View allAll Photos Tagged Perilous
A forgotten relic of the Bagenalstown & Wexford Railway dream to create a 44 mile inland railway route to Wexford. Built in 1858 as part of the first opening 8 miles to Borris, the dream quickly stuttered as the railway only made it to Ballywilliam by 1862.
Running through the totally unremunerative, but beautiful and sparsely populated rolling hills of South Carlow and Kilkenny and with only four stations it earned the least of any railway in Ireland and early closure envitably followed in 1864.
A fresh impetus in the 1870’s revived the line and with the line operated south of Ballywilliam by the Dublin Wicklow & Wexford Railway the line eventually made it’s connection to Wexford just north of Palace East.
Unfortunately for the line these developments never really improved the financial situation of the line and the Bagnelstown - Palace East section was the first in Ireland to lose it’s passenger service under Great Southern Railways ownership in 1931, full freight services following in 1947. Surprisingly for a line with such a perilous existence, it was kept open and in place for occasional passenger special and seasonal sugar beet traffic till the axe finally came down in 1963.
Today with one side of it’s embankment removed, it really is a bridge to nowhere.
Canon 5D - August 2025.
I was in Messina, Sicily, for a convention - Messina, the city of the Strait. The city of the two seas, the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian - not two whichever seas, but the very stuff of myths and epics. Scylla and Charybdis haunted these narrow, deep, perilous waters.
As you would expect, I had tried to leave my camera at home (it was work, after all...), but it nevertheless jumped into my backpack, along with my Samyang wide angle lens and my tripod. Unfortunately neither of them told the remote shutter, so it stayed safe and cozy within my gear bag at home. Oh my gosh! What was the use of having a tripod while lacking a remote shutter? I just hoped that enabling the Delay exposure Mode would be sufficient to compensate for my awkward finger actually pressing the shutter release button.
So I began my Sicilian days with just as many sunrise sessions. Wow.
The weather was consistently unstable - an ever changing sky enlivened by an endless turmoil of clouds (sometimes benign, sometimes threatening and ominous), sudden showers followed by warm sun, and then again. There was at first a peculiar ambiance - a stormy mood, I would say - an epic character reminiscent of remote ages, when the gods and Cyclops trod these lands and monsters haunted these waters. I could understand the sense of awe the ancient dwellers of these places felt while contemplating such views. I could feel the presence of the gods of old just before me. Just all around me.
My third Sicilian sunrise was the most amazing of the whole trilogy of four (dedicated to my fellow Doug Adams' fans). At first I dubbed it "the sunrise of the happy painter", since it was so colourful and the sky was - well... It was just like a happy painter - maybe a painter in love - had brushed it with glowing orange and pink. I dubbed it like that to make my fellow librarians attending the convention regretful for not having accepted my invitation to come along with me and see the sunrise. Haha. And I showed them some photos taken with my smartphone, just to pour salt into the wound. Haha.
However when I immersed myself in the project humbly titled "In the Land of the Gods", I forgot the painter in love and came to see Nephele and her sister nymphs, the Nephelai, dancing in the morning sky with their billowing robes flying about and streaking the sky while capturing that incredible orange-rosy light. The Nephelai, or Nephelae, were the nymphs of the clouds and rain, daughters of the gods of the earth-encircling river Okeanos, the Titans Okeanos and Tethys.
As an individual nymph, Nephele originated from a cloud moulded by Zeus to look like his own wife, Hera, to test the integrity of Ixion, king of the Lapiths - or rather to test Hera's report that Ixion had tried to violate her. Be that as it may, Ixion failed the test and was chained to a fiery wheel for all eternity - a hell of a punishment for an impious king.
Well, I understand that by now you might be getting lost in the multifaceted, complex layers of Greek mythology, with their often conflicting traditions. To be honest I am fully with you, yet I believe that you can really see the beautiful girls dancing in their orange and rosy robes, smiling and laughing while looking at their own colourful reflections in the tidal pools - so close to a humble mortal like me that I felt I was almost able to touch them. I did not succumb to the temptation, anyway, fearing that disturbing those reflections would make the nymphs flee - after all you can only watch a reflection and delight in its beauty, but never seize it - so I contented myself with photographing the scene that I am sharing with you.
Explored on 2022/11/26 #43
I have processed this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-2.0/-1.0/0/+1.0/+2.0 EV] by luminosity masks with the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal" exposure shot).
Along the journey - post-processing always is a journey of discovery to me - I tried the inverted RGB blue channel technique described by Boris Hajdukovic to give a slight tonal boost to several parts of the scene. As usual, I gave the finishing touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4 and played a bit with dodging and burning. I used for the very first time the Gimp's Liquify tool - a very powerful and dangerous one, indeed - to impart a slight bending on the streaks of clouds on the left, that were absolutely straight. As always, it was a small touch, not betraying itself.
Raw files processed with Darktable.
Sunset at the outflow by Heysham's Nuclear Power Station. There are two water outlets here each servicing one of the two Nuclear Power Plants. This is the outlet for Heysham 1. Sea water is used to act as a coolant for the reactors and here it flows back out into Morecambe Bay at the temperature of bath water. This dubious warmth is actually utilised by nature and attracts spawning Bass and other fish, resulting in it being designated as a fish nursery!
The seabirds also seem to be attracted, probably in order to scoop up warm young fish, (as you can see just about here)! I think they can then fly at "warp factor 3" after their visit here!! This was taken at low tide exposing the outflow structure which is hidden at higher tides!
The other feature, on the right, is the old wooden sea jetty, which used to be the Port's Southern Pier before the more modern Harbour was developed to take bigger ships. The tower on the end of the wooden South Pier is actually a "fog signal tower". The Pier is now in a perilous state of decay.
| Gospel Movie | Clip "Perilous Is the Road to the Heavenly Kingdom" (6) - How Does God Use Satan to Do Service?
Introduction
God says, "In My plan, Satan has ever snapped at the heels of every step, and, as the foil of My wisdom, has always tried to find ways and means to disrupt My original plan. But could I succumb to its deceitful schemes? All in heaven and on earth serves Me—could the deceitful schemes of Satan be any different? This is precisely the intersection of My wisdom, it is precisely that which is wondrous about My deeds, and it is the principle by which My entire management plan is carried out" (The Word Appears in the Flesh). How does God's Work of the last days make use of the Chinese Communist Party and the antichrist forces in the religious world to do service for making people perfect into overcomers? Why is it said that God's wisdom is exercised based on the crafty schemes of Satan? What will be the final outcome of the Chinese Communist Party and the antichrist forces in the religious world that have consistently hated the truth, and wildly resisted God? We invite you to watch this short video.
Recommended for You：religious movie
Image Source: The Church of Almighty God
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The departures screen flickered for a moment and changed. Gate 12; and if we were in any doubt it was immediately assuaged as a massed scrum of pensioners began to head towards it, dragging Ali and I along with them in their midst. On our previous visit to Madeira, sixteen years earlier, the only couple who looked to be of a similar age to ourselves were wearing matching jumpers. Not long before the return I'd admired the chunky navy blue cable knit sweater she'd bought in one of her charity shop expeditions and hastily made an acquisition of my own so that in the event of one of us getting lost, they could be returned to the other without delay. We needed to make sure we fitted the demographic after all - especially now we're no longer in youth's full bloom. This time we would be firmly among the majority - couples of a certain age dominating the departure lounge, with just the odd family gazing at the hardy looking pensioners around them and wondering whether they should have gone to Magaluf instead of Funchal. It's not the sort of island you come to for a beach holiday, but don't forget your walking poles. A floating garden that bursts forth extravagantly from the sea, and filled with flowers it plunges up into the clouds where the Laurisilva forest waits for the more adventurous visitors to explore its depths along the levadas and mountain trails. A hiker's dream. A photographer's paradise.
"We've just left the coast at Porto, so we should be arriving in about ninety minutes." Our captain's announcement reminded us just how far away our destination was from the rest of the world, a few hundred miles west of the coast of Morocco. I carried on reading my book - we'd be there soon enough and all of the worrying had come to nought. More than two years and one pandemic after our last overseas adventure and the prospect of the journey itself had become a three headed monster in our minds. But check in, security and boarding had been pretty much like it ever was - better in fact because it was quiet and the plane wasn't completely full. The only thing that was different from before was that everyone was wearing a mask, and we're used to that anyway of course. Originally these two flights, booked in September 2019 had been bound for Seville the following summer, so that we could explore the Costa da Luz of South Western Spain. When Covid put paid to that, and our airline having realised that they'd need to offer some flexibility if they wanted to keep their customers coming back in the future, those flights morphed into a visit to Porto and a motorhome rental to potter around the northern mountains and centre of Portugal. When it became clear that this wasn't going to happen either, at around the same time that Nigel Danson had shared his visit to Madeira over three consecutive weekends, I decided it was time to return to Funchal. And then we waited, more in hope that expectation. It was only about four weeks before the outbound flight with the restrictions in the UK easing and the island keen to welcome visitors that we booked the hire car and paid for the airport parking.
The first thing I always notice when we arrive in what Ali calls "a nice place" (by which she means somewhere warm) is the creaking of cicadas coming from every hillside and verge, welcoming the weary traveller to a more gentle climate than the cold February landscape they left behind. It's a sound that forever brings a joyful sense of calmness, especially at the end of a long winter at home, seen out by a volley of inhospitable storms. Even in the evening, more than an hour after sunset the air feels warm - much warmer in fact than we've felt at home for four months or more. Winter may bring wonderful light to the photography community in Cornwall, but I just wanted to feel the soft breaths of spring again now.
As we drove the car across Funchal, the heavy rains we'd remembered a holiday rep refer to as the city's irrigation system stirred the windscreen wipers into a quick march. Everywhere you drive in Madeira is either a steep uphill or a perilous descent as you hesitantly dab the brake pedal at regular intervals. If I ever need to go back to work I've already decided I'll retrain as a car mechanic and move to Funchal, specialising in brake pads and clutch replacement servicing - the market for it here must be insatiable. One minute you're cruising merrily down an incline in sixth gear, and then a few seconds later you're labouring up a near vertical slope in third, wondering whether you'll need to change down again before you reach the crest.
An hour of alternating sixth gear with third later we arrived here, at Porto Moniz on the northwest tip of the island. The final long climb out of the small coastal resort took us to our base for the first week, high above the sea, almost in the clouds, a perfect recipe for life on this most extraordinary island. The following day I would begin to gather my first shots over the seascape that in many ways reminded me of home - with the exception that it was ten degrees more agreeable and everyone around us was speaking Portuguese. I'd remembered how powerful the sea was here from a day trip all those years ago, and the image of those big rollers smashing into the black lava rocks and flooding the lido had made a big impression and made the place an obvious choice for a longer visit. It felt wonderful to be at large in the wider world again at last. The floating garden had lived up to expectations.
Maybe I’d allowed myself to get carried away with things a bit too much. While there was no doubting that it was one of my own favourites this year, I later returned to the image, now sitting on my wall in the form of a large aluminium acrylic print and looked at it more critically. Putting to one side the irritation that the printed version lacked the vibrance of the one on my computer screen, I could see that Gull Rock was just a little bit soft, and might have looked more effective if I’d darkened down the shadows a bit more. Of course, it wouldn’t be completely tack sharp from front to back when I’d taken the entire scene in a single frame without resorting to a focus stack. Not even in the middle of the focal range of the wide angle lens at f16 could I expect not to see some imperfections. “Why hadn’t I focus stacked?” I asked myself. I must have been suffering from that sense of “new scene” rush, combined with a limited amount of time, combined with the fact that I was there in the company of visitors who weren’t photographers.
Of course I’d never have reviewed my photo so carefully if it weren’t for the big print that sits over my computer or the fact that I’d entered it into Nigel Danson’s world landscape photographer of the year competition. I don’t do competitions normally because I don’t deal with rejection well, but the fact that the entry fee was going to be of help to Ukrainians persuaded me that perhaps for once I should prepare myself for eventual disappointment. For a day or two I ruminated over my entries, examining potential candidates closely and imagining Mads and Nigel picking holes in them before consigning them to the reject pile. “At least I’ve got that Trebarwith shot,” I told myself. “That one’s definitely in.” Eventually I narrowed it down to five pictures that I believed to be about the best I could manage. A moody winter shot at Wheal Coates threatened to break the rules that had prevented me from entering a single one from my considerably enormous Godrevy gallery. “No buildings,” said the small type “unless they’re incidental to the scene.” I uploaded my five images and waited for Nigel to make the phone call, congratulate me and pop a brand new Nikon kit in the post.
The winning entries were predictably superb, each of them with that added bit of magic that turns a good photograph into something memorable. Did you see them? As I watched our head judge one Sunday morning talking his followers through the prize winners and honourable mentions I was reminded that there is still a very long way to go on this adventure. I’m not expecting to ever win anything of course, but I do want to improve. Mr Danson was also good enough to review some of the submissions that had not completely impressed the galaxy of esteemed judges, with permission from the entrants of course. At least I hadn’t been singled out and shamed for failing to address a lack of balance or an absence of edge patrol, and none of my halos had been highlighted to a watching audience. Nobody had complained that my light source was darker than my foreground or that my focal point wasn’t entirely compelling. Hidden away among the thousands of also rans, there was much I could learn from the experience. And I was still happy with the shots I’d entered, even if they hadn’t appeared on anyone’s shortlist. Ultimately that’s all that really matters, isn’t it? Of course, none of the things I could have done might have advanced my entries further up the final scoreboard, but at least entering a competition for once had found me looking more closely at my own pictures and thinking about how the moods I always try to convey might be backed up with improvements in the technical and compositional departments. Progress is progress. Anyway, even if Mads and Nigel had both been knocked over the head by persons unknown and come bouncing over the airwaves in misguided excitement before sending me the coveted first prize, I’d have only ended up agonising over whether to stick with the gear I know and love or move wholesale to a new mirrorless set up.
Recently I noticed the Trebarwith folder still sitting on my screen, untouched since making straight for the one image that had caught my attention when I’d raced through the day’s results on the back of the camera. It was my first, and to date only visit to a place where I’d somehow managed to stay on my feet on a narrow slippery shelf of rock, before battling for space with four or five other ageing togs on rather more solid footing while the previously unpromising sky began to work some magic above a gentle high tide. Finally, I returned to the perilous green patch where everyone else feared to tread and where the stream that enters the sea cuts through the shelf in a series of attractive swirls and eddies, but not before I’d managed to jostle my way to the front row and capture the setting sun as it turned orange and cast its glow across the hard black slab on which we were standing. And now, three months later I was at last looking through that folder and finding images I’d ignored in the race to publish the one that had drawn my eye at first glance. Trebarwith, it seemed had delivered on that Bank Holiday Monday in May. Somewhere in those moments among the small gaggle of battling togs, the incoming surf had created some foreground interest without covering the orange reflections on the dark rocks.
Ali keeps on mentioning an overnight park up at Tintagel, another place I’ve never made it to in all my years of living in Cornwall. It’s her way of saying “can we go there in the van please?” With locations like this and the sea pool at Bude on offer, it seems daft not to agree really. She won’t mind if the camera bag gets surreptitiously slipped into the overhead cab. I expect an autumn visit is on the cards then.
We took a trip in to rural Lincolnshire last night to recce a few locations. The first one was a bust due to perilous looking access with the next being South Kyme Keep in this photo.
The Keep is surrounded by a few occupied houses so using a drone or lights didn't look like an option. I opted to shoot a 5 minute exposure to expose for the landscape in the dark and create a short star trail.
“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.” ~ Thomas Mann
Bok! Bok! Bok!
It has come to the attention of the Walden household that a mass re-education on the ethical treatment of the Wubba Chiken is in order! We have heard stories that some of our wubba Chiken friends have come perilously close to being on the dinner menu at the hands of their Blythe owners!
We implore you! Remember...Wubba Chiken's are our F-R-I-E-N-D-S!!!!
** Friends! Not Food!
** Please join the WCC. Wubba Chiken Coalition! For the ethical treatment of the Wubba Chiken!
***Finally, in the words of April Dori...Fank You!!
Resting atop a sea stack of basalt, more than a mile off the banks of Oregon’s North Coast, the notorious Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, (nicknamed “Terrible Tilly”), is the stuff of aged lore. Although long closed to the public, she still stands today, though battered and bruised, a testament to her storied past.
Tilly’s story began in 1878 when a solid basalt rock was selected as the unlikely location for a lighthouse off the coast of Tillamook Head. Danger and intrigue began almost immediately for Tilly. Before work even began, a master mason surveying the location was swept out to sea, never to be seen again.
Constructing Tilly was grueling work. Just accessing the rock was dangerous, not to mention the stormy weather wreaking havoc on the crew, their supplies, and their morale. In January of 1880, four months into construction, a perilous storm sent huge waves peppered with loosened rocks crashing over the work site, sweeping away the crew’s tools, water tank, and provisions. According to historical records, all the workers survived, but they were stranded for over two weeks waiting for new food, clothing and supplies.
Construction took over 500 days and just weeks before completion in January of 1881, the sailing barque Lupatia wrecked in heavy fog killing all 16 of her crew members. The only survivor of the wreck was the crew’s dog. On January 21, 1881 Tilly’s first order Fresnel lens was lit for the first time. Light keepers were assigned to duty, but for shorter than typical rotations — 42 days on, 21 days off — because conditions proved so harsh, both physically and mentally.
For decades, Tilly and her keepers withstood the ravages of the sea, but October of 1934 brought the worst storm on record, inundating the entire Pacific Northwest for four days. Tilly’s lantern room and Fresnel lens were smashed by boulders hurled by the storm. It was never replaced.
All the written information and some superb details in these pictures bring the village of Skara Brae to life in our modern era through the excavations of 1850 and onwards, 1928-1931 and the 1970s. From 1850 the dwellings and significant finds have been opened up. In the picture captioned, “Director of excavations at Skara Brae, Gordon Childe, emerges from a trench...” there looks to be a Kodak Brownie Box Camera to the right of the picture. The Brownie produced square pictures at two and a quarter inch size on No. 117 Roll Film. Brownie’s and other 117 Roll Film Cameras although some are made out of cardboard designed for limited use they can still produce good images today with some slight adjustments.
Skara Brae on Orkney is prehistoric gem. Semi-Subterranean houses and workshops make up the site as it stands today. It is an impressive site much visited and intricately studied as it offers to reveal how prehistoric people lived. The site is said to be built into the community midden, or rubbish dump. The soft midden can be shaped and moulded with stones fitting in the voids to make a very safe stable environment for living and working in. Skara Brae is vaunted as the most complete Neolithic Village in Europe. House 5 as labelled in this picture has had a drain and still shows stone furnishings looking like lithic versions of kitchen dressers, a central hearth and a window too. This once inland village is now perilously close to the sea and needs sea defences to maintain the structure from destruction by wind and sea. It was rediscovered in 1850 after a storm uncovered part of the structure.
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Skara Brae, Sandwick, Orkney, KW16 3LR, 01856 841 815
“Long before Stonehenge or even the Egyptian pyramids were built, Skara Brae was a thriving village. Step back 5,000 years in time to explore the best-preserved Neolithic settlement in Western Europe.”
www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/skara-b...
Skara Brae: view of house 5
canmore.org.uk/collection/337194
Skara Brae – the houses
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Skara Brae Evening Tours
Selected dates from Monday 9 June 2025 to Thursday 28 August 2025
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Orkney Digital Guide
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Skaill House
“Overlooking the spectacular Bay of Skaill, Skaill House is the finest 17th Century mansion in Orkney. Covering thousands of years of history, Skaill House is renowned for its contribution to Orkney’s diverse and exciting past. Today, after careful restoration work, the house is open to the public.”
After securing a prey item, the flight to an eating tree can be a bit perilous for an eagle at the dam. Rivals are watching closely, especially immature birds laying in wait in riverside trees, and they're very likely to go after the bird with the fish. Indeed, just after this adult bird passed me, it was waylaid on its journey by two other birds, but fortunately ended up making it to a tree with the fish intact.
I was in Messina, Sicily, for a convention - Messina, the city of the Strait. The city of the two seas, the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian - not two whichever seas, but the very stuff of myths and epics. Scylla and Charybdis haunted these narrow, deep, perilous waters.
As you would expect, I had tried to leave my camera at home (it was work, after all...), but it nevertheless jumped into my backpack, along with my Samyang wide angle lens and my tripod. Unfortunately neither of them told the remote shutter, so it stayed safe and cozy within my gear bag at home. Oh my gosh! What was the use of having a tripod while lacking a remote shutter? I just hoped that enabling the Delay exposure Mode would be sufficient to compensate for my awkward finger actually pressing the shutter release button.
So I began my Sicilian days with just as many sunrise sessions. Wow.
The weather was consistently unstable - an ever changing sky enlivened by an endless turmoil of clouds (sometimes benign, sometimes threatening and ominous), sudden showers followed by warm sun, and then again. There was at first a peculiar ambiance - a stormy mood, I would say - an epic character reminiscent of remote ages, when the gods and Cyclops trod these lands and monsters haunted these waters. I could understand the sense of awe the ancient dwellers of these places felt while contemplating such views. I could feel the presence of the gods of old just before me. Just all around me.
This photo comes from my fourth Sicilian sunrise, when I ventured as far as Capo Peloro, where the Ionian and Tyrrhenian seas swirl into each other. Directly above the beach stands the mammoth electricity pylon of Messina, that was one of the tallest in the world. It is disused now, but it still stands proudly like a sentinel on the very northeasternmost tip of the island - a modern giant guarding the place once haunted by the monstruous Charybdis. The dolphins and swordfish that frequent these waters in Summer where gone, but the magic of the place was fully there. It was a windy, almost but not quite cloudless morning and the blooming light at the horizon, pouring from the rugged coastline of Calabria felt just like the fiery chariot of Apollo was about to rise from the very edge of the world as the wavebreakers emerging from the sand were stirring to hail the new day.
Apollo was one of the Olympian gods, son of Zeus and the nymph Leto. He was the god who used to give his gifts to the mortals: medicine and healing were among the most important gifts from Apollo (Asclepius was his son), along with music, songs, dance and poetry (Orpheus was another renowned son of his); he was the inventor of string music and archery, and the protector of herds and crops from diseases. Apollo was also a protector of the young, concerned with the health and education of children. He was also the giver and inspirer of laws and of prophecy - he was the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Apollo was a complex, multifaceted, mostly benevolent deity, who was willing to offer his many gifts to the mortals, to the point that one could wonder what was the raison d'etre of the other gods. And it is no wonder that since the 5th century BC he has been identified with Helios, the personification of the Sun, and depicted while driving a fiery chariot across the sky, maybe as Aurora, goddess of the dawn, strews flowers in his path, announcing his - and the new day’s - arrival (see an example from Italian Renaissance).
Explored on 2022/12/12 nr. 41
I have processed this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-2.0/-1.0/0/+1.0/+2.0 EV] by luminosity masks with the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal" exposure shot).
It has been a long, difficult, and devious post-processing journey, and I am not really ok with how this photo has come out. The sky always tried to overdo itself and I often had to retrace my steps, trying to get a more realistic result; this was made even more difficult by those streaks of clouds, that were strangely flat and saturated from the very onstart of the journey. I tried my best to bring out the real three-dimensional look of the treacherous clouds while not having the whole sky looking like clown vomit (I am indebted to Pat David for this brilliant, self-explanatory phrase). No inverted RGB blue channel technique for this photo, since it only worsened things. I hope to get your feedback and constructive criticism.
As usual, I gave the finishing touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4 and played a bit with dodging and burning in the foreground.
Raw files processed with Darktable.
I was delighted to get to walk the corridors of power although it is now completely ruinous. Last time I visited Slains Castle it was all fenced off now you enter at your risk.
It is a solid build but now it is in a perilous state.
I am currently in Iceland. I took this image earlier this evening. Photographing a waterfall is a perilous past time. Both for you and the equipment. Gullfoss is one of the most powerful waterfalls in the world, yet you can get within a few feet of it. A simply extraordinary experience. Take lots of wet gear for you and your equipment.
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In the Central Oklahoma Cross Timbers, a ruby-crowned kinglet flitted among leafless oaks and redbuds, his olive-gray feathers blending with the winter drab. March’s first warmth stirred the air, signaling time to prepare for the northward trek.
All winter, he’d foraged tirelessly—tiny wings flitting incessantly as he gleaned spiders and dormant insects from bark, his slight frame belying fierce tenacity. The ruby crown, usually hidden, flared briefly when a chickadee darted too close, a flying jewel against the brown landscape.
He’d weathered ice storms, huddling in cedar boughs, and now his restless flight quickened. With a high, thin see-see-see, he tested the breeze, instincts pulling him toward Canada’s spruce forests. One dawn, as redbuds hinted at bloom, he gorged on leftover berries, fueling up for the 1,500-mile journey.
At dusk, he launched skyward, a speck against the fading light, navigating across the starlit Great Plains. Ahead lay breeding grounds, mates, and summer songs—a promise worth the perilous journey. Oklahoma faded below, and his winter refuge was now just a memory.
At first there was a 'two's company scenario': two mating ladybirds hanging perilously vertically on the narrow edge of a picnic table. The sight of a small boy trying to cup them in his hands drew my attention to them.
I suggested I would take their photo and perhaps we should leave them alone. This apparently satisfied him, and also his even smaller brother who had come to see what was going on.
Some time afterwards, we passed by this same picnic table during our visit to the buddleias in the walled garden. I saw a third ladybird alight on the table and scurry along the top edge. I must have then had a moment's inattention because I suddenly realised it had joined the first two, making this threesome.
Not easy to tell, from this jumble of red with black spots, but these look rather like 5-spot ladybirds aka coccinella qinquepunctata, although Google tells me they are rare.
I showed my shot to my good friend, Gilly, who tells me she discovered that "ladybirds' mating lasts 2 hours during which time they are very vulnerable to passing hungry birds (plus innocent small boys and mad ladies with cameras)** and if you see some you should cover them up to prevent aerial attacks."
It's taken ages to render this photo suitable to post - thus for:
Sliders Sunday -- Post Processed To The MAX!
**in brackets = Gilly's own words, some of which I have edited....
By the time the rite was over Carter knew that he was in no region whose place could be told by earth’s geographers, and in no age whose date history could fix. For the nature of what was happening was not wholly unfamiliar to him. There were hints of it in the cryptical Pnakotic fragments, and a whole chapter in the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred had taken on significance when he had deciphered the designs graven on the Silver Key. A gate had been unlocked—not indeed the Ultimate Gate, but one leading from earth and time to that extension of earth which is outside time, and from which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads fearsomely and perilously to the Last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter.
There would be a Guide—and a very terrible one; a Guide who had been an entity of earth millions of years before, when man was undreamed of, and when forgotten shapes moved on a steaming planet building strange cities among whose last, crumbling ruins the earliest mammals were to play. Carter remembered what the monstrous Necronomicon had vaguely and disconcertingly adumbrated concerning that Guide.
“And while there are those,” the mad Arab had written, “who have dared to seek glimpses beyond the Veil, and to accept HIM as a Guide, they would have been more prudent had they avoided commerce with HIM; for it is written in the Book of Thoth how terrific is the price of a single glimpse. Nor may those who pass ever return, for in the Vastnesses transcending our world are Shapes of darkness that seize and bind. The Affair that shambleth about in the night, the Evil that defieth the Elder Sign, the Herd that stand watch at the secret portal each tomb is known to have, and that thrive on that which groweth out of the tenants within—all these Blacknesses are lesser than HE Who guardeth the Gateway; HE Who will guide the rash one beyond all the worlds into the Abyss of unnamable Devourers. For HE is’UMR AT-TAWIL, the Most Ancient One, which the scribe rendereth as THE PROLONGED OF LIFE.”
Through the Gates of the Silver Key - By H. P. Lovecraft
(with E. Hoffmann Price)
... yet she was so beautiful as she was quietly gliding through the treacherous waters of the Strait of Messina, where the fearsome shadows of Scylla and Charybdis are still looming. I have already mentioned that my second Sicilian sunrise was somehow a bipolar one: a fiery, ominous Cyclops' sunrise, no doubts about that. Yet when looking Southeastwards it was as gentle and serene as a sunrise can be, bathed in a soft light. And yes, I was lucky enough to see and capture the elegant, graceful shape of the Amerigo Vespucci, the renowned training ship of the Italian Navy, in the distance, her sails furled. Definitely not Ulysses' galley, but a subtle sense of adventures to come transpired from her.
For those who are new to this series, here is some context.
I was in Messina, Sicily, for a convention - Messina, the city of the Strait. The city of the two seas, the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian - not two whichever seas, but the very stuff of myths and epics. Scylla and Charybdis haunted these narrow, deep, perilous waters.
As you would expect, I had tried to leave my camera at home (it was work, after all...), but it sneaked into my backpack anyway, along with my Samyang wide angle lens and my tripod. Unfortunately neither of them told the remote shutter, so it stayed safe and cozy within my gear bag at home. Oh my gosh! What was the use of having a tripod while lacking a remote shutter? I just hoped that enabling the Delay exposure Mode would be sufficient to compensate for my awkward finger actually pressing the shutter release button.
So I began my Sicilian days with just as many sunrise sessions. Wow.
The weather was consistently unstable - an ever changing sky enlivened by an endless turmoil of clouds (sometimes benign, sometimes threatening and ominous), sudden showers followed by warm sun, and then again. There was at first a peculiar ambiance - a stormy mood, I would say - an epic character reminiscent of remote ages, when the gods and Cyclops trod these lands and monsters haunted these waters. I could understand the sense of awe the ancient dwellers of these places felt while contemplating such views. I could feel the presence of the gods of old just before me. Just all around me.
Explored on 2022/12/31 me. 75
I have processed this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-2.0/-1.0/0/+1.0/+2.0 EV] by luminosity masks with the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal" exposure shot).
Along the journey - post-processing always is a journey of discovery to me - I tried the inverted RGB blue channel technique described by Boris Hajdukovic to give a slight tonal boost to several parts of the scene. As usual, I gave the finishing touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4 and played a bit with dodging and burning. I did not like the sea in this photo, so I tried a fancier processing; yet I would have had a ND filter while shooting in order to get the result I wanted (incidentally, I have one now, a little late for my shooting at Messina though). I did not try to emulate the effect of a longer exposure, it looked futile and dangerous, so I was a little creative with the sea as it was.
Raw files processed with Darktable.
WIP I put random figures in there btw
EDIT: Do you guys think this backstory is any good so far?
After ten long perilous years of searching, the 'Insert Special Forces Team here' have finally found the Skull Trio's Hideout, they have been on the run since they terrorised a village until it was deserted in the year 2000. Over 300 Police officers have been involved in the search in Thailand, China, and Afghanistan. A team of X officers have been assigned the mission to take it out
I was in Messina, Sicily, for a convention - Messina, the city of the Strait. The city of the two seas, the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian - not two whichever seas, but the very stuff of myths and epics. Scylla and Charybdis haunted these narrow, deep, perilous waters.
As you would expect, I had tried to leave my camera at home (it was work, after all...), but it nevertheless jumped into my backpack, along with my Samyang wide angle lens and my tripod. Unfortunately neither of them told the remote shutter, so it stayed safe and cozy within my gear bag at home. Oh my gosh! What was the use of having a tripod while lacking a remote shutter? I just hoped that enabling the Delay exposure Mode would be sufficient to compensate for my awkward finger actually pressing the shutter release button.
So I began my Sicilian days with just as many sunrise sessions. Wow.
The weather was consistently unstable - an ever changing sky enlivened by an endless turmoil of clouds (sometimes benign, sometimes threatening and ominous), sudden showers followed by warm sun, and then again. There was at first a peculiar ambiance - a stormy mood, I would say - an epic character reminiscent of remote ages, when the gods and Cyclops trod these lands and monsters haunted these waters. I could understand the sense of awe the ancient dwellers of these places felt while contemplating such views. I could feel the presence of the gods of old just before me. Just all around me.
The first sunrise was glorious. Epic, actually. I would not try and waste word in conveying the drama, since the photo already does. The moment was imbued with a strong feeling that the Greek myths were not dead at all, but rather powerfully alive all around me. For those curious about the title and the related Greek myths, the Titans were the twelve children of Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth). For the sake of being aware of the intricate genealogies of the different gods, you can give it for granted that each and every child born from Gaia was a perfect, complete troublemaker. And that every troublemaker is of that progeny. LoL.
The Olympian gods were born much later than the Titans and the Giants and they fought enormous battles against those ancient, powerful beings (the Titanomachia and the Gigantomachia), defeating them. Until they return for their revenge, of course.
The sunbeams are pouring from the steep, rugged coast of the mainland, namely that of one of the southernmost regions of Italy, Calabria, on the other side of the Strait.
Explored on 2022/10/23 nr. 34
I have processed this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-2.0/-1.0/0/+1.0/+2.0 EV] by luminosity masks with the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal" exposure shot).
Along the journey - post-processing always is a journey of discovery to me - I tried the inverted RGB blue channel technique described by Boris Hajdukovic to give a slight tonal boost to several parts of the scene, mainly to the lights. As usual, I gave the finishing touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4.
Raw files processed with Darktable.
For those who are new to this series, here is some context (feel free to skip the text in italics, which is not picture-specific).
I was in Messina, Sicily, for a convention - Messina, the city of the Strait. The city of the two seas, the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian - not two whichever seas, but the very stuff of myths and epics. Scylla and Charybdis haunted these narrow, deep, perilous waters.
As you would expect, I had tried to leave my camera at home (it was work, after all...), but it sneaked into my backpack anyway, along with my Samyang wide angle lens and my tripod. Unfortunately neither of them told the remote shutter, so it stayed safe and cozy within my gear bag at home. Oh my gosh! What was the use of having a tripod while lacking a remote shutter? I just hoped that enabling the Delay exposure Mode would be sufficient to compensate for my awkward finger actually pressing the shutter release button.
So I began my Sicilian days with just as many sunrise sessions. Wow.
The weather was consistently unstable - an ever changing sky enlivened by an endless turmoil of clouds (sometimes benign, sometimes threatening and ominous), sudden showers followed by warm sun, and then again. There was at first a peculiar ambiance - a stormy mood, I would say - an epic character reminiscent of remote ages, when the gods and Cyclops trod these lands and monsters haunted these waters. I could understand the sense of awe the ancient dwellers of these places felt while contemplating such views. I could feel the presence of the gods of old just before me. Just all around me.
Siciliy and the coastal regions of Southern Italy were not just a land of myths and legends, and of epic deeds: they were also a land of philosophy. The whole Magna Graecia was imbued with Greek art, culture, and philosophy - not least because people who had troubles in their homeland often found useful to settle in the Italian colonies, as things so often go. Pythagoras emigrated to Croton, a rich, lively city on the Ionic coast of Calabria. Pythagoras founded a school in that city in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle, the doctrines of Pythagoras being sort of a religion as well as a philosophy. This lifestyle entailed a number of dietary prohibitions, traditionally said to have included vegetarianism (mainly due to the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the "transmigration of souls" into new bodies after death). Most notably, women had a prominent role in the community of the Pythagoreans and were admitted to the mysteries of Pythagoras (my female Flickr friends might be interested in reading a free ebook I have found in Project Muse: Pythagorean Women: Their History and Writings by Sarah B. Pomeroy).
I cannot even begin to sing the glories of the man and of his followers, of course. It would suffice to think that he was the first to think that Nature is fundamentally mathematical and that numbers are within everything that exists. This is a fundamental tenet of modern science, of course: Galileo, who had not a real Pythagorean attitude, famously stated that "Nature’s great book is written in mathematics", acknowledging Pythagora's contribute to the new science. On the other hand, another pioneer of the new science and a contemporary of Galileo, Johannes Kepler, was still deep into Pythagorean mysticism.
Pythagoras was also credited to be the first to offer a mathematical view of music, based on the study of the monochord and how musical intervals corresponded to mathematical ratios of integer numbers. The Pythagorean scale was very important in the history of Western music, and hence, contemplating the fact that numbers ruled everything, the Pythagoreans derived the concept of the "music of the cosmos", or "music of the spheres". A large part of J. S. Bach's music, not least The Art of the Fugue, was strongly influenced by Pythagoreanism. And so on... Pythagoras and his followers made so many discoveries in geometry and mathematics that I cannot put them in words, but let me say that one of the early followers of Pythagora, Hippasus of Metapontus, was even credited with the discovery of irrational numbers, that were anathema for the Pythagoreans (it is said that they drowned him at sea for this).
As that wondrous sunrise was stirring up its fires (see my Nymphs dancing in the sky to see it in its fullest splendor) I was walking in a silent, dark world, and I could feel the marvel Pythagoras and his followers - men, women, and children - felt as they peered into the deep mysteries of the world, finding order they were able to understand. And I wondered with them, not for the first - nor for the last time - how is it that we can grasp its rules and laws at all - which could arguably be the very mystery of mysteries.
I hope that you enjoy this work of mine, my friends, and that it is able to pluck some string within your souls, just as being there in that magic moment plucked my own ones. Have a great weekend!
Explored on 2023/02/04 nr. 52
I have processed this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-2.0/-1.0/0/+1.0/+2.0 EV] by luminosity masks with the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal" exposure shot).
Along the journey - post-processing always is a journey of discovery to me - I tried the inverted RGB blue channel technique described by Boris Hajdukovic to give a slight tonal boost to several parts of the scene, absolutely excluding the sky.
As usual, I gave the finishing touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4 and played a bit with dodging and burning.
Raw files processed with Darktable.
A vantage point lifting above the 'Causse noir' - a limestone plateau between the rivers Tarn and Dourbie, so just to the south of the Causse Méjan.
A slightly perilous knoll summit with considerable three and four story drops ornamented with scrub to afford a false sense of security. The natural rock barrier of the above post adds a sense of theatre to a space that had enough significance to merit a considerable number of runs of monolithic stairs. From the uneven measures of the treads and the destination that lends itself to pyre, solstice celebration and unknown rite, it would seem safe to say that the site had cultural meaning either side of the Iron age. A measured circle dance or a musical choir, rhythm or call might all have enjoyed the setting.
This ridge and summit is one of a cluster, and between are tight, short and chunky 'canyons' which might have been converted as hunting traps or animal pens, or ornamented by people, pigment and weave for special events.
An abris, possibly associated with the steps and known as "gâches" was a necropolis, and in 1932 bones of 45 individuals were found with two hunters knives, 10 arrow heads and one blade in flint. These details are relayed by Marc Parguel, but without the real examples it is difficult to know if the abris aligns to the Neolithic and Bronze age finds associated with the site of the priory further down the slope. He also mentions references that talk of the site being used for worshiping the Celtic God Bélénus (thus the basin).
The steps up to the site can be seen on the images linked below.
AJM 07.10.22
Pic By Tonic
She trudged so far alone , days and nights passed, she thought she was in control of her path, knowing she was being followed by the jewel thief, she was so weary trudging through the thick deep forests of second life till suddenly she slipped through the trees as she lost her footing, luckily she was able to get a grip of a mashed up track on her fall and struggled to grip her way back up, praying in the mean time that the Jewel thief doesn''t find her where abouts, she just needs to drag herself up and rest up some just so she can gather her thoughts togeather and refuel herself.
For those who are new to this series, here is some context.
I was in Messina, Sicily, for a convention - Messina, the city of the Strait. The city of the two seas, the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian - not two whichever seas, but the very stuff of myths and epics. Scylla and Charybdis haunted these narrow, deep, perilous waters.
As you would expect, I had tried to leave my camera at home (it was work, after all...), but it sneaked into my backpack anyway, along with my Samyang wide angle lens and my tripod. Unfortunately neither of them told the remote shutter, so it stayed safe and cozy within my gear bag at home. Oh my gosh! What was the use of having a tripod while lacking a remote shutter? I just hoped that enabling the Delay exposure Mode would be sufficient to compensate for my awkward finger actually pressing the shutter release button.
So I began my Sicilian days with just as many sunrise sessions. Wow.
The weather was consistently unstable - an ever changing sky enlivened by an endless turmoil of clouds (sometimes benign, sometimes threatening and ominous), sudden showers followed by warm sun, and then again. There was at first a peculiar ambiance - a stormy mood, I would say - an epic character reminiscent of remote ages, when the gods and Cyclops trod these lands and monsters haunted these waters. I could understand the sense of awe the ancient dwellers of these places felt while contemplating such views. I could feel the presence of the gods of old just before me. Just all around me.
Siciliy and the coastal regions of Southern Italy were not just a land of myths and legends, and of epic deeds: they were also a land of philosophy. Pythagoras emigrated to Croton, in Calabria, and the first community of Pythagoreans were founded in that city. The whole Magna Graecia was imbued with Greek art, culture, and philosophy - not least because people who had troubles in their homeland often found useful to settle in the Italian colonies, as things often go.
Plato travelled three times to Sicily, more specifically to Syracuse (yes, that in the USA is not the only one - the Sicilian city is the original!), apparently considering Sicily the best setting to try and make his idealized Republic real (there is an enormous amount of information in the web, but if you are intrigued by the subject you could enjoy reading part of a book I have found freely available in Jstor, Politics and Performance in Western Greece: Essays on the Hellenic Heritage of Sicily and Southern Italy, ed. by Christos C. Evangeliou: part VI). Scholars believe that Plato might have developed the well-known Allegory of the Cave thinking of the 7,000 Athenians imprisoned and chained in the quarry Grottoes of Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War.
It was my last morning in Sicily and I was gifted with what I previously described as the "Apollo sunrise" (have a look at my Apollo's Fiery Chariot on the Horizon, even though I do not love it too much). It was a crystal clear windy morning and the world was so sharp and crisp that it felt like it had just been created. When the chariot of Apollo rode above the horizon everything was flooded with a powerful warm light that sculpted everything just like it was the perfect model from which our human perceptions derive. Yes, in that magic place, the very horn of the island, for some minutes I felt like the freed slave that was allowed/forced to leave the cave in Plato's allegory, the man who was blinded by the glare of the Real world whose confused shadows he was able to see while dwelling in the cave. A painful, yet revealing experience. I kept shooting as my camera was struggling to capture the real essence of reality, knowing that such shots would testify that fleeting, dizzling epiphany to my fellow photographers much better than any words.
All that said, I do not love the sky of that morning, and it keeps coming out accordingly (maybe it resents my feelings) - however this is my image, with its limits and its beauties, and I hope you enjoy it. Have a nice Sunday!
Explored on 2023/01/16 nr. 63
I have processed this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-2.0/-1.0/0/+1.0/+2.0 EV] by luminosity masks with the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal" exposure shot).
Along the journey - post-processing always is a journey of discovery to me - I tried the inverted RGB blue channel technique described by Boris Hajdukovic to give a slight tonal boost to several parts of the scene, absolutely excluding the sky.
As usual, I gave the finishing touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4 and played a bit with dodging and burning.
Raw files processed with Darktable.
Sisters of Opposing Magic
Book 1 - The Perilous Path
© 2025 All Rights Reserved
A novel by yours truly, if I ever get it done.
Model ships hanging from the ceiling spin lazy circles in the still air; stained glass windows depict various nautical scenes from the Bible; and an intricately carved wooden Mother Mary from the 18th century holds baby Jesus in one hand, and a single-masted schooner in the other. The paintings therein are as likely to depict religious figures as they are to depict stately vessels at rest, or in the tumult of a perilous sea voyage. It’s a mariner’s church through and through.
Lysandra's native city, and the crown jewel of Calathar, Solkaris rises defiantly from the arid expanse like a blazing beacon. Its sunbaked sandstone walls gleam golden beneath the unyielding light, a testament to the resilience of its people. Built atop a rocky mount, the Palace of the Sun towers above the lush green oasis below, sustained by an ancient, hidden aquifer. The citizens of Solkaris are as rugged and unyielding as the desert itself. Hardened by relentless heat and shifting sands, their spirits reflect the stark and unforgiving beauty of their land. Yet within them lies a fierce pride, for Solkaris is not merely their home; it is their legacy, a city forged through fire and perseverance.
Sisters of Opposing Magic: The Perilous Path
by... me, if I can ever finish it
'A Kestrel for a knave’. A beautiful female Kestrel, Falco tinnunculus captured sitting it out on a cold Northumberland winters day...I knew of its name 'Windhover' but was surprised to read in Wikipedia that it has another name!
Wikipedia Notes: Archaic names for the kestrel include windhover and windfucker, due to its habit of beating the wind (hovering in air). The Late Latin falco derives from falx, falcis, a sickle, referencing the claws of the bird. The species name tinnunculus is Latin for "kestrel" from "tinnulus", "shrill".
Many thanks for visiting my Flickr pages ...Your visits, interest, comments and kindness to 'fave' my photos is very much appreciated, Steve.
Kestrel Notes and Information:
In medieval falconry the Kestrel was reserved for the knave, reflecting its lowly status.
Country kestrels feed almost exclusively on small rodents (particularly voles), but those living in towns will take sparrows instead.
Though rodents may be the principal diet, they will also take a wide variety of other prey, including lizards, earthworms, large insects and even bats.
Vole numbers affect kestrel numbers: in good vole years more young kestrels are fledged.
Kestrels have remarkably keen eyesight even in extremely poor light, allowing them to hunt almost until dark.
Kestrels hunt from static perches and by hovering: the latter is far more productive, but uses lots of energy, which is why they hunt mainly from perches during the winter.
Hovering gives the kestrel its country name of windhover.
Kestrels aren’t as big as they look. An adult weighs on average a mere 220gm, less than half the weight of a red-legged partridge.
Our UK kestrel is one of a large group of similar species, found throughout much of the world, but it has the largest range, breeding through much of Europe, Africa and Asia.
Kestrels are Britain’s most widely distributed bird of prey, breeding throughout the mainland and on many offshore islands.
Kestrels rarely breed on Shetland: the most recent record was in 1905.
Their absence from Shetland may be explained by the absence of voles there.
Until recently kestrels were also our most numerous bird of prey, but the buzzard has taken over the No 1 slot.
Breeding kestrels like to use old crows’ nests, but they will also use holes in trees, nest boxes and cliff ledges.
Most kestrel nest failures occur during incubation; if eggs hatch, then it is most likely that some of the young will fledge.
Though not a colonial species, in years when there is an abundance of voles they will sometimes nest within a few metres of each other.
The lesser kestrel, which breeds in southern and eastern Europe, is a strictly colonial nester, often found in large colonies.
The world’s rarest species of kestrel lives on Mauritius, where it has come perilously close to extinction. There were just eight birds left in the wild 30 years ago, but the number is now close to 1,000.
Kestrels have been seen to rob sparrowhawks and both barn and short-eared owls of their prey.
The major cause of death among young kestrels is starvation: only 30-40% survive their first year.
The film Kes, about a young working-class boy training a kestrel, was made in 1969 but is still regarded as a classic living with birds notes.
Snowdrops surround Shipton Church which is first mentioned c1110 and was probably a small 2-celled church until the tower was added at some time in the medieval period, and contained 3 bells by 1552.
Of particular interest there is a plaque in the church recording that 4 local children were sent in 1620 to Virginia on the ship the Mayflower which took shelter in Cape Cod due to bad weather. Only one child Richard survived the first 12 months, and even thrived, in the perilous environment of early colonial America, going on to lead a very full life.
Richard became a well known sea captain who helped deliver supplies to various colonies which were vital to their survival, travelled over Atlantic and West Indies trade routes and fought in various early naval sea battles. He and other Mayflower survivors were referred to in their time, as "First Comers", who lived in the perilous times of what was called "The Ancient Beginnings" of the New World adventure.
www.flickriver.com/photos/jimborobbo/popular-interesting/
© Jim Roberts JR's Gallery
Thank you for looking at my photographs and for any comments it is much appreciated.
All my photos and images are copyrighted to me although you are welcome to use them for non commercial purposes as long as you give credit to myself.
Sisters of Opposing Magic
Book 1 - The Perilous Path
© 2025 All Rights Reserved
A novel by yours truly, if I ever get it done.
The sole-surviving Wickham Class 109 DMU waits at Carrog on the first operational day of the 2022 season
The Class 109 is one of preservation's success stories. With only five built for BR service in 1957, they were all withdrawn as non-standard early on, with a single set surviving, heavily modified in departmental use.
This set was saved by the Chasewater Railway, but became dilapidated and in a perilous state by the mid 1990s, its asbestos contamination making it an expensive set to save.
However the Llangollen Railcar Group bought the set and in a ten year project assisted by the Heritage Lottery Fund, returned it to original condition, to excellent standards. The Class 109 set has become a flagship for DMU preservation in general and is a regular performer at Llangollen.
The two engine houses at Crowns Mines, clinging perilously to a cliff edge, with a boiling sea below and thick fog all around.
Anasazi Part 7: This is False Kiva in Canyonlands National Park, Utah, USA. an Anasazi (or more properly Ancestral Puebloan) ruin. They are better known as the Cliff Dwellers. The exact purpose of this structure is unknown. It resembles a Kiva, or Ceremonial Center, but does not fit all the classic characteristics. The back left corner of the alcove or cave is roped off, presumably for possible future excavations. The Ancestral Puebloans literally lived on the edge in many ways. In the 13th Century, many of the structures were built in cliffs that were difficult to access, possibly because of raiding or strife. Archeologists have found evidence of massacres in some locations, that academics sometimes kindly call "warfare events". Anyway, life was perilous and frequently short. Examination of skeletons show many "stress bands" in the long bones from periodic episodes of starvation. Surprisingly, they also suffered from osteoporosis, or softening of the bones from loss of calcification or mineralization. We think of osteoporosis as an older person problem, related to aging an inactivity. They were most definitely not inactive, and did not live long. As game meat became scarce they relied more and more on corn they grew. A predominately corn diet lacks at least one essential amino acid, resulting in osteoporosis and weakened bones. They lived on the edge of survival every day, a truly amazing people living in a harsh land.
As a side note, about 1 meter in front of that wall is a long straight drop down a cliff. There is also some smoke on the horizon from wildfires in California.
Thanks for taking the time to look. Hope you enjoy! Big thanks to the wonderful Flickr family out there.
Please join me at:
It could only happen in Ireland. I've never hugged a hire car operator before. At least not until the day I collected a Fiat Panda from the Easirent office at Cork Airport. As I busied myself, photographing every inch of the bodywork using the date stamp mode on my phone, Fiona chatted to the man who'd rented it to me. Fiona's my cousin by the way. Number two of eight. There are a lot of big families here. “That's where he's going next,” she nodded in my direction once she'd established the fact that Victor was Egyptian. He’d made us guess and we’d toured most of the Middle East before we gave up and asked him to tell us. “I won't be hiring a car over there though,” I grinned in reply. Fly, flop and fill up with vitamin D and the all inclusive menu is going to be the order of the day there.
Happy that the car was blemish free, I was ready to begin my journey and hugged my cousin goodbye. I'd been staying in her guest quarters for a couple of nights, catching up on far too many years since I'd last been in Ireland. Victor almost looked disconsolate though. He was missing out on a hug. So I hugged him as well. I think he was really angling for a hug from Fiona - my Irish family were the ones who inherited our grandparents’ good looks. Once she'd hugged him too, he was happy. If ever you rent a car at Cork Airport, embrace the operator as you leave. You'll feel better for it. Love costs nothing after all.
The journey west was easy driving, especially along the pristine Macroom bypass, recently opened and blissfully quiet. There was so little traffic that I could almost have parked in the fast lane and had a cup of tea, risking neither insurance excess nor limbs, and I was soon at the Kerry border as the landscape began to grow into brown hills and boggy moorland. In just under an hour I was west of Killarney, on slower roads, gradually getting closer to the Dingle Peninsula in the extreme Atlantic reaches, a wild, sparsely populated country at the edge of existence in this far flung corner of Europe.
I stopped at the Lidl in Dingle for two days worth of supplies. The opening hours were only displayed in Gaelic, although everything else was written in English. At the checkout, the group in front of me spoke to the cashier in a language that I couldn't place. But they sounded decidedly Eastern European. I think they were all Polish or Lithuanian. Thanks to the cool bag that Fiona had loaned to me, I wouldn't need to drive back here later and add an unwanted hour to the end of the day.
And now I was in the last handful of miles, past Ventry and at the gateway to a secret enclave packed with rare landscape treasures. I knew roughly what I was going to find, but nothing could really prepare me for what I was about to see. Today I needed somewhere that wasn't too far from the car because I'd only have about ninety minutes of daylight, and there was just one location in my sights. I pulled into an almost completely deserted car parking area just after 3pm. Most of the people here seemed to be making their way down the slope towards Coumeenoole Beach. Good, it seemed I might have the place to myself. Unlike my generous cousins, I'm not that good at sharing.
The path was narrow, slippery and uncomfortably close to a perilously steep descent into oblivion. In my haste to get to the end of the headland I'd failed to notice the safer trail on flat ground that ran twenty yards parallel to it. But in time I made it down to the end of the headland where I was quite alone in this visceral Eden. Like Cornwall on steroids. I clambered down as far as I dared. In front of me was a Celtic dragon in the form of a group of huge rocks, and beyond that lay a succession of islands, the Blaskets. The stuff that dreams are made on. The sort of place you think can't possibly be real, yet here it was, home to a tiny number of humans and plenty of wildlife. And talking of the locals, a big grey bull seal floated in the water close to the rocks in front of me, watching the stranger looking back at him. Just like it so often happens at Godrevy near home. And here, I felt entirely at home, balancing on a small even platform among the endless stony needles that protruded like sharks’ fins, protected from the Atlantic by a high buttress where the sea poured in from the north, making waterfalls over a series of rocks between the land and the dragon.
The light was on my side in this distant wonderland, elegantly framing the dragon in a golden glow as I settled down to work, taking one shot after another while the water frothed and boiled in front of me. It was everything I'd hoped for, and quite a lot more besides. I don't need to tell you that it doesn't always happen like this. And today was just the start of what turned into three extremely rewarding days, each one very different from the others. Each one delivering moments that will stay with me for a very long time. In a land as blessed as this, where the gulls shriek, the winds whistle and the ocean thunders, it's really no wonder people lose themselves and do strange things like hugging car hire operators.
Don't be deceived by the divine light. The bridge isn't safe.
The image is an HDR from 3 handheld exposures. Then a bit of manual blending, curves, levels, shadow/higlight filter, dodge and burn plus some cloning away of burnt out spots.
The place is Svartsengi, home to a geothermal powerplant and the Blue lagoon. I used my lunch break the other day to take a short walk around the place with my camera.
I've been thinking and daydreaming of achieving a look like this for a while now. The idea was originally inspired by Rarindra's Prakarsa work. I might have done a few things to improve the image like using a tripod, taking additional +/- 4EV exposures and moving the fence to the left, which might be considered as vandalism.
I've made a hard copy available.
I must get down there soon and see what's going down. I hope they haven't sold out completely. Do people still send physical, tangible postcards though?
Hello there. Relevant comments welcome but please do NOT post any link(s). All my images are my own original work, under my copyright, with all rights reserved. You need my permission to use any image for ANY purpose.
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A very young bighorn lamb surveying the badlands from the top of an eroded rock wall. Badlands National Park, South Dakota.
It may look like he's in a perilous position, but that's not the case. Even though the lambs were quite young (umbilical cords were still showing on many.) I watched as more than a dozen of them (including this one) sprinted and scrambled up, down, and all around narrow ledges and eroded rock formations.
It seems they are born for this.
The young man you see standing on the brink of death was taking pictures but was also walking back and forth between his camera and the ledge you see in this picture. It is every bit as dangerous as it looks in the picture and even the “path” to get there was perilous, yet he walked it like it was a 5’ wide paved walk with 20’ of level grass on both sides. I thought about going out to stand on the ledge but was afraid I’d find a You Tube video of me crawling on the path crying like a baby trying to turn around to get back to safety.
Anyway, I’m glad he enjoyed standing out there and it also made for a great photo opportunity.
The winter colors in the foothills are laden with orange, red, browns, and muted greens. Now as we approach the awakening, the greens are becoming more prevalent with a plethora of wildflowers adding local color. This image taken back in January shows the lower Nevada County foothills in the dead of winter.
Speaking of winter, after a spring-like February, winter has returned to the foothills in earnest. We woke up to six inches of fresh snow on the ground this morning. Kenzie the pup is most happy about it. She loves to romp through the white stuff. Me? Not so much. It's quite beautiful, but I hate shoveling the driveway. In fact, I might just forget about it and let it take its course. It's a good way to self quarantine in these perilous times.
Stay safe everyone. Wash those hands.
Nevada County CA
Cove Island Lighthouse, Tobermory, Ontario
Cove Island lighthouse has been marking safe passage through a perilous strait between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay for sailors since October 30, 1858. , it sits on Gig Point, the northeast tip of the island, about five miles from Tobermory’s mainland harbour.