View allAll Photos Tagged absorption
Once a bracket for a bird feeder. Now it feeds a hungry Live Oak tree. No rescue, no freedom, no release. And no chance of parole...
The Hague
May 2012
The Netherlands
A rather idyllic church garden, not very well known to the general public, although it has been busier in the last few years. Used to be a preferred spot for junkies and dealers for hustling and using. Now its a place for lunch, conversation and the occasional joint.
Urban life in the Netherlands
Ricoh GRD IV
Please do not reproduce or use this picture without my explicit permission.
If you ask nicely I will probably say yes, just ask me first!
If you happen to be in one of my frames and have any objections to this.
Please contact me!
Please no glossy awards, scripted comments and big thumbnails back to your own work.
I will remove them...
A Sri Lankan girl drawing at an arts exhibition.
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." - Pablo Picasso.
Improved insole; premium, 3x better moisture absorption, 100% better energy absorption
•Standard: EN ISO 20345:2011 S5 CI SRC
•Resistance: minerals, animal and plant oils and fats, disinfectants, fertilizer, solvents, various chemicals
•Lining; antibacterially treated, recognisable Dunlop red
Once wore the green of Dundee Corporation but seen here shortly after absorption by Tayside Regional Council.
Metro
Beijing, China
July 2012
Candid shots in and around Public Transport
Ricoh GRD IV
Please do not reproduce or use this picture without my explicit permission.
If you ask nicely I will probably say yes, just ask me first!
If you happen to be in one of my frames and have any objections to this.
Please contact me!
Please no glossy awards, scripted comments and big thumbnails back to your own work.
I will remove them...
The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) A1 Class is an English class of 0-6-0T steam locomotive. Designed by William Stroudley, 50 members of the class were built in 1872 and between 1874 and 1880, all at Brighton Works. The class has received several nicknames, initially being known as "Rooters" by their south London crews. However, the engines were more famously known as "Terriers" on account of the distinctive 'bark' of the exhaust beat.
A1X (Terrier) Class 0-6-0T No. 72 ‘Fenchurch’ (72 ‘Newhaven Docks Company’, 636, B636 & 2636 & BR No. 32636) designed by William Stroudley, built in 1872 at Brighton Works. Rebuilt to A1X in 1913.
It was sold to Newhaven Harbour Company in 1898 for £500 working with the No.72, it returned to the Southern Railway in 1925 when they took over the operation at Newhaven Harbour. It became part of the capital stock as B636 in 1927 following the absorption of the Harbour Company as part of the Southern Railway. When the Western Breakwater line was closed the need for locomotives with light axle loads to cross the swing bridge ceased and Fenchurch was no longer required at Newhaven.
From May 1963 the locomotive transferred to Eastleigh but in fact it went to Fratton to supplement the other Terriers A1X Class engines based there for working the Hayling Island branch. The Branch closed in November and all the members of the class were withdrawn from service.
From 1950 until withdrawal in November 1963 No.32636 had the distinction of being the oldest locomotive in British Railway stock. After withdrawal it was sold for £750 to Bluebell Railway where it is still preserved
Photographer: Peter Heelas – taken while arrivinging at Hosted Keynes Station on 13/02/2023.
Monday, April 18, 2016, Hertfordshire, UK - Brew Day number 7 with the Grainfather. For this brew I decided to use the following formula to calculate mash water: (Grain Bill in kg x 2.5) + 3.5 litres. This gave me more water to work with than in all previous brews where we used the formula (Grain Bill in kg x 2.2) + 3.5 litres. The alkalines in the pale grains pushed the pH up a bit. After the mash, it was 5.6 (at 20.2°C) while the refractometer read 18.5 Brix (gravity = 1.0763). I was not happy with the mash as I think the grains were too finely ground. As a consequence I don't think water was filtering through the grain bed fast enough, and the Grainfather recirculator was pumpiing a lot of foam and not enough water. Terribly frustrating with such a small grain bill :-/ Sparging was also painfully slow! After sparging, pre-boil pH was unchanged at 5.6 (at 20.2°C) and the Brix reading was 11.0 (gravity = 1.0442). At the start of the boil I had 25.5 litres of wort to work with. By the end of the boil, the volume was down to 23.5 litres.
We're callng this brew "The Forbidden" as I added grapefruit zest (and a little juice) at flameout. Grapefruit has been referred to as the forbidden fruit. I've also used "EPA" instead of "IPA" as I used Egyptian grapfruit, hence "Egyptian Pale Ale." After the boil, and before the addition of the grapefruit, the pH was 5.4 (at 20.2°C). After the addition of the zest and juice, it went down to pH 5.2 (at 20.2°C). Spot on :-) Original gravity was measured as 1.054 (at 19.5°C in an Hydrometer). With all the hops bags in this brew, I fell like I lost more wort to absorption than I have with previous brews. I also felt that the grapefruit zest needed longer contact with the wort. Furthermore, there seemed to be a hell of a lot of sediment in the conical fermenter - possibly because the grains were too finely ground. Otherwise, brew day went pretty much to plan :-) Another long day, flying solo in the ThunderMalt brew house.
2016-04-19: By this morning, heathy fermentation had kicked in, and the brew was happily bubbling away :-) Note to self - see p.14 of the Grainfather instruction manual re. "Small Grain Bills Below 4.5kg". For grain bills below 4.5 kg, you will need to add additional mash water:
1. Fill the boiler with the same amount of initial mash water based on the standard calculation: (Grain weight in kg x 2.7) + 3.5 = volume of mash water in L to add to the boiler.
2. Add the grain and mix it in.
3. Fit the top perforated plate and overflow pipework. Depending on how small your grain bill is, the top perforated plate may not go down all the way to rest on top of the grain. This is fine, push it down as far as it will go.
4. Fill the unit with additional water until the water level is just above the perforated plate. You must record how much water you add. And then you are ready to begin the mash.
5. Use the standard sparge water calculation with the total mash water (original calculated amount + additional water added). Use the formula: (28 - (mash water volume in L + additional water in L)) + (grain bill in kg x 0.8) = sparge water volume in L.
This is an unusually rich view of the Earth's telluric absorption spectrum obtained using the addition of many spectra of the underside of a dark thundercloud obtained in Munich in August 2014. More details of these observations can be seen at:
www.flickr.com/photos/bob_81667/49778550932/in/album-7215...
The Solar altitude at the time was 45° and so the normal telluric spectrum of the sky would be weak and rather unimpressive. In this case however, the light reaching the spectrometer had experienced a long path through the towering cloud and had scattered many times from water drops, other aerosols and air molecules with much of the path happening at low altitudes where the pressure is highest.
Such a random walk through the cloud can accumulate a long pathlength's worth of travel through a medium that will contain a high proportion of absorbers and scatterers such as water that predominate at low altitudes.
One species that will be under-represented is ozone (O_3) because this gas is only present in any quantity above about 12km — although some will be produced locally by lightning flashes.
Another oxygen 'molecule' however will be over-represented since its density depends on the square of the gas pressure. This is tetra-oxygen (O_4) which is a transitory (very short-lived) association of two oxygen molecules that allows the formation of spectral bands from normally electric dipole forbidden transitions. These O_4 bands are called Collisional Induced Absorptions (CIA). The short lifetime of these collision interactions results — basically because of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle — in spectral lines being substantially broadened. This process was only discovered in the mid-20th century and the full quantum-mechanical explanation has only recently been explored by Tijs Karman and co-workers in the Netherlands (Karman, T., Koenis, M.A.J., Banerjee, A. et al. Publisher Correction: O2−O2 and O2−N2 collision-induced absorption mechanisms unravelled. Nature Chem 10, 573 (2018). doi.org/10.1038/s41557-018-0063-2).
These distinctive absorption bands were seen by the 19th century observers such as Ångström and others at sunset and sunrise but, although they realised that the bands behaved differently from those due to water vapour and the normal O_2 molecule, they were not able to identify them.
The green and violet lines in the plot show processed versions of the observed cloud spectra which have been normalised by a process described in the previous posts referred to above. This results in a flat continuum which is free from all of the absorptions in the Sun's atmosphere: the Fraunhofer lines have gone.
The thin violet spectrum contains all of the telluric features including the complex spectrum of nitrogen dioxide (NO_2) which occupies the blue and green part of the spectrum only. The thick green line has the NO_2 spectrum removed assuming a column density of 2.5e17/cm2. This rather high density is probably predominantly the result of the formation of NO_2 in lightning flashes and not necessarily by vehicle exhaust pollution. Cross-section data for NO_2 can be obtained from:
www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2019.00118/full
A model of the computed O_4 spectrum corresponding to a column of 2e44 cm^5 molecule^-2 using the HITRAN database ( www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022407311003773 ) is shown as the dashed red line.
In this case the telluric spectrum is dominated by the the bands of water vapour whose strength increases towards the infrared. These are overtones (harmonics) of the fundamental vibrations of the water molecule that include symmetric and asymmetric stretch of the two hydrogen atoms with respect to the central oxygen, the oscillation of angular separation of the hydrogens around a mean angle of about 105° and librations around three axes (see: www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/water_vibrational_spectrum.html ). These higher harmonics cause depths of a metre or so of clear water to appear blue. See my discussion of water spectra at: www.flickr.com/photos/bob_81667/6309336354
The spectra also include emission from some lightning flashes (the spectra were selected to avoid strong lightning flashes) which have not been marked but can be identified by looking at:
www.flickr.com/photos/bob_81667/4951867947/
Note that there is no visible sign of ozone which only dominates the spectrum near twilight.
I have included on the plot overlays of two of the maps of the atmospheric spectrum made by Ångström. The top one, made by Ångström and Thalén is taken from the book "Spectrum Analysis" by H. Schellen published in 1872 and reproduced by the Scholarly Publication Office of the University of Michigan University Library (which I gratefully acknowledge as the source) as part of Plate VI.
The second map (left-right mirrored) is from the same volume as Fig. 95. While these two maps are very similar, there is a significant change in the position of the blue absorption band marked as Greek(lambda) in the lower map. What is apparently the same band appears shifted some 14nm to the blue. This band, which appears strongly in my cloud spectrum at a wavelength consistent with the lower map, is hard to see in a visual spectroscope (I have yet to observe it!) and one can perhaps excuse Ångström — who is renowned for his exquisite precision — for getting it wrong the first (?) time. Remember that he did not have access to the digital manipulation of spectra that I have now! He had to disentangle the telluric spectrum from that of the sun by eye, a task that is considerably easier in the red than in the blue.
Since all of these telluric features result from transitions in molecules, they tend to be more frequent and stronger towards longer wavelengths, leaving the visible and ultraviolet spectrum dominated by atomic processes. It is perhaps remarkable that some of the most obvious features to our eyes are due to the somewhat esoteric and only lately understood process of CIA. Indeed, the yellow/orange part of the spectrum seen through a spectroscope is dominated by an almost transparent region between about 580 and 590nm that is bounded on the blue side by the strongest O4 band at 576nm and, on the red side, by "The Rainband" of water from 590 to just over 600nm. This leaves what almost appears as a yellow/orange emission band in the region of the spectrum to which our eyes are most sensitive.
Another interesting telluric spectral feature can be see at the violet end of this spectrum, again enhanced in the cloud spectrum due to the long high pressure pathlength of the light. The majority of scatterings of photons by molecules or aerosols in the atmosphere are 'elastic', ie. do not involve a change of wavelength between the incident and the scattered photon. A small fraction are however 'inelastic', meaning that some energy is transferred from the photon to produce internal vibrations in the molecule. [Note that this process can happen in reverse but that is very rare and most of the outgoing photons are redder that the original one.]
In the case of the solar spectrum scattered in the Earth's atmosphere, especially in clouds, a small fraction of the photons at each wavelength will be Raman scattered towards longer wavelengths. If the Solar spectrum was perfectly flat, this would make little difference. When there are strong, deep absorption lines however, more light will be scattered into an absorption line than out of it. This will result the spectrum of skylight having slightly shallower lines than the Fraunhofer absorption lines in in the Sun. See the discussion of the phenomenon in:
www.researchgate.net/publication/253321609_The_Ring_Eect_...
This process, called Raman scattering after the Indian Nobel Laureate in physics (1930) who discovered it with his student K. S. Krishnan, is now very widely used in science, technology and forensics to study and identify materials of many sorts. When we remove the Solar lines by dividing our cloud spectrum by the Sun, we can see the strong lines appearing in apparent 'emission'. The Ca II H & K lines, being the strongest is the spectrum, offer the best chance of seeing the effect appearing in our plot.
This nice example of a telluric spectrum gives an idea of the kind of spectrum that we might hope or expect to see from an exoplanet in the 'habitable zone' orbiting another sun-like star when our instruments allow us the capability to see this level of detail (which may take a while!)
- sports car
- street-level parking lot
- artificially colored mulch
- plastic tarp preventing absorption of rain water
gimme a break.
Amsterdam
June 2012
The Netherlands
Urban life in the Netherlands
Ricoh GRD IV
Please do not reproduce or use this picture without my explicit permission.
If you ask nicely I will probably say yes, just ask me first!
If you happen to be in one of my frames and have any objections to this.
Please contact me!
Please no glossy awards, scripted comments and big thumbnails back to your own work.
I will remove them..
Two versions of a sketch of the visual spectrum of the setting Sun showing the prominent telluric lines towards the red end.
The bottom spectrum shows lines in black and diffuse bands in grey as they would appear in the spectroscope.
In the top spectrum, the telluric features are coded in blue (for water vapour absorption), red (for diatomic oxygen) and brown (for tetra-oxygen).
A few of the strong Solar Fraunhofer lines are shown in black and marked with their designations (C – h) in black letters.
Greek(alpha) marks the combination of ordinary diatomic oxygen absorption and a broader contribution from the collisionally induced transition in the transitory association of two oxygen molecules called tetra-oxygen. Greek(delta) marks the strongest visible tetra-oxygen absorption at ~576nm.
'r' marks the water absorption that was known in the late nineteenth century as The Rainband since there were attempts to use it as a predictor of rain.
These three features along with the water band that encompasses the H-alpha line 'Fraunhofer C' are the most visually prominent telluric features.
I find it interesting that two of these features are associated with an absorption process that was not identified until 1949 ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision-induced_absorption_and_em... ).
The 19th century scientists had appreciated that these two bands behaved differently from the water absorptions and became stronger more rapidly as the Sun approached the horizon. However, they had no idea what caused them.
The yellow gap between r and delta appears as a very prominent structure in the visible spectrum of the daytime sky, particularly at dusk and dawn.. The yellow almost looks as if it is an emission band superimposed on the Solar spectrum!
The coloured background spectrum in these illustrations is derived from my own photograph, taken with a full-spectrum digital camera, of a dispersed quartz-halogen lamp using a slit and a 60° glass prism.
Backlit Beauties in Ophiuchus
Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello
A dark nebula or absorption nebula is a type of interstellar cloud, particularly molecular clouds, that is so dense that it obscures the visible wavelengths of light from objects behind it, such as background stars and emission or reflection nebulae.
Dark clouds appear so because of sub-micrometre-sized dust particles, coated with frozen carbon monoxide and nitrogen, which effectively block the passage of light at visible wavelengths.
The main molecular clouds are annotated according to SIMBAD.
Square crop of a wider field obtained with the Tair-3S array (300mm f/4.5) during the 2023 astronomical camp.
Alexander bodied X reg Dennis Dominator, beautifully restored internally and wearing a commemorative livery celebrating Doncaster Corporation's undertakings prior to South Yorkshire PTE's absorption.
Fat along with protein and carbohydrate are essential nutrients for normal body function and for maintaining our well-being. We all need fat, but consuming fat worries us and there is a fear associated with it. This fear is not without a reason as it is associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cholesterol issues.
A balanced diet requires some amount of dietary fat however if you are obsessed and avoid fat altogether you could be taking it too far as you could be triggering physical and mental health issues. In a couple of months you would lose weight, but along with it your skin could lose lustre, you could experience poor memory and hair fall. Fat is a pillar of nutrition and you simply can’t completely delete it from your diet. Dietary fat provides energy, protects organs, maintains cell membranes, and helps the body absorb nutrients and provides essential fatty acids that play a crucial role in the optimum functioning of the body.
Avoid ‘The Fat Fear’ – Eat Good fat and Avoid Bad Fat Despite the bad reputation surrounding fats, fat isn’t always our enemy in waistline wars. More than the amount of fat, it’s the type of fat you eat that matters as there are good fats and bad fats.
Dietary fat can be classified into four groups:
Saturated
Monounsaturated
Polyunsaturated
Trans
Fats, such as trans-fats and saturated fats, are guilty of the unhealthy tags and lead to shooting up of cholesterol levels and the risk of certain diseases, whereas good fats like monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) and Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) protect your heart and support overall health.
Remember good fats have a lion’s share in helping you manage your moods, fight fatigue and even control your weight and lipid levels.
1. Depression:
A diet that lacks essential fatty acids may affect your mental health including mood and behavior. A study published in the Journal of Effective Disorders has linked low essential fatty acid intake to depression. Omega 3 fats are considered as brain food as they aid in normal functioning of the brain cells.
2. Increased Cancer Risk:
Low intake of essential fatty acids has been correlated with colon, breast, and prostate cancer. If your diet lacks healthy fats, you could significantly increase your risk of cancer.
3. Vitamin Deficiencies:
Eating a diet too low in fat can interfere with the absorption of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, which play a role in as growth, vision, immunity, cell repair and blood clotting. They also assist in keeping our hair and skin smooth and healthy.
4. Heart Related Disorders:
When your diet is extremely low in fat, the High Density Lipoprotein (HDL) levels go down. HDL transports Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) deposited in the arteries to the liver where it can be reprocessed to bile acids. Higher LDL levels put you at risk of a heart attack as they narrow the artery walls that may cause a blood clot. When the HDL and Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) ratios get out of balance, an increased risk of heart disease and cholesterol levels are inevitable.
5. Overeating:
Fat imparts flavor to food. It also promotes a sense of satiety i.e. you feel full for a longer duration after eating a meal or snack that contains some amount of fat as compared to eating a no-fat meal. Thus when fat goes missing, you may have an urge to eat more.
Eating very few calories can hamper your weight-loss efforts. Similarly, a diet too low in fat can have negative impact on your overall health.
So clearly the answer isn't cutting out the fat—it’s learning to make healthy choices and to replace bad fats with good ones that promote health and well-being. Thus, just because a few berries in the box are bad you won’t throw the box away, similarly, some fats are bad for us (like trans fats) but don’t go on a zero-fat or oil-free diet to achieve your weight-loss or health goals.
How Much Total Dietary Fat Do You Require?
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 recommends:
Less than 10% of calories should come from saturated fats.
Keep the total Trans fatty acid consumption as low as possible and avoid synthetic sources of Tran’s fatty acids such as hydrogenated oils.
Replace solid fats with oils as and when possible.
Reduce your intake of calories from solid fats.
Eat fewer than 300 mg of dietary cholesterol per day. To know more visit www.yogagurusuneelsingh.com Mobile 09810210802
Alias: Moonlight
Real Name: Hailee Carreon
Powers: Telekinesis, energy blasts, force field creation, flight, enhanced strength, enhanced reflexes, enhanced speed, self-healing
*Her powers are derived from moonlight absorption. She becomes more powerful if under direct moonlight, and if she goes too long without being exposed to moonlight, she loses her powers
Earth: 304
Origin: After her father was kidnapped, Hailee learns that he was kidnapped because he used to be the city’s hero, and someone had found his identity. Without her dad, Hailee has nothing. Her own mother hates her, and she doesn’t get along with her brother. She now only has one person she can lean on, her boyfriend, Nick. She goes to Nick for comfort, but after a while, he gets fed up with it, and tells her she has too many emotional problems for him to have to deal with, he’s not her therapist. So he breaks up with her. Now truly alone with nothing but an emotionally abusive mother, Hailee chooses to run away from home. She decides that she wants to try and find her dad, holding out hope and choosing to believe that he’s still alive. She teaches herself how to use her father’s bo-staff, and does everything she can to track him down. While following a lead on her father, she tries to break into a crime gang’s hideout, but fails and nearly gets herself killed. But she’s saved by a mysterious vigilante, who offers to help her. He reveals his identity to her as a young man named Trevor. Hailee almost immediately fell for this kindhearted vigilante. Trevor brings Hailee back to his home, where he and his mentor, Dick, teach her to fight, and offer to help her find her father. Dick eventually leaves Trevor and Hailee alone, and they finally show their feelings towards one another. They protect the city as a strong duo of vigilantes together. One night, Hailee had been searching for her father, and the city suddenly blew up. In attempting to free herself from the destruction, Hailee finds a man, and goes to help him. This man turns out to be her father. She had finally found him at last. She desperately tries to save him, but can’t get to him. He tells her to leave, as the building they’re in will soon fall. Hailee hesitantly obeys her father’s orders, and narrowly escaped the collapsing building. When she steps outside, the moon begins to shine brightly on her, and she notices her injuries are beginning to heal. She realized that not only is she using her father’s staff, but she’s inherited his powers and connection to the moon too. She was crushed at the lost of her father, yet satisfied that she finally got closure, and happy to know that she could continue his legacy.
The Hague CS
March 2012
The Netherlands
Candid shots in and around the Public Transport in The Netherlands
Ricoh GRD IV
Please do not reproduce or use this picture without my explicit permission.
If you ask nicely I will probably say yes, just ask me first!
If you happen to be in one of my frames and have any objections to this.
Please contact me!
Please no glossy awards, scripted comments and big thumbnails back to your own work.
I will remove them...
All rights reserved
For this gentle and relaxing photowalk in my district, Lyon, France, I brought along my French TLR SEMFLEX Standard 3.5 camera (see below for details) loaded with a never-tried yet film Svema FOTO 100 made in Ukraine. The backing paper is black with white numbering and signaling symbols are easy to read across the small red window of my SEMFLEX.
For all the frames, my SEMFLEX was equipped with the original SEMFLEX squared shade hood a SEMFLEX yellow filter x2. The film was exposed for 50 ISO to compensate the light absorption of the yellow filter. Metering was done using a Minolta Autometer III equipped with a 10° finder for selective measures privileging the shadow areas or an opale dome for incident light integration.
View n° 10: 1/100s f/8 focusing @ 50 m, SEMFLEX Yellow filter x2
Rue Bleton (Ecole Providence des Trinitaires), May 10, 2025
69004 Lyon
France
After the view #12 exposed, the film was fully rolled to the taking spool and was developed in a Paterson tank with a spiral adapted to the 120-format film. 500 mL of Adox Adonal (Agfa Rodinal) developer were prepared at the dilution 1+25 and the film processed for 7 min at 20°C. The first view was shifted by about two frames leading to only 10 views on the film. This is clearly due to a quality problem. The backing paper was improperly positioned during the spooling of the film.
Digitizing of the remaining 10 frames, was made using a Sony A7 camera (ILCE-7, 24MP) held on a Minolta vertical macro stative device and adapted to a Minolta MD Macro lens 1:3.5 f=50mm. The light source was a LED panel (approx. 4x5') CineStill Cine-lite fitted with film holder "Lobster" to maintain flat the 70mm films.
The RAW files obtained were inverted within LR and edited to the final jpeg pictures without intermediate file. They are presented either as printed files with frame or the full size JPEG together with some documentary smartphone pictures..
About the camera and lenses :
My French Semflex TLR year 1959-1960 is equipped with triplet 1/3.5 f=75mm SOM Berthiot lenses as descripted bellow.
The SEM company ("Société des Etablissements Modernes de Mécanique") was founded in France by Paul Royet in 1946, in the small city of Aurec near Saint-Etienne (Loire). The SEM camera's was known essentially for the TLR Semflex that were a great commercial success in France until the 70's. The camera's are constructed around an injected aluminum alloy chassis, very resistant and rigid permitting precise optical alignments. The focusing mechanism is made of a cam system like the Rolleiflex giving an accurate and smooth focusing. SEM constructed their own shutters called Orec with 5 leaves capable of the 1/400s to 1s with B.
Semflex received in majority French optics Berthiot with 3 or 4 lenses (Tessar type). Some camera's were also mounted with Angénieux lenses.
Semflex were trusted TLR camera's used by amateurs and for professional purposes. From 1949 to 1976, 171.000 Semflex were produced in many different types and versions.
My Semflex in a middle grade version Standard 3.5 type-10 (1959-1960). It was the last version mounted with the 3-lens SOM Berthiot 1:3.5 f=75mm. I got the camera with set of accessories and several documents including the user manual of the Semflex Standard 4.5 versions. The accessories include a leather SEM ever-ready bag, a Semflex push-on shade hood, a Semflex push-on yellow filter x2 in its original box, and close-focusing lenses. The 1D one is constructed with a prism for the finder lens that compensates the parallax in the zone 1m to 0.5m.
The decorative ring around each lenses can also receive push-on accessories in 36mm diameter as the FOCA or Leitz 36mm filter series. I adapted two protective lens caps from Kodak film canister snapped covers.
I needed to test out my new Mini 3 Pro, and decided that these stormwater management ponds would be a nice place to try some panoramas.
From the city web page:
After rain or snowfall, the water left behind on roads, sidewalks, grass and pathways is called “stormwater.” This is ordinarily absorbed into the ground by plants and soil. However, pavement and other hard surfaces — such as driveways, sidewalks and roofs (especially in urban areas) — can interfere with this absorption. This can lead to water pooling or even flooding.
To help take care of this, stormwater management ponds exist throughout the city. They are human-made areas created to gather and retain rainfall and surface water runoff. These ponds are usually found in neighbourhoods where stormwater can easily be collected. The City of Vaughan manages more than 150 stormwater management ponds.
Stormwater management ponds can be either wet or dry and they are designed to maintain a permanent body of water within the pond area. A dry pond is designed to remain dry until a rain event occurs which may temporarily retain stormwater within the pond area. A wet pond holds water all the time and is designed to collect and store runoff from rain and melted snow. These wet ponds collect sediment so only clean water is released back into rivers and creeks.
Stormwater management pond surrounded by greenery in the summer
Stormwater ponds have at least one inlet that allows water to flow from the storm sewer system into the pond. Once the stormwater drains into the stormwater pond, any of the sand, dirt and other sediments that pollutants attach themselves to settle to the bottom of the pond. The pond's outlet releases water from the pond into a nearby creek system at a controlled rate. This process helps make the water cleaner when it leaves the pond and back into lakes and rivers. Without stormwater ponds, large amounts of water would enter a stream all at once, causing flooding and eroding soil from the stream banks. Everything that enters a street’s catch basin will eventually end up in a stormwater management pond before making its way back into local creeks, rivers and lakes. This water is not treated before entering the water cycle again; therefore, everyone must do their part to keep it clean.
This High Dynamic Range 360° aerial panorama was stitched from 78 bracketed photographs with PTGUI Pro, tone-mapped with Photomatix, processed with Colour Efex, then touched up in Affinity Photo and Aperture.
Original size: 13000 × 13000 (169.0 MP; 551.70 MB).
Location: Vaughan, Ontario, Canada
Yesterday I was lucky enough to have free tickets to the Braque expo at the Grand Palais. I didn't know this artist before and was very happy to discover his work which has a very wide variety of styles. If you have the opportunity, go discover!
Having just done the series of 6 photos where there was indifference also, it was interesting to see yesterday that everyone was absorbed! I've decided to do this series in black and white to focus on the people rather than the art. However, I'd definitely recommend this artist to you :)
Hier j’ai eu la chance de pouvoir aller gratuitement à l’expo Braque au Grand Palais. Je connus pas cet artiste et fut heureuse de découvrir son travail qui a changé en plusieurs styles très différents tout au longue de sa vie. Si vous avez l’occasion, découvrez-le ! (Demain c’est le dernier jour au Grand Palais.)
Puisque j’ai fait très récemment cette petite série « immersion et indifférence » j’étais très sensible aux autres visiteurs … et cette fois-ci tout le monde était immergé ! J’ai décidé de montrer ces photos en noir et blanc car j’ai voulu mettre en valeur les personnes et non pas l’art. Mais je vous recommande vivement cet artiste :)
If you recognise yourself in these photos and prefer they are not here, just let me know (or if you would like a copy of the photo).
Si vous vous reconnaissez dans cette photo et préfériez que la photo ne soit pas publiée, dites le moi (ou bien si vous aimeriez en avoir une copie).
Den Haag
The Netherlands
2013
Dijsselbloem, Dutch Minister of Finance and head of the Eurogroup
Urban life in the Netherlands
Ricoh GR Digital IV
Leiden
June 2012
The Netherlands
Urban life in the Netherlands
Ricoh GRD IV
Please do not reproduce or use this picture without my explicit permission.
If you ask nicely I will probably say yes, just ask me first!
If you happen to be in one of my frames and have any objections to this.
Please contact me!
Please no glossy awards, scripted comments and big thumbnails back to your own work.
I will remove them...
Tips to avoid a hangover
Follow these tips to keep hangovers at bay:
Don't drink on an empty stomach. Before you go out, have a meal that includes carbohydrates (such as pasta or rice) or fats. The food will help slow down the body's absorption of alcohol.
Don't drink dark-coloured drinks if you've found that you're sensitive to them. They contain natural chemicals called congeners (impurities), which irritate blood vessels and tissue in the brain and can make a hangover worse.
Drink water or non-fizzy soft drinks in between each alcoholic drink. Carbonated (fizzy) drinks speed up the absorption of alcohol into your system.
Drink a pint or so of water before you go to sleep. Keep a glass of water by the bed to sip if you wake up during the night.
---------------
The morning after
If you wake up the next morning feeling terrible, you probably didn't follow this advice. Although there are no real cures for hangovers, there are ways to ease the symptoms.
Treatment involves rehydrating the body so it can deal with the painful symptoms, though the best time to rehydrate is before going to sleep.
Over-the-counter painkillers can help with headaches and muscle cramps. Paracetamol-based remedies are usually preferable, as aspirin may further irritate the stomach and increase nausea and sickness.
Sugary foods may help you feel less trembly. In some cases, an antacid may be needed to settle your stomach first.
Bouillon soup, a thin vegetable-based broth, is a good source of vitamins and minerals, which can top up depleted resources. Its main advantage is it's easy for a fragile stomach to digest.
You can replace lost fluids by drinking bland liquids that are easy on the digestive system, such as water, soda water and isotonic drinks (available in most shops).
"Hair of the dog" – drinking more alcohol – does not help. Drinking in the morning is a risky habit, and you may simply be delaying the appearance of symptoms until the alcohol wears off again.
If you've had a heavy drinking episode, hangover or not, doctors advise that you wait at least 48 hours before drinking any more alcohol to give your body tissues time to recover.
Sometimes, of course, a hangover makes that advice easier to follow.
Dashilan, Beijing
July 2012
China
Urban life
Ricoh GR Digital IV
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For testing on film my newly arrived exceptional French 35mm camera FOCA Universel RC (see below for details about this rare and fascinating camera), I went for photowalk in my district, Lyon, France. The weather was very sunny and the outside temperature warm (32°C).
Testing a new collection camera is always is great moment. We know the camera only from its blank manipulations but the real judge is the test film on the field, the camera exposed to outside elements in real photography operations. Some possible problems as light leaks or slight unpairing of the shutter curtains, will be only detected on film.
I used the camera with its ever-ready bag and I removed the front part for operation. In particular, I previously checked very carefully the exact condition of the thin leather neck strap. Old leather may crack and it would a shame and a nightmare to drop such camera. The OPLAR standard lens 1/:2.8 f=5cm was equipped with a yellow filter FOCA x2.5. The OPLAR lens fro the FOCA’s only accept push-on filter (42.5mm in this specific case). A vintage Genaco cylindric stainless-steel shade hood conceived for a 5cm focal length was also used all along the session.
The test film was a 36-exposure Fomapan 100. Expositions were determined for 50 ISO to compensate the absorption of the yellow filter. Metering was achieved using a Minolta Autometer III lightmeter fitted with a 10° finder for selective metering privileging the shadow areas.
View Nr 34: 1/50s f/4 focusing @ 3 m - Yellow filter
Collection car Volvo P1800, July 5, 2025
Boulevard de la Croix Rousse
69004 Lyon
France
After completion at view #39, the film was rewound normally and processed using 350 mL of Adox Adonal developer (identical to the original Agfa Rodinal in its formula of 1891) prepared at the dilution 1+50 for 9 min at 20°C.
Digitizing was made using a Sony A7 camera (ILCE-7, 24MP) fitted to a Minolta Auto Bellows III with the Minolta slide duplication accessory and Minolta Macro Bellow lens 1:3.5 f=50mm. The diffuse light source was a LED panel CineStill Cine-lite.
The RAW files obtained were inverted within the latest version available of Adobe Lightroom Classic (version 14.4) and edited to the final jpeg pictures without intermediate file. They are presented either as printer files with a frame or the full size JPEG's together with some documentary smartphone color pictures.
As a result, the test film shows that this FOCA Universel RC is in perfect conditions and could be used normally with confidence.
About the camera and its history :
Among the French 35mm camera produced by « Optique & Précision de Levallois S.A. » from 1945 to the middle of the 60’s, the FOCA Universel « RC » is likely the most captivating ever produced in France at that time.
The camera was the last development of the FOCA, sometime called the « French Leica » because the optical and mechanical precision matched and even surpassed the original thread-mount Leica. Far before the first Leica M (the M3 in 1954) O.P.L. developed a bayonet-mount FOCA in 1948 called the FOCA « Universel ». Seeing the incredible viewer and range finder of the Leica M that is likely the most sophisticated system even engineered, O.P.L. released lately a great improvement of the FOCA with a novel collimated, parallax auto-corrected, of a fully original and different design of the Leitz system.
The FOCA Universel RC It is a rare camera that only appears for time to time on the collector market, being only produced to a bit more than 2000 overall units in the years 1962 and 1963, just before O.P.L. decided to quit the camera production and returned to other instrumental optical production. O.P.L. soon merged with SOM Berthiot and today can be found still in the industrial filiation of SAFRAN group, the French leader company for designing and producing system for aerospace appliances. The plant where the FOCA's were produced still exists in an almost original form in Châteaudun, Eure-et-Loir, France.
I got my first FOCA URC unit two years ago (Sept. 2023, flic.kr/s/aHBqjAV6Dg) that is a standing and emotional piece of my small camera collection.
I got this one from an apparently ignored auction on the French eBay. We were only two biders in the last 5s and I won the auction not far away to the initial price. The camera was fully revised, with new shutter curtains, a new delayed shutter release mechanism. The serial number indicated a year-1962 production starting with 1.000.000, closed to my first FOCA URC. The camera works in every functions like on its Day-1! The camera came with a late version 1962 of the OPLAR 1:2.8 f=5cm standard collapsible lens of excellent quality, the FOCA UCR dedicated ever-ready leather bag with the original leather neck strap in good condition.
The original O.P.L. camera warranty and a registration postal card fortunately followed the life of the camera, indicating that this beautiful FOCA Universel RC was sold to its first owner on August 9, 1963 by the official FOCA dealer « ROYAL-PHOTO, Photo-Ciné-Magnétohone », 42, rue Vignon, Paris 9ème arrondissement, France, today a Weill fashion shop at the same address. The address of the owner also still exists with the original Parisian building in place, Boulevard Poniatwski, next to the Métro station « Porte de Charenton », Paris 12ème arrondissement.
The shown original FOCAL Universel RC user manual is the one that came with my other FOCA URC camera.
These information pushed me to question what were the news in France on this Friday, August 9, 1963… France was mainly on vacation, by an exceptional wet and fresh weather that wasted many French citizens holidays. The whole national radio information bulletin is still available online here :
www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/audio/phd94020557/inter-actua...
Inter actualités de 7:15 PM du 9 août 1963
Inter actualités de 7:15 PM - 09.08.1963 - 29:58 - audio
Ina.fr (English translated)
- Headlines - Jean-Pierre ELKABBACH: The Marseille and Bordeaux sailors' strike ended this morning, but nothing has been resolved in Le Havre. Many heads of state and government sent messages of condolence to President Kennedy for the death of his third child shortly after birth. Other headlines in the newspaper (2'20"). - André Brière: It does not appear for the moment that work will resume in Le Havre. Mr. Pisani would agree to the distillation of 2 million hectoliters of wine, which is clogging up the market, but a subsidy would be required. Discontent is growing among winegrowers in the south, whom the population accuses of various acts of sabotage in the Narbonne region. Complaints from winegrowers in the southwest. Farmers scattered 5 tons of potatoes yesterday in the streets of Douai (3'30"). - Jacques Behingue: Secretary of State Dean Rusk will return to Washington from Moscow on Monday. He will give a presentation to senators on the Moscow Treaty. This morning, Dean Rusk was received by Mr. Khrushchev on the shores of the Black Sea in Cagra. This evening, Mr. Dean Rusk will host a dinner in Moscow at the US Embassy. Tomorrow, he will be in Bonn, received by Mr. Adenauer. The Moscow Treaty was signed by 11 new countries, with Japan set to sign next Wednesday. North Vietnam has refused to sign. Mr. MAC MILLAN declared that underground tests, which are not prohibited, are not of great importance because nuclear weapons can only be modified following atmospheric tests (4'40"). - Gérard TAVERA: Two years after Bizerte, France and Tunisia signed an agreement this morning that includes two chapters: the first concerns the 30,000 Tunisian workers living in France, the second concerns economic cooperation. This agreement resolves the economic problems concerning Bizerte. After an African trip, Mr. BEN BELLA returns to Algiers. In Accra, Mr. BEN BELLA declared that the next session of the UN would be an African session. Yesterday, AIT AHMED violently criticized the FLN party and the constitutional project. All French newspapers reproducing Mr. AIT AHMED's Declaration were seized this morning upon their arrival in Algiers. Since July 16, in Morocco, leaders of the UNFP are detained in rather precarious conditions following the "plot" against the monarchy (2'25"). - André Brière: before the State Security Court, opening of the trial of the station commander, among those who are bringing a civil action is Mr. Jean OUDINOT, former director of RTF in Algiers (1'05"). - Victor VRAMANT: the body of Doctor WARD was cremated this morning, only members of Doctor WARD's family attended the funeral ceremony. The weather in France and Europe. It is raining everywhere in France except on the Côte d'Azur. Road accidents (2'). - Jean-Pierre ELKABBACH: Gaston GELIS, former director of "Paris-journal" died in a road accident in Seine et Marne (1'). - Victor VRAMANT: a major drug trafficker was arrested at Orly. In Italy, following the arrest of a repeat offender, a 22-year-old American woman was arrested for drug trafficking (1'30"). - Jacques CHABOT: Charles TRENET has not yet been released; he would be released tomorrow morning after payment of bail (25%).
WEATHER:
SOURCE: www.meteo-paris.com/chronique/annee/1963
June 14, 1963: a particularly cool day - it was no more than 12°C in Rouen, 13°C in Paris, St. Quentin, Lille, Le Havre, and Caen.
August 1963 was autumnal because it was very cool and very wet. On August 3, 1963, torrential rains caused catastrophic flooding and the death of eight people in the Lyon region. On August 4, 1963, 400 houses were also flooded between St. Jean de Luz and Le Boucau (Pyrénées Atlantiques). On August 17 and 18, 1963, it was no more than 10°C. and 15°C in the northern half - many summer visitors leave early - it's snowing in the mountains and the harvest is very difficult.
Historical landmarks of the year 1963
August 28, 1963: Martin Luther King leads the march on Washington. October 11, 1963: Jean Cocteau and Edith Piaf die within hours of each other. November 22, 1963: President J.F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. The yé-yé movement is in vogue - the debut of Françoise Hardy and the politically engaged singer, Jean Ferrat.
A short series of 6 photographs taken at the Centre Pompidou.
Une petite série de 6 photos prises au Centre Pompidou.
If you recognise yourself in these photos and prefer they are not here, just let me know (or if you would like a copy of the photo).
Si vous vous reconnaissez dans cette photo et préfériez que la photo ne soit pas publiée, dites le moi (ou bien si vous aimeriez en avoir une copie).
This pitcher plant was observed at the base of Pico da Neblina in a high altitude (2000 meters) wet meadow with three other species of Heliamphora: H hispida, H ceracea, and H neblinae. Though it most similar morphologically to H neblinae, there are several distinct differences that warrant further study as a potential new species or at minimum complex hybrid.
Pitcher plants of the genus Heliamphora are related to the North American pitcher plants Sarracenia and Darlingtonia. All are carnivorous plants wth passive pitfall traps to capture insects. Most species of North American Sarraceniaceae produce digestive enzymes to aid ultimately in nutrient absorption. Most Heliamphora spp., however, apear to rely on associate microorganisms to aid in the digestion process of captured prey.
The Hague Central Station
August 2012
The Netherlands
Candid shots in and around the Public Transport in The Netherlands
Ricoh GRD IV
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A boy drawing with crayon at an arts exhibition in Kandy, Sri Lanka.
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." - Pablo Picasso.
The Hague
April 2012
The Netherlands
Urban life in the Netherlands
Ricoh GRD IV
Please do not reproduce or use this picture without my explicit permission.
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Kantara Castle is a castle in Northern Cyprus. The exact date of its construction remains unknown, the most plausible theory being the Byzantine period. It combines Byzantine and Frankish architectural elements, became derelict in 1525 and was dismantled in 1560. It gave its name to the nearby Kantara monastery.
Kantara is situated to the east of the Buffavento Castle with the St. Hilarion Castle standing even farther to the west forming a protective axis in the Kyrenia mountain range of Northern Cyprus. As both of the other castles are visible from Buffavento, it was used to pass signals between them. The castles were built in conjunction during the Byzantine period but the date of their commission remains unknown. Among the theories put forward to explain their origin the popular are: In 965 (after the expulsion of the Arabs from the island), in 1091 by the rebel Rhapsomates, during the rule of Eumathios Philokales (1091–1094), in the late 11th century after the Cilician coast was overrun by the Seljuk Empire or in 1096 as a countermeasure for the upheaval caused by the First Crusade. The name of the castle derives from the Cypriot Maronite Arabic word kandak which means stone bridge.
Serving as a watchtower for pirate raids, an administrative centre and a place of incarceration the castle saw next to no fighting. In 1191, it was taken by Richard the Lionheart during his campaign against the island's ruler Isaac Komnenos of Cyprus. Richard subsequently sold the island to the Knights Templar whose rule abruptly ended after a major revolt in Nicosia. Cyprus was thus resold to Guy of Lusignan, the former king of Jerusalem who became the first king of Cyprus in 1192. A period of peace ended with the death of Hugh I of Cyprus in 1218. A struggle over who should act as the kingdom's regent ensued, pitting the House of Ibelin with the local supporters of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. Frederick's arrival in Limassol in 1228 escalated the conflict into an open war. In 1229, the castle came under siege by the Ibelins, who bombarded it with trebuchets, reportedly destroying several buildings. The castle's garrison surrendered a year later when its commander Gauvain de Cheneche was killed by a crossbow bolt. Afterwards, the Lusignans continued their reign interrupted only by occasional palace coups. In 1373, Cyprus was invaded by the Republic of Genoa imprisoning the local nobility. According to Philip of Novara's chronicle prince John of Antioch managed to escape from Famagusta after disguising himself as the valet of his cook. John subsequently fled to Kantara, from which he organised a successful counter offensive that expelled the Genoese after the latter failed to capture Kantara.
Recognizing the importance of the three Kyrenian castles James I of Cyprus and Peter II of Cyprus vastly expanded their fortifications. During their reign Kantara was transformed into a garrison castle, barracks and an enormous cistern were erected. Another cistern located at the basement of the castle was converted into a prison and later made into rooms for the captain of garrison. In 1489, the Republic of Venice acquired the island, 1519 Italian engineers branded the castle as obsolete. At which time the Kyrenian mountain castles fell into disuse, the last garrison departing in 1525. The castle was finally dismantled in 1560. Kantara's buildings remain in a relatively good condition until they were subjected to looting in the early 20th century. In 1905, the castle was classified as historic heritage due to the efforts of the French archaeologist Camille Enlart. In 1914, British colonial authorities under George Jeffery undertook restoration work at the castle, in an effort to attract sightseers. In 1939, the foundation of the horseshoe tower was refurbished in order to prevent it from collapsing.
Kantara is situated on an elevation of 550–600 metres (1,800–1,970 ft) above sea level. The castle is surrounded by ridges of barren granite and sandstone bedrock which were used as the main building materials for the castle's construction. The materials were subjected to coarse masonry; most of the buildings are coated with thick layers of plaster to cover the poor quality of the materials. Doors, windows and quoins were transported from elsewhere. The lack of local water sources necessitated the collection of rainwater through the use flat roofs which were connected to the cisterns through a drainage system. Among the six cisterns used the largest stood outside the walls. Buildings contained bread ovens and perhaps even a mill.
The steep crags limit the available pathways to a narrow valley on its eastern side, which is guarded by twin towers named Nicolas and Faucherre respectively. The first gate is followed by a barrel vaulted barbican, a steep chicane then leads to the portcullis protected main gate. The barbican shows great similarities with contemporary Cilician Armenian designs, having a gallery of arrowslits and two towers of its own. To the north of the main gate stands a horseshoe shaped tower providing additional support to the defenders of the barbican. The apsidal vault at the front of the tower facilitates better shock absorption. Despite its similarities to Roman and Byzantine military architecture it was in fact constructed sometime between 1208 and 1228.
The surrounding 120 by 70 metres (390 ft × 230 ft) wall contained ten garrison rooms which were constructed in the late 14th century, the barracks were connected with a latrine. A concealed postern, guarded by two towers lies on the south–western corner of the castle. To the south of the main gate, was built a rectangular, barrel vaulted keep, used a prison, later converted into a cistern. The centre of its northern wall is graced by a refined late 14th century Frankish window built from what once was an embrasure. The shape of the embrasures throughout the castle points out that they were mainly used by crossbowmen. At the top of the castle stand the ruins of "The Queen's Chamber", an alleged fortified chapel destroyed in a Turkish naval bombardment in 1525 and looted in the 19th century.
Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, and its territory is considered by all other states to be part of the Republic of Cyprus.
Northern Cyprus extends from the tip of the Karpass Peninsula in the northeast to Morphou Bay, Cape Kormakitis and its westernmost point, the Kokkina exclave in the west. Its southernmost point is the village of Louroujina. A buffer zone under the control of the United Nations stretches between Northern Cyprus and the rest of the island and divides Nicosia, the island's largest city and capital of both sides.
A coup d'état in 1974, performed as part of an attempt to annex the island to Greece, prompted the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. This resulted in the eviction of much of the north's Greek Cypriot population, the flight of Turkish Cypriots from the south, and the partitioning of the island, leading to a unilateral declaration of independence by the north in 1983. Due to its lack of recognition, Northern Cyprus is heavily dependent on Turkey for economic, political and military support.
Attempts to reach a solution to the Cyprus dispute have been unsuccessful. The Turkish Army maintains a large force in Northern Cyprus with the support and approval of the TRNC government, while the Republic of Cyprus, the European Union as a whole, and the international community regard it as an occupation force. This military presence has been denounced in several United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Northern Cyprus is a semi-presidential, democratic republic with a cultural heritage incorporating various influences and an economy that is dominated by the services sector. The economy has seen growth through the 2000s and 2010s, with the GNP per capita more than tripling in the 2000s, but is held back by an international embargo due to the official closure of the ports in Northern Cyprus by the Republic of Cyprus. The official language is Turkish, with a distinct local dialect being spoken. The vast majority of the population consists of Sunni Muslims, while religious attitudes are mostly moderate and secular. Northern Cyprus is an observer state of ECO and OIC under the name "Turkish Cypriot State", PACE under the name "Turkish Cypriot Community", and Organization of Turkic States with its own name.
Several distinct periods of Cypriot intercommunal violence involving the two main ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 de facto division of the island along the Green Line following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful.
Cyprus, an island lying in the eastern Mediterranean, hosted a population of Greeks and Turks (four-fifths and one-fifth, respectively), who lived under British rule in the late nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century. Christian Orthodox Church of Cyprus played a prominent political role among the Greek Cypriot community, a privilege that it acquired during the Ottoman Empire with the employment of the millet system, which gave the archbishop an unofficial ethnarch status.
The repeated rejections by the British of Greek Cypriot demands for enosis, union with Greece, led to armed resistance, organised by the National Organization of Cypriot Struggle, or EOKA. EOKA, led by the Greek-Cypriot commander George Grivas, systematically targeted British colonial authorities. One of the effects of EOKA's campaign was to alter the Turkish position from demanding full reincorporation into Turkey to a demand for taksim (partition). EOKA's mission and activities caused a "Cretan syndrome" (see Turkish Resistance Organisation) within the Turkish Cypriot community, as its members feared that they would be forced to leave the island in such a case as had been the case with Cretan Turks. As such, they preferred the continuation of British colonial rule and then taksim, the division of the island. Due to the Turkish Cypriots' support for the British, EOKA's leader, Georgios Grivas, declared them to be enemies. The fact that the Turks were a minority was, according to Nihat Erim, to be addressed by the transfer of thousands of Turks from mainland Turkey so that Greek Cypriots would cease to be the majority. When Erim visited Cyprus as the Turkish representative, he was advised by Field Marshal Sir John Harding, the then Governor of Cyprus, that Turkey should send educated Turks to settle in Cyprus.
Turkey actively promoted the idea that on the island of Cyprus two distinctive communities existed, and sidestepped its former claim that "the people of Cyprus were all Turkish subjects". In doing so, Turkey's aim to have self-determination of two to-be equal communities in effect led to de jure partition of the island.[citation needed] This could be justified to the international community against the will of the majority Greek population of the island. Dr. Fazil Küçük in 1954 had already proposed Cyprus be divided in two at the 35° parallel.
Lindley Dan, from Notre Dame University, spotted the roots of intercommunal violence to different visions among the two communities of Cyprus (enosis for Greek Cypriots, taksim for Turkish Cypriots). Also, Lindlay wrote that "the merging of church, schools/education, and politics in divisive and nationalistic ways" had played a crucial role in creation of havoc in Cyprus' history. Attalides Michael also pointed to the opposing nationalisms as the cause of the Cyprus problem.
By the mid-1950's, the "Cyprus is Turkish" party, movement, and slogan gained force in both Cyprus and Turkey. In a 1954 editorial, Turkish Cypriot leader Dr. Fazil Kuchuk expressed the sentiment that the Turkish youth had grown up with the idea that "as soon as Great Britain leaves the island, it will be taken over by the Turks", and that "Turkey cannot tolerate otherwise". This perspective contributed to the willingness of Turkish Cypriots to align themselves with the British, who started recruiting Turkish Cypriots into the police force that patrolled Cyprus to fight EOKA, a Greek Cypriot nationalist organisation that sought to rid the island of British rule.
EOKA targeted colonial authorities, including police, but Georgios Grivas, the leader of EOKA, did not initially wish to open up a new front by fighting Turkish Cypriots and reassured them that EOKA would not harm their people. In 1956, some Turkish Cypriot policemen were killed by EOKA members and this provoked some intercommunal violence in the spring and summer, but these attacks on policemen were not motivated by the fact that they were Turkish Cypriots.
However, in January 1957, Grivas changed his policy as his forces in the mountains became increasingly pressured by the British Crown forces. In order to divert the attention of the Crown forces, EOKA members started to target Turkish Cypriot policemen intentionally in the towns, so that Turkish Cypriots would riot against the Greek Cypriots and the security forces would have to be diverted to the towns to restore order. The killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman on 19 January, when a power station was bombed, and the injury of three others, provoked three days of intercommunal violence in Nicosia. The two communities targeted each other in reprisals, at least one Greek Cypriot was killed and the British Army was deployed in the streets. Greek Cypriot stores were burned and their neighbourhoods attacked. Following the events, the Greek Cypriot leadership spread the propaganda that the riots had merely been an act of Turkish Cypriot aggression. Such events created chaos and drove the communities apart both in Cyprus and in Turkey.
On 22 October 1957 Sir Hugh Mackintosh Foot replaced Sir John Harding as the British Governor of Cyprus. Foot suggested five to seven years of self-government before any final decision. His plan rejected both enosis and taksim. The Turkish Cypriot response to this plan was a series of anti-British demonstrations in Nicosia on 27 and 28 January 1958 rejecting the proposed plan because the plan did not include partition. The British then withdrew the plan.
In 1957, Black Gang, a Turkish Cypriot pro-taksim paramilitary organisation, was formed to patrol a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the Tahtakale district of Nicosia, against activities of EOKA. The organisation later attempted to grow into a national scale, but failed to gain public support.
By 1958, signs of dissatisfaction with the British increased on both sides, with a group of Turkish Cypriots forming Volkan (later renamed to the Turkish Resistance Organisation) paramilitary group to promote partition and the annexation of Cyprus to Turkey as dictated by the Menderes plan. Volkan initially consisted of roughly 100 members, with the stated aim of raising awareness in Turkey of the Cyprus issue and courting military training and support for Turkish Cypriot fighters from the Turkish government.
In June 1958, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was expected to propose a plan to resolve the Cyprus issue. In light of the new development, the Turks rioted in Nicosia to promote the idea that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together and therefore any plan that did not include partition would not be viable. This violence was soon followed by bombing, Greek Cypriot deaths and looting of Greek Cypriot-owned shops and houses. Greek and Turkish Cypriots started to flee mixed population villages where they were a minority in search of safety. This was effectively the beginning of the segregation of the two communities. On 7 June 1958, a bomb exploded at the entrance of the Turkish Embassy in Cyprus. Following the bombing, Turkish Cypriots looted Greek Cypriot properties. On 26 June 1984, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, admitted on British channel ITV that the bomb was placed by the Turks themselves in order to create tension. On 9 January 1995, Rauf Denktaş repeated his claim to the famous Turkish newspaper Milliyet in Turkey.
The crisis reached a climax on 12 June 1958, when eight Greeks, out of an armed group of thirty five arrested by soldiers of the Royal Horse Guards on suspicion of preparing an attack on the Turkish quarter of Skylloura, were killed in a suspected attack by Turkish Cypriot locals, near the village of Geunyeli, having been ordered to walk back to their village of Kondemenos.
After the EOKA campaign had begun, the British government successfully began to turn the Cyprus issue from a British colonial problem into a Greek-Turkish issue. British diplomacy exerted backstage influence on the Adnan Menderes government, with the aim of making Turkey active in Cyprus. For the British, the attempt had a twofold objective. The EOKA campaign would be silenced as quickly as possible, and Turkish Cypriots would not side with Greek Cypriots against the British colonial claims over the island, which would thus remain under the British. The Turkish Cypriot leadership visited Menderes to discuss the Cyprus issue. When asked how the Turkish Cypriots should respond to the Greek Cypriot claim of enosis, Menderes replied: "You should go to the British foreign minister and request the status quo be prolonged, Cyprus to remain as a British colony". When the Turkish Cypriots visited the British Foreign Secretary and requested for Cyprus to remain a colony, he replied: "You should not be asking for colonialism at this day and age, you should be asking for Cyprus be returned to Turkey, its former owner".
As Turkish Cypriots began to look to Turkey for protection, Greek Cypriots soon understood that enosis was extremely unlikely. The Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios III, now set independence for the island as his objective.
Britain resolved to solve the dispute by creating an independent Cyprus. In 1959, all involved parties signed the Zurich Agreements: Britain, Turkey, Greece, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Makarios and Dr. Fazil Kucuk, respectively. The new constitution drew heavily on the ethnic composition of the island. The President would be a Greek Cypriot, and the Vice-President a Turkish Cypriot with an equal veto. The contribution to the public service would be set at a ratio of 70:30, and the Supreme Court would consist of an equal number of judges from both communities as well as an independent judge who was not Greek, Turkish or British. The Zurich Agreements were supplemented by a number of treaties. The Treaty of Guarantee stated that secession or union with any state was forbidden, and that Greece, Turkey and Britain would be given guarantor status to intervene if that was violated. The Treaty of Alliance allowed for two small Greek and Turkish military contingents to be stationed on the island, and the Treaty of Establishment gave Britain sovereignty over two bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia.
On 15 August 1960, the Colony of Cyprus became fully independent as the Republic of Cyprus. The new republic remained within the Commonwealth of Nations.
The new constitution brought dissatisfaction to Greek Cypriots, who felt it to be highly unjust for them for historical, demographic and contributional reasons. Although 80% of the island's population were Greek Cypriots and these indigenous people had lived on the island for thousands of years and paid 94% of taxes, the new constitution was giving the 17% of the population that was Turkish Cypriots, who paid 6% of taxes, around 30% of government jobs and 40% of national security jobs.
Within three years tensions between the two communities in administrative affairs began to show. In particular disputes over separate municipalities and taxation created a deadlock in government. A constitutional court ruled in 1963 Makarios had failed to uphold article 173 of the constitution which called for the establishment of separate municipalities for Turkish Cypriots. Makarios subsequently declared his intention to ignore the judgement, resulting in the West German judge resigning from his position. Makarios proposed thirteen amendments to the constitution, which would have had the effect of resolving most of the issues in the Greek Cypriot favour. Under the proposals, the President and Vice-President would lose their veto, the separate municipalities as sought after by the Turkish Cypriots would be abandoned, the need for separate majorities by both communities in passing legislation would be discarded and the civil service contribution would be set at actual population ratios (82:18) instead of the slightly higher figure for Turkish Cypriots.
The intention behind the amendments has long been called into question. The Akritas plan, written in the height of the constitutional dispute by the Greek Cypriot interior minister Polycarpos Georkadjis, called for the removal of undesirable elements of the constitution so as to allow power-sharing to work. The plan envisaged a swift retaliatory attack on Turkish Cypriot strongholds should Turkish Cypriots resort to violence to resist the measures, stating "In the event of a planned or staged Turkish attack, it is imperative to overcome it by force in the shortest possible time, because if we succeed in gaining command of the situation (in one or two days), no outside, intervention would be either justified or possible." Whether Makarios's proposals were part of the Akritas plan is unclear, however it remains that sentiment towards enosis had not completely disappeared with independence. Makarios described independence as "a step on the road to enosis".[31] Preparations for conflict were not entirely absent from Turkish Cypriots either, with right wing elements still believing taksim (partition) the best safeguard against enosis.
Greek Cypriots however believe the amendments were a necessity stemming from a perceived attempt by Turkish Cypriots to frustrate the working of government. Turkish Cypriots saw it as a means to reduce their status within the state from one of co-founder to that of minority, seeing it as a first step towards enosis. The security situation deteriorated rapidly.
Main articles: Bloody Christmas (1963) and Battle of Tillyria
An armed conflict was triggered after December 21, 1963, a period remembered by Turkish Cypriots as Bloody Christmas, when a Greek Cypriot policemen that had been called to help deal with a taxi driver refusing officers already on the scene access to check the identification documents of his customers, took out his gun upon arrival and shot and killed the taxi driver and his partner. Eric Solsten summarised the events as follows: "a Greek Cypriot police patrol, ostensibly checking identification documents, stopped a Turkish Cypriot couple on the edge of the Turkish quarter. A hostile crowd gathered, shots were fired, and two Turkish Cypriots were killed."
In the morning after the shooting, crowds gathered in protest in Northern Nicosia, likely encouraged by the TMT, without incident. On the evening of the 22nd, gunfire broke out, communication lines to the Turkish neighbourhoods were cut, and the Greek Cypriot police occupied the nearby airport. On the 23rd, a ceasefire was negotiated, but did not hold. Fighting, including automatic weapons fire, between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and militias increased in Nicosia and Larnaca. A force of Greek Cypriot irregulars led by Nikos Sampson entered the Nicosia suburb of Omorphita and engaged in heavy firing on armed, as well as by some accounts unarmed, Turkish Cypriots. The Omorphita clash has been described by Turkish Cypriots as a massacre, while this view has generally not been acknowledged by Greek Cypriots.
Further ceasefires were arranged between the two sides, but also failed. By Christmas Eve, the 24th, Britain, Greece, and Turkey had joined talks, with all sides calling for a truce. On Christmas day, Turkish fighter jets overflew Nicosia in a show of support. Finally it was agreed to allow a force of 2,700 British soldiers to help enforce a ceasefire. In the next days, a "buffer zone" was created in Nicosia, and a British officer marked a line on a map with green ink, separating the two sides of the city, which was the beginning of the "Green Line". Fighting continued across the island for the next several weeks.
In total 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots were killed during the violence. 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 103-109 villages fled and were displaced into enclaves and thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses were ransacked or completely destroyed.
Contemporary newspapers also reported on the forceful exodus of the Turkish Cypriots from their homes. According to The Times in 1964, threats, shootings and attempts of arson were committed against the Turkish Cypriots to force them out of their homes. The Daily Express wrote that "25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes". The Guardian reported a massacre of Turks at Limassol on 16 February 1964.
Turkey had by now readied its fleet and its fighter jets appeared over Nicosia. Turkey was dissuaded from direct involvement by the creation of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964. Despite the negotiated ceasefire in Nicosia, attacks on the Turkish Cypriot persisted, particularly in Limassol. Concerned about the possibility of a Turkish invasion, Makarios undertook the creation of a Greek Cypriot conscript-based army called the "National Guard". A general from Greece took charge of the army, whilst a further 20,000 well-equipped officers and men were smuggled from Greece into Cyprus. Turkey threatened to intervene once more, but was prevented by a strongly worded letter from the American President Lyndon B. Johnson, anxious to avoid a conflict between NATO allies Greece and Turkey at the height of the Cold War.
Turkish Cypriots had by now established an important bridgehead at Kokkina, provided with arms, volunteers and materials from Turkey and abroad. Seeing this incursion of foreign weapons and troops as a major threat, the Cypriot government invited George Grivas to return from Greece as commander of the Greek troops on the island and launch a major attack on the bridgehead. Turkey retaliated by dispatching its fighter jets to bomb Greek positions, causing Makarios to threaten an attack on every Turkish Cypriot village on the island if the bombings did not cease. The conflict had now drawn in Greece and Turkey, with both countries amassing troops on their Thracian borders. Efforts at mediation by Dean Acheson, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and UN-appointed mediator Galo Plaza had failed, all the while the division of the two communities becoming more apparent. Greek Cypriot forces were estimated at some 30,000, including the National Guard and the large contingent from Greece. Defending the Turkish Cypriot enclaves was a force of approximately 5,000 irregulars, led by a Turkish colonel, but lacking the equipment and organisation of the Greek forces.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1964, U Thant, reported the damage during the conflicts:
UNFICYP carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances; it shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish-Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting.
The situation worsened in 1967, when a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government of Greece, and began applying pressure on Makarios to achieve enosis. Makarios, not wishing to become part of a military dictatorship or trigger a Turkish invasion, began to distance himself from the goal of enosis. This caused tensions with the junta in Greece as well as George Grivas in Cyprus. Grivas's control over the National Guard and Greek contingent was seen as a threat to Makarios's position, who now feared a possible coup.[citation needed] The National Guard and Cyprus Police began patrolling the Turkish Cypriot enclaves of Ayios Theodoros and Kophinou, and on November 15 engaged in heavy fighting with the Turkish Cypriots.
By the time of his withdrawal 26 Turkish Cypriots had been killed. Turkey replied with an ultimatum demanding that Grivas be removed from the island, that the troops smuggled from Greece in excess of the limits of the Treaty of Alliance be removed, and that the economic blockades on the Turkish Cypriot enclaves be lifted. Grivas was recalled by the Athens Junta and the 12,000 Greek troops were withdrawn. Makarios now attempted to consolidate his position by reducing the number of National Guard troops, and by creating a paramilitary force loyal to Cypriot independence. In 1968, acknowledging that enosis was now all but impossible, Makarios stated, "A solution by necessity must be sought within the limits of what is feasible which does not always coincide with the limits of what is desirable."
After 1967 tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots subsided. Instead, the main source of tension on the island came from factions within the Greek Cypriot community. Although Makarios had effectively abandoned enosis in favour of an 'attainable solution', many others continued to believe that the only legitimate political aspiration for Greek Cypriots was union with Greece.
On his arrival, Grivas began by establishing a nationalist paramilitary group known as the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston B or EOKA-B), drawing comparisons with the EOKA struggle for enosis under the British colonial administration of the 1950s.
The military junta in Athens saw Makarios as an obstacle. Makarios's failure to disband the National Guard, whose officer class was dominated by mainland Greeks, had meant the junta had practical control over the Cypriot military establishment, leaving Makarios isolated and a vulnerable target.
During the first Turkish invasion, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus territory on 20 July 1974, invoking its rights under the Treaty of Guarantee. This expansion of Turkish-occupied zone violated International Law as well as the Charter of the United Nations. Turkish troops managed to capture 3% of the island which was accompanied by the burning of the Turkish Cypriot quarter, as well as the raping and killing of women and children. A temporary cease-fire followed which was mitigated by the UN Security Council. Subsequently, the Greek military Junta collapsed on July 23, 1974, and peace talks commenced in which a democratic government was installed. The Resolution 353 was broken after Turkey attacked a second time and managed to get a hold of 37% of Cyprus territory. The Island of Cyprus was appointed a Buffer Zone by the United Nations, which divided the island into two zones through the 'Green Line' and put an end to the Turkish invasion. Although Turkey announced that the occupied areas of Cyprus to be called the Federated Turkish State in 1975, it is not legitimised on a worldwide political scale. The United Nations called for the international recognition of independence for the Republic of Cyprus in the Security Council Resolution 367.
In the years after the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus one can observe a history of failed talks between the two parties. The 1983 declaration of the independent Turkish Republic of Cyprus resulted in a rise of inter-communal tensions and made it increasingly hard to find mutual understanding. With Cyprus' interest of a possible EU membership and a new UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1997 new hopes arose for a fresh start. International involvement from sides of the US and UK, wanting a solution to the Cyprus dispute prior to the EU accession led to political pressures for new talks. The believe that an accession without a solution would threaten Greek-Turkish relations and acknowledge the partition of the island would direct the coming negotiations.
Over the course of two years a concrete plan, the Annan plan was formulated. In 2004 the fifth version agreed upon from both sides and with the endorsement of Turkey, US, UK and EU then was presented to the public and was given a referendum in both Cypriot communities to assure the legitimisation of the resolution. The Turkish Cypriots voted with 65% for the plan, however the Greek Cypriots voted with a 76% majority against. The Annan plan contained multiple important topics. Firstly it established a confederation of two separate states called the United Cyprus Republic. Both communities would have autonomous states combined under one unified government. The members of parliament would be chosen according to the percentage in population numbers to ensure a just involvement from both communities. The paper proposed a demilitarisation of the island over the next years. Furthermore it agreed upon a number of 45000 Turkish settlers that could remain on the island. These settlers became a very important issue concerning peace talks. Originally the Turkish government encouraged Turks to settle in Cyprus providing transfer and property, to establish a counterpart to the Greek Cypriot population due to their 1 to 5 minority. With the economic situation many Turkish-Cypriot decided to leave the island, however their departure is made up by incoming Turkish settlers leaving the population ratio between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots stable. However all these points where criticised and as seen in the vote rejected mainly by the Greek Cypriots. These name the dissolution of the „Republic of Cyprus", economic consequences of a reunion and the remaining Turkish settlers as reason. Many claim that the plan was indeed drawing more from Turkish-Cypriot demands then Greek-Cypriot interests. Taking in consideration that the US wanted to keep Turkey as a strategic partner in future Middle Eastern conflicts.
A week after the failed referendum the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU. In multiple instances the EU tried to promote trade with Northern Cyprus but without internationally recognised ports this spiked a grand debate. Both side endure their intention of negotiations, however without the prospect of any new compromises or agreements the UN is unwilling to start the process again. Since 2004 negotiations took place in numbers but without any results, both sides are strongly holding on to their position without an agreeable solution in sight that would suit both parties.
Dhyana is my Baby
My Best Friend
Dhyana means;
Contemplation
Absorption
Meditation
She is my mentor
She helps me breath
She calms me
She the Source
Of my Life
She helps me
To be in contact
with the Nature
Of the Animal
To Learn how
Works her Life
Respect her Nature
I am Grateful to Her
To Love Me Has I Am
Even if I am not perfect
With her inconditional Love
She always come back Home to me
I tell Her everyday
I love you baby
With tears in my eyes
She doing well
She is now 11 years old
We are closer then ever
Having a very special nice
friendship;))
Je t'aime mon bébé ! XXX
Simone XXXX