of me - there were lots of them at that. In fact this may not be the only shot I share here from the evening. In this one the beach seemed to be extending a sandy hand towards me at the very front of the frame. Mind you I feel like that every time I'm here.

It's not long now until the crowds arrive in our corner of the country and even at 9pm there will be plenty of people strolling across the scene you see here. Finding perfect sand without signs of humanity will become ever more challenging until the place is returned to us once more at the end of the summer. But that just means I'll move onto other compositions. There's always an image on this beach after all.

It's Sunday evening and another week at the grindstone awaits. I hope you have a good one.

I've been grappling with creativity lately. It used to come so easy. I seldom really thought about the process. It just happened. Often it was fueled simply by reacting to impulsive instinct. In that sense it wasn't so much about getting into a creative frame of mind so much as getting into an activity that was likely to yield creative results. Much like priming a pump. Once started, it required no further input. In the first weeks of the quarantine all of that went out the window. I was preoccupied for one, and creative pursuits seemed a low priority in the larger scheme of things. Also opportunities were limited and at first I was hesitant to even bring the camera out of the house. Everything just felt different. I took to shooting furtively, and even trying to conceal the fact that I was carrying a camera. I've since relaxed quite a bit. There's still tension but not nearly as extreme as it was. Opportunities are still limited, but often the biggest limitation is the mind. My impulsiveness has returned. I'm more apt now to act in the moment. I thought the societal shutdown might actually be a good time to explore situations that I might otherwise have shunned. Such was the case the other day when I encountered this figurine. The classic Virgin Mary funerary statue. I passed a small cemetery on my way home for the millionth time and suddenly veered around and drove back to check it out. I had seen several Virgin Mary figurines from the road and one seemed to beckon me in. However up close it seemed dull and rather featureless. But a couple of rows over I noticed this figurine standing in a puddle or rain water. It was as if her gown was drenched from the puddle but she was undaunted. Sometimes these figurines look utterly plastic and unrealistic while others are imbued with lifelike character and emotion. This one was as expressive as any I've seen. The effect was striking and highlighted by the low sun angle and ominous clouds. I was at first annoyed by the sun glare, but ultimately realized that it was transforming the scene.

A male kōlea in his dapper breeding plumage, often referred to as a tuxedo, before the long flight from the tropics to the nesting grounds on the Alaskan tundra. In a few days, he will sense that the time has arrived to congregate with other previously solitary kōlea and depart collectively. The trip spans 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring a rigorous, energy intensive effort of 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight at elevation ranging from 3,000 to 16,000 feet. Superb navigators with territorial fidelity, kōlea, or Pacific golden plovers, use the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find their way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of territory every year. They may use the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in their retina.

The physiological changes in migrating shorebirds, like this male kōlea, are astonishing. The necessity of increasing fat load for the sustained energy demands of long-distance migration has been compared to, in terms of percentage body fat, larding up to morbid obesity in humans. The surge in heart and lung capacity and increase in pectoral flight muscle are driven by hormonal changes (without the drudgery of exercise!).

From the pier to Blaine, just dull

Actually, microwave might be more accurate, I believe those are MMW line-of-sight links.

This crowns the roof of a massive Verizon data center in Cambridge, which connects this town to the US internet infrastructure at large. I would even call it a data fortress, the building is largely featureless and seems built to last a war. These towers are meant to connect different central offices together, with extremely low latency line-of-sight links.

It's funny to think that, all that I'm typing right now, is probably passing over this structure right now.

======Technical Details======

Camera: Contax 167MT (1987)

Lens: f2.8/180 Zeiss Sonnar T*

Film: Ferrania P30

Exposure: ISO 80

Weather: Late morning, mostly sunny.

Scan: Lab scan.

The original rolling stock and infrastructure from the New York Central New York Terminal Electrification finished in 1913 provided continuous reliable operation until the Penn Central merger in the late 1960s. Although the locomotives and passenger MUs have been replaced several times with modern equivalents, it is astonishing that the third rail design and power distribution infrastructure continue to serve on the Hudson Division more than 100 years later. The original distinctive tapered pylons lining the right-of-way on the east bank of the Hudson still carry High Voltage AC - now provided by public utilities - to railroad substations for conversion to 660 V DC to power the third rail. The upper cross arms used for signal and communication are now bare.

The Manhattan skyline has undergone dramatic change since the Hudson Division was electrified. The 1916 zoning resolution requiring set backs to preserve light and air space shaped the Art Deco stepped design of the Empire State Building completed in 1931. Its iconic 200 foot spire made it - for a short time - the tallest building in the world. Recent featureless boxy skyscrapers in midtown Manhattan now look down on one of the greatest symbols of New York City.

As the evening light fades, northbound MTA train 869 to Poughkeepsie speeds up the Hudson leaving the details of the city including the shining spire of the Empire State Building shimmering in its wake.

A large featureless field, apart from this one lonely old oak, the victim of a lightning strike by the looks of it.

Soon after leaving Whichford Mill, the white cloud caught up with me, and with another four miles still to go it felt like a bit of a trudge.

But I did get a nice pint of Old Hooky in the Pear Tree before the bus home!

- Sarah Ban Breathnach.

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I am a repeat visitor to Alabama Hills' location in the eastern Sierras and almost always relied on my wide lenses to make images there. This time while we visited, I had my 70-200 on my camera, and on a whim, I decided to keep it on my camera. I thought it would be an interesting experience. Also, we were too lazy to wake up early for sunrise, and I didn’t have many hopes for a good image with the cloudy featureless sky. However, it turned out to be the best decision of the day. With the telephoto lens on, I found a lot of compositions where I could isolate rock formation against the steel gray of the Massie Sierra Nevada Mountains. I managed some incredible images, but this one is my favorite from the session.

I've captured an inordinate number of images of Thailand's rice fields over the years, I'm inexplicably drawn to them and find the allure hard to pin down exactly. It might simply be the wide open spaces which are bound to end in mountainous areas or possibly the bright green tones at certain times of the day. Either way, they are mostly flat and can even be a little featureless as a photographic subject so I generally look for some kind of farm activity such as a tractor or even field workers to help provide depth. But even that doesn't always translate the beauty I see so my moment of choice whenever I'm given the opportunity is to try to include something worthy in the way of clouds instead. On this particular day, by design I don't think I could have even have put this scene together in my own mind, nature has a funny way of surpassing even the most fertile of imaginations, especially my own.

Thank you for being here :)

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Nomads has to move ,so the catle has new and fresh gras. Taking everything they own and put it on the backs of yaks and horses.

For the Tibetan nomads, life is indeed a struggle in the harsh environment of the high plateau: A place where the ground and winds are in perpetual motion. It is a place where temperatures range from a low of -40 degrees Fahrenheit to around 60 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. The yak is the key to survival on the Tibetan plateau. A visit to a nomad's tent illustrates this point. The tent itself is made from yak hair. Upon entering, the center of the tent is warmed by the fire of yak dung. The tent is illuminated by yak butter candles, and their blankets are made from yak hair. The principle diet includes tsampa and yak butter, dried yak cheese and sometimes yak meat. A poor family may have 20 yaks or fewer; wealthy families up to 500.

Settling nomads

Government policy aims to settle more and more nomads. It says that this is aimed at improving the economic viability of animal husbandry and lessening the effects of natural disasters on the livelihood of Tibetan herdsmen.

This allows the government to manage the nomadic population as it gives them fixed addresses.

Culture shock

For most nomads, the transition to a more urban lifestyle is difficult.

They are often settled in featureless blocks of housing by the side of roads or in newly created urban areas, and face the problem of creating an entirely new and sustainable livelihood.

Approximately 40% of the ethnic Tibetan population is nomadic or semi-nomadic.

www.humanrightshouse.org/Articles/11820.html

Amazing cloudscapes over the last few days, I find it compelling to photograph them. Makes the featureless grey skies we get in the UK look somewhat pathetic

A Pacific golden plover hunts for invertebrates in coastal beach sand on the south shore of Oahu. This beautiful male kōlea is in full breeding plumage; departure to arctic Alaska for a five-month summer nesting season is imminent. The trip spans approximately 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring an exhaustive 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight. In mid-August, this kōlea will make a return trip to this precise location. Incredibly, some kōlea will continue their marathon semiannual migration to oceanic islands of the southern Pacific resulting in an annual round trip total of about 15,000 miles. Their fledglings set off from the tundra searching for an island and a suitable territory a month or two after the adults have departed. Many first-year birds probably miss landfall and perish at sea. Survivors are superb navigators with territorial fidelity, using the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find their way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of land every year. Like most transoceanic migratory birds, they may use the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in their retina.

Despite being a common sight, I’ve aways struggled to get a decent shot of one in flight. Shame about the featureless sky, but just proves we can get clear blue skies in the UK!

Tipulidae

Size: 14 mm

Handsome, right?

This is a studio portrait of a common but easily overlooked creature: the larva of a crane fly. Like most dipteran larva, they are soft skinned, legless, feeding machines.

This particular image was featured in my latest children's book "Livet som minimonster" ("Life as a mini monster") which explores the topic of various arthropod life cycles.

I think this is a good example of the fact that no matter how drab and featureless a subject may appear, it never fails to fascinate me when I look closer. In this case I was intrigued by the bristles and the interesting texture of the skin.

Stacked from 150 exposures (dead/prepared specimen) in Zerene Stacker.

Sony NEX-7, Mitutoyo M Plan Apo 10X 0.28

Many of my wildlife shots, particularly birds, although generally acceptable, are spoiled by an unattractive background. This often happens when they are shot against a blank or featureless sky. I have found that the Luminar 4 editing program is not just a boon for landscape photographers, but is also a fun way to give the birds a second chance. Sky replacement in these shots is not an attempt to deceive - just a bit of fun to let the subjects have their moment in the sun (or cloud, or storm, or sunset!).

The Lilac-breasted Roller and its perch are absolutely real.

What I really wanted to do was spend the day at home, catching up with normal life, pottering around the garden and planning what to plant where for the summer, and returning to the huge backlog of images from the trips to Madeira and the New Forest. After coming home from the latter a few days earlier I’d packed the van again the very next day to meet up with Mark and Wendy, our old hiking buddies who were touring Cornwall in their motorhome. By the time I returned home on Sunday afternoon I slumped onto the sofa and slept until tea time, woken by a text from my son in Wadebridge, who wanted to add another escapade to our friends’ visit the following day. My first reaction was to decline. I had plans for almost every day of the forthcoming week, and I really wanted a breather from life for twenty-four hours. But then it occurred to me that Tom’s time is far more precious than mine; he’d be back at work the following morning, and even though it was a bank holiday which means I usually hide in the garden, I said I’d be at his around noon, from where we’d push on to a couple of places that until now had always just been interesting looking dots on the map.

To start with, we headed for Port Isaac, home of TV’s Mr Grumpy, Doc Martin, a number of pasty hungry herring gulls and more than a smattering of bank holiday visitors. Only Wendy’s pasty came under attack, and fortunately for Tom and myself, it was of the vegetarian variety, so we didn’t feel obliged to share our steak filled options in recompense for failing to warn our friends about the likelihood of needing to repel airborne assaults. Following this, we spent the entire car parking allowance hunting for sea glass on the beach. Of course we did. What else would you do in a picture perfect postcard village riddled with pubs and ice cream parlours? “We’re looking for Sea Badger Droppings!” affects my son in a strangely Bristolian sounding accent whenever asked by strangers what they’re missing. The odd thing is he was born in Truro, so quite why he suddenly decides to sound like he’s the new tambourine player in The Wurzels for these moments is a question that remains unresolved. The fact that he believes for a moment even the most gullible tourist might fall for the ruse also requires further explanation. Surely everyone knows the Sea Badgers only ever leave the Isles of Scilly and come to the mainland for the mating season in the autumn?

And then we moved on to the bit I’d been looking forward to. Tom’s partner Rhi grew up in Tintagel, and had arranged to meet us later at Trebarwith Strand, her local childhood haunt after finishing her shift as a paramedic. We ate at the pub which sits above the water overlooking the sea, where I was so wrapped up in the prospect of the sunset shoot that I raced through my Waldorf Salad almost without reference to Fawlty Towers at all. I also failed to notice the presence of the famous face sitting at the opposite table; one who appeared in the locally filmed TV series mentioned above if you were wondering. Of course, I’d already done my homework, which mostly consisted of examining the weather and tide apps that tell me whether I should get excited, and then viewing a certain Mr Pedlar’s (you know him!) photos in these pages to see what to expect. And in a rare moment of perfect fusion, it seemed the gods were on my side. The high tide I'd anxiously coveted for this location would be just an hour before sunset and in the previously featureless sky, groups of fluffy clouds were gathering like old friends to hang in stillness over Gull Rock. My plate now clear of all the remaining Waldorfs, I raced down to the water’s edge like a child excused from the dinner table, only to find the plum spot taken by an interloper. I knew I should have brought a sandwich and refused to budge for two hours – naturally if I’d been here on a photography only mission rather than a social engagement that’s exactly what I would have done. Soon he was followed by three or four more tripod bearing togs, each competing for ground in a very limited space, and to add insult to injury not one of them appeared to be Mr Pedlar himself. It goes without saying that if Lee had been present they’d have seen him sharpening his famous elbows and all headed for the pub in varying states of fear for their personal safety to soak up restorative brandies in an instant, leaving me with only himself to contend with.

But high tide Trebarwith offers a secret weapon to the intrepid tripod wielder, in the form of a narrow ledge of rock to the left of the funnel where we were all standing. With a degree of care and the removal of the varifocals that suddenly become about as useful as a house made of cheese when looking at the space around my feet, I hopped across the stream that cuts through the rock shelf on its way to the sea. Finally I had the space I wanted, from where I could watch the rest of them fight for position on the other side of the divide. One of them decided to offer some counsel. “Take care down there. I once watched someone slip over on that bit, and when they carried him back to safety his kneecap wasn’t in the same place it had been when he first went down there.” I nodded and smiled. I’d already negotiated a section that the falling tide had uncovered and was all too aware of exactly how slippery the green and black areas that I’d so studiously avoided were. Two hours earlier, on the other side of high tide it had been bone dry here and the difference on the surface beneath my feet was all too palpable. I moved very slowly, just a few yards forward; every inch was undertaken with the utmost caution in my most grippy of hiking shoes, using the tripod as a makeshift walking stick until I reached a small crack in the rock above the receding sea that offered a bit of traction. Now I could concentrate on setting up the shot, waiting for those moments when an incoming wave washed back towards the sea, the brightness of the white water softening to an icy blue after the break. Above us, the dreamy shroud began to light from underneath as the sun, cloaked in a glorious bold and bright orange made its final bow. As long as I stayed on my feet, I might just get a shot. At least if I got it right, I wouldn’t have to take my chances here again on another visit. Probably.

I’ve often thought that pride is an unattractive trait, and blowing one’s own trumpet should be put to one side in favour of reluctant acceptance of a positive reaction from one’s peers where merited. But in this case, I have to admit I was rather excited about sharing the image, and the entire brass section, accompanied by an oboe, a couple of flutes and three very noisy recorders has been turned to full volume on presenting the final result. I like this shot rather a lot. In fact I'd go as far as to say it's one of my favourites. So much in fact that I’m going to get it printed and put it on the wall at home. Of course it’s pure luck really. It's not often that you turn up at a brand new location to conditions you never dared to hope for. Not often you get to take a shot that makes you this happy when you’re in the company of people who didn’t come here armed with tripods and bags full of camera gear.

The farewell was not long after I took this shot. Mark and Wendy were heading back to the campsite near Tintagel as their adventures in the beautiful county that we call home came towards a close. Tom and Rhi headed back to their home in Wadebridge and work the next day. For a while I sat at the wheel of my car and grinned into the fading light. Somewhere out on the water, a skulking pair of Sea Badgers grinned back as they slipped beneath the surface and began the long journey back to the Scillies.

We're back in South Lanarkshire just now but I was looking through some photos from Skye which I had rejected to see if anything could be salvaged. Originally, I had passed on this one because there was a large expanse of featureless sky. However, although the end result isn't perfect, cropping out most of the sky has certainly improved matters. This isn't too bad but I feel there is a far better picture to be had in more dramatic lighting.

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I'd no intention of heading up to London for the Coronation itself but on Thursday I decided at short notice that I'd head up to take some photos of the preparations.

I wanted to get a shot of the Mall decorated with Union Jacks but unfortunately from this viewpoint there was a big truck parked in the way. Fixed this in Photoshop though by 'flipping' one half of the photo and partially replacing one side of the shot. This is probably now obvious now that I've said it but hopefully it initially fooled you....... Oh, that and I've replaced a completely white featureless sky with something a bit more interesting.......

Click here for more of my pre-Coronation photos : www.flickr.com/photos/darrellg/albums/72177720308161314

© D.Godliman

A kōlea probes the damp soil for earthworms. A Pacific golden plover patrols the Oahu shoreline and reestablishes his territory after a five-month summer breeding season in arctic Alaska. With his seasonal mating plumage fading this shorebird looks for food to replenish his body fat. The return trip traversed approximately 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring an exhaustive 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight. Incredibly, some kōlea will continue their marathon semiannual migration to oceanic islands of the southern Pacific resulting in an annual round trip total of about 15,000 miles. Their fledglings set off from the tundra searching for an island and a suitable territory a month or two after the adults have departed. Many fledgling birds probably miss landfall and perish at sea. Survivors are superb navigators with territorial fidelity, using the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find their way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of land every year. Like most transoceanic migratory birds, they may use the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in their retina.

2020 is very likely to be the last winter for the Sandouling open cast coal pit in China and thus the use of steam traction at this facility will cease.

With reserves nearly depleted the future of the mine will be reviewed in April/May.

Here we see stalwart traction for the coal trains in the form of Class JS 2-8-2 locomotive No 8190. She was built in the mid 80s and is still going strong today.

The area is on the edge of the Gobi desert and is largely featureless and expansive. This man made hole facilitates the removal of the coal from the mine at Xikang to the washery at Xuanmechang. From there it is transferred for onward transportation by diesel locomotive being loaded in the Nanzhen freight yards.

Temperatures during my visit ranged from -7 to -23.

Unusually for the area there was some prolonged snowfall. The area is usually bone dry the last light covering of snow being in 2012.

Storm clouds. On Hadrians wall chasing the snow. Although this area got a pasting yesterday much of the snow has melted today. Still the snow storms pile in and as I turn I see one engulf Cross Fell in the distance. Cross Fell, the highest point on the pennines a flat featureless plateau, you would need to sit tight when this storm hit and wait for it to clear.

Working the splash zone tide pools, this wandering tattler probes the rocks and periwinkles for a meal, sometimes while dodging breaking waves. ‘Ūlili, the Hawaiian name, resembles the tattler’s alarm call. With an expansive migratory range, the wandering tattler lives up to its common name. ‘Ūlili were considered messengers and scouts of the gods. A magnificent navigator, the tattler annually migrates between Alaska and Canada to tropical Pacific islands on a high endurance non-stop flight of 72 to 96 hours. Using the stars and the earth’s magnetic field, perhaps visually with magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in its retina, ‘ūlili find a route over thousands of miles of featureless open ocean.

Common ruddy turnstones in breeding plumage forage on the mudflats at low tide prior to departing the tropics for northern nesting grounds. The Hawaiian name, ‘akekeke, mimics the bird’s call. Migratory ruddy turnstones like to remain clustered after arriving at their winter range. Kōlea and ‘ūlili, two of the other common shore birds in Hawaii, disperse from their migratory flocks upon arrival and defend solitary territories until gathering again for the return migration to the breeding grounds. Fattening up is requisite for an annual migration from Hawaii to nesting grounds on the tundra of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia. The trip spans over approximately 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring an exhaustive, marathon effort of 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight. Turnstones use the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find their way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of territory every year. They may use the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in their retinae.

Somewhat different in appearance from the other Perdix species such as the grey and Daurian partridges this 28–31 cm long partridge has the brown back, blackish belly patch and chestnut flanks of its relatives, but has a striking black and white face pattern, which contrasts with the rufous collar.

The forehead, broad supercilium, face and throat are white. A broad black stripe runs down the face from below the eyes and it has a broad chestnut hind neck collar. The upper parts are buff, barred with rufous and black. The other tail-feathers are chestnut, tipped with white. The lower plumage is pale buff closely barred with black, with broad chestnut bars on the flanks. The male has black belly patch which is barred in female. The female is otherwise similar to the male but duller, and the juvenile is a featureless buff-brown, lacking the distinctive facial and underpart markings of the adult. Sexes are similar in size.

A very heavy frost coats the trees and shrubs growing around this old farmstead. The abandoned home on the right is so overgrown you hardly notice it. The mood is enhanced by the

frost-encrusted trees leaning in over the shed and the heavy, low cloud and fog that created a featureless sky that was still a subtle shade of blue.

You really have no idea of how endlessly flat Manitoba can be until you see it for yourself. Most of it along the trans-Canada highway that we drove along early last summer, is developed into farm land. I have to admit that driving through becomes a bit monotonous, but occasionally there were points of interest. The sky was singularly grey, which probably didn't help peak my interest.