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My love for Pilani birds seems to be increasing day by day!!!
Another bird captured through my lens .Metering the bird was quite difficult because of bright background.Anyways,got a decent result at last.
Have no idea what the name of bird is :-(
Have a nice day :-)
Press L and F11 to view large and on black!!!
4.5 stars – “This understated style of enhancement is a seamless fit with the gorgeous sketches and tongue-in-cheek humor… the storytelling is exceptional.” - Digital Storytime
“Young listeners will come away having learned more than they expected…" - Bulletin of Children's Book Reviews
How do African animals spread rumors?
What games do animals play?
Why do crocodiles have tears?
In this delightful, kid-friendly, super-fun app experience, African animals tell their stories in highly interactive and animated storybooks, as well as have their portraits available in original art watercolor style Painting Pages, Games, and Puzzles. Unique and playful animated illustrations and natural sounds make the animals come alive.
Follow the adventures of many of your favorite animals in the African savanna – Lion, Monkey, Elephant, Hippo, Turtle, Rhino, and many more.
Author and illustrator Alex Beard brings his love of exploration and painting to life with his signature animals in these charming stories. His watercolor drawings and stylized illustrations are unique.
Based on the award-winning trilogy of children’s books and narrated by the author and illustrator Alex Beard, Tales from the Watering Hole includes three storybooks.
Launching with “The Jungle Grapevine,” that tells the story of eight African animals who learn about the dangers of rumors through an outrageous game of telephone.
“The Jungle Grapevine” is followed by “Monkey See, Monkey Draw,” which tells the story of a troop of monkeys and an elephant who learn to paint and draw with their hands and feet in a tale about confronting fears and the discovery of creative expression, and “Crocodile's Tears,” which tells the story of a rhino and a tickbird as well as the endangered animals they encounter on a journey to discover why Crocodile is crying.
Notable Features include:
◆ Fun, interactive animations
◆ Unique, imaginative illustrations by the author, Alex Beard
◆ Storybooks featuring African animals
◆ Animals, birds, and insects that move, speak, and make natural sounds
◆ Wonderful animations and sound surprises to discover
◆ Funny voices for all the main animal characters
◆ Painting Pages use a watercolor style for coloring and drawing
◆ Puzzles have 9 difficulty levels
◆ Learn the names of African animals throughout the whole experience
◆ Match the animal game
◆ Discoverable animal scramble game (iPad only)
◆ Percentage of revenues will be donated to The Watering Hole Foundation, to preserve natural environments and species - wateringholefoundation.org
*****
About FatRedCouch
FatRedCouch delivers exciting interactive experiences for content creators that connect global audiences on multiple devices and platforms. We integrate innovative technologies with creative content and brand strategy to maximize audience reach and sales potential. We develop interactive applications for books, appisodes, and games that engage, delight, and immerse audiences in story and brand on a new level. fatredcouch.com
FatRedCouch is a proud member of Moms With Apps, a collaborative group of family-friendly developers with family-friendly apps.
IMO number : 9284647
Name of ship : BIT OKTANIA (since 01/04/2004)
Call Sign : PCAN
MMSI : 246694000
Gross tonnage : 9503 (since 01/06/2012)
DWT : 13602
Type of ship : Chemical Tanker (during 2002)
Year of build : 2004
Flag : Netherlands (since 01/03/2010)
We stayed at the City of Arts and Sciences from late afternoon till night time. There was a beautiful blue cast through twilight and then, about 8.00pm the lights came on. I forgot the tripod so it was a case of having a steady hand. A bit of noise in there but I'm glad I hung around - we had a few glasses of wine as well needless to say.
We decided to go for a city break rather than sun in Tenerife again this September. Other than a few days in the North East we haven’t been away since last March and wanted a change and hopefully some sun. The problem is getting flights from the north of England to the places we want to go to. We chose Valencia as we could fly from East Midlands – which was still a pain to get to as it involved the most notorious stretch of the M1 at five in the morning. In the end we had a fairly good journey, the new Ryanair business class pre-booked scheme worked quite well and bang on time as usual. It was dull when we landed with storms forecast all week, the sky was bright grey – the kiss of death to the photography I had in mind. I was full of cold and wishing I was at work. It did rain but it was overnight on our first night and didn't affect us. There has been a drought for eleven months apparently and it rained on our first day there! The forecast storms didn't materialise in Valencia but they got it elsewhere.
You May notice discrepancies in the spelling of some Spanish words or names, this is because Valencian is used on signs, in some guide books and maps. There are two languages in common use with distinct differences. There may also be genuine mistakes - it has been known!
Over the course of a Monday to Sunday week we covered 75 miles on foot and saw most of the best of Valencia – The City of Bell Towers. The Old City covers a pretty large area in a very confusing layout. There was a lot of referring to maps – even compass readings! – a first in a city for us. The problem with photography in Valencia is that most of the famous and attractive building are closely built around, some have poor quality housing built on to them. Most photographs have to be taken from an extreme angle looking up. There are no high points as it is pan flat, there are a small number of buildings where you can pay to go up on to the roof for a better view and we went up them – more than once!
The modern buildings of The City of Arts and Sciences – ( Ciutat de Las Arts I de les Ciencies ) are what the city has more recently become famous for, with tourists arriving by the coachload all day until late at night. They must be photographed millions of times a month. We went during the day and stayed till dark one evening, I gave it my best shot but a first time visit is always a compromise between ambition and realism, time dictates that we have to move on to the next destination. I travelled with a full size tripod – another first – I forgot to take it with me to TCoAaS! so It was time to wind up the ISO, again! Needless to say I never used the tripod.
On a day when rain was forecast but it stayed fine, albeit a bit dull, we went to the Bioparc north west of the city, a zoo by another name. There are many claims made for this place, were you can appear to walk alongside some very large animals, including, elephants, lions, giraffe, rhino, gorillas and many types of monkey to name a few. It is laid out in different geographical regions and there is very little between you and the animals, in some cases there is nothing, you enter the enclosure through a double door arrangement and the monkeys are around you. It gets rave reviews and we stayed for most of the day. The animals it has to be said gave the appearance of extreme boredom and frustration and I felt quite sorry for them.
The course of The River Turia was altered after a major flood in the 50’s. The new river runs west of the city flanked by a motorway. The old river, which is massive, deep and very wide between ancient walls, I can’t imagine how it flooded, has been turned into a park that is five miles long. There is an athletics track, football pitches, cycle paths, restaurants, numerous kids parks, ponds, fountains, loads of bridges, historic and modern. At the western end closest to the sea sits The City of Arts and Sciences – in the river bed. Where it meets the sea there is Valencia’s urban Formula One racetrack finishing in the massive marina built for The Americas Cup. The race track is in use as roadways complete with fully removable street furniture, kerbs, bollards, lights, islands and crossings, everything is just sat on the surface ready to be moved.
We found the beach almost by accident, we were desperate for food after putting in a lot of miles and the afternoon was ticking by. What a beach, 100’s of metres wide and stretching as far as the eye could see with a massive promenade. The hard thing was choosing, out of the dozens of restaurants, all next door to each other, all serving traditional Paella – rabbit and chicken – as well as seafood, we don’t eat seafood and it constituted 90% of the menu in most places. Every restaurant does a fixed price dish of the day, with a few choices, three courses and a drink. Some times this was our only meal besides making the most of the continental breakfast at the hotel. We had a fair few bar stops with the local wine being cheap and pleasant it would have been a shame not to, there would have been a one woman riot – or strike!
On our final day, a Sunday, we were out of bed and down for breakfast at 7.45 as usual, the place was deserted barring a waiter. We walked out of the door at 8.30 – in to the middle of a mass road race with many thousands of runners, one of a series that take place in Valencia – apparently! We struggled to find out the distance, possibly 10km. The finish was just around the corner so off we went with the camera gear, taking photos of random runners and groups. There was a TV crew filming it and some local celebrity (I think) commentating. Next we came across some sort of wandering religious and musical event. Some sort of ritual was played out over the course of Sunday morning in various locations, it involved catholic priests and religious buildings and another film crew. The Catholic tourists and locals were filling the (many) churches for Sunday mass. Amongst all of this we had seen men walking around in Arab style dress – the ones in black looked like the ones from ISIS currently beheading people – all carrying guns. A bit disconcerting. We assumed that there had been some sort of battle enactment. We were wrong, it hadn’t happened yet. A while later, about 11.30 we could hear banging, fireworks? No it was our friends with the guns. We were caught up in total mayhem, around 60 men randomly firing muskets with some sort of blank rounds, the noise, smoke and flames from the muzzles were incredible. We were about to climb the Torres de Serranos which is where, unbeknown to us, the grand, and deafening, finale was going to be. We could feel the blast in our faces on top of the tower. Yet again there was a film camera in attendance. I couldn’t get close ups but I got a good overview and shot my first video with the 5D, my first in 5 years of owning a DLSR with the capability. I usually use my phone ( I used my phone as well). Later in the day there was a bullfight taking place, the ring was almost next to our hotel, in the end we had other things to do and gave it a miss, it was certainly a busy Sunday in the city centre, whether it’s the norm or not I don’t know.
There is a tram system in Valencia but it goes from the port area into the newer part of the city on the north side, it wouldn’t be feasible to serve the historic old city really. A quick internet search told me that there are 55,000 university students in the city, a pretty big number. I think a lot of the campus is on the north side and served by the tram although there is a massive fleet of buses as well. There is a massive, very impressive market building , with 100’s of stalls that would make a photo project on its own, beautiful on the inside and out but very difficult to get decent photos of the exterior other than detail shots owing to the closeness of other buildings and the sheer size of it. Across town, another market has been beautifully renovated and is full of bars and restaurants and a bit of a destination in its own right.
A downside was the all too typical shafting by the taxi drivers who use every trick in the book to side step the official tariffs and rob you. The taxi from the airport had a “broken” meter and on the way home we were driven 22 km instead of the nine that is the actual distance. Some of them seem to view tourists as cash cows to be robbed at all costs. I emailed the Marriot hotel as they ordered the taxi, needless to say no answer from Marriot – they’ve had their money. We didn’t get the rip off treatment in the bars etc. that we experienced in Rome, prices are very fair on most things, certainly considering the city location.
All in all we had a good trip and can highly recommend Valencia.
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Enter the Dragon revolves around the three main characters. Lee, a man recruited by an agency to investigate a tournament hosted by Han, since they believe he has an Opium trade there. Roper and Williams are former army buddies since Vietnam and they enter the tournament due to different problems that they have. Roper is on the run from the Mafia due to his gambling debts, while Williams is harassed by racist police officers and defends himself from them and uses the car for his getaway. It is a deadly tournament that they will enter on an island. Lee's job is to get the other two out of there alive.
Slowly but surely the tugs towing the barges made their way through the large Hiram M. Chittenden locks.
A bit ironic that on the day we go to pick up large stack of books on photography from the library, I part ways with my D90 (so long, good friend). Although I guess now there is no better time to brush up on the academic side of things. First stop: The Hot Shoe Diaries. Already halfway through and it's awesome. Makes me want to buy a few more SB flashes, though!
The idea for this actually came from that very book, as Mr. McNally suggests blowing the highlights isn't always a bad thing. I'm not so sure it worked well here. The photo of the photo looks almost as if I performed some poor photoshop work to remove the background (I didn't).
Captured this Guitar image at Armadillo Enterprises in Tampa, Fl., while our on a field trip with our local Photography club. Thought this was a cool image of an artistic design. Loved the light and shadow...
Bit by bit I am reducing my A4 files with A6 and A7 files with pared down information, extracting the core information from those
articles and books, and writing it on A6 or A7 pieces of paper or maybe file a small, dense article as is ( a job for long winter evenings). The mini files use A7 paper, using the back of old correspondence cut down, and punched with standard hole punch.
There is more on organization tools on my website www.judyofthewoods.net
@designeour : Young Heart #Typeface by alit_design #type bit.ly/29gZqrH bit.ly/29g9eWt (via Twitter twitter.com/designeour/status/750389072586309632)
Bits and bobs
Pictures taken during exercising my hobby (electronics) and building/disassembling amplifiers and/or upgrading a record player tonearm and pre-amplifier. Anyway, a text was needed, to describe this lot, and here it is (the text and the lot, enjoy the pictures :)).
My videos are filmed with:
Tripod: Promediagear TR423: bit.ly/3hSdy2k
Gimbal: Promediagear GKJr: bit.ly/3hSdy2k
Canon R3: amzn.to/3Tnb220
Canon R5: amzn.to/3pU9GP3
The best lens covers: amzn.to/3HtQGQ5
SmallRig Camera Base Plate : amzn.to/3TnRTgq
Quick Release Plate: amzn.to/3wzxOu7
SmallRig V Mount Battery Plate: amzn.to/3KpGCIt
FXLION Nano ONE Battery: amzn.to/3e0N4d4
SmallRig 15mm Carbon Fiber Rod 12 inch: amzn.to/3pL1Ebf
SmallRig 15mm Long Lens Support: amzn.to/3TonaAb
Battery Cable: amzn.to/3Kns38x
Manfrotto Nitrotech Fluid Video Head 608: amzn.to/3PZcq8i
Atomos Ninja V+: amzn.to/3R5urmq
SmallRig Mini Follow Focus: amzn.to/3CzZXF2
Rode VideoMic Pro: amzn.to/3TgM04Z
IFOOTAGE Magic Arm: amzn.to/3RimH0C
Small Rig Matte Box: amzn.to/3KUYziw
Mic: amzn.to/3gDIy2a
Video fluid head: amzn.to/3sEnuOp
Videos: www.youtube.com/harrycollinsphotography
Calendars: www.createphotocalendars.com/Shop/harrycollinsphotography
Prints: www.etsy.com/shop/HarColPhotographs
Website: www.harrycollinsphoto.com
TikTok: @HarryCollinsPhotography
Instagram: @harrycollinsphotography
I use Topaz Denoise on all of my photos: topazlabs.com/ref/519/
Assemble Borg designer Yasuhiro Nightow is a Takara SF Land fan so it's worth scrutinising his designs for nods to the classic lines that inspired him. For instance, this particular look for the Nexus figure could be seen as an updated Cybercop design. The chin, massive scowl and chest piece seem to be a tip of the hat to Lucifer Bit while the ear-wings are reminiscent of Mercury Bit.
The Cybercop figures never really got the recognition they deserved back then. They were superbly-articulated, the accessories were fantastic (and this being a Takara line, there naturally was a drill) and there was even a slick vehicle. If they look fairly unimpressive 27 years later, you need only look at the competition to appreciate just how outstanding they were at the time.
Cybercop was later repackaged and sold in the US as ZAP Power Force but it seemed to have made no impact whatsoever. That really was typical of Takara: great action figures coupled with mediocre marketing.
But it really says a lot that another generation of toy designers are taking inspiration from those old designs. The Diaclone toys may have less cachet than their Transformers counterparts but with fans like Shogo Hasui around, it's no surprise there's going to be an update of Diabattles thirty years later.
8-bit'n the Commodore 64 logo.
This is where it all really started. Routinely swapping graphic and sound demos on 5 1/4 floppies with foreign penfriends who had access to the very latest in visual and audio demonstrations. The Amiga took the demo to another level.
It was an epic time to be a teenager.
2022-09-10 Waiting for my tire to be fixed at Canada Tire on Grandview on a half sunny not too warm late summer day Sony RX10IV
SET 2 – Oxford Kroger, Post-Expansion
My shot of this wall blurred just a little bit in my attempt to snap it quickly, but even still you get the gist: this wall is full of local art pieces, very well done and depicting landmarks, scenes, and famous folks from both Oxford and Ole Miss, as well as two quotes from William Faulkner. Even absent the insane amount of local flair this store has, Kroger has made it a point to showcase artwork or murals in each of its new stores, like we saw back in Hernando. This almost seems to be an industry-wide thing at this point, actually, given that numerous Walmart remodels have similarly brought along murals (Southaven, Hernando, Ridgeland, etc.) as has the Horn Lake Target remodel (spoilers!). Really glad to see that sort of thing taking hold :)
(c) 2024 Retail Retell
These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)
A warm and sunny Sunday, so we went to Richmond Beach Park and happened to find a particularly high high tide. The waves were washing various bits of driftwood and flotsam around. The beach (more rocky than sandy) is littered with driftwood, but the waves usually don't come high enough to start moving them around much. Even this high tide was only doing a bit of flotsam arranging. Puget Sound was pretty calm and the waves small, and the really big driftwood logs on the upper beach would take a major storm to move around. Still it was cool to see this high tide -- an interesting contrast with the low low tides I've happened upon recently. I ought to look up and print out tide information so I know when the more extreme tides will be happening.
I just checked the tide info online and it looks like we were at the beach at the peak of the high tide, which was +11 feet. I'm not exactly sure what the average high tide is around here, but I think it is quite a bit less than that. (later note: I tried to find out if this was an unusually high tide or not, but got lost in tidal terminology and differing datums -- mean high water MHW, mean high high water MHHW, mean low water MLW, mean low low water MLLW, mean this, mean that. It appears, I think, that this high tide was not unusually high for a "high high tide" (which occur about once a day when the moon is right). Also, I thought +11 feet seemed like a lot, but I assumed it meant +11 from "sea level", but apparently they measure from "mean low low water", which explains why the tide tables almost always give positive values for both high and low tide.)
Being a nice weekend afternoon, there were lots of people at the beach here. I watched a group of three young teen kids dare each other to go into the water. Two of them did wade in and do quick dives underwater before running out and shrieking about how cold it was as if they were in great pain. Then they would dare each other again and do back in for another reluctant-but-playful soaking and another shrieking run back to towels and a little fire they had going. The temperature of Puget Sound's coastal water is currently about 47 F (8 C).
I should have set the zipper in just a bit higher. I don't know why I'm so reluctant to make garments with buttonholes because this buttonhole was a breeze. I luckily had a coordinating button in my spare button stash. I was tempted to use a round faux pearl button, but realized a flat button is necessary if I wanted to wear a belt.
Blogged about here.
Poor villagers collect scrap metal and trek to Kumasi to sell it at the Magazine area where the scrap is melted down and recycled. Every little bit counts, and piles like this were accumulated by the use of small handheld magnets.
Not my Hobby (mine is very obvious) but my husbands, anything ships or Titanic, he was at one time very obsessive, now his new love is Hi-Fi, he is upping the stakes just a weee big bit.
A great bit of wall art, Merchant Street, Edinburgh #wallart #wallartist #muralart #muralartists #edinburgh #edinburgh_snapshots #edinburghstreetphotography #wallartedinburgh #photography #aerlingus #airline #airlineadvertising #billboard
A 5 hour late eastbound Empire Builder with a Charger locomotive in the lead spot, passes by me between Fargo and Harwood ND.
October 21st 2022
Bits and pieces of ephemera, some mail art I'd made last February, a photo of my daughter. Journaling with a white sigma pen and a blue gel pen. Love the green masking tape!
HDR helps a bit, but most of the color magic here is thanks to magic hour.
My current gear:
Lenses: 14mm 24mm 16-35mm 50mm 70-200mm 100mm 400mm
Lee 105 adapter for attaching the 105mm circular polarizer to the front of the Lee filter holder
Various Lee adapter rings for attaching the back of the Lee filter holder to different lenses
Universal lens caps to cover lens when they have the back adapter ring in place