View allAll Photos Tagged Refine
I viewed the refinery from the Waterbird Regional Park, looking across the marsh and Interstate 680. It refines gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. It was built in 1915 by Shell Oil Company, and sold to PBF Energy in 2020.
It is in Martinez, California, about 12 miles from my home in Walnut Creek. It is just south of the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta. January 23, 2023
My wife took this photo of me gawking up at the huge Kennecott Concentration Mill. The section in the foreground holds what is left of an ammonia leaching operation that was part of the initial refining process conducted before the ore was shipped to the lower 48 states to complete the refining.
In 1900, the “Bonanza Mine Outcrop,” in the Wrangell Mountains northeast of Valdez, Alaska, proved to be one of the richest copper deposits ever found. At the peak of operation, 200 to 300 people worked in the mining operation at Kennecott. The Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark preserves some of the buildings remaining from the ore refining operation, including the giant Concentration Mill here.
(Source: National Park Service website)
Over its brief history, Kennecott Corporation, with support from J.P. Morgan, Guggenheim and other New York financiers, produced $200-300 million worth of copper and silver.
Double-tap image to enlarge.
To hit with precision —
exactly where I meant,
exactly as I wished.
Simple?
Not at all.
Practice and repetition bring me closer to accuracy,
but before that, I must want it.
I must tune myself inward
and learn how to refine.
And even after I’ve learned and aligned —
from every strike
there will always rise the small, unwanted fragments,
the dust that drifts in the air.
Because wanting, planning, and aiming are never quite enough.
There will always be things
we didn’t plan for.
Viser et Affiner
Atteindre avec précision —
exactement où je l’avais voulu,
exactement comme je l’avais imaginé.
Simple ?
Pas vraiment.
La pratique et la répétition m’amènent vers plus de justesse,
mais avant cela, il faut désirer.
Il faut s’accorder de l’intérieur,
apprendre à affiner.
Et même après avoir appris et m’être aligné —
de chaque impact
s’élèveront toujours de petits fragments indésirés,
la poussière qui flotte dans l’air.
Car vouloir, planifier et viser ne suffisent jamais tout à fait.
Il y aura toujours des choses
que nous n’avions pas prévues.
Fairbanks Alaska. ca. 1985.
The United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company. Illinois Street supply yard.
the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
...and it would be nice if you would come back for another visit and post a link here to how you used one of my textures ... for my curiosity, of course ... but it also allows me to enjoy your creativity as well AND refine the types of textures I shoot ... so it's all good!
In 1900, prospectors discovered magnificent green cliffs of exposed copper in the Wrangell Mountains northeast of Valdez, Alaska. Their discovery, the “Bonanza Mine Outcrop,” proved to be one of the richest copper deposits ever found. From 1911 to 1938, the Kennecott Copper Corporation extracted nearly $200 million worth of copper from nearby mines. At the peak of operation, approximately 300 people worked in the mill town and 200-300 in the mines. The Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark preserves some of the buildings remaining from the ore refining operation, including the Concentration Mill seen in the background here. Today’s visitor can get a guided tour of the entire inside of this huge building as it clings to a steep mountainside.
Over its brief history, Kennecott Corporation, with support from J.P. Morgan, Guggenheim and other New York financiers, produced $200-300 million worth of copper and silver.
(Source: National Park Service website)
Double-click image to enlarge.
In Explore 6 Nov 2023. Best position: #447
12.6.2021.
Statfold Barn Railway.
Hudswell Clarke (Leeds) 0-6-0 No 972 'Fiji' climbs to Statfold Junction with an afternoon passenger train.
Built in 1911 specifically to work in the sugar cane fields on the 2'- 0" gauge rail system of the Colonial Sugar Refining (CSR) Company Ltd in Fiji.
This is a vintage photo of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge taken by my aunt sometime in 1935-36. Underneath the photo, she wrote 'Incomplete' in her beautiful handwriting.
I LOVE the new Flickr! It seems to be better optimized for mobile with the new home page. I love seeing the photos in bigger sizes on my desktop monitor, too. Photostreams look more like galleries now. Flickr's justified layout is better than the one-by-one scroll that exists on other photo sites. I hope they continue to refine the options and provide some choices for those who would like to display a different layout to their streams like before. And I wish Flickr were fastr...
. . .
People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget
how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou
This painting was made on an iPad Pro, with an Apple Pencil, using iColorama and Procreate. I moved back and forth, between these two apps, layering, compositing, masking, painting and refining color relationships. I saved versions as PNGs, to maintain image quality, and I tried to utilize the strengths of each app. Eventually, I arrived at at a moment of peace, when I feel harmony in what I have done. In this, it took several days, and several temporary conclusions, before I reached the end.
What I love about working in digital media, is that I can test ideas, change my mind, move in different directions, with so many choices. It is so nimble! It is, also, compelling, and exhausting. I miss the mandatory reflection time in having to weigh and imagine visual choices, and in literally having to wait for paint to dry, with natural media.
I had been working on a portrait for Claude Panneton, which took much longer than usual, and was relieved, satisfied, and happy to think it was finished. He is a mobile art friend, whose work I respect completely. I used several of his images, some of my own elements, and found images – an old Japanese print of fishes, textures, a butterfly etc. The first version, had a full portrait of Claude on the right side, and as often happens, I later realized that I liked the depth and magic of the background, on the left side, better than the fully realized foreground focus of the "subject".
I was selecting images for a competition, which a friend talked me into entering. Having asked Claude's permission, I was preparing to submit the piece. Out of the blue, I remembered a 2nd century A.D. doll, found in a sarcophagus of an 8 year old girl, in Rome. The doll was ivory. I had saved the image to a "someday" folder, a while ago, because she drew me – the sweetness and the sadness. Then, it is as if she had to be seen, urgently. After more hours of painting, masking and layering, she arrived, large, in color, renewed, clothed, and striding as if from her own vision, somber, thoughtful, and about to free herself from the puppeteer's strings. The articulated 2nd century doll came to life, becoming real, to me, as our dolls do, when we are children.
This one rare doll, survived, loved by a child who died more than 2000 years ago, and whose family had the grace to put her to rest, with love, with her toy. I felt respect for the maker of the doll, also, for the care and craftsmanship in her. The doll emerges, in this image, from fragments of dreams – doll becoming puppet-spirit – dwarfing the puppeteer. I felt a bridge of love.
I submitted the piece, in that state, to the competition, then, went on to work with it, for another full day. I was completely unaware of time, tweaking texture and tone until it arrived here. I had no good reason for doing this, other than being curious about where it would take me. I am as surprised as anyone.
What do these elements have in common –
Claude Panneton's eyes, puppeteers, Japanese prints of fish, a 2nd century A.D. ivory doll, a piece of a musical score, a butterfly, abstract space, textures, and colors?
For me, it is about connecting to love and beauty, pausing to reflect and appreciate the very non-linear ways our imaginations can bring the humanity of past into the present moment. It is humbling, challenging, and elevating, I stand in awe of the possibilities.
The redddish-colored water is "runoff" from tailings piles at the Ray Open Pit mines, Arizona. At this particular location copper ore is being extracted. Read about the history of the open pit mining that began in this area here:
westernmininghistory.com/towns/arizona/ray/
westernmininghistory.com/articles/95/page1/
www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/how-can-m...
WawaWAWAwa!
Whoa! How beautiful! Snoopy, you're in China again!* Has much changed since your last visit?
WawaWAWA wawa WA!
Oh! You're a kung fu grandmaster now with your own school?? Wow! What style?
WawawaWAWA! WawaWA!
Pizza Woof Fu?? Snoopy... is that a real kung fu class?
WawaWA WAWAWA wa WA!
Ah, classes are open every day at lunch. 😏
EEHEHEHEHE!
__________________________
A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.
McDonald's Japan
Snoopy
World Tour
China
1999
I guess only Snoopy would refine the art of eating pizza like this.
* Snoopy visited China in his first world tour in BP 2020 Day 243:
Refining hundreds of years ago was far from present processes and therefore there is a lot of copper left in the slag. The enormous heaps are part of the UNESCO heritage listing, but before that , people wanted to process them
to get the copper. Copper ore made possible a more than 3oo years mining venture beginning about 1645. Today Røros mining town is on Unesco's heritage list.
Chimneys, smokestacks, and flues huddled together at the Montana Refining Company refinery in Great Falls, Montana.
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Willemstad is the capital city of Curaçao, an island in the southern Caribbean Sea that forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Formerly the capital of the Netherlands Antilles prior to its dissolution in 2010, it has an estimated population of 150,000. The historic centre of the city consists of four quarters: the Punda and Otrobanda, which are separated by the Sint Anna Bay, an inlet that leads into the large natural harbour called the Schottegat, as well as the Scharloo and Pietermaai Smal quarters, which are across from each other on the smaller Waaigat harbour. Willemstad is home to the Curaçao synagogue, the oldest surviving synagogue in the Americas. The city centre, with its unique architecture and harbour entry, has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Insel Air, the national airline of Curaçao, had its corporate head office in Maduro Plaza.
Tourism is a major industry and the city has several casinos. The city centre of Willemstad has an array of colonial architecture that is influenced by Dutch styles. Archaeological research has also been developed there.
Owing to its location near the Venezuelan oilfields, its political stability and its natural deep water harbour, Willemstad became the site of an important seaport and refinery. Willemstad's harbour is one of the largest oil handling ports in the Caribbean. The refinery, at one point the largest in the world, was originally built and owned by Royal Dutch Shell in 1915.
The four companies comprising the Royal Dutch Shell refining operation; the actual refinery, oil bunkering, the tugboat company (KTK) and the local distribution of refined products (CurOli/Gas) were each sold to the government of Curaçao in 1985 for the symbolic sum of one guilder per company, or a total of 4 guilders and is now leased to PDVSA, the state owned Venezuelan oil company. Schlumberger, the world's largest oil field services company is incorporated in Willemstad.
Numerous financial institutions are incorporated in Willemstad due to Curaçao's favourable tax policies.
The Avalon University School of Medicine is located in Willemstad. The Caribbean Medical University is also located in Willemstad, close to the city centre.
Major League Baseball players Jair Jurrjens, Wladimir Balentien, Jurickson Profar, Andruw Jones, Ozzie Albies, Kenley Jansen and Jonathan Schoop are from Willemstad.
Pabao Little League has appeared in five Little League World Series, winning in 2004. They were crowned the International Champions in 2019 after a victory over Japan. They were defeated 8-0 in the World Championship by River Ridge, Louisiana. In 2008, another Pabao Little League team won the Junior League World Series, after winning the Latin America Region, then defeating the Asia-Pacific Region and Mexico Region champions to become the International champion, and finally defeating the U.S. champion (West Region), Hilo American/National LL (Hilo, Hawaii), 5-2.
Willemstad is served by Curaçao International Airport, located 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) north of the city, which is annually used by about two million passengers.
Credit for the data above is given to the following website:
Tried to refine a similar photo I did by making each post spin fit inside the one before it. Guess there weren't enough steps in between to make this work.
Spin by Lo. 4 spins (though the fourth is barely visible).
**Due to complications, I will have to stop my 365. I'm going to start over again this summer.**
The Illinois Street warehouse/shop of the United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company. Fairbanks Alaska. ca. 1985.
The USSRM provided equipment to its subsidiary the Fairbanks Exploration Company (F.E. Co) in support of gold mining operations outside of Fairbanks in the middle part of the last century.
www.asme.org/about-asme/engineering-history/landmarks/113...
Friday Flashback.
Tri-X 400, Minolta SRT.
I will tweak this style a little but have been wanting to use this fabric for something like this for a while :)
Further to my chart published yesterday, I was able to refine the data to match the time of capture and processes for a direct comparison of RGB against one shot colour for precisely the same time each.
The difference is less pronounced but I would argue that the data in column 1 on the left (RGB with a mono camera) is clearly superior to the middle column (the one shot colour camera) and column 3 a little better than the middle column.
Part of the inherent problem of a one shot colour camera is the Bayer Matrix reduces the amount of surface area of the CMOS chip where the colour data is being collected for red, green and blue. The ASI462 compensates by being more sensitive but will still lose out on capturing some finer details this way.
The second problem is one that all SCTs and also refractors have. The front corrector plate of the SCT and the glass of a refractor spread the light causing blue in particular to focus at a different point. At very high magnifications of planets with a large SCT the red, green and blue channels all focus at a different point, the blue is at one end of the focus range and red the other with green close to the red end. The one shot colour camera can only be avereaged in focus because of this but the RGB filters with a mono camera can be refocused for each colour giving a sharper result.
Peter
See my main account for my photography, videos, fractal images and more here: www.flickr.com/photos/josh-rokman/
This is one of a series of images I made with the Bing Image Creator, which is an AI image generator powered by DALL-E 3.
For most of these images I tried to combine multiple elements together into one, rather than creating a scene with multiple separate elements. This pushes the limits of what the AI model can do, and maximizes the amount of human control over the images. For example, I might use the text prompt ‘photo realistic snake plane made out of carbon fiber and gold’.
Here is my take on AI generated images vs. human made art: I think that the quality of AI generated images will NOT dramatically improve, even many years into the future. The ultimate goal of a creative image is to create a certain emotional state in the viewer. - Emotions themselves - are the main tool used to do this. A purely logic driven machine can only create a crude, generalized model of something meant to create a certain emotional state. When someone makes a piece of art, it is always some combination of using logic and emotions to guide the process. Remember that the ultimate goal is to create a certain emotional state in the viewer. Only having access to logic, but not emotions, will always create a very generic looking work. You need to actually be able to feel emotions to fine-tune the work beyond that, since creating emotions is the ultimate goal.
The main difference between an AI model and a human is not the difference in the power of the logic that can be deployed. The difference is that a human can feel emotions, which is key to creating an image (or text) made to create a certain emotional state. The logic that the best AI image generator models currently have seems to already be at the level of what the best human can do (based on some of the results I got, which was quite a shock). The results are still crude and generic compared to what a human can do, because the AI models have no access to emotions, which are the main tool for making and refining a creative work designed to create certain emotional states.
All creative work is built with a combination of logic and emotions (emotions should always be the main tool), and by not having direct access to emotions, a machine can only create crude, generic results. When I make music I always try and use emotions rather than logic to guide the process as much as possible, since creating a certain emotional state in the listener is the ultimate goal. The best AI models have an amazing ability to use logic to mix two different styles of images together since that is a logic driven process. They can’t make those images from scratch, since that is an emotion driven process, since it is all about creating certain emotions in the viewer.
Imagine you were a chef trying to develop a new dish, but you were not allowed to taste the food at any point as you made it. Your ability to determine the correct amount of salt and other seasonings would be very crude and limited. There would always be the possibility of a disaster happening, since you could not add a bit of seasoning at a time and taste it, so you would have to just dump it all in at once. This is the same idea of an AI model that is trying to ultimately create emotional states using sophisticated logic, but without having any access to emotions to guide the process.
The results will always be very generic looking, with the occasional unexpected gruesome image being returned. The power of the logic I have seen in some of the images I have created is quite shocking, but the results are still crude and generic compared to what a human can do, since the AI model is trying to create emotional states without being able to actually feel emotions itself, which is vital to creating emotional states through an image (or text).
The AI models have an amazing ability to combine multiple types of images together into one, but they have no understanding of what the individual elements they are combining together truly are. Again, this is because the individual images are designed to create certain emotional states, and an AI model has no ability to feel emotions, meaning it has no ability to understand them.
Having said all that, there is a good chance that the ability of humans to customize AI generated images will keep going up, and this will allow for this tool to create highly creative works close to what a human could do from scratch after all. I don’t think that the AI models will ever be able to do this by themselves with a simple button push though, as I have made the case for above. Also, I would expect that the number of images that are generated with a button push will keep going up and up.
Now, does making good AI generated images take talent? I say the answer is yes simply because these images are not all equal in quality. To create the best image in a set of 1,000 to 100,000,000 images, and to do so consistently, takes skill. You need to learn something from every single image you create about what the AI model does well and does not do well. You also need creative and artistic skills to come up with really good text prompts, in addition to this. The skills involved in this are similar to the skills involved in coming up with a great line in text, like in books, poems, speeches, scripts, ect. This is like abstract art. I know from experience that randomly applying different colors of paint never yields anything impressive. It takes a lot of talent to make good abstract art. Random combinations of words in text prompts will never create the results that highly targeted ones will, when it comes to AI generated images.
Still refining my design aesthetic -- water color, hand lettering with images that evoke wanderlust for art and travel. This time the color palette is mint + pink/coral with pops of blue and yellow.
A Mobile Refining Vessel, built by Civilian Engineering Corporation. It carries a myriad of refining equipment, the main of which is a collider-reactor (the green structure protruding at the rear of the ship) designed to collide isogen and puzzleium, resulting in awesomium condensates.
-----------------------------------------
This was a rush build of a few hours, but lots of fun, especially considering I hadn't built anything significant in a while. It includes quite a few tablescraps, most noticeable being the collider-reactor itself.
The United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company. Fairbanks Alaska. ca. 1985.
Illinois Street warehouse/shop. The USSRM provided equipment to the Fairbanks Exploration Company (F.E. Co) in support of gold mining operations outside of Fairbanks in the middle part of the last century.
www.asme.org/about-asme/engineering-history/landmarks/113...
Friday Flashback.
Tri-X 400, Minolta SRT.
The site was formerly an oil re-refinery operated by Canadian Oil that was a fully owned subsidiary of Shell Oil Company. Re-refining services ceased operations several years ago and the site was taken over and revamped in the spring of 1999 by Quantex. It is currently operates as a waste treatment facility.
When Quantex assumed operations at the site there were approximately ten million litres of liquid waste that had been abandoned by the previous operators.
The Sado Gold Mine was an important financial resource for the Edo Shogunate.
The Meiji government also took over it and operated until 1989.
The gold refining remains are aiming to become a World Heritage Site.
Trentham falls at 1.44 am nikon d700 14mm iso 3200 f 2.8 30 sec with lightpainting.Taken standing in the Coliban river in the middle of the night-a bit late as the slender moon had set and the milky way had spun out of view...one to refine later.
Still refining the frame using the Mixel/Chima joints. This version has double jointed knees and elbows. 100% legal, 100% purist, 100% Batman
Trying to refine the wings a bit for Angel. The rubber band on the inside makes these more discrete. Getting the hands into the arm sockets was a pain though.
**Ohio-Colorado Smelting and Refining Company Smokestack** - National Register of Historic Places Ref # 76000548, date listed 1976-01-11
NE of Salida at jct. of SR 150 and 152
Salida, CO (Chaffee County)
The Smeltertown Smokestack was built for the Ohio-Colorado Smelting and Refining Company. Commenced in 1916 and finished in 1917, this majestic brick and tile structure stands 365 feet into the air, 35 feet taller than the famous Daniels and Fisher Tower in Denver, twice as high as the 179 foot Leaning Tower of Pisa. The concrete foundation, 40 feet wide, extends downward 30 feet into the ground to solid granite.
The octagonal base rises approximately 70 feet above ground and is of pressed, glazed brick; the walls here are six feet thick. Above this base rises the circular upper part of the stack; it is constructed of a special tile. Here the walls taper in thickness from six feet, to three and one-half feet at the top. The top, with its flat steel collar, measures seventeen feet in diameter. Two hundred sixty four standard gauge carloads of brick and tile went into the structure. Construction cost was $43,000. It is estimated that at today's construction costs, a similar stack would cost over a million dollars. (1)
References (1) NRHP Nomination Form npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/76000548.pdf
Out this evening for a drive and swung by this old church hoping the lights would be on inside, but no luck tonight. But still a pretty place to sit and sip a Honey Oat Latte while contemplating the universe and its ways. Was playing with the new ON1 B&W filters this evening for fun. I’m really liking the way they are refining that program.
Colonial Sugar Refining Co (CSR) 0-4-0ST No.19 is working the passenger service at Statfold Barn arriving at Oak Tree Halt, 5th April 2025.
Locomotive History
No.19 is a two foot gauge 0-4-0ST locomotive built in 1914 by Hudswell Clarke, Leeds (Works No. 1056} and supplied to the Colonial Sugar Refining Co (CSR) of Fiji. It was withdrawn in 1960 and put on static display at the mill apart from a brief return to steam in 1978 for the mill's 75th anniversary celebrations. It arrived at Statfold in May 2012 and was back in steam in the spring of 2013.
refining the HydRingEa: I moved the triangle and hex twists from the back to the front. the triangles can be mostly hidden. and the hex twist gives rise to some nice extra floral decoration (others ways are conceivable).
I like it more this way.
in other news: spring has finally come, hooray hooray!!! :-D
(today almost felt like summer even.)
Michigan tanker train in the 1960's. Neil Sherff photo. Note: Different headlight styles on these two trucks.
Spitzenleistungen kommen nicht von ungefähr
Du möchtest dein Handicap verbessern?
Repitio est mater studiorum - Übung macht den Meister
Die Wiederholung ist die Mutter aller Bemühungen
„Wiederholung ist die Mutter der Studien.“
Wiederholung ist die Mutter des Studierens.
studere - (lat.)
studieren - im Sinne von sich intensiv beschäftigen mit, danach streben
- bekannt ist vom STUDENTEN:
studere litteris - sich wissenschaftlich betätigen
aber: Neutralitäts-Prinzip
sine ira et studio - ohne Hass und Parteilichkeit
ohne Ansehen der Person, gegen Vetterleswirtschaft, gegen Bestechung, keine Vorteil gewähren.
Sine ira et studio wird vielfach als Aufforderung an eine wertfreie Geschichtsschreibung – oder an die Wissenschaft allgemein – zitiert.
##
define: Handicapping - Handicap sportif
Handicapping, the various methods of leveling the outcome in a competitive sport or game
ein Handicap bestimmen - verschiedene Methoden anwenden, um das zu erwartende Ergebnis im Sport oder Spiel von vornherein ausgleichen zu gestalten.
Pädagogisches Prinzip: Gewinnen ist nicht alles
So dürfen auch mal alle guten Sportler gegen die Schlechteren antreten, wenn ihnen vom neutralen Spielgestalter eine Erschwernis auferlegt wird.
Handicap - eine Hand hinter dem Rücken ( Hand + capere) verstecken, aus
Fairniss Gründen zum Beispiel beim Rennen oder Fangen.
oder beim Spiel die schwächere Hand nehmen.
Das Handicap ist in Sport und Spiel ein in der Regel berechneter Faktor, der unterschiedliche Leistungsstärken nivellieren soll, um auch in einem heterogenen Feld einen spannenden Wettbewerb zu ermöglichen.
Beispiele:
- Die Pferderennen - nur bei Trab-, nicht bei Galopprennen - gibt es Wettbewerbe, in denen stärkere Teilnehmer längere Distanzen zurücklegen müssen.
-
- Im Golfsport wird aus den Eigenschaften des bespielten Golfplatzes (Course Rating und Slope) und aus der Stammvorgabe (Handicap) jedes Amateurspielers die Spielvorgabe berechnet, die er als sogenannte Vorgabeschläge erhält. Ein besserer Spieler auf einem einfacheren Platz muss die Runde also mit entsprechend weniger Schlägen absolvieren, um ein vergleichbares Ergebnis zu erzielen.