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Coucher de soleil sur le massif de la Vanoise depuis la Toussuire dans le massif Arvan-Villards en Maurienne (Savoie).
Snowy Range, Wyoming - August 2013
Portra 160 4x5, 90mm Caltar Lens
1 second af f22, 2 stop GND filter
A wonderful place to spend some time alone in the wilderness, this was my view when I got out of my tent in the morning. I think Portra did a great job at capturing the subtle colors and feeling of a late summer sunrise.
Ripon Tor Rifle range. Second visit to this exposed hilltop with Paul. Built in 1942 due to world war II, Closed in 1977. The wind eventually eased and I was able to get the drone up to light this unique structure, most ranges are just mounds of earth. This is a two shot vertical pano using the 17mm tilt shift lens. I'm sure there other comps here so I'll have to go back at some point.
The Craigieburn Range forms part of the Southern Alps in New Zealand's South Island. The range is located on the south banks of the Waimakariri River, south of Arthur's Pass and west of State Highway 73. The Craigieburn locality is adjacent to the Craigieburn Forest Park.
A northbound Alaska Railroad lumber trains rolls north along the very scenic Turnagain Arm as the sun begins to set. Silhouetting the Alaska Range and casting an orange glow upon the Alaskan landscape.
Lydd Ranges is a military firing range south of Lydd, in Kent, England. It extends as far as the coast.
It has been used for military training for over 150 years and is part of the Dungeness, Romney Marsh and Rye Bay Site of Special Scientific Interest.Because the range is used for live firing access is sometimes restricted - red flags are flown during these times, access is prohibited along the foreshore and Galloways Road. Also red lights are shown at restricted times due to poor weather. The Danger area extends out to sea and mariners sailing to and from Rye Harbour must pass south of the Stephenson Shoal to avoid it. Firing occurs about 300 days a year. When firing is not carried out, it may be possible to walk along a designated path along the shore
There was another chap photographing this, and he commented how the Mini next to it was about the same size. I wouldn't be surprised if the Mini isn't heavier either.
This immaculate car appears to have done under 40,000 miles and had the same owner since 1996. When it drove off it sounded lovely too.
Teton Viewpoint, Grand Teton National Park. Storm was coming. After shooting Schwabachers Landing, I got a shower on the way back to car. But a few minutes after I dried up myself, surprisingly, the rain stopped and I saw the sky was blowing off! And that was the best sunset I've ever got.
The site selected for Woomera was on a stony gibber plain with the small Arcoona Creek nearby. Apart from the pioneering pastoralists the other crucial pioneers of this region were the police troopers who covered vast areas with deadly terrain and hazards and the mail contractors who struggled through adverse conditions to get the weekly mails through to the sheep station managers and workers. By the time of the Tarcoola gold rushes in 1893 the mail contractors were using carriages and carts instead of just horses. They took paying passengers with mails. One famous mail contractor was Norman Richardson who personally knew all of the 100 or so early pastoralists. He also established some leaseholds himself. The harsh conditions and remoteness of the region was broken by 1915 when the first stages of the Transcontinental railway line to Kalgoorlie reached Tarcoola almost on the edge of the Nullarbor Plain. South Australia contains about one quarter of the Nullarbor Plain. A slow mixed train began travelling to the workers camps along the line in 1915 with materials for the line and with goods for people working and living along the line. Deserted Pimba, where the branch line to Woomera was built, was a busy workers camps during World War One.
Woomera Township. Population 130.
Woomera grew like a mushroom, almost overnight. In 1946 the Australian Chifley government and the British government wanted to act with speed to establish a long-range weapon research station. Chifley also created our security space agency ASIO in 1949. Six years later 500 houses had been built at Woomera and the government town had a population of around 3,000 people. All town residents had to take an oath of secrecy to live there as “the eyes and ears of the world” and its spies were focussed on the town and the missile programme. The residents were basically stratified according to the Mess that they attended which included the Senior Officers, Officers, Sergeants, Staff and Junior Staff Messes.
The sentry gate to Woomera was at Philip Ponds named after Philip Hierns whose family settled at Gumeracha in 1852. Next to the Philip Pond is Hiern Hill used as a survey point. The Hiern family also had the Hiltaba station in the Gawler Ranges. In 1885 the government built a 60,000 gallon underground water tank for the use by all travellers and pastoralists at Philip Ponds. This was the site selected for the rocket range with most of it taken from part of Mt Eba sheep station (established in 1874 by Price Maurice). This selected site offered a largely uninhabited range to the north west coast of Western Australia a significant distance of 3,000 miles or 4,830 kms. Britain had considered low populated areas of another former British colony - Canada but they had few hours of sunshine compared with that of central and western Australia. The lands where Woomera township was established were Kokatha lands. Their territory ranged from Ceduna, across the Gawler Ranges to Woomera.
The cemetery is a couple of kms outside of the town and is the burial site of Len Beadell. Just north of the cemetery (5 kms from Woomera) are the Philip Ponds Station ruins and waterhole and the Philip Ponds cemetery. This tiny cemetery has six graves but only two headstones. It was here in 1947 that Beadell camped with some other army personnel to look for a site for an airstrip. The homestead was in good condition then but is now a deserted ruin. Nearby is the Arcoona Creek which flows from near Woomera towards Lake Torrens. Near the lake it forms a series of periodic wetlands between Roxby Downs and Woomera when rainfall is high. Arcoona sheep station is less than 30 kms from Woomera on the way to Roxby Downs. Arcoona Station (meaning underground water) was established in 1876 by Andrew Wooldridge and covered over 4,900 square kms. He sold part of it to Charles Burney Young who created Andamooka station. James Gemmell took over Arcoona station in 1902 and added Norman Richardson as partner in 1906 and it was sold by both in 1909. The station was sold in 1947 to the Estate of Sir Sidney Kidman. It covered almost 4,000 square kms by then. After floods the Arcoona Lakes can support over 150,000 birds (until the water dies up) including ducks, swans, Cormorants, Coots, Terns, etc. There is no public access on to these leaseholds. Philip Hiern, the fifth son of Henry and Grace Hiern was an intrepid bushman and accompanied G.B. Richardson in 1869 when Richardson found good natural waterholes here and called it Philip's Ponds.
When the Woomera Prohibited Area was created in 1946 another huge area was also created on the Western Australian coast from just south of Broome almost to Port Hedland. This was where the long-range missiles were expected to touch down. The Woomera prohibited area had to be surveyed and Len Beadall (1923 – 1995) from NSW was selected for this arduous task in difficult arid country. He had enlisted during World War Two and stayed on in the Army after the war doing survey work. In November 1946 he was asked to postpone his retirement from the Army to undertake the Woomera survey. He was sent to choose the selected area and then survey it. His first task was to survey the site for an airport. Another first priority was the construction of a water pipe line from Port Augusta to Woomera. A RAAF Squadron was sent to build a temporary air strip and the first plane landed in June 1947. The proposed town was named in 1947 by one of the English planners once he saw woomera in an Aboriginal dictionary. For the Dharug Aboriginal people of the Sydney region the word meant “spear launcher.” Nothing could be more appropriate. The Woomera long range rocket facility is now the RAAF Woomera Range Complex. It covers 122,000 square kms of which parts are SA Crown land, Federal Crown lands, some is pastoral lease and some is mining tenancies. The area of the Woomera Prohibited Range was roughly the size of England and Wales combined. Sargeant Len Beadell began his survey on what is now the corner of Dewrang and Booromi Streets where a monument is situated. After the initial survey Beadell stayed on until he left the Army in 1948. He then became an employee of Long Range Weapons establishment. After the first surveys Len Beadell began building bush roads through the deserted areas with his first being the Gunbarrel Highway from Northern Territory through part of SA to Western Australia in 1955. It began at the Stuart Highway near the NT and SA border. This area had been first explored by Ernest Giles in 1874. The Gunbarrel Highway is 1,347 kms long and enabled weather stations and other rocket range work to occur along its length. The first track that Len Beadell surveyed was to a secret location for an atomic test at Emu field in 1952 with two British nuclear tests there in 1953. Thereafter nuclear tests were conducted at Maralinga. Len Beadell moved his family to Salisbury so that his trips in the bush could be interspersed with flights from Woomera airfield to Edinburgh RAAF base airfield to visit his family. The new Salisbury Library which opened in 2019 is the Len Beadell Library. Len’s and his wife’s ashes were interred in the Woomera cemetery. Len published six books on his explorations and exploits. He has been described as the last Australian explorer.
The work undertaken at Woomera was backed by work undertaken at Weapons Research Establishment at Penfield near Salisbury. The efforts of both towns were like symbiotic organisms dependent on the other. The British were bombarded by German rocket missiles during World War Two and they wanted to advance their knowledge by developing new long-range missiles. The German rocket missiles in 1944 were the first to go into space and then descend without noise or warning on the British below. It took these rocket missiles about 5 minutes to reach England from Germany. After the European War ended the Americans dropped their atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Science was advancing weaponry quickly. The British government was not concerned greatly about cost just speed of development. Russia had the remnants of German missiles and England wanted to beat them in new developments in the Cold War Age as the United Soviet Socialist Republics developed their first nuclear test in 1949. Woomera, the joint Australian British range was soon the second busiest rocket and space range in the world after Cape Canaveral in Florida. The original aim to develop long range missiles was supplemented with nuclear/atomic tests. The first long range missile the MkI Jindivik or Bloodhound occurred in 1952. It was developed and refined over the next 14 years to enable it to carry nuclear bombs as well. Later came the Black Knight rockets from 1957. Ten rockets were fired by the Joint British-Australia group in Woomera followed by 20 from the USA NASA programme and 258 Skylark (the later rocket 1969 to 1978) rockets for various countries including Australia, Britain, USA, Germany etc. Some projects were very secret but others were reported in the Australians press. We heard and read about Black Knights, Thunderbirds, Skylarks, Blue Streaks etc. The British government’s nuclear test program was conducted at Maralinga, Emu field in SA and Montebello Island near Exmouth in WA. Maralinga is 570 kms from Woomera in the Anangu Aboriginal lands. Between 1953 and 1973 the British exploded seven nuclear tests at Maralinga. The first two, relatively small nuclear tests in SA were conducted at Emu Field (8 to 10 kilotonnes) in 1953 which is about 650 kms north west of Woomera. Emu Field tests were followed by 3 bigger tests in Montebello Island (25 kilotonne). The largest tests all occurred at Maralinga from 1956 ranging from 10 kilotonnes to 26.6 kilotonnes. Britain has never disclosed where they got the uranium for the tests and research, but the SA government built a Uranium Treatment Plant in Port Pirie in 1955 to provide yellow cake to Britain and the USA. This facility closed in 1962 and it was a possible source of Britain’s uranium for Woomera tests. The Anangu Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from the area and moved to near Fowlers Bay and then Yalata. Both white workers and some of the Anangu people left behind later suffered from radioactivity diseases such as cancers and skin diseases and blindness. Anangu people still living near Maralinga reported a “black mist” descended on their country after a test on 15th October 1953. The history of the nuclear tests lingers on with the Anangu people. They officially received the partially safe test sites region back from the Federal government in 2009 with full return of the testing region in 2014. Tests just a couple of years ago show that some soil particles are still highly radioactive sixty years after the tests. Weathered soil particles broken down by the sun can still release radioactivity. The test range program at Woomera officially closed in 2000 and the remaining population there now number around 150 to 200 people. Despite the opening of Woomera township to the public one eight of South Australia is still a prohibited area with no public access, except for the Stuart Highway to Alice Sprigs and the main road to Roxby Downs and Andamooka. Number 20 Squadron is still based at the Woomera RAAF Base and does ongoing testing of war material and training for war fighting.
The research and experimental station was established in 1947 and the town was laid out in 1949. Building advanced at break neck speed in Woomera. By 1953 there were 500 houses completed and in 1958 work began on two storey flats for single workers. As early as September 1949 the first multi denominational church opened in a building provided by the Federal government. In August 1952 the Federal government gave land grants and £3,000 for a Catholic, an Anglican and a multi denominational Protestant church. The town then got its Catholic Church 1953, its Anglican Church 1953 and the United Protestant Church building started in 1954 and opened in 1956. Soon after other community facilities opened – the first Post Office in 1949, the first cinema and theatre early 1950s, sporting facilities, shops, the Primary School (1950) and the Higher Primary School (1951), the important 44 bed hospital (1958) and the tavern and Mess buildings and blocks of two storey accommodation for single women and single men. The hotel was named the ELDO after the European Launcher Development Organisation which was formed in 1962 for Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, West Germany and Italy for space rocket research and launching. Ten launches were fired at Woomera for ELDO between 1962 and 1970. The EDLO Hotel was built in the mid 1960s.
Some interesting buildings remaining in Woomera: starting on the corner of Banool and Dewrang Avenues are. -
The open air missiles museum on two corners, the Woomera theatre on one and the back of the former shopping centre on the other. The first wooden cinema building came from Port Pire to Woomera in the early 1950s. The stone Woomera Theatre was built in 1963. Behind it are public toilets and the heritage museum, café and shop. Along Dewrang Save opposite the heritage centre is the War Memorial, further along Dewrang is the former Post Office (1954) and on the next corner is the Department of Defence Offices. If you turn left here into Kotara Crescent is the Courthouse and the current police station. A tin and wooden Courthouse opened in 1949. This brick one opened in 1974. Next to it is the current Police Station built around 1970. At the end of this crescent is the Eldo Hotel (European Launcher Development Organisation).
Back at the intersection north along Dewrang Ave beyond the open air museum is the former 1950s St Barbara Anglican Church which became the town museum but is now empty. Behind it is the United Protestant church( originally Presbyterian) built in 1956 which is now the RAAF Base Chapel.
Directly opposite The RAAF Base Chapel is the Woomera Area School with the Latin motto of Et Scienta Et Sapienta –Knowledge and Wisdom. The primary section we built in 1950 and the High School added in 1951. In 1954 when the Duke for Edinburgh visited the school it had 550 students.
West of the intersection in Banool Ave is St Michael’s Catholic Church built in 1953. It has since been replaced by a new church. Only the stumps for the early church remain with a mural on what was once the interior wall.
In the open air museum you can see several rockets, missiles and aircraft etc. They include the Black Arrow missile in front of what was the Anglican Church. It was launched from 1969 to 1971. In Breen Park you can see more RAAF aircraft, the famous Blue Streak missile crash ruins, the Sea Slug missile, the Black Knight missile, the Blue Steel missile, a bomb etc.
Our next campground was at Juniper Beach. Juniper Beach is located between the two main mountain ranges within British Columbia and as such doesn't receive much rainfall meaning the area is very dry and composed of desert habitat. Given we had just stayed in two well wooded campgrounds it was therefore a surprise that I found my first woodpecker of the trip at this campground where there were hardly any trees.
Taken on recent trip down to the Stirling Ranges.
Website. www.williamophuis.com
Sun breaking over the Tatoosh Range.
The entire Tatoosh range is stretched out across the frame. In the far background are Mt Adams (on the left) and Mt St Helens (on the right).
Took this shot just outside my tent shortly after sunrise. Normally the road up to the Paradise base area is closed until 9:00AM so the only way to get a shot like this is to hike up here and camp the night before. This spot is a couple hundred feet above Panorama Point near the frozen over Pebble Creek crossing towards McClure rock.
Shortly after taking this I headed up the Muir snowfield to Camp Muir.
Press 'L' to view large on black
Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
EF16-35mm f/4L IS USM @24mm
1/250sec @f5.6, ISO 200
two shot merged panorama
approximate location
46.8083917, -121.725005555
Florida Red-bellied Snake (Storeria occipitomaculata obscura) found crossing a trail around dusk in southern Volusia County, Florida. This is a little outside of any documented range that I've been able to find.
Lake Marie, Snowy Range, Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming--summer 2022
As noted elsewhere, this is one of my favorite spots in all the world, having first visited the area with my family when I was a small child. I was always hesitant to return as an adult, fearing that my childhood memories would be damaged by the more sophisticated and jaded sensibilities of my adult self. But when I visited for the second time in 2015, I almost cried when I discovered it to be just as beautiful as remembered. This third trip did nothing to change my assessment. It could be a national park, and perhaps one day it will be, but for now, I'm happy that it remains a relative secret, one that thousands enjoy each year instead of millions. Here's hoping I return yet again in the not distant future.
One of the cool things about the fact that the area remains unknown to the vast majority of Americans, is that it's easy to find places to be nude without having to hike miles off the beaten path. This spot is perhaps 300 meters from that (relative) beaten path and yet I felt quite isolated. I spent a few hours here, relaxed and unconcerned with being seen. Of course, the main attraction isn't the naturism, but the nature.
I love the palate of color in the photo, though it was difficult to process owing to the high-contrast, including a very dark merman. Incidentally, this is a Pano combing two (vertically oriented) photos.