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This is a scene that ended up having more significance for me than I thought when I clicked the shutter. Unbeknownst to me, my mother actually worked for Matson Navigation before she met my father. To add a little more synchronicity to the moment, I also found out that dad once owned a gas station about a block away from where I took this shot. Here I was wandering amongst ghosts from my past, and I didn't even realize it. Come to think of it, I did get a chill shiver down my spine as I was standing there.
Happy Slider's Sunday everyone.
San Francisco, CA
Navigational beacons were first placed at the entrance to the Tamar River in 1804. Two new towers were built in 1882, this one at Middle Point not far from the Pilot Station, and another at She Oak Point.
Originally the lights were powered by sperm whale oil (hundreds of whales were harpooned on the south east coast of Tasmania during the 19th century), but then changed to carbide lamps.
This ingenious method involved solid carbide being placed in a tank with water dripping on it. When the keeper opened a valve the resulting acetylene gas passed through a pipe to the mantle and was lit each night. The white carbide waste was used to paint the towers.
The light was electrified in 1955. As a sign of the times, these lights are no longer lit (although the original lenses remain in place). Instead there is an LED array to guide the shipping lane.
Two shafts were sunk into the Black Vein seam at Crumlin, commencing in 1907 and reached completion in 1911. In 1935 the Colliery employed 86 men on the surface and 358 men underground working the Meadow Vein, Black Vein, Elled, Big Vein and the Three-Quarter. Two years later the Black Vein Straight North District hit an underground lake and the water eventually made its way half way up the shafts and following emergency pumping operations the pit bottom was permanently raised by 39 metres.
Following Nationalisation in 1947 Crumlin Navigation employed 79 men on the surface and 336 underground and by the 1960's succumbed to the widespread pit closures and closed its gates in September 1967. The collieries' buildings were considered to be of "outstanding industrial architecture." and are protected as listed buildings by the Secretary of State for Wales. Maximum output at Crumlin occurred in 1954 with 145,129 tons of coal produced. Info taken from BBC Wales web site.
Looking across the River Lea where it splits into two channels at Clapton, just south of Lea Bridge. In the foreground, going out of shot at bottom right, is the River Lee Navigation, which runs in an artificial cut south of here as far as Old Ford.
Beyond the orange floats, the other branch flows over a weir into the Old River Lea, which follows the natural course of the river and serves as an overflow for the navigation when the water is high.
Both spellings of the River Lea/Lee are used but they tend to attach to different parts of the river - the navigation is officially spelt Lee, as are the various parks named after it in the lower and middle course of the river but the valley overall, the old course of the river and, especially, the upper course of the river above Ware, tend to be spelt Lea.
The older Akranes lighthouse … as seen from the top of the newer Akranes lighthouse. The person in the red parka in the foreground gives some sense of the scale.
Lately I've been feeling a little lost, and when I say lately it's been about 3 months or so. I feel conflicted about my photography, that it's not where I want to be going and that I'm not creating my best work. I feel kind of like I'm just going around in a big circle and I keep coming back to this spot pointing me into a bunch of different directions. For some reason this seems to happen almost every summer, I get this surge of self-doubt and feelings of unease and that I need to sort out my path in life. I think I get too involved in too many things and then I become so wrapped up in all the little things tied to my attention that I get overwhelmed and start to panic. I need to learn to say no, to let this pass and not feel like I'm missing out and to sort out the "musts" from the "would likes".
One of these arrows hopefully points in the right direction!
Star Navigation.
It all seems like a great idea from the comfort of the car, but then you get out there and its dark, cold and in this case.. just down right sandy and I think, seriously?
To top it all off navigating sand dunes in the dark is pretty hard, whilst I could just use my GPS or phone, I elected to use stars, so I picked one particular bright one that was close to the dune exit point and followed it.. needless to say.. i did find my way out eventually :) albeit with shoes full of sand and almost going head first off a rather large dune drop off in the :)
14 shot panorama (two rows in vertical orientation) at f1.6 ISO 1600 and shutter 13s