View allAll Photos Tagged Featureless
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.
An office building in Las Colinas, Irving, Texas rises into the featureless sky over the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
Bennerley Viaduct has been on my 'to do' list for a long time. The weather forecasters had predicted minimal wind, clear skies and mist, but as soon as I looked out of the window after waking up I could tell that the prevailing weather was breezy and cloudy. Nevertheless, I decided to go to the location and treat the trip as a recce for future images. As this was a new location, I spent a fair amount of time walking around the site, working out potential compositions and just admiring the impressive Victorian engineering of the viaduct. After a fruitless half hour or so, I began to think about potential images in monochrome. I figured that the pale, featureless sky would be a perfect backdrop to show off the dark outline of the viaduct. The old wooden gate guarding an entrance to nowhere provided me with the perfect foreground element.
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.
Taken for 'Saturday Self Challenge': "A postcard from where you are"
These are murals that recently appeared on 'The Great Wall of Basingstoke' originally a featureless brick wall that was built in the 1960s after the old market town centre was razed to make way for a modern shopping centre.
Another example of sky replacement with Luminar 4. This time the bird was reasonably well exposed, but the sky was a pretty boring, featureless blue. I found it a nice complementary backdrop.
Bamford Edge, Peak District
Slightly disappointed that there was a featureless sky, but the light was great. Always a pleasure to walk up to Bamford Edge
The church has a commanding position on a hill-top at the centre of the village.
Largely 14th and 15th century, the tower was rebuilt in 1707.
I found the interior disappointing. It seems to have been the subject of enthusiastic Victorian 'scrapers'; all the plaster removed and the rubble walls exposed producing the look of a featureless stone cave. This was the fashion in almost all church restorations from the 1840s to at least the1880's as 'medievalism' - more fantasy than historically correct - became fashionable.
An EMD SD70ACe-T4 leads a Long Beach to Denver Premium Intermodal train into a deep cut approaching the 6814 ft. summit at Washatch the afternoon of Oct. 1, 2022. I continue to enjoy the advantages of digital photography over film. This image would likely have been disappointing if shot on Kodachrome 25 slide film (a medium I used for 27 years), with a washed out sky and a dark, featureless foreground.
Decked out in breeding plumage just days prior to departure, this ruddy turnstone runs up and down the beach, often flipping stones, to see what bounty a wave might wash in or uncover in the intertidal zone. Fattening up is requisite for an annual migration from this one’s tropical Hawaiian winter range 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. The Hawaiian name, ‘akekeke, resembles the sound of their call. The physiological changes in migrating shorebirds, like this ‘akekeke, 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!).
This was a mildly underexposed shot of patterns in the sand at Sunset Beach, NC, taken on an overcast morning about an hour after sunrise - nearly featureless! I starting playing with Photoshop, and here we are. The original appears in a comment - about the 17th comment, as I had trouble recalling how to display it.
Lone Brahman appears insignificant, gazing at the seemingly featureless horizon. A section of the productive cattle-grazing country between Winton and Boulia in the Queensland Outback.
Scanned negative from my film days. Full disclosure, I added the night sky to replace a dead and dull featureless one. Something I could not have done back then for better or worse.
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.
This male kōlea is molting into his 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 weeks, 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!).
There has been debate in the UK recently as to what the best view in Britain is. The view from Snowdon in Wales was voted the best. But, you can take a train to the top and tens of thousands of people do it every year. To get to Sgurr na Stri on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, requires a trek of 15 miles / 24km over rough tracks and featureless peat bogs, then climb the mountain. You need to camp out to get the sun striking the Cuillin mountains in the morning, so you have to carry all your camping and photography gear, in my case a 25kg pack. All for this.... in my opinion, indisputably - 'The Best View in Britain'. Very few people are prepared to do it - so it gets few votes.
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.
Taken near the start of the path up to Cwm Idwal. I took this on the way down when I was heading back to the car. The sun had completely come up so the sky was a featureless blue. I couldn't get the perspective I wanted standing on the narrow wooden bridge across the stream so the tree is cut off :( The Lee Big Stopper was a help here as it was so bright by then.
A black & white rendition of a night shot in Gion, Kyoto.
The gentle light peeking through the Noren curtain on the extreme right of the frame. More soft light filters through the wooden lattices showing off the lattice patterns.
I like it that the black is really black like Japanese Sumi ink with proper details instead of having shadows crushed into a featureless blob. The dark vs lighter areas are also clearly distinct.
Tilt-shift (T-S) lenses can be said to be facing their Kodak moment as well, negatively. They were useful back in the analog days and earlier digital era when sensor resolution was still low.
In today’s world of high resolution sensors and more sophisticated software, how many photographers still need expensive T-S lenses?
“Keystone correction + shift” software have become much more sophisticated these days besides. While keystone adjustments in the past might reduce sharpness in the image areas that are stretched, the interpolation and sharpening algorithms of some of these software today have become so good that this is hardly noticeable.
This image underwent keystone and shift adjustments in post-processing, no camera/lens was hurt in the process 😇!
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Don't ask me why, but Longlands Fell is probably my favourite 'Wainwright'. It's very featureless, unassuming and low in elevation - but all in all I think it's a lovely fell with great character and a grand sense of quietness. For a small hill, the views are very far reaching too, with glimpses of Lakeland yet a grand panorama of Scotland and the Solway right round to Carlisle and the Pennines. I struggled to find a rock or any foreground feature to compliment the view, but then I thought the patterns of snow amongst the grasses fitted in nicely with Longland's grassy charm and didn't distract from the vista.
A juvenile Bald Eagle, has run out of patience with me photographing it and leaps into flight.
Note: the sky was literally gray and featureless so I applied some split toning to it.
Photographing the Great Sand Dunes National Park was so much fun but a bit hectic. Once the sun breaks the horizon, the park is transformed into a land of shadow and contrast. Highlights dance across the dune tops and every minute the sun grew higher, the sand changed. Everywhere I turned a new composition presented itself.
Unfortunately after about 30 minutes the light becomes flat and featureless and your photoshoot comes to an abrupt end!
Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO
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.
A silhouette (English: /ˌsɪluˈɛt/, French: [silwɛt]) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhouette is usually presented on a light background, usually white, or none at all.
The silhouette differs from an outline, which depicts the edge of an object in a linear form, while a silhouette appears as a solid shape. Silhouette images may be created in any visual artistic medium, but were first used to describe pieces of cut paper, which were then stuck to a backing in a contrasting colour, and often framed.
Many photographers use the technique of photographing people, objects or landscape elements against the light, to achieve an image in silhouette. The background light might be natural, such as a cloudy or open sky, mist or fog, sunset or an open doorway (a technique known as contre-jour), or it might be contrived in a studio; see low-key lighting. Silhouetting requires that the exposure be adjusted so that there is no detail (underexposure) within the desired silhouette element, and overexposure for the background to render it bright; so, a lighting ratio of 16:1 or greater is the ideal. The Zone System was an aid to film photographers in achieving the required exposure ratios.
High contrast film, adjustment of film development, and/or high contrast photographic paper may be used in chemical-based photography to enhance the effect in the darkroom. With digital processing the contrast may be enhanced through the manipulation of the contrast curve for the image.
While not strictly a day to night simulation, it is a manipulated image.
I took the original right after sunset, but the sky was rather featureless so I replaced it with a sky more appropriate for what I wanted to achieve.
Then I went ahead and cleaned up the scene by removing a few objects that disturbed me with the Photoshop generative fill and removal tools. A parking meter, an electrical box, a mailbox, a car, some modern technology, wires hanging from the roof, some garbage and a few motion blurred people all had to go.
After that the image looked a little lifeless, so I turned on the lights in the room on the upper level. I also let the streetlights shine onto the pavement. All the Christmas farolitos on top of the wall were already lit, so I didn't have to. Same with all the street level shop windows and the street lanterns. Then it took about 9 tries to generate a single person with shopping bags using Photoshop generative fill. I think she looks pretty convincing.
What do you think?
Of course every self respecting business has them; the annually reviewed and tested pithy document, guaranteed to cure even the worst cases of insomnia, upon which the big chiefs would resort to immediately if a crisis were ever to occur. In my previous life I even had to propose updates to ours a couple of times, although it felt far removed from what I was qualified to do. As I presented it to the governing body, I made some sage comment about risk being at the heart of every senior team meeting and looked for approving nods around the table in the hope that it had helped to disguise a painful attack of impostor syndrome. I’m convinced that when the pandemic struck, UK plc dug out its own emergency procedures manual; the one that had been dusted off and reviewed, with a couple of paragraphs refreshed and updated before being approved by some parliamentary select committee in the middle of a particularly snoozy agenda when everyone was itching to get to the members’ bar to engage in whatever they’d later be found guilty of. Now they were glad that Jordan and Poppy, the bright young things from Treasury Operations had been to the benchmarking exchange conference in Vilnius last spring and come back with that great idea they’d pinched from Marius and Ruta, their equally irritatingly gifted Lithuanian counterparts. Until that moment it had been assumed they’d just gone for the expense account lunches and the duty free on the way home, but now it seemed their visit had been worthwhile. “It says here we need to close the schools, put half the nation on furlough and get most of the rest of them to work at home.” And then a few paragraphs further down; “who came up with this? Support the hospitality industry by subsidising the punters and paying half the price of their pub lunches on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Genius!” I’m sure the Cabinet didn’t really come up with that at the drop of a hat. They might have claimed the credit, but you can be pretty sure that the Civil Servants did all the clever thinking and implementing. Maybe the soubriquet “Rishi’s Dishes” was coined as a nod to the new chancellor in a hurry by some Whitehall underling with a talent for Cockney rhyming slang, but I’ll bet the concept had long since been lying in Section G, paragraph 143.2(f), waiting for its moment in the sun. In fact, we had a Jordan working for us as an apprentice for a while, but he was one of those rarities us masses come across once in a career, as calm and capable as anyone I’ve ever worked with at any level. Jordan was destined for much greater things than a humble college accounts department, soon leaving us to be fast tracked to manage a large team of staff somewhere secretive before the eve of his twentieth birthday. He had to have “security clearance,” whatever that means – and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he’d dreamed up one of the more inventive schemes that Boris and Rishi pretended was their brainchild. He still sends a Christmas card, but I’m not allowed to ask him about his work unless I want to be dragged away by the SWAT squad in the middle of the night in my jimjams. He’s still only about 24 and I believe he may actually be running the country while Parliament goes on its summer holidays. I hope he’s worked out what the new Prime Minister is going to do to sort the energy price hikes this autumn.
Not all of these thoughts occurred to me in the moments that I heard the sound of hooves on the tarmac behind me, but I knew an opportunity was about to occur and that a sudden change of plan would be needed. Ali and I had just completed a rather wonderful circular walk along the banks of the River Barle, starting and ending at the famously mysterious Tarr Steps as our brief stay at the edge of Exmoor came to an end. It had been an especially pleasing way to complete the day, and the crowds that had converged here when we’d arrived three hours earlier had now dispersed, with only one soon to depart family left wading in the cold water and skipping over the iconic causeway. Now I could at least try something; quite what I wasn’t certain. Photographing the steps in their entirety didn’t feel like it was going to produce much more than what documentary togs call a “record shot,” and I scratched my head as I hadn’t given the matter much thought beyond that. Finally deciding to zoom into a small section with the reflection of the trees in the water balancing the composition, I reached for the polariser and the six stop. In truth, I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired. It was still probably going to be a record shot and nothing to write to the papers about.
And that was the point at which the steady clip clop sound of approaching horses came into earshot, signaling the fact that a far more interesting spur of the moment shot lay in wait. “I do hope we’re not about to spoil your shot,” came the voice of the first rider. “No, you’re about to turn it into a much better one,” came the response, the only piece of spontaneity that young Jordan might have nodded at in approval. The rest was chaos of course. As the equestrians briefly paused at the water’s edge, seemingly so at my behest, I ripped the two fragile filters from the lens and stuffed them into an already full pocket, before dialing in a torrent of random settings designed to change a long exposure to a very fast one in low light. With very little thought about the enormous dynamic range before me, I hit the shutter in hope as I invited them to cross the ford. Come on now, you’ve all taken the odd shot when any attempts to reduce the highlights later on have left you with a strange pink featureless patch where the sky is supposed to be haven’t you? Even since I realised that the pretty graph on the back of my screen actually meant something, the highlights have been blown to kingdom come on more than one occasion.
Watching Nigel Danson’s three way chat with Mads Peter Iversen and James Popsys last weekend on YouTube, two thoughts emerged from the hour long presentation. Firstly, it was agreed that James, a confirmed disciple of the "run and gun" school of landscape photography is much better at reacting to situations such as the sudden and unexpected arrival of horses than either of the other two with their more considered approach. But then he doesn’t believe in tripods or filters, which is an alien world to me. Secondly, when they were each asked what were their favourite images from their own portfolios, Mads chose a predictably stunning image of some early morning geese flying low across the water on a misty Danish morning in front of a fir forest; a picture he’d confessed he had to do a bit of “hit and hope” of his own in the making of. Did you see it? The picture took my breath away, and I’m used to being routinely bowled over by Mads’ pantheon of extraordinary output. And then I remembered my last visit to Godrevy just before we went to Exmoor and the ritual flight of the gulls to the lighthouse that seems to always happen half an hour before sunset – another moment where I’d locked into a long exposure and missed the chance of a far more interesting shot than the one I was taking at the time.
So I’ve decided that what I need, before I even think about putting the camera in the bag again is a set of emergency procedures; something that makes me a little bit more James and a little bit less Nigel and Mads when the moment of unexpected drama calls for it. They won’t be as long and tiresome as the ones we had to update for audit committee each June, but they will need to be useable in the event of something exciting happening without warning, such as horses crossing a river next to a national landmark of uncertain age, or seagulls making that end of day exodus to Godrevy Lighthouse in huge numbers. It might even be as simple as going to the place us togs sniff at, and putting the camera into automatic mode and letting it decide, or it might be that I need to work out how to use the creative buttons and set up shortcuts for such moments. It also needs to include a section on having a better receptacle than a pocket already stuffed with keys and a mobile phone for the quick and safe storage of rapidly discarded filters. Having the filter pouch more readily available might be an idea – in fact there’s a clip on the tripod to hang it from. And finally, I need to test the emergency procedures in a controlled environment and give myself feedback on how I performed and what needs improvement. I’ll need a tick box form for that. Oh heck - that's a slippery slope I've started making right there.
Or rather more likely, I’ll forget the entire thing until another sudden moment comes careering into the field, catching me unawares and cursing myself at the sound of the white noise between my ears amid the rush of excitement. I’m sure Jordan would know exactly what to do. He was always on top of things when the you know what was flying at speed in the direction of the office fan. For a start, he would have immediately noticed that there was a dog wandering across the Tarr Steps when the photo was taken. I didn’t see it at all until I looked at the image on the big screen at home the next morning. Now where on earth did that come from?
A female Bufflehead lands on the calm, featureless water in the early morning. Shooting into the light results in a silhouette, and combined with the lack of features on the water's surface reduces this image to the bare essentials.
Simpler is usually better!
A wandering tattler sings from atop a coastal limestone outcrop. Uncommon in breeding plumage in its nonbreeding range, I’m not sure if it’s an early migratory return or if it’s a young bird that oversummered in the tropics. I observed it chasing other tattlers on the shoreline. ‘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, many tattlers annually migrates between Alaska, Siberia, 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 perceived with magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in its retina, ‘ūlili find a route over thousands of miles of featureless open ocean.
Another from my jaunt around Newcastle last week - everywhere is so wet it's tricky to get off piste at the moment. This is (yet) another view looking down Grey Street, but with some mono and pinhole processing to distract from the drab, featureless, grey skies.
Burney overlooks the busy A5092 opposite the vast Kirkby slate quarries. On both flanks are scanty remains of antiquities, the rougher west side also having traces of old workings, but in general Burney is featureless, a grassy mound with little to commend it, but redeemed by a superb view that ranges from far out in the Irish sea to the Yorkshire Pennines and includes most of the southern half of Lakeland.
Nikon d810a
50mm
ISO 8000
f/2.2
Foreground: 12 x 13 seconds
Sky: 31 x 20 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
Hoya Red Intensifier filter
This is a 43 shot panorama of the Milky Way rising above the salt encrusted surface of a dry lake at Cowcowing Lakes, 2.5 hours north east of Perth in Western Australia.
Another photo where I've thrown myself into the foreground to add some scale and interest as the lake was otherwise featureless, save for the pressure ridges you can see on the surface. It was a pretty windy night so I had to shorten the exposures, compensated by increasing ISO.
As usual, prominent in the night sky are the Magellanic Clouds near the centre, the deep red Gum Nebula on the right and just left of that is the pink coloured Carina Nebula.
I actually felt bad putting my own signature on this work of art.
Sometimes I catch and release a spider onto my black glass, only to immediately cover it again because it’s too active. I give them time to settle down, and check again later. Sometimes that works.
When I came back to check on this guy, I discovered he had found a way to occupy himself in confinement. In the moment, it looked like a mess - definitely not the featureless black glass I typically desire! I took the shot anyway, in case he ran and I didn’t get a chance for another.
I did get a few others, and so nearly deleted this “mess”…
But then I SAW it. And it was beautiful.
I found him very near the lady Coras funnel weaver who starred on the 5th, and when we were done, I made sure to put him back there.
20 Arachtober 2024
Funnel weaver, Coras sp.
Tellico Plains, TN • 17 October 2024
Scottish Parliament Building, Edinburgh
I had a write-up planned but you have no idea how long it has taken me to process this!
Thanks to INNES for his insight into this building... it saves me the hassle of researching it myself. However, I will say that I found it a bit of a letdown. I'm all for favour of pushing the boundaries in architecture design but this has over stepped the mark and produced nothing of ground breaking merit. I can see where the cost has done - its quirky features might look good on the designer's computer screen, but someone has to build and manufacture these things!
Just in my image alone there are four distinct window designs, not to mention two different depths. And what is all that cane/pole screening about? But the pièce de résistance has got to be the surrounding walls. But for the quirky interior I would say I visited a prison - tall, ugly, featureless and concaved. In my mind, I think these where an afterthought - maybe for anti-terrorism or bomb blast deflection but still ugly.
A dim aurora from the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, in Churchill, Manitoba on February 26, 2022. This aurora was at Kp1 level (very low) and appeared only as featureless grey arcs to the eye. But the camera picked up unusual red colouration, and even some yellow-oranges, along with the more normal greens. The reds are odd for such a low-level aurora as the oxygen reds typically appear only when the aurora gets very active and energetic. The display did brighten later this night when it took on the more classic green arcs, with occasional lower fringes of nitrogen pinks. But at the start of the night the reds dominated.
The Big Dipper is at top centre. Vega is at bottom left. Arcturus is at bottom right.
This is a single frame with the TTArtisan 11mm full-frame fish-eye lens at f/2.8 for 30 seconds with the Canon Ra at ISO 3200.
A wandering tattler runs along the beach searching for crustaceans in the sand that are exposed by the receding waves. Uncommon in breeding plumage in its nonbreeding range, I’m not sure if it’s an early migratory return or if it’s a young bird that oversummered in the tropics. I also observed it chasing other tattlers on the shoreline. With an expansive migratory range, the wandering tattler lives up to its common name. ‘Ūlili, the Hawaiian name, resembles the tattler’s alarm call. ‘Ūlili were considered messengers and scouts of the gods. A magnificent navigator, many tattlers annually migrate between Alaska, Siberia, 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 perceived with magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in its retina, ‘ūlili find a route over thousands of miles of featureless open ocean.
This should be interesting to anyone who has used mandelbulb3d. Start with a parameter sset that will give you transparent blocks with bubbles and such internal structure. find a nice image and then move into one of the objects so that you are just on the edge showing a slice through the object. Even if it is featureless go and change the camera to "pano[ramaa]."
You might get an image like this. I seems to help to staay close to the edge. Once you find an image you can move around tp some extent, although you cannot zoom in or out, it will only take you in one or more jumps to another image. I'm not at all sure what you are seeing here but that is roughly how this is made.
Alvin Fisher’s students in his ninth grade Hebrew class at Oheb Shalom Congregation told him that they did not believe that the Holocaust ever happened. Thus was the beginning of Mr. Fisher’s crusade to have a memorial to Holocaust victims constructed in his own city of Baltimore.
The Baltimore Jewish Council, in 1976, adopted the project to construct the major monument to Holocaust victims. Ruth Hurwitz, Associate Director, supervised the effort. A one acre site on a busy street in downtown Baltimore was selected. The original memorial, designed by Donald Kann of Kann and Associates and Arthur Valk of Valk Design Associates, was constructed in 1980 for a cost of $300,000. The memorial had three parts; a large grassy mound planted with trees, two 80 by 19 feet cantilevered blocks of bleached, gray-white concrete which were deliberately featureless, cold and brutal and a grassy mall behind the blocks. On one wall was a granite inscription consecrating the memorial to the victims of the Holocaust and listing the 32 camps where they died.
In 1987, Jean and Melvin Burger, and Jean and Jack Luskin commissioned the internationally renowned artist Joseph Sheppard to produce a sculpture for the memorial.
In 1988, the sculpture was dedicated in the memory of Kristallnacht, Night of Broken Glass, which in 1938 the Nazis destroyed Jewish homes, shops and synagogues. A quotation from the philosopher and author George Santayana, "Those who do not remember the past are destined to repeat it" is inscribed around the base of the sculpture.
In 1995, the Baltimore Jewish Council, Rabbi Joel Ziaman, president, agreed to support a redesigned memorial. The original one had substantially deteriorated because it provided a location for activities inappropriate for the memorial. Dr. Arthur C. Abramson, Executive Director, supervised the effort to replace the memorial while leaving the sculpture in place. Architect Jonathan Fishman of Richter, Cornbrooks and Gribble was selected to provide guidance in defining the memorial themes and producing an appropriate architectural design. His description of the theme "Our notion was to conceive the site as an abandoned rail yard. The idea was to evoke a sense of vacancy, an image of abandonment." Holocaust author Dr. Deborah Lipstadt was commissioned to write perspective message to be placed on a plaque.
In 1997 the Baltimore Jewish Council, Myrna Cardin president, dedicated the redesigned memorial. Several survivors of the concentration camps were present for the dedication.
This is one of this morning's DLSR shots looking out over Swansea Bay which turned out so featureless that I had a bit of fun with it in Photoshop
Paris Hotel & Casino‘s reproduction of the Eiffel Tower rises into the featureless sky over Las Vegas.
It is not pining, it has passed on! It is no more! Its expired and gone to meet its maker.
And it is not a parrot. youtu.be/vZw35VUBdzo
Another shot from the trip to Glen Strathfarrar earlier this month when we focussed on individual, isolated trees. Some of the trees were dead, some were fallen and some were alive but still interesting.
This is the first shot I took in this area and soon after the lighting wasn't great and the sky became featureless.
Explore 13/05/2022 No. 107
A featureless sky. Usually the death knell of any good landscape photography shoot, but fortunately there is enough colour beneath the horizon to make up.
Quite a contrasty shot due to shooting directly towards the light.
The lighted red chochin lantern and the hung out external noren curtain signal that they are opened for business.
I love taking night shots not because it's easy but because it's hard to do it well, in particular handheld night shots.
The interplay of light and shadows, love the slivers of light that seeps through the thin gaps between the wooden lattices and blinds.
The restaurant’s name “竹茂” can be seen clearly on the red chochin lantern, the green noren (暖簾) and the floor lamp in similar traditional fashion as most of the eateries in the area.
Burnt highlights, blocky featureless shadows, loss of contrast, flare and color noise are the typical problems that plague poorly executed night shots. All these can then be further exacerbated by clumsy post-processing with too much push of shadows and highlight recovery rendering the image lifeless. Pre-shot discipline and proper post-processing can mitigate all these, even with cheap, basic ILC cameras.
Boat anchor kilo class f1.2 lenses are also not necessary especially when the image is at an oblique angle which will require a slightly deeper depth of field.
Meanwhile, smartphone multi-shot modes keep getting better for static night scenes. Before long people will look back at the silliness of boat anchor sized f1.2 lenses!
Shot taken handheld with FE 55mm f1.8 ZA (281g), a lens that has been much maligned unfairly by forum gear nuts pretending to understand photography.
The image posted before this was shot on tripod;
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.