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Ventanales. Fachada de Calle San Diego. CARTAGENA.
Copyright © José Hijano 2015 - All Rights Reserved.
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Flickr-users from the US will be familiar with those legendary commercials for BUD(WEISER) beer, some years ago.
Curious Germans who are wondering now what it is all about
can easily find endless clips on youtube...
Für die deutschen Fotofreunde:
In der englischsprachigen Welt assoziiert man mit "bud"
nicht nur eine Biermarke, sondern eben auch "Knospe".
["So sorry!" an alle, die gerade genervt aufgestöhnt haben...]
People who complain that software engineers build unwieldy, unfriendly and outright mindboggling user interfaces need to look back in history to realize that hardware engineers have not always been much better in that respect. A good place to do that is the Railway Museum in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
500px Photo ID: 252360747 - #exterior #hdr #town #sky #forest #houses #roofs #doors #windows #trees #clouds #nature #Shipka #Bulgaria #photography #art #landscapes #travel #Traveler #travelguide #interesting #followme #likeit #touristblog #photooftheday #colors #effect #Europe #World #aroundtheworld #SuperPhoto 500px.com/photo/252360747/shipka-city-hdr-by-v-g?ctx_page...
July 6, 2024 - East of Axtell Nebraska
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Watch that afternoon's chase (on Flickr) Click Here (Pt 1)
Watch that afternoon's chase (on Flickr) Click Here (Pt 2)
Watch that afternoon's chase (on Flickr) Click Here (Pt 3)
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stock photography & non exclusive licensing...
A dramatic sky showcases vibrant, multicolored clouds swirling above a green field, creating a striking visual contrast. The foreground features an open expanse of grass and a paved road, adding depth to the scene.
*** Please NOTE and RESPECT the Copyright ***
Copyright 2024
Dale Kaminski @ NebraskaSC Photography
All Rights Reserved
This image may not be copied, reproduced, published or distributed in any medium without the expressed written permission of the copyright holder.
#ForeverChasing
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IMPORTANT: for non-pro users who read the info on a computer, just enlarge your screen to 120% (or more), then the full text will appear below the photo with a white background - which makes reading so much easier.
My best photos (mostly not yet on Flickr) are here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:
The above photo - a field poppy (Papaver rhoeas) in full bloom - is a rare exception for me, because I normally don't photograph flowers. Not because I don't like them; I assure you I hold no grudge against the most colorful emissaries of the plant kingdom, nor do I have floral allergies of any sort - it's just that I'm no good at it. Believe me, I've tried, and the results were not pretty.
I've never found out why; I adore the magnificent flower photos I encounter here on Flickr and have attempted to replicate their style many times, but it never worked. With animals I tend to know what to focus on - usually the eyes - and have at least a vague idea how to compose a shot, but with flowers I'm at a loss.
Unlike the accomplished floral compositions of the photographers I admire so much, all my efforts looked lifeless and dull, and the poor subjects in my photos ended up with about as much charm as a salad in fast food restaurant (I'm talking about the one they actually serve you - not the nice one they've photographed for the menu ;-).
Now the photo above is the first flower shot of mine that I like, even though some of you might think it is a bit a of cheat, since there is also a honeybee (Apis mellifera) visible in it. But in terms of mere percentages, there's much more poppy per-square-inch-of-photo present than bee, so to me it counts as flower photography (and my lawyer agrees ;-).
The main reason why I posted it here, however, happens to be another one, namely that it was incredibly hard earned. And I'm not referring to the photo itself but the subject in it: the poppy - or rather the poppies. You have no idea how much it took until I finally had a few of those gorgeous flowers blooming in my garden.
Some of you might recall that with my last photo, I told you about my remodeling of the garden and how I scattered seeds of wildflowers - including poppies - all over the premises to increase biodiversity. I might have given the impression that it was all smooth sailing, and that everything went just as I had hoped it would, but that isn't exactly how it happened.
In truth, it was a hard-fought battle against an almost invincible army of adversaries that tried to prevent my intended wildflower meadow for my beloved "creepy crawlies" at almost every step of the way. But I have to start at the beginning.
After I had removed the old lawn and emptied a big bag full of seeds all over the upper part of the garden, I regularly went to check on their "progress" - of which there was, unsurprisingly, none. Now I'm not a complete idiot, and I didn't expect my wildflowers to sprout right away as if they were on steroids - after all it was still February and very cold - but what struck me was that I soon didn't even see most of the seeds anymore. No matter how hard I looked - and I even dug a little in the ground - most of them seemed to have mysteriously vanished.
It didn't take me long to identify the likely suspects: a gang of siskins (Spinus spinus) had appeared in the neighborhood a while ago, and I actually had caught them red-handed (or rather red-beaked) when they were picking around on the ground where I had removed the lawn. So I went into the gardening center and bought a new "wildflower mix" - along with a huge bag of sunflower seeds.
This is how I intended to save my flowering paradise: I would just offer the siskins enough calorie-rich delicacies as an alternative to the meager wildflower seeds for as long as it took the latter to sprout. The idea was genius - or so I thought. Unfortunately I hadn't taken into account the competitive, greedy nature of my avian adversaries.
Once I had put a bunch of sunflower seeds on the tree trunk that serves as my "bird buffet", it didn't take long until the hungry flock arrived. Now the first thing you have to know about siskins is this: they really, and I mean REALLY don't like to share their food. Not with any other bird species, nor with their own kind.
The leader of the gang, a tiny - but ferocious - female immediately took possession of the tree trunk, and anyone attempting to join in the feast got chased away with a vengeance. The remaining gang members sat in the fig tree while they had to wait their turn at the buffet, which they didn't like one bit. And that's the second thing you have to know about siskins: patience is not their strong suit, and so they immediately got bored - and started looking around for other sources of food.
And guess where they found it? Exactly: within two minutes most of the rowdy bunch had fluttered onto the ground and started picking away my beautiful future wildflower meadow, one seed at a time. After all, who doesn't like a little appetizer before the main course - right?
It was a disaster. In my desperation, I didn't know anything better to do than opening and shutting the living room window loudly - which worked: the feathered little gangsters fled the crime scene immediately. So this became my new strategy: I sat near the window with my laptop all day (which I'm apt to do during the colder season anyway), and whenever I saw the siskins starting to veer away from the "official" buffet, I used this "opening-shutting" tactic to scare them back where they belonged.
Over the following days, the siskins and I continued this lovely routine: whenever the first bird showed up near the wildflower seeds: "BANG"! went my window. Unfortunately, the intervals between these bangs got increasingly shorter, because the bird buffet and the loud flock of siskins attracted other birds - as well as more siskins - to my garden.
This was obviously not what I had intended at all! Now pretty much the whole feathered neighborhood sat in my fig tree, impatiently waiting until the next ravenous little bird at the buffet had finally had its fill and vacated the tree trunk, and to pass the time the hungry onlookers would inevitably start searching for other delicacies in my garden.
It got to the point - and this is the sad truth - where I opened and shut the window almost every five minutes! I can only imagine what my neighbors thought (although they're used to many weird, mostly garden-related activities from me and probably stopped wondering ;-), not to mention any unsuspecting tourists passing my house, who must have believed it was haunted by a poltergeist. :-)
Then, one day, the whole flock of Spinus spinus was gone - just as they had appeared out of nowhere a few weeks earlier, they'd now left without prior notice, presumably to pursue their seed-stealing activities further south and bully some other poor wanna-be gardener. "Problem solved!" I thought, and opened a bottle of champagne (well, it was just a beer, but you get the idea ;-)
Once the siskins were gone, the other birds co-existed much more peacefully around the tree trunk/buffet, and I was soon able to reduce my window-shutting duties to a minimum. As temperatures in March gradually got warmer, I expected the first tiny wildflower saplings to emerge from the ground - but still nothing happened. I was getting worried, so I went to investigate. A close inspection of the ground led to a shocking surprise: there was no trace of the seeds.
I couldn't believe it. I had no explanation; by now I was sure it couldn't have been the birds - so who was secretly sabotaging my future wildflower meadow? Was it my neighbors? Had I finally gone too far with my window-banging after all my previous, highly suspicious "creepy-crawly-furthering" activities over the years?
I tried to imagine them all coming together in my garden during the night as I was sleeping, a group of men and women mostly in their late 80s and 90s (I'm by far the youngest inhabitant of our village), armed with tiny tweezers to pluck the seeds out of the ground, to punish me for disturbing the quiet in our peaceful community. It just didn't make any sense (though I didn't rule it out completely ;-)
I was at my wits end, but I'm stubborn as hell: I had made up my mind to have a wildflower meadow, and I would will it into being - regardless of the costs. So I went into the gardening center once more to purchase yet another "wildflower mix", or rather several (I bought three bags, which theoretically should have provided enough seeds to turn the entire area around our village into a blooming paradise ;-).
I scattered the content of one bag in the garden as I had done before, but now I went to check on the seeds every day. And each time I checked, they had become fewer - there could be no doubt about it. It was truly puzzling: whoever the thieves were, they kept their identity hidden; I even went into the garden at night several times with a flashlight, but I never saw any small rodents or other possible suspects.
Then, one day in late March, as I was closely scanning the ground, I noticed something peculiar: a particularly large seed appeared to be moving all by itself across the dark earth. Imagine my disbelief: the thought that the seeds themselves were leaving my garden of their own volition had obviously never crossed my mind! What an insult - was my garden so horrible that the wildflower seeds had sprouted legs just to flee to a place that was more suitable to their taste?
I immediately went on my knees to further investigate this new mystery, which - as some of you with more gardening experience than me might have already guessed - revealed itself to be no shocking new step in plant evolution, nor any mystery at all: it was an ANT that was carrying the seed! And now that my eyes and brain had become adapted to recognizing the little bugger, I realized he wasn't alone: they were everywhere! And many of them were carrying seeds!
As I watched them carrying the loot - my poor wildflower meadow - away to their colony, all the pieces finally started to fall into place. The ants were hard to make out against the dark ground (and admittedly my eyes aren't the best), which is probably why I hadn't seen them, but it also had been raining most of the time for the past few weeks, and they had to have carried out their raids during the short dry spells or perhaps even at night when I wasn't in the garden.
Just to make sure you don't think I'm a complete ignoramus: it's not that I wasn't aware that several species of ants were living in my garden, but when I had removed the lawn it had been February and still winter, so the ants were deep under ground. And they'd never been on my list of suspects in the first place, because I'd had no idea ants even collected seeds!
I'd always thought the kinds of ants living in Switzerland were predators and preferred a largely carnivore diet (with the occasional sip of honeydew or other sugary treats for dessert if the opportunity arose) - which in the north, where I grew up, is largely true. But of the many ant varieties present in Ticino - which lies on the southern side of the Alps - one in particular has specialized in foraging for seeds.
A search on the internet quickly educated me on the matter: my tormentors were "harvester ants" of the Messor structor species; apparently I had a so called "super-colony" of them in my garden, and the more I read about them, the more fascinated - and shocked - I became.
These ants build gigantic underground colonies (on the surface only tiny mounds of earth or sand around the entry hole are visible) and store the foraged seeds in huge chambers: but not before cutting the seeds' appendages to prevent germination! Isn't that pure genius? But my greatest shock came when I read that their storing chambers can hold up to 2 kg of seeds or more! One wildflower mix from the store consisted of perhaps half a kilo (if even that): I needed more and bigger bags!
And as I found out, these Messor fellas aren't just thieves, they're also bakers - and I'm not kidding you! They chew the seeds into a paste-like substance that is called "ant-bread" which is their staple food (and sorry: whoever makes bread is a baker in my book, regardless whether they actually "bake" the bread or not ;-)
These tiny, bread-loving thieves had stolen the seeds from right under my nose, and perhaps they had already started doing so back in the siskin days, whenever temperatures were warm enough for them to venture out. They'd completely outmaneuvered me, and I felt about as foolish as Donald Duck trying to defend his pick-nick against an army of ants in the old Disney cartoon. But at least I now had finally managed to solve the mystery of the disappearing flower seeds.
In the end, I found a solution to my ant problem. I simply went to the gardening center once again and bought a half dozen more bags of wildflower mixes, all of which I emptied into my garden. It wasn't the most sophisticated strategy, but it worked.
Once the ants had filled their pantries to capacity - and I imagined they were now able to gorge themselves on 10-course menus of ant-bread every day - there were still enough seeds left that my wildflower meadow eventually started to grow.
In June, the cornflowers, ox-eye daisies - and of course: the field poppies - opened their buds, and my garden exploded with the most gorgeous colors. And thus, dear readers, I managed to get the above photo ;-)
As always, many thanks for reading and commenting: have a great start into the new week everyone! ❤🙏😊
P.S. I documented the transformation of my garden here, the photos of the blooming wildflower meadow are towards the end of the post: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/post/attract-lizards-to-your-ga...
June 10, 2023 - Between Minden & Axtell Nebraska US
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Watch the Video of that afternoon on Flickr
Hail Core was on top of me on that first storm to the north of the City... I deiced to bail & go pick up my daughter, as she had called & said I want to go...I scooped her up & proceeded south of the city about 20 miles between Minden & Axtell Nebraska!
The 2nd supcell of the day was coming at us from Dawson County. @ That time that would be direcly to our west northwest. This storm was a fast mover. The first storm of the afternoon was only moving at 14 mph... So we didn't have much time to take snaps.
Though I did take a lot of snaps ...but I made a rookie play & didn't reset this focus from manual. I can be a knucklehead sometimes with I'm in the thick of things....
These were the final images of that afternoon. The ones in focus... We arrived just minutes ahead of its approach. Just in time to get these phenomenal captures right underneath the base of this monster!!!
*** Please NOTE and RESPECT the Copyright ***
Copyright 2023
Dale Kaminski @ NebraskaSC Photography
All Rights Reserved
This image may not be copied, reproduced, published or distributed in any medium without the expressed written permission of the copyright holder.
#ForeverChasing
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2J74 Southport to Manchester Oxford Road, formed of 150138 trailing 156428, has deposited a solitary passenger at Hoscar station. In the 2016/17 period the station was the least used station in Lancashire with just 1024 recorded passengers although this was up from 900 in the previous year. There are just 8 services, 4 in each direction, that call at this lonely outpost Monday to Saturday.
August 22, 2021 - South of Arapahoe Nebraska US
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Finally a good setup for severe weather and were were on time for the event. Shortly after 4pm CDT were in the Moderate Risk area for that afternoon. Arapahoe Nebraska was our destination. Traveled a few miles south to get the best open position before the storms. Pointing the cameras due southwest, this is were they were to develop and become severe.
Towers were already forming and were were under the first cells of the day. These would become the tornadic cells just north of Alma Nebraska that late afternoon.
As were were watching the severe storm to the southwest approach our location... This formed and went severe right behind our location.
*** Please NOTE and RESPECT the Copyright ***
Copyright 2021
Dale Kaminski @ NebraskaSC Photography
All Rights Reserved
This image may not be copied, reproduced, published or distributed in any medium without the expressed written permission of the copyright holder.
#ForeverChasing
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i so cant wait to return i could process all day from this beach !!! Gutted our week here was a total wash out got here once .
This image is copyrighted to David Smith; Any users, found to replicate, reproduce, circulate, distribute, download, manipulate or otherwise use my images without my written consent will be in breach of copyright laws. Please contact me at daismiff39@hotmail.com for express permission to use any of my photographs.
A Western Diamondback Rattlesnake found crossing in the mid-afternoon in Southeastern Arizona after a mild, overcast day.
Youtube video: www.youtube.com/user/Tamers111
Finally :"O !
i'm Canon User !
Thanx Dad 7bibi ! , j3lneee Man7rm Mnk y el.'3aly :* !
Trd Le B el.Salma <33 !
Twinzy : Fdeet 3mrch ! To Manwrt Q6r Brj3tCh !
Miss yeew Mn el.5a6r :| ! Mtaaaaaaa Ashof Facech el.jmeeeeeeeel <33 !
LOVEu (L) !
Spicalle Thanx For Shlon b9br 3 Kl Shy Sweeth 4 Me , :* LUVyew Mn el.5a6r Walla (A) !
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all canon users say HOOORRAAAAAAAAAAAY =P
and yea Nikon - sony - Fuji users =P
too bad u can't say hoooray
out of picture
out of ideas =P
and btw. that colorful thing is eatable =P LOOOL i jst did it to take this shot =P
Created for dA Users Gallery Challenge 144 – 181
With thanks to....
Background • Nathies-Stock
=====================================
For all commissioned work, please contact me via the contact form on my Website
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© Copyright Parée Erica. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this image in any form without express and written permission from me is illegal
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My favorite tool for weeding is that little folding saw.
It allows me to get under the surface and pull out weeds and grasses with the serrations. It's sure easier than grasping weeds with fingers and pulling.
It was cold today, down to the low 20ºsF/3ºC. Even in the early afternoon I had to wear a sweatshirt and thick vest. The hat and balaclava sleeve are to keep the UV rays off.
So why did I shoot this?
The Photo Forum challenge this week is "Tools Paradise." We are to try to show them in context.
I was out there weeding and wondered if I could get the shot by propping the phone against one of those rocks.
This Photo Goes to MyCuzn Maramesh i Upload's l3youn'ha *(L)
Umm what i have to say umm i don't have word's to say about you but i will say one word's for you Maryoom" you are the beest :D " i hope soon you have a true LOVE :P< i know you will kill me bcuz i say that :P but what ever :P umm adrey anch ma t3rfeen english 3dell :P but i don't have arabic latter's :P sow it's oky ^^
تدري لوطلبت حياتي عطيتڪ ~
i hope i say all about you true !
i LOVE u MyCuzn''s (L)(L)!!
July 22, 2023 - Kearney Nebraska
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Late July 2023...
This month of storms was just down right jaw dropping. Why not continue since we didn't have any storms in May or June! Overtime for July is the way I like it!
90% of the time of year in South Central Nebraska is Hot & Humid. It is normally the beginning of our dry season. But not in 2023.
In the path of the Jet Stream that day that forced some severe thunderstorm development over south central Nebraska. We were not excepting anything super severe but a tornado or 2 is always possible this time of year.
Gear Primed & excited about the views I'm going to get for this event that day. I knew they were going to be photogenic.
*** Please NOTE and RESPECT the Copyright ***
© Dale Kaminski @ NebraskaSC Photography - All Rights Reserved
This image may not be copied, reproduced, published or distributed in any medium without the expressed written permission of the copyright holder.
#ForeverChasing
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Spinybacked orbweaver wrapping a fly in the web.
Lens mounted on a 36+20+12 mm Xit Photo extension tube set Pro series.
Ariel the british shorthair cat learning how to use an Olympus SP35 rangefiner camera.
more of me at www.facebook.com/arielbritishblue