View allAll Photos Tagged Featureless
Taken from Oxfordshire, UK with a Coronado PST, 2x Barlow & slimline T-ring attached to a Canon 1100D
Shot through quite a lot thin high level cloud.
ISO-800 1/60 second exposure
324 images shot and the best 50% stacked using Autostakkert! 2. Resulting stacked image was processed using Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop CS2, Focus Magic and Faststone Image Viewer
I over exposed the photos so the area which suffers from the "spotlight" effect you usually get with this telescope has completely blown out, leaving most of the disc featureless. Howerver, I was lucky enough that the only active region currently visible was just outside the area that I over exposed and these 2 huge prominences came out ok
No, It's Not Snowing,
... but the white fluff does stick around awhile before blowing away or melts into the ground by moisture.
Even the hens seem to be confused to see our UNIQUE yard, blanketed in white & fluffy Cottonwood seed!
A-Choo!
Excuse me while I sneeze!!!!
This Barred Rock hen seemed to be as annoyed as we are by the white fluff as she searched for insects and then worked to get the cottonwood seed off her beak and feet!!!
Not even our Oklahoma winds seem to blow the white fluff away!!!
In many parts of North America, it "snows", regularly, in June. If you’re in this part of the country now, you might be experiencing this year’s June “snow.”
The June "snows" are white and fluffy, but warm and cottony rather than cold and crystaline. The snows of June consists of “cotton” from the cottonwood trees: small bits of cotton-like fibers enclosing a small green cottonwood seed. The cotton is nature’s distribution agent, allowing the seeds to be widely dispersed as they are blown in the wind.
Sometimes, especially near a stand of cottonwoods, there is a flurry of cotton not unlike a slight flurry of winter snow. The little, bright white puffs of cotton waft up high in the sky and can shine, starlike, in strong sunlight.
Cottonwood cotton can be a nuisance, too, as it piles up and is sometimes difficult to clear away. During particularly prolific Junes, it can clog filters, collect inches deep in gutters, and turn into clumps of fibrous mass in the rain.
In some cases the cotton can completely cover patches of ground, looking for all the world like the cold, wintery type of snow. In fact some towns have forbidden cottonwoods, or at least the cotton-producing female trees, as a public nuisance.
In the Oklahoma City area, the cotton blizzard typically lasts only a few weeks, and all is gone by July. Various forms of cottonwoods and related poplars can be found through most of North America, and both the timing and amount of “cotton” produced can vary a bit, but here in Oklahoma City it is late May through June.
The greatest concentrations of cottonwoods tend to be on the Great Plains and in the West. They are particularly common along streams on the plains, and in places, long stretches of cottonwoods growing along either side of a creek or river, snake a bold, dark thread through an otherwise nearly featureless landscape.
In fact, the sight of a row of cottonwoods in the distance was welcomed by pioneers and wagontrain scouts, as it signified water on an often parched prairie.
Here are 5 facts you may or may not know about this yearly occurrence:
1. Cottonwoods are the Fastest Growing Native-trees in North America, and Can Reach 150 feet in Height- Surprisingly, these trees have a relatively short life cycle, living only 50 years at the most, so they are typically fast growers. Often growing near rivers or water, the cottonwood loves large amounts of moisture.
2. All That Cotton Comes AFTER Pollination Ends - Yes, believe it or not, all that fluffy cotton blowing everywhere is a sign that pollination for the cottonwood is over. A very mild allergen, cottonwoods effect sufferers BEFORE the spreading of all that fluffy cotton.
3. Cotton Lasts Only Two Weeks and Blows Up to 5 Miles - That's some serious frequent flier miles! However, we only have to put up with the large amounts of cotton for only two weeks a year. This is good because the massive amounts of cottonwood seed travels in the air, piling up in lawns, landscapes, gutters, and other areas.
4. Cottonseed Doesn't Usually Cause Hay Fever - While all that cotton may make you feel like your about to sneeze, you have less than a 7% chance of it effecting your allergies, according to studies. So while it may be gathering all over your lawn and landscape, the cottonwood pollen doesn't usually cause allergy symptoms.
5. Cottonwoods Can Survive Most Forest Fires - The cottonwood has an extremely thick bark, making it very tolerant to heat, drought, and even forest fires. For this reason, the cottonwood thrives in the changing weather patterns of the midwest.
But, while some folks today don’t like cottonwoods, they are my favorite trees. In spring, they provide early splashes of green.
In the summer, that give a brief “snowfall” and months of cool shade.
In the fall they decorate the season with golden, fluttering leaves.
In winter, their stark outlines reveal an organic complexity reaching skyward.
That’s why, unlike many people, I like the cottonwood snows of June.
So, even though it looks as if I should get out my snow shovel to rid our driveway edges of the mounds of white fluff, I'll probably get out my leaf blower today and then turn on the water sprinkler for just a bit, just long enough to watch the fluffy cotton melt into earth.
A featureless sky is the perfect backdrop for the texture overload in the foreground. It was so much fun to explore the mud flats and washes looking for interesting shapes and patterns. Once I found my spot it was just a matter of waiting until the light hit Telescope Peak in the distance. This is a 3 image focus stack to maximize sharpness.
This is the view of the walk back to Cley car park along the long featureless beach from Blakeney Point - it's one of those walks that never seems to end!
You do not have the right to copy, reproduce or download my images without my specific permission, doing so is a direct breach of my copyright.
I thought that this would be an easy week as my kids have a dolls house - unfortunately they didn't have any of the little detail items left (lost/broken/eaten) and most of the bigger items were featureless (it wasn't the most elaborate of dolls houses) and in macro it wasn't clear what they were.
So, here is the best I could muster with what I found - the bowl is about 1cm across for some scale!.
HMM
At Robin Hood's Bay. I'd gone, hoping for reflections but the sky was grey and featureless, the sun broke through for minutes!
Venice, Italy
I was going to write about imagery, Flickr and social media on my follow-up to yesterday's posting but I had such a good response from Explore that I thought I would save those thoughts for another day and continue with the morning shoot at the Accademia bridge. The bridge was packed all along its length with photographers waiting for that golden hour and sunrise which incidentally was scheduled for 6:46am according to my Ephemeris timetable.
My first snap was taken at 5:50am and I wondered how many I would personally take during this shoot as the sound of camera shutters constantly clicked around me. The guy next to me on my right (had squeezed in between me and the first photographer to arrive at the bridge - the cheek of it!) had some serious kit - Nikon D810 with power pack, a bigger, better lens (lens envy creeping in there) and a camera frame that allowed him to swap between landscape and portrait orientation simply by sliding this frame into a base plate on his tripod without any adjustment - neat, but I digress from the story.
As with all of my morning adventures on this holiday, the sunrise didn't materialise yet again and refused to show itself from behind the left side buildings. The official sunrise time came and went and so did most of the photographers on the bridge including the American party who were clearly on a mission to capture Venice in a day!
I decided to stick around, mainly because I hadn't thought beyond this shoot and breakfast wasn't until 8am and besides I didn't want to go back and wake Mrs R up for a third time (three strikes and you're out is a general rule in our household). The photographer next to me was still setup and taking shots on an almost time-lapse basis. I thought.. if he still thinks something might materialise I might as well stick around also. I broke the silence and asked him if he was a professional in order to strike up a conversation. It transpired he was also an American on holiday and was kind of a "semi-pro" as he still worked for a living but had a secondary income via Getty Images.
Suddenly, he broke off in mid-sentence and started shooting at a more feverish rate... I looked to see what had caught his eye. We had both watched the blue hour come and go leaving a rather pale orange featureless sky as the backdrop to our Grand Canal and Salute scene. But now the sun was just ever so sneakily peaking around the buildings and illuminating buildings along the canal. I too started clicking away as the light and illumination ventured up the canal towards us. Traffic was now freely meandering about the canal and randomly reflecting the light on their painted and lacquered hulls. Half a dozen frames later and the early morning light was gone. Clearly my fellow photographer felt the scene had played to its conclusion for he quickly packed up and left me all alone as the sole photographer on the bridge.
The whole morning experience had lasted 1 hr 26mins and I had only taken 34 images over that time frame. I suspect there are several thousand images on hard drives around the world from the 30+ photographers that jostled for position on that bridge, but only two of us captured this delayed after glow. I took a couple of extra frames and I too departed...
I spent a couple of hours exploring the amazing rocks at this incredible location on the north coast of Spain, finding new opportunities as the tide came up. Unfortunately this was my only visit to this place and the conditions weren't kind - as we approached the coast the sun disappeared and the sky washed out to an almost featureless white (although there was some subtle detail there if you underexposed it). To add to the difficulty of getting a shot I was happy with, I smashed my most-used grad on the rocks half-way into my session here, so had to resort to blending exposures for the rest of the trip... Although I'm not completely happy with this image, it's the best I have from this place so thought I'd share it. I had a blast walking along these lines of rocks and the location reminded me of the amazing Mupe Bay in Dorset - and given the conditions I had to keep reminding myself that this was Spain, not England!
The shot:
- Canon EOS 5D Mark II
- Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 L USM @ 20mm
- 30 seconds @ f/8, ISO200, Manual mode
- B+W Circular Polariser and Light Craft Workshop LCW ND500MC 9-stop ND filter (actually 8 stops)
- Manfrotto 190XB tripod with 322RC2 joystick grip ball head
Processing:
- WB and tonal adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw
- Second raw conversion for sky detail blended in
- Noise reduction with Noiseware Professional plug-in
- Selective Curves to darken the sky
- 50% grey layer for a little dodging and burning
- Contrast boost with a Gradient Map layer in Luminosity mode
- Resized and sharpened with Smart Sharpen
Finally I got a chance to get out and shoot the beach. Lately, It seems like conditions bring either been solid gray sky and rain or featureless blue sky. The golden hour of transition has either been in the middle of the night or when I'm tied to my desk at work.
...maybe I need to call in sick once in a while ;-)
Gaviota coast, Santa Barbara county.
Explore March 24th, 2011 #322
Taken in the middle of the day with high, thin cloud and a haze over the water almost obsuring the oil refinery. The sky was featureless, the light was strong but not harsh, shadows were deep and everything from mid-tones to highlights blended into one.
Film 31 FP4_Plus
OM2n
Ilford FP4+ @ Box
Perceptol 1+1 15 min @ 20 Deg C
Agitate 30 sec to start then 10 sec every min (plus 3 bumps)
Stop bath 1 min
Adofix Rapid Plus II 1+7 8 mins @ 20 Deg C
Wash and final rinse in wetting agent
Scanned Plustek 8200i SE @ 3600 ppi
LrC and FilmPack7 (for framing)
The Willet (Tringa semipalmatus) is a grey, featureless North American shorebird, until it flies, then it reveals wings like a zebra crossing. It used to go by the clumsy name of Semipalmated Snipe but the name willet prevailed, apparently coming from the call of the bird. There are two separate breeding populations that occupy different habitats. Western birds inhabit the prairies while eastern birds inhabit coastal saltmarshes. Eastern birds are long-distance migrants wintering in South America while western (prairie breeding) birds winter mainly on the coasts of the USA and Mexico. So this bird at San Ignacio lagoon is likely to be of the Prairie race "inornata".
Here is a wider angle view of Plockton compared to my previous image. It has been cropped top and bottom to get rid of some featureless sky and seaweed covered sand.
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.
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.
The mist in this local area of heather and woodland really added a sense of mystery and depth. I love this little area of wild Cornwall, despite it being somewhat featureless and flat as a landscape.
If you follow me on facebook then you might know that just a few minutes after this I was face down in a stinking muddy bog after slipping off a wooden gate! My camera and lens have dried out and cleaned off fine, just lost a spike and end to a Gitzo leg. I tried metal detecting for it today, but no joy. The ups and downs of landscape photography, never a dull moment.
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.
I couldn't resist a selfie with the aurora during my recent trip to Iceland. This shot was taken somewhere between Kálfafell and Scaftafell on the South coast. I can only describe the landscape as being like a black desert and quite featureless for as far as the eye can see. It felt really remote wherever it was and it was out of this world watching the aurora dancing in the sky.
A day that was very dull, the light was flat with a slight mist and a grey featureless sky but there was one redeeming feature for me and that was the tractor tracks through the field of Barley. I took a shot thinking I might be able to do something with it, so here it is in mono.Harlyn Bay and beyond is Mother Ivey`s bay.
The original Oystercatcher pic was against a bland featureless sky so I decided to plonk it on a new background!
For info the seascape was taken with my first ever DSLR (350D) way back in 2006.
A Pacific golden plover overlooks a tide pool to see what bounty a wave might hurl into the intertidal splash zone. Most kolea I have observed establish territorial fidelity at inland grassy areas. This one earns its classification as a shorebird. A superb navigator, the kolea (Pluvialis fulva) annually migrates from Alaska and to tropical Pacific islands on a high endurance non-stop flight of 3 to 4 days over thousands of miles of featureless open ocean. Using the stars and the earth’s magnetic field (perhaps visually with magnetoreception in cryptochrome molecules in the eye) to precisely find its destination.
Big Rock (also known as either Okotoks Erratic or, by the Blackfoot, as Okotok) is a 16,500-tonne (18,200-ton) boulder that lies on the otherwise flat, relatively featureless, surface of the Canadian Prairies in Alberta.
This massive angular boulder, which is broken into two main pieces, measures about 41 by 18 metres and is 9 m high. It consists of thick-bedded, micaceous, feldspathic quartzite that is light grey, pink, to purplish. Besides having been extensively fractured by frost action, it is unweathered. [...].
[...] Big Rock is the largest erratic within the [930-km-long] Foothills Erratics Train. Lying on prairie to the east of the Rocky Mountains and like all the larger erratics, it is visible for a considerable distance across the prairie and likely served as a prominent landmark for Indigenous people. Wikipedia
A néhai kiskunhalasi fűtőház mellett csorog be az átépítés alatt álló Kiskunhalasra a bajai ócskavas vonattal a 231-es Szergej 2023 májusában. A kép készülte utáni héten kezdték meg az alap járműfenntartási célokat szolgáló egyedi fűtőház épületének és az alakjelzőknek a bontását, hogy helyüket átvegye egy felújított, lelketlen, tucatkinézetű, jellegtelen állomás.
Next to the late Kiskunhalas locomotive depo M62 231 arrives to Kiskunhalas station which is under reconstruction, with scrap train to Baja station in May 2023. In the week after the picture was taken, the demolition of the locomotive depo for basic vehicle maintenance purposes and the old signals began, so that a renovated, soulless, dozen-looking, featureless station could take their place in the future.
A dry lake somewhere in Nevada.
When you walk at this place and look around you feel as if you were walking on a conveyer belt or on one of these fitness-walking machines where you hold on to some kind of handle and just go through the motions of walking without really progressing. The ground is so homogenous and featureless that there is really nothing there, around you, that would change or move while you are walking and that could give you an impression of your own motion. The mountains, toward which motion could be perceived, are too far away. It feels like walking to the body, but you don’t get any sensual feedback of progress, the mind misses the expected visual confirmation of things around changing, that you actually cover ground. Nothing changes, not even slowly, you can walk for 15 minutes and everything looks exactly the same. It’s like in a dream when you try so hard to run but don’t move.
Once reason forces the mind to accept that there must be motion, it actually comes up with the sensation that the ground is moving instead, backwards, and I’m completely still, just my legs paddling and pushing the ground backwards. Not bad! What’s the difference? So I walk and make the world turn under me. Wouldn’t make much difference, would it? How do I know that this is not what’s really going on?
Ah, yes, that’s where my discriminating intellect comes in, the “experience processor” that saves us so often from getting undone or – what we so often forget – prevents us from seeing the truth!
At night a new moon illuminates the scene, just enough to see the mountains. But now, when I walk, I really get dizzy, the deceiving sensation of walking without moving is chillingly convincing. The wind stops at night, no sounds; it is so quiet that again the mind protests. It comes up with all kinds of objections, aversions, and fears. I hear my heart pounding, blood rushing, monstrous, strange sounds. “How can all this work without my control?” says mind and is confused. And then I even hear things that clearly are unreal: scary ringing gongs, piercing beeps and roaring surf. I need to stay with the irritation for a long time until I gradually manage to let it all be whatever it is without interpreting it. Have I ever experienced such enormous cosmic silence of open space? Even the concept of sound becomes uncertain, somehow, and dissolves. A completely new experience arises: not the lack of hearing something, but the sensation of hearing silence. It takes a long time before the mind gives up its expectations and objections and starts to believe this emptiness.
Much later, when the moon is gone and a thick overcast has developed that holds back even the starlight, I walk away from the motor home into the complete darkness. Now there is absolutely nothing to see anymore – it doesn’t matter if my eyes are open or closed – nothing to hear, nothing to touch, nothing to react on, nothing to work with, nothing to change. Awesome! – Nothing to find awesome. I feel a sensation of panic arise.
Imagine such a place: the ultimate model for the unobstructed freedom to go nowhere – you step out of your camper, spin around a few times, and start walking in an arbitrary direction. And you keep walking, for 20 minutes if you like, because – you have seen, it’s obvious – you can be absolutely certain that you cannot bump into anything wherever you go (unless you run into the van after two steps). It’s amazing how the mind gets alarmed and doesn’t quite believe it, in spite of the indisputable knowledge of no danger, how you stumble and how drastically you actually deviate from a strait line soon. You don’t walk blindly, your eyes are wide open, but there is nothing to see. You want feedback, you crave for news, you insist on information, but there is absolutely nothing happening outside.
Went out for a desert shoot. It wasn't such a good day that i wanted it to be. The sky was featureless...few clouds and bit hazy. Well I guess i just have to live with it. Nevertheless, I managed to pull out some clean shots. These dunes were from the outskirts of Abu Dhabi.
Belle Tout, it's an 1832 lighthouse which is now a seaside B&B.
It's still open though the cliff area around it seems to be eroding, it's probably on more solid foundations.
Taken in the morning at Beachy Head, when it was less crowded and very few people were about. I saw this lone person walking up and thought it would make for a good 'scale' shot in among the featureless background.
This whole area does get pretty busy later in the day,, lots of tourists come by for photos with this lighthouse and the sea behind them.
With an expansive migratory range, the wandering tattler lives up to its name. ‘Ūlili, the Hawaiian name, resembles the wandering tattler’s alarm call. On tropical islands it prefers to feed by probing crevices and crannies on intertidal shorelines and exposed reefs for invertebrates, often dodging breaking waves. This one watches the sunrise from a coastal ledge in Mokulē’ia. ‘Ūlili were considered messengers and scouts of the gods.
A magnificent navigator, the tattler annually migrates from Alaska and Canada to tropical Pacific islands on a high endurance non-stop flight of 3 to 4 days. Using the stars and the earth’s magnetic field, perhaps visually with magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in the retina, to find its way over thousands of miles of featureless open ocean. Tringa incana, non-breeding plumage.
Like all migratory shorebirds, this kōlea lives in an immense world. Kōlea migrate to Hawaii after a five-month summer breeding season in arctic Alaska. The trip spans approximately 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring an exhaustive 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight. Incredibly, some 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. They may use the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in their retina.
Like to see the pictures as Large as your screen? Than why not click on the Slideshow : www.flickr.com/photos/reurinkjan/sets/72157622436074363/s...
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 Red Tailed Hawk in flight, the sky was the colour of a gray card and totally featureless - so it just turned white in post.
The slower shutter speed is why there is some motion blur!
No surprise - this, and the associated buildings photographed here - have now been converted. I have a feeling that soon the only barns that are actually still barns will be featureless tin things with a shelf life of thirty years... The march of progress seems to invariably leave footprints totally devoid of character.
Shammer, North Creake, Norfolk
This male kōlea combing an exposed coastal limestone shelf is only hours from his annual migration from the tropics to the Alaskan tundra. He is looking fat and dapper in his breeding plumage, requisite for success. He will somehow sense the time 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.
After capturing the Milky Way setting over the canola fields north of Cowra, Australia, in late September, I turned 180 degrees to see what the eastern sky offered. As we move towards summer here in Australia, our skies will have a different roll call of celestial features for photographers to contemplate and capture, so it’s good to look to the east now to see what’s ahead.
The Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxies were on the upward segment of their daily circle around the South Celestial Pole, two puffs of light in a relatively featureless area of the southeastern sky. Aldebaran, the red giant star in the constellation Taurus, was only a small way above the horizon, over on the left of the scene near the white burst of light from a car’s headlamps. Electrically energised particles in the Earth’s atmosphere lit the sky with their green glow, providing a fine match for the fields of pre-bloom canola prominent in this photograph. On the horizon to the right of the trees flanking the road, you can see the purple glow from a thunderstorm battering my home city, around 220 km (136 mi) distant.
I shot this single-frame photo with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, matched with a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f/2.4, using an exposure time of 25 seconds @ ISO 6400.
Had this image kicking around for some time, and had a few goes at various options to try and make it work in the way I wanted. Finally arrived at this image, created by converting to mono, then adding some blue and green, and messing around with the basic levels.
Not bad, not 100% happy with the composition, but did like the way the mist accentuates the perspective effects, starting with dark trees in the foreground, all the way out to "oblivion", a pale, featureless misty space.
An empty limestone train heads back to Proctor after delivering to Minorca on a dull · drab · uninteresting · flat · dry · banal · bland · insipid · colorless · lifeless · sterile · tedious · wearisome · boring · unexciting · unstimulating · uninspiring · desolate · vapid · jejune · bloodless · soul-destroying · as dry as dust · humdrum · routine · monotonous · uneventful · run-of-the-mill · prosaic · pedestrian · commonplace · everyday · unexceptional · unremarkable · quotidian · unvaried · repetitive · featureless · ho-hum · sad · miserable · depressing · grim · gloomy · glum · somber · grave · doleful · mournful · melancholic · joyless · cheerless · wretched · dismal · bleak · dark · dingy · murky · overcast day across NE Minnesota.
There is a fabulous mountain range in Baja-California, Mexico, on the Sea of Cortez. It rises abruptly directly from sea level and presents a spectacular sight from the shore like a gigantic wall, filled with pillars, towers, and deep narrow canyons. When you live on one of those beaches below this range, it’s impossible not to be spellbound by the Sierra de la Giganta’s magnificence. It glows in the morning and looms in the afternoon; vultures soar in the air all the time and play in the thermals. You can climb into some of its dramatic canyons, but you never get very far.
One never really knows where dreams come from. Maybe birds sowed the seed of inspiration some lifetime ago to fly up there in the blue haze and see, really see what it’s like. One day I strap into my new “Powered Paraglider” and do it.
My takeoff is pretty exciting. There is not much room on the beach, and the wind is too strong for a well-controlled inflation; so I take off like a rocket without even completing one step. But, as always, once I’m in the air the world seems to stay behind. I slip into my little seat, do a downwind turn, and fly away. I turn directly toward the mountains, this dark blue gigantic wall looming in front of me. It is late in the afternoon and I’m flying due west, almost directly into the sun. The mountain range is in deep shadow and all I can see is a massive, unfathomable, featureless wall of intangible dimension and distance. I have to trust my experience to understand that it will actually take a while before I’m really close, and by then I’ll hopefully have gained enough altitude. Looking down, I see my forward motion, but ahead I’m blinded by the sun. I’m flying over the immense shadow the mountain range casts over the desert. My body and my wing are bathed in glaring light and everything ahead and below is in blue, dark shadow. I know it’s still a long way up to the summit, but somehow it feels as if I would crash any moment into this mysterious, featureless wall getting bigger and darker all the time.
When I’m past the first lower peaks at the foot of the range, I begin to see the structure below: furrowed, gnawed rock, vertical towers, bottomless canyons, all in warm pastel colors. Occasionally one of those pillars peeks out of the shadow-zone like a monstrous finger emerging from the dark. There is a mini-plateau, just catching the very last light, a small round area on top of a tower, maybe 30 feet across, totally flat, one cactus on it and two bushes, vertical cliff all around – an island in the sky. I glide by 100 feet away, the wall threatening above.
Suddenly the air gets wild, turbulence boiling up from the shadow below, and I’m busy all over controlling and keeping my attitude and course. I see gigantic canyons below, and the gusts come funneling along them, throwing me around. I would feel better if I could see more. The blue wall looms, threatening, so close now that it’s really hard not to pull away. A cool eerie radiation comes from the darkness, a mysterious presence.
Sometimes I feel violent updrafts. When the wing catches more lift on one side than the other my whole harness distorts, my body bends. I feel the air with my whole body. Then again I’m terribly convinced that I’m falling with increasing speed into the dark abyss underneath. I keep my eyes on the rim above to gauge my climbing progress. It’s scary at times, but then I really feel the air, I fly with it, it’s wonderful. I’m a leaf blown up by a gust, played by the wind.
I must still be climbing, even though it’s hard to believe. It gets so wild that I finally ease away and go more parallel to the range for a while. I see less rugged terrain under me and the air gets a bit calmer. What I thought to be the summit ridge turns out to be just a huge flake, leaning away from the real ridge, still about 500 feet higher. I fly between it and the final crest, the air is clean now, the tension ceases, I’m there. A few more minutes and the horizon in the west becomes visible; I’m over it.
I fly circle after circle. There is the other coast, the Pacific Ocean, the surf glistening in the distance, some 50 miles away. And the ridge is not a ridge but a large plateau, a mesa, several hundred feet across. (Wouldn’t that be something to land up there one day?) I finally throttle back and glide over the crest. Mountains everywhere, like sand dunes, golden in the sun, shadows carving into the valleys. The sea looks like velvet.
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I was up at 4:30am this morning to get this shot. I was expecting a blue, featureless sky but fortunately there was some cloud action going on.
Had a visit over the border in to Wales this morning, to - the often overlooked (certainly by me!) - Snowdonia.
The light and sky was pretty flat and featureless for most of the morning, but as it was my first visit to this spot (overlooking Llyn Ogwen and the striking shape of Tryfan) and spent some time playing around with composition and enjoying the changing colours of autumn.
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The badlands along the Red Deer River, approximately between Drumheller and Dinosaur Provincial Park, are dinosaur country - and rightly so. Erosion in the river valley has produced one of the world's great collections of late Cambrian fossils, and excavations have been ongoing since the 1880s.
It isn't surprising, therefore, to see dinosaur models everywhere. I really liked this one; spotted it on the way to the park shortly after arriving in the area, and stopped the next morning to line up this shot. A low fog had developed overnight, producing a featureless, almost blank sky. Conventional wisdom dictates that most of this should have been cropped out, but I wanted that blankness, that sense of a great vast nothingness surrounding my subject. A tip of the hat, too, to the landowner, who obviously has a great sense of humour, for his generosity in sharing his "capture". Made my day!
Photographed near Patricia, Alberta (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2018 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Steve (Stoates), Rob (rob_coffey) and I spent a fair amount of time wandering around an area of individual, isolated trees looking for inspiration. Some of the trees were dead some were fallen and some were alive but still interesting.
The light conditions and a relatively featureless sky didn't help matters and I think my shots benefit from the monochrome conversion.
It's not the Surprise View above Hathersage, but it's the first view into the Derwent valley from the featureless walk up from Cut-throat bridge.
I was actually on my way down, and the fly density had reduced to "only annoying" so I took the chance for a breather. In two visits to the Peak District in August I'd managed about 90 minutes amongst the heather. Autumn will probably be well under way when I next return as I'm soon off to the south coast for a bit
When I first saw this scene an hour before I took the shot, the sky was white, the colours faded, but as soon as the sun lit up the area and turned the trees a wonderful golden brown, it was transformed. Oh and a nod to the forestry workers who drove down the bridleway to get to a job for adding a bit of interest into which was a featureless track!!
Two cats and a dog ago, we went to Quadra Island. It's one of those uber-West Coast places Mike and I like so much... easily accessible, close to civilization and yet... once you're there... a world unto itself.
We had our time, did our thing, explored forests, farms, beaches... laughed at our cats getting wild in the woods. And then caught the ferry back to the big island.
It was late fall. November I think. Storm season. And we had a massive storm.
The ferry couldn't dock. It turned back eventually. But only after an hour or so of trying trying trying.
During that hour.... as the ferry rose and fell... and rocked and swayed and heaved and rolled and nearly overturned... as our poor little girl cat barfed in the backseat... we saw the world differently.
On the crests of waves, we had an almost aerial view of Campbell River (the town where the ferry docks) - high high above it all. Deep in the troughs, we were so far down we could only see the concrete and timbers that support the dock... the part that's normally well submerged and should definitely not be at human-eye level.
On those crests, it felt like we could soar straight home - or anywhere, for that matter.
In the troughs, it felt as though the ocean would swallow us; as though we'd never see the sky or land again.
I think I'm in a trough, photographically. I just can't get it up, you know? I look at other people's pics... They snap and leap and sparkle. Then I look at mine. Dull dull dull. Boring. Quotidian. Flat. Featureless. Lifeless. Grey. Completely uninteresting.
That's okay. It's probably a phase. Something to be gotten through. I'll just keep on trudging the path and see what might be waiting up ahead. If you don't hear from me, I may be lost. And that's okay too.
Natural Bridges, Santa Cruz, Jan 2011
Attended Jim Patterson and Josh Cripps' Santa Cruz photo workshop on Saturday. The tide was low and there were a lot of people on the beach, which didn't make for an appealing front composition. Jim was kind enough to bring 2 of us to the back of the arch where there were fewer people and a much more interesting angle (thanks Jim!). The sky was mostly cloudy & featureless yesterday but the Sun did peep out for a couple of minutes throughout the day.
All comments, critiques and feedback both positive and negative welcome.
Technical info:
- Canon 5D mark 2
- Canon 17-40mm f/4L
- 30s @ f/8, ISO 200
- Lee 3 stop soft grad ND
- Lee Big Stopper
- Adobe Photoshop CS5
- Silver Efex Pro
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.
The last in this series of snow on high ground images. Snow changes the look of a landscape, the lines of crops and tractor lines would not have been visible without the snow laying between the lines. the field would have just been a featureless green.
It`s just something that catches the eye and makes you use your imagination .
Horse Island (Eilean nan Each) - originally known as Horssey’s Island - is a low-lying, unpopulated island in the Firth of Clyde, situated approximately 2 km northwest of Ardrossan harbour.
The island is flat and featureless, rising at its highest point to a mere 4m above sea level; as such, it represents a significant hazard to shipping and has been the site of numerous shipwrecks.
The island's principal feature is a 16 metre high stone beacon (centre) at the south of the island. It was erected by the 12th Earl of Eglinton in 1811 to mark the location of the island for ships entering Ardrossan harbour.
The island is now run as a nature reserve by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and has nationally important populations of Lesser Black Backed and Herring Gulls.
Single exposure of a setting Moon over the Cape Arago Lighthouse on the Oregon coast. The Sun had just risen, painting the upper portion of the tower bright yellow, and fading the Moon to a pale and nearly featureless disc. I took this from Lighthouse Beach, which fortunately at the time was accessible due to a low tide. The focal length and f-stop were not recorded because, as I found out after the shot, the 2x extender was not twisted tight on the lens! But the focal length was 400mm (200mm + 2x); no idea what the aperture setting was. I used the app The Photographer’s Ephemeris to home in on the location I needed to shoot from in order to get this alignment.
This morning at 0900 the scene you see in this picture was raised to the ground. The smelter and blast furnace from the old Redcar steelworks was demolished leaving a featureless landscape. Some may say this is a good thing, personally I will miss this industrial landscape and wish it could have been preserved in some way. Totally impracticable I know but I am sure I am not the only one who will miss it.
I had planned a return to Snæfellsnes for quite a while. I have wanted to photograph it in winter snow for a couple of years now. Yesterday I finally got there but I only managed to get the sunset on a day with featureless sky. The color of it was interesting but I definitely need to get back there soon as I suspect that the sunset will light the famous Snæfellsjökull Volcano from the side in about a month.
What I liked about this picture is the curved leading line of the incoming wave.
Iceland 2011 Adventure Photography Tour & Workshop
I have seen Orange-crowned Warblers on many occasions and I have yet to see any trace of orange in the crown. Wikipedia says "the orange patch on the crown is not usually visible". Despite its name they are rather dull, featureless warblers. This is reflected in the scientific name Leiothlypis celata. The genus comes from leios meaning plain, and thlupis, an unknown bird mentioned by Aristotle, and celatus means hidden. They breed right across Canada and Alaska and also throughout the western United States and I photographed this one on Vancouver Island. Most Orange-crowned Warblers are migratory and winter in Central America and Mexico.