View allAll Photos Tagged Think
I took that shot in probably the most famous shooting spot in NYC...I was just facing the wrong direction ;(
Is it a sin to search for those things which you fear? My purpose in this world is knowledge, and the dissemination of it.
And it is I who is to restore the fruits of my labor to the entire world.
Fear... It is something vital to us puny creatures. The instant man stop fearing is the instant the species reaches a dead end, only to sink to pitable lows, only to sit and wait apathetically for extinction.
Humans who lose the ability to think become creatures whose existence has no value. Wake Up! Don't be afraid of knowledge!
Think, you humans who are split into two worlds, unless you want the gulf between humans to expand into oblivion, you must Think!
Still shooting in Cygnus...
Though I think IC1318/γ Cyg can be used to describe most of the nebulosity around the star Sadr, stellarium has it directly over the bright nebula in this image. Overall I'd consider it an improvement over my [last go at it back in 2020](live.staticflickr.com/65535/50419547308_9c269f4b51_o.png). Captured over 12 nights from Oct-Nov 2024 from a bortle 9 zone.
---
**[Equipment:](i.imgur.com/kDRYMKi.jpg)**
* TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
* Orion Sirius EQ-G
* ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
* Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
* ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
* Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
* Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
* Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
* ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding
* Moonlite Autofocuser
**Acquisition:** 25 hours 40 minutes (Camera at -15°C), unity gain
* Ha - 50x600"
* Oiii - 57x600"
* Sii - 47x600"
* Darks- 30
* Flats- 30 per filter
**Capture Software:**
* Captured using [N.I.N.A.](nighttime-imaging.eu) and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.
**PixInsight Preprocessing:**
* BatchPreProcessing
* StarAlignment
* Blink
* ImageIntegration per channel
* DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
* Dynamic Crop
* DynamicBackgroundExtraction
> duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)
> $T * med(model) / model
**Narrowband Linear:**
* Blur and NoiseXTerminator
* made SHO image and extracted stars to be processed separately
* StarXterminator to completely remove stars from each Ha, Oiii, and Sii image
* HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear
**Stars only image:**
* SpectrophotometricColorCalibration (narrowband working mode)
* HSV repair
* arcsinhstretch
* scnr > invert > scnr > invert to remove greens and magentas
* HistogramTransformation
* (combined with starless pic later on)
**Nonlinear:**
* PixelMath to combine monochrome Ha Oiii and Sii images into a color image with SHO --> RGB, respectively
* slight SCNR (bright areas protected with Ha mask)
* Some curves to adjust colors
* LRGBCombination using stretched Ha as luminance (accidentally left that Ha mask on from earlier so it applied more to the bright parts, and honestly turned out nicer than applying the Ha luminance to the entire image)
* Shitloads of Curve Transformations to adjust lightness, hues, contrast, saturation, etc
* DeepSNR
* MLT for small scale chrominance noise reduction
* DarkStructureEnhance script
* LocalHistogramEqualization
* more curves
* invert > slight scnr (masked) > invert to remove some background magentas
* even more curves
* Pixelmath to add in the stretched RGB stars only image from earlier
> This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. [More info on it here](www.nightphotons.com/guides/star-addition))
> mtf(.005,
> mtf(.995,Stars)+
> mtf(.995,Starless))
* Resample to 65%
* Annotation
I Think This Butterfly Loves Me!! ;P
Last Time It Was Sitting On The Door, Almost Stepped On It While Entering My Room. Today Morning, It Was Sitting On The Window, Clever & Careful Enough! :D
I Had Taken Some Close-Up Shots Last Time Too But Did Not Come Out The Way I Love. I Think It Came Back Again To Give Me Another Chance! ;)
Sometimes you cant decide what to eat.Seems like everyone around you have ordered better food than you and that sux.
I swear the Anhinga is laughing at me, it is like he is saying you gotta be kidding, you are actually taking photos of me in this heat and humidity. I hope everyone has a great weekend, me I think I'll just sit in the A/C and chill out.
I think that I'm correct in saying that these UTIC bodied buses were built around Leyland's B21 running units, and handsome buses they were too though their large wheels gave them an unusual edge. As built, they were powered by the TL11 engine, though some were to be re-powered by Volvo engines. When seen here, they were being operated by TUF (Transportes Urbanus Famalicao) or Famailcao Corporation in British speak. They'd come to this operator as replacements for some un-loved French built single deckers, having being new to the Guimaraes Municipal fleet where they themselves had been replaced with newer tackle. The whole transfer had been facilitated by nature of Arriva's newly acquired stake in both operations.
I think this must have been the hardest shot I've ever taken. Ok, the composition itself wasn't that hard, and the weather was well behaved, but....
Well.... it's a *long* way from the car. Seriously. Kinlochhourn to Barrisdale and then up into Coire Dhorrcail with full camping gear and 3.5 days of wet food (doh!) lasts forever. The path looks flat enough on the map, but if you look closely then you might spot that they've built it up and over every bump they could find along the way. I kind of looked closely, so knew it wasn't going to be perfectly flat - but man! - I wasn't expecting that.
I also wasn't expecting Summer. It was one of those concentrated Scottish summers where you get 3 months of heat in a couple of days. I didn't take any suntan lotion or a hat with me (it's Scotland - why would you?), so got sunburned on my left side on the walk in (actually, that's one of the reasons I decided to cut my trip short and walk out the next day - I needed to get equally burned on the right hand side, or I'd have spent the summer with an uneven tan. The weather broke the day after that, so I made the right decision).
I also wasn't expecting quite so many ticks. The place was swarming with them; really tiny ones. I was constantly having to pick the little buggers off my hands before they crawled anywhere more intimate. It's quite distracting trying to compose a shot when you know you're nothing more than a big happy meal on legs for the local population. I ended up spending ages picking them off my trousers before climbing into my sleeping bag. Still - it killed some time and I didn't have a book to read.
But that was all ok as well though. Tiring and a bit unpleasant, but not very hard.
No - what made it so difficult was realising at the car park that I could only take one lens and one filter with me to last 3 days. No one should ever have to make that kind of decision.
1850's "mirror mansion" built by identical twins Argalus Isaac and Augustus Ira Foote.
Speculated underground railroad site, Al Capone moonshine still
For years, this old place lie rotting away just a short trip through the woods from my home. I was in it when I was young and later in my teens. I knew it was there but didn't think much of it. Sure I loved old houses - the workmanship and the history - but it wasn't until crazy stories told to me captured my imagination. Stories of secret stairways, underground tunnels, and stories of moonshine and gangsters - then I was curious of the old, boarded up building. Were there tunnels? Was there, truly, rings in the basement walls and blood spattered upon them from some unfortunate incident? Were there bars on the basement windows? There was some truth to some of it, but how much? I headed to the library to seek information.... and the courthouse, many, many times
It was there I learned the story of twin brothers, born in 1817, who shared a deep brotherly love through out their life. It's been said they had a double wedding, Argalus married Adelia, and Augustus married Anna, making a complete foresome of "AF" initials. So close they were, after moving from Massachusetts in the early 1850's, they had constructed a home for two families. One side of the house was the mirror image of the other side just like the brothers themselves. It is said that they furnished their sides the same and that the interior decorating was of the highest quality. Things were good. The brothers farmed their 300 acres (and more) of virgin land and Argalus and Adelia started building their family with sons Andrew, William, and Frank. The place was the pride of the countryside... but fate intervened. Anna Foote died during childbirth just before Christmas, 1855. The little daughter, Mary, followed her mother a few months later. As you can imagine, Augustus was devestated. Suddenly things became unequal between the two. Contrary to what is written out there, the Foote brothers carried on with life despite what was planned to be. Augustus lived with his sister, Sara, and mother, Rebecca, until they both past away as well. Come 1870 census, Augustus no longer lived there. Too much personal tragedy probably drove him away. In his place lived farmhands and a domestic servant or two. Once Argalus' wife past away in 1876, the decision was made to move away. Argalus' three sons had grown and left as well. Everyone moved to Oshkosh and established the Foote Brothers Milling Co. Their home sat empty and became known as "Foote's Folly."
The mansion was bought by a family who raised horses and soon there were stables of fine horses and a racetrack was set up behind the house. Some eleven years later, they moved on, and the place sat empty. The place changed hands numerous times until the present owner bought it in 1934. But just prior to that, the place was one of speculation and concern.
Stories of covered trucks coming and going through the night and gangsters living there had the town of Eureka concerned. Once a place of admiration, now it was a place to avoid. Rumors soon circulated of a machine gun, on a turret, being mounted in the cupola. There were ideas of who they were, and to this day, Al Capone's name comes up. Their time passed there as well.
In 1935, a local women's group held a Halloween tour at the huge place. People came from everywhere for their chance to see the house, something of a legend already. To this day, their names are written on the walls of that time as well as others. So much admiration....
A lot of damage and deterioration came into play after that. Numerous articles in papers were written about it, a few photos taken, but nothing to save it from ruin. The coils and boilers from the moonshine days were lying out by a shed back in the 60's as evidence of it's moonshine days.
Armed with my new found knowledge of the house, I had a entirely new sense of admiration for the place. It was the twins dream house. It was an enormous place and being there, I felt like I was in another era - another time. The structure is - was - quite a place to walk up to. Very massive and overwhelming, yet somewhat personally romantic with it's remaining Italianate gingerbread. It was hauntingly beautiful and I was completely drawn to it.... To imagine what it looked like - to "see" it with all the shutters, windows, and massive front porch. Fantastic...
Investigating it further, I noticed the remains of a carriage loop in the front yard from all those years ago. Inside the 7000 sq ft house were sagging floors covered with falling plaster and busted lathe. Remains of peeling wall and ceiling papers clung to twelve foot ceilings, hand-grained woodwork, ceiling medallions with remains of chandeliers in each of the four parlors, etc. There were two kitchens linked to twin dining rooms graced by huge bay windows. Upstairs there were 9 bedrooms, each with built in show closets, located off a 80ft hallway. The three staircases were open but the spindles were long gone. A hidden flight of steps led to the cupola which was once encased in 16 double hung windows.
The fabled tunnel was no longer open, but found to be mortared shut in the basement and sealed off on the other end. I spoke to a man who tried to dig it out when he was a kid in the 40's. What could be in there? I wonder to this day.... Did the Foote's set a lantern out on the porch years ago for those runaway slaves to spot? Was it another spot along the way towards freedom in Canada? It may forever remain a mystery.
It was a place of broken dreams from another place in time. It became a place riddled with rumors and speculation - a legend in itself. Those who desired to save it, couldn't find a way. A place admired by many but now it faces a fate of it's own. Even the fact of being potentially eligible for National Registry status wasn't enough.
The brothers lived out their lives together in New London, Wi, with Argalus' son, Andrew. It is written in one of their obituaries that, I quote, "they were impossible to tell apart and shared everything through out life. Their minds were but one thought it seems and their pleasures and sorrows were shared together. Their pocketbooks were combined, and neither knew what a quarrel was.That they trusted each other in ways that few brothers ever could. Living into their early '80s, before the time of Augustus' passing it was said they were the oldest surviving twins in the United States." Augustus past away in 1901 and was laid to rest beside his wife and daughter who lives were tragically cut short so many years before, and Argalus, the following year. A short mile away, the family is buried together in a family plot marked by a tall, white spire. The brothers still together just like they had been all their lives.
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi (1893 - 1986)
Inspired by my friend's art peices, flyzipper
I think a poem would be great for this, but at the moment I can't think of one myself. Maybe you could help?
---------------------------------------
This is the Pegasus sculpture on top of the "Alte Oper" (Old Opera House) in Frankfurt/Main. Actually not from last weekend's excursion, but one from the archives from August 2007. I didn't like it that much in colour, so I converted it to sepia and am quite pleased with the outcome. What do you think?
This is why I think scale is important. It is to do with a rather shoddy 'bill of goods', a new(-ish) religion even. It involves a taking back of the city, of our shared spaces, and learning to carve messages on our conurbations themselves, our termite hills.
Yes, I am writing. I sit with the stuff and grapple with it most days. It’s principally about what I call ‘drivers’, that is, more or less, everything else that isn’t the ‘self’, but including that self. It is primarily about there being no such thing as ‘free will’, nothing that might remotely resemble the idea of ‘choice’, that we are in that state of being constantly ‘driven’, with no real idea of who or what the ‘driver’ is.
Hormones were, of course, one of those out-of-control drivers, but so was the cup of coffee we probably both had this morning, as are the drugs, those drivers I am currently ‘enjoying’ that are designed to control the driver that is ‘HIV’ itself. Part of the story includes musings around Joyce and others (Duchamp, Goya, David etcetera), many others even, and how the syphilis spirochete, perhaps, wrote ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ (the blinding genius is in allowing it to do so), getting past that blood/brain barrier, in the same way that Opium wrote De Quincey’s ‘Confessions of an Opium Eater’. Dawkins posited the idea somewhat in ‘The Selfish Gene’, when he wrote about the parasite that infected the fluke, entering its brain and causing it to climb to the highest outward leaf, totally against its nature, to be eaten by a passing bird, thus assuring its own continuance, through laying it eggs in the gut of the bird to be shat out and, thereby, to start all over again. Dawkins also introduced us to the idea of the ‘meme’ in the same volume, how memes infect, even. The idea is that we are in a soup, a 'mere' ingredient, and all ingredients are equal, and we have no idea what we are imbibing from our surrounding, what ‘parasite’ or ‘influencers’ /memes are driving us. Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays knew this well, and developed ‘public relations’ and ‘propaganda’. He was called ‘The Father of Spin’, and we are currently seeing the fruit of his life’s work coming to a perverse type of fulfilment.
Bernays knew about ‘drivers’, and how to exploit them.
Personally, I would also like to look at ‘shame’ and religion relative to all this. The shame meme was central to my Irish childhood, twinned with the religion meme. This is, and has been for a while, some brouhaha around Mr. Joyce and a theory, currently enjoying some literary attention, that he had syphilis. I am thinking here particularly of three books: 1. ‘Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis’, by Deborah Hayden, 2. ‘James Joyce & the Burden of Disease’, by Kathleen Ferris, and 3. ‘The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses’ by Kevin Birmingham. There is some strong opposition to the idea at the same time, that ‘why besmirch the writer’s reputation with such a scandalous theory?’ school-of-thought, though there seems to be a lot of evidence suggesting this to be true. But I would like to posit another idea, and that is that syphilis, or HIV for that matter, is the same as any other disease or virus, and that the need to attach shame to a virus because it is sexually transmitted is erroneous, and that disease is disease, and sex itself, alone, or with one, or hundreds of partners (dare I say thousands), is not a shameful act. I feel, now at last, enough beyond the control of that ‘driver’ to be able to look at it straight on, unashamedly.
Then there is another idea I am working on, which is also a part of that mix, the idea of the universal equality of all matter and anti-matter, everything, and everything else, and the notion of us being to this planet as HIV, or any virus or ‘life-manifestation’, is to the body it inhabits (or infects, as it is called medically). The ideal would be to achieve a stasis, a symbiotic arrangement between the host and the visitor, the body and the virus, the planet and the inhabitant.
But life eats, it is what it does, and mostly it eats blindly, indifferent to what it is eating, so the visitor, or that inhabitant, will overcome the body, or planet, eventually. We can devise methods to slow it down, drugs whatever, we can all become vegan, stop breeding, and forgo flying, we can attempt to contain ourselves.
I would say that greed is a human foible, but it’s not, it’s a universal driver, acknowledged by Mr. Darwin. Life eats everything, every other manifestation of life, weaker than itself, is probably how I might best describe it. Then there is also that ‘driver’ idea Mr. Dawkins introduced in that book of his in the seventies, that the parasite itself can become the ‘driver’. That life determines ‘choices’ and ‘decisions’, and that this might not include the survival of the host, and invariably doesn’t.
The ‘struggle’ would appear to be how to celebrate this, to show this apparent striving in all its glory. There is a lineage, of course, from the Taittiriya Upanishad: “(O wonderful! O wonderful! O wonderful!) I am food, I am food, I am food! I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food!” It continues through the writings of Shaw and his ‘Life Force’, through Bertrand Russell, to modern day philosophical musings around ‘Universal Consciousness’, a discussion currently calling itself ‘Panpsychism’. Ideally, I would like to, and do attempt to, approach these ideas godlessly, but in absolute awe.
This cannot be done, or at least I cannot do it, scientifically. There can be no ‘Double-Blind’ test, no controller, no statistics to fall back on. I see it as a groping forward in that inspiring, but doomed to failure, blind-leading-the-blind sort of way. It must be a flight of imagination, with no roadmap, and acceptance of, or rather embracing of, failure. The worst that can happen is that you fall flat on your face and die.
Ho-hum, as they say, wasn’t that on the cards from the beginning anyway?
I think of thee, whene'er the sun his beams
O'er ocean flings;
I think of thee, whene'er the moonlight gleams
In silv'ry springs.
I see thee, when upon the distant ridge
The dust awakes;
At midnight's hour, when on the fragile bridge
The wanderer quakes.
I hear thee, when yon billows rise on high,
With murmur deep.
To tread the silent grove oft wander I,
When all's asleep.
I'm near thee, though thou far away mayst be--
Thou, too, art near!
The sun then sets, the stars soon lighten me.
Would thou wert here!
Think this is the male. He was carrying his gift dilligently and when the other saw him she tossed hers away and lured him into the bushes...lol
last of the lemurs, a golden sifaka in Andasibe rainforest. this chap was a family of 3 adults with babies that stopped to pose for awhile.
Jhena found a great location for a shoot - an old building that had been abandoned for years; the new owners were going renovate it; they let us shoot in it before they gutted it. Very cool setting but this was in July so it was over 100 degrees inside the building, full of dust and who knows what else. Everyone was drenched with sweat but it was worth it.
The model in this series is Jhena. She is a photographer's dream come true. Drop dead gorgeous, an awesome personality; she oozes sweetness, has a great sense of humor and adventure. Just an all around great person. My camera never gets tired of shooting with her.
I took these photos in Ontario, OR on a very hot, muggy day in July 2021.
Mr. Zachary...
Our Daily Challenge - Mar 9 2015 - "Isolated"
… against black, showing off his...
Daily Dog Challenge 1224. "Singular"
… new collar.
Today's Post (The Thinker) : www.bzdogs.com/2015/03/the-thinker.html
Stop on by Zachary and Henry's blog: bzdogs.com
Almost at the end of my photos from this drive.
On 5 September 2025, I think I overdid things! It had been about three weeks since my head injury and I thought I would be able to manage a nice drive out of the city. I ended up getting home ten hours later, much of that time spent actually driving! The next day, I can't say I felt great, sigh.
I knew where I wanted to go, but somehow it took longer than I expected, and by the time I got home (after getting take-out food to last me a couple of days), the light was fading and car headlights were turning on. Something I have to avoid, as my eyes can't deal with the blinding lights.
My day started off by heading south on the highway (to save time) till I reached the Stavely area. Then, heading east. my bird sightings began. The highlight was a huge flock of Greater White-fronted Geese, down in the water, with lots of Gulls for company - and about half a dozen beautiful, white Snow Geese. Exactly the same as what I saw three (?) years ago, at the same area. Unfortunately, they were SO far away, so I was unable to get any half-decent photos. Delighted, though, to have seen them all.
The rest of my trip was along familiar roads, apart from just one fairly short section that if I had ever been there before, it would have been many years ago, while car-pooling.
Along one of the back roads, I had pulled over to take a photo of an old wooden homestead. A truck happened to come along in the opposite direction and the driver stopped to ask if everything was OK. Such a pleasant, interesting, knowledgeable man, who was from the Hutterite Colony. We had a long chat, including about birds. He suggested I try down the next road, which I did. No hawks, which I had been hoping for, but large flocks of Brown-headed Cowbirds, Brewer's Blackbirds, and Starlings, each species separate. When I returned back to the road on which we had met, to my delight, there was a beautiful Swainson's Hawk (?) juvenile, perched on a weathered fence.
A few old barns and old vehicles added to my day. including pulling over by a country garage to photograph several beautiful oldies that need a whole lot of loving care.
Along one of the highways in the area, I spotted a hawk down on the road. Someone needs to tell some adult Swainson's that they need to do a much better job of teaching their youngsters that it is so dangerous to hang out in the middle of the road like that. Not only are they on the road, but they don't move away to safety when a vehicle is coming! Fortunately, I missed this one, checking in my mirror that it was OK. I noticed that a sibling was standing on a hay bale in the field and I hung around until the one on the road flew up and away and landed on another hay bale. Silly bird. The very same thing had happened on 13 August, when I had to collect my car from High River Emergency Hospital, where it had been parked for two days after I had taken a taxi home, after getting 12 staples in the back of my head! The hawk on a different back road also was determined to not move from the road to safety.
So, a very long, tiring day, in wildfire smoke, and now I am staying home for the weekend. Next time I go for a drive, it will have to be a short one.
Some might think this dress is too short to wear out for shoe shopping but not me!! It was actually exhilarating both walking in the mall and trying on shoes. These blue heels are not what I wore with my dress from home it is a try on. The salesman helping me told me I had nice legs so I asked him to take a snap of me. He also said that women's legs look so nice in pantyhose and I agreed. So I think he enjoyed slipping different shoes on me with his hands delicately touching my nyloned calves and feet! (Hehe) I admit I was a bit flirty trying the shoes on and walking around looking at them in the mirrors right in front of him. I do believe the poor man had quite a stiffy from it all. Not my fault !!