“A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.”

— Zen Shin —

"Like wildflowers; You must allow yourself to grow in all the places people thought you never would."

— E.V. —

♫ TUNE ♫

"Blossom"

A frozen heart beat under the snow

I've been waiting, ready to grow

Shivering and weathering storms

Dreaming of some other place warm

While my roots hid deeper inside

And my leaves stay bundled up tight

I felt my faith get bigger than life

Not only did I survive...

I learned to blossom

I learned to blossom, finding sunlight in the grey

Knowing I will be okay

I learned to blossom, finding sunlight in the grey

Through a lifetime with no rain

I'll blossom

Wilted voices ghostly in wind

Whispering "this could be the end"

Why are they forgetting me not?

Can't they see I'm hurting enough?

While my roots hid deeper inside

And my leaves stay bundled up tight

I felt my faith get bigger than life

Not only did I survive...

I learned to blossom

I learned to blossom, finding sunlight in the grey

Knowing I will be okay

I learned to blossom, finding sunlight in the grey

Through a lifetime with no rain

I'll blossom

I learned to blossom

I learned to blossom, finding sunlight in the grey

Knowing I will be okay

I learned to blossom, finding sunlight in the grey

Through a lifetime with no rain

I'll blossom

And I'll bloom

And I'll bloom

And I'll bloom

Hey, hey, hey, hey

💖💖 In advance I want to thank you all for your always kindness and support. Please Know that I appreciate each one of you very much for taking the time to look at my pictures. You all mean a lot to me, you make Flickr a lovely place to be and to share pictures. Huge, huge hugs, peace and lots of love to you all💖

Competing for the title of champion of the ministry of silly walks competition! lol

Irises compete with new spring weeds along a fence line in Coloma. My money is on the weeds. They play the long game.

A block away from this scene James Marshall discovered gold along the American River, setting off one the greatest migrations of people in history.

Happy Fence Friday everyone.

Coloma CA

This is the Rose from my garden that I promised yesterday, to post today. It is competing with the yellow dahlia but will lose out for longevity as the dahlias stay longer. Still, it’s not bad for the middle of November!

This cowgirl is 72 years old and still competing in barrel racing at the Russian River Rodeo. Looking closely, it appears that the horse is blind in its left eye.

Competing with the Dlugi Targ as the major tourist draw for the city is the riverbank of the Matlawa River. Alas at the moment there is a huge amount of regeneration work ongoing so the West Bank isn’t seen at its best.

The two key subjects here are the Zuraw (the Crane) which dates back to the 15th century. It was hand powered, the largest such example in Europe and capable of lifting 2 tonne (I thought it might have been more than that). At the end of WW2 it was blown up, but has since been rebuilt, like much of Gdansk.

Also seen at the other side on the photo is the MV Soldek, a coal and ore freighter which holds the distinction of being the first cargo boat of note built in Poland after the conclusion of WW2.

Frankfurt skyline vs. plantains on the southern bank of the river Main.

To compete for money prizes, you have to ride the Bronco for a minimum of 8 seconds and then be judged on your performance. This cowboy stayed on for well over 8 seconds.

Short eared owl out hunting

Competing with some ivory drapes, this beech stands out with the remains of its coppery leaves. Taken at Brush Hill Nature Reserve, Whiteleaf, Buckinghamshire.

a flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. it just blooms.

♬ girl, just let me buy you flowers ♬

[SHIFUKU] - Tweed look @ Cupid inc.

♡ taken @ Zaanse Schans

Two grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) competing for space on a Norfolk beach

Competing for the light.

Infrared 720

Tree tops above Chapel Common in the South Downs National Park, England

Multi-colour Ranunculus.

COMPETING WITH THE GRANDDAUGHTER?

After trying for a month, I finally got an Echeveria flower and its parent in the same frame. The flower can be ten inches to eight feet from home base. This insures that when the flowers set seed, they will not compete against the parent plant. It works: no other flower or plant is as numerous at Ruth Bancroft Garden than the Echeveria agavoides.

Compete

Maniola jurtina

Une myrtil et une abeille en compétition pour une knautie

Canton de Neuchâtel, Suisse

A meadow brown and a bee, competing for a knautia...

Canton Neuchatel, Switzerland

(competing ideologies)

I can now continue to reveal the competing images from the 2021 Sandwich Fair Competition.

These images continue the series from the Sandwich Fair, the biggest and the last county fair in the state of Illinois. Known simply as "The Fair" by locals, it was started in 1888 and is the oldest continually-operated county fair in Illinois as well.

Held the week after Labor Day, the Sandwich Fair can draw tens of thousands of visitors per day and is a photographer's delight.

It is the reason why my photography club, the Sandwich Photographic Society exists. Formed in 1986 to document every aspect of the 100th Sandwich Fair in 1987, SPS is now a Chicago Area Camera Club Association certified club.

SPS sponsors a "Sandwich Fair Challenge" every year a themed photographic competition open to all that consists of 10-15 categories with the only criteria being that all images need to be taken at the current year's Fair. Many of the images featured in this series were taken to fit these categories.

This image is the front grill ove an Oliver tractor, one of the many vintage tractor brands that can be found in the antique tractor display.

2021 Category: Details

For more information on the Sandwich Fair, visit their website at www.sandwichfair.com/.

Red kites (Milvus milvus) scrapping for food

David Piper competed in the Formula One World Championship in 1959, and then went on to race sports cars when he lost interest in single seaters. From 1962 until 1970, he often competed in his own cars at sports car events, incluidng 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 12 Hours of Sebring.

Perhaps most famous for racing a multitude of Ferrari's, including the 250 GTO, 250 LM and the 512S, he also competed using his own Porsche 917K, and was involved in the filming of the Steve McQueen film Le Mans, where he crashed the 917K and lost part of his leg.

He also competed using the Lola T70 seen here with the Sandeman sponsorship livery and its original British Petroleum Green colour (the colour is impregnated into the bodywork itself). This Lola is chassis number SL76/150, delivered new to the David Piper Autoracing Modena team on the 7th March 1969, and was fitted with a 5ltr Bartz Chevrolet engine.

David Piper described the Lola as "such good value for a long distance sports racing coupe at that time. It was a big step forward in all areas over the Ford GT40 against which it was measured. The car was comfortable and east to drive with no vices at all."

________________________________

Dave Adams Automotive Images

Competing to get to food

acrylic on paper Cornwall 450 g/m²

cm 12x20.5

Two major players competing for traffic in the viable transportation corridor that is the Columbia River Gorge momentarily roll past one another on the river's Washington banks at Dallesport in a side-by-side appearance made possible by some unbelievable luck. The 11,249 foot snow-capped peak of Mt. Hood looks down at eastbound garbage traversing both their respective playing fields as a 60-car H INBROO1 26A, fresh out of the siding following a meet with a Pasco to Longview freight, hustles on rails above while a much slower "Crown Point" tug painstakingly pushes its short barge toward the locks at The Dalles Dam in this region's never-ending "Dash for Trash." BNSF collects garbage from terminals all throughout the Pacific Northwest via a handful of local jobs that shuttle the loaded containers of waste to yards at both Interbay and Everett where several of these unit trash trains per day are assembled for forwarding to a landfill site at Republic Services in Roosevelt, WA. These moves closely resemble your normal intermodal trains, however with a rather distinct and unpleasant odor attached with them. Upon arrival, the containers are removed from their railcars and loaded onto trucks where rubber wheels bring the garbage its last few miles uphill to Republic's large dump site, which has the capacity for over 120 million tons of trash, fourth largest of its kind in the United States. Empties are then loaded back onto a waiting train and promptly sent back west to the cities for another load of stinky cargo, continuing the cycle. Union Pacific runs almost an identical operation of their own for Waste Management on the Oregon side of the river to and from a dump site near the town Arlington.

Some of railroad's EMD SD75Ms that often run these trash trains would've been the icing on the cake for this shot, but hard to complain here.

www.railpictures.net/photo/840025

Kingsburg, Ca.

This was shot at Brookgreen Gardens, near Murell's Inlet, South Carolina, as was a very similar image posted in late 2019 or so. This is a brick walkway, shadowed by the lattice structure above it and the trees above that. What I like here is the way the different patterns compete for my attention, making me feel a bit nuttier than usual: the virtually black shadow, the bricks and their different types and colors, and the variable colors of sunlight on the bricks caused by trees overhead letting different amounts of sunlight through. Just as I manage to focus on one pattern, another grabs my attention and the former is lost.

The history of Brookgreen Gardens is pretty interesting. Anna Hyatt Huntington was among New York City's most prominent sculptors in the early 20th century, when female artists generally garnered little respect. With her husband, Archer Huntington, they bought four old plantations around 1929, totaling over 9,000 acres, between the Waccamaw River and the Atlantic coast, in order to showcase her sculptures. Over time, they acquired works by a few dozen other American figurative sculptors, with a total of some 1400 works. The sculpture garden takes up about 550 acres; there is also a zoo, and several nature trails. For me, the gardens were a little more interesting than the sculpture, but enjoying it all together was pretty wonderful. The coastal areas have been leased to the state of North Carolina, forming Huntington Beach State Park. If you ever get down that way, check it out; otherwise, Google it. (They're not paying me anything for this brief review.)

A Mute Swan shows why this introduced species is able to successfully compete with the native Trumpeter Swan.

In the Humber Bay area of Toronto, (European) Mute Swans are increasing common, while Trumpeter Swans are less frequently seen. So I was delighted to come across a flock of 15 to 20 Trumpeter Swans in a sheltered lagoon in Humber Bay Park East.

By the early 20th century, Trumpeter Swans, which are native to North America, had almost been wiped out. Careful reintroductions by wildlife agencies and the Trumpeter Swan Society gradually restored the North American wild population to over 46,000 birds by 2010.

The heaviest living bird native to North America. It is one of the heaviest living birds or animals capable of flight, and, in terms of average mass, the heaviest flying bird in the world.

In Southern Ontario, the Trumpeter Swan competes for habitat with the aggressive, introduced Mute Swan.

I saw this at play, as a single Mute Swan swam into the area where the flock of Trumpeters Swans were feeding, and proceeded to chase the other birds.

sodium strret light and moon over Calder riverfront

With the moonlight over my shoulder highlighting the rocks in the foreground the predawn glow made for interesting lighting overall ...

Pentax K1 w DFA15-30/2.8

ISO400 f/8 30s (+1.7ev - sometimes the light meter struggles with the ultra wide lens in competing conditions).

Two frames raw developed in DxO PhotoLab 6, stacked/aligned in Affinity Photo 2, luminosity blended in ON1 Photo Raw 2023, colour graded in Color Efex Pro 5 and finished off back in PhotoLab.

The used App Hypocam has a few Filters preinstalled and here I used the Filter HC-01.

About the series

I was in Berlin for a few days and of course I wanted to shoot some Photos. My normal Camera was a little too big and unhandy for my business-trip and so I gave a Chance to my smartphone (Xiaomi Redmi Note 11) and a free B&W-App called “Hypocam”. I would like to share a few impressions, but it will not be a detailed test of the smartphone-camera or the software. For me it was more about the question: can my Smartphone compete with my normal Camera? And can I create a nice & appealing b&w-Series with this equipment?

I will try to answer it primarily by showing the final results and I want to add only a little Text to every Photo. I hope you like the photos and if you want to leave a comment: What experiences have you had so far? Can a smartphone compete with or even replace expensive equipment in some situations?

British Short Track Championships, Nottingham UK

Competative to the end. They say the spirit never leaves you.

Honiton, Devon, UK.

Rangers Football Club is a professional football club in Glasgow, Scotland. The team competes in the Scottish Premiership, the top division of Scottish football. The club is often referred to as Glasgow Rangers, though this has never been its official name. The fourth-oldest football club in Scotland, Rangers was founded by four teenage boys as they walked through West End Park (now Kelvingrove Park), in March 1872, where they discussed the idea of forming a football club, and played its first match against the now-defunct Callander at the Fleshers' Haugh area of Glasgow Green in May of the same year. Rangers' home ground, Ibrox Stadium, designed by stadium architect Archibald Leitch and opened in 1929, is a Category B listed building and Scotland's third-largest football stadium. The club has always played in royal blue shirts.

Rangers have won the Scottish League title 55 times, the Scottish Cup 34 times, the Scottish League Cup a record 28 times and the domestic treble on seven occasions. Rangers won the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1972 after being losing finalists twice, in 1961 (the first British club to reach a UEFA tournament final) and 1967. The club has lost a further two European finals, the UEFA Cup final in 2008 and the UEFA Europa League final in 2022. By number of trophies won, Rangers are one of the most successful clubs in the world.

Rangers has a long-standing rivalry with Celtic, the two Glasgow clubs being collectively known as the Old Firm, considered one of the world's biggest football derbies. The rivalry is linked to sectarianism in Glasgow, with Rangers and its fanbase being associated with Protestantism and British unionism. Rangers had a policy from the First World War until the late 1980s of refusing to employ Catholic players and staff. With more than 600 Rangers supporters' clubs in 35 countries worldwide, Rangers has one of the largest fanbases in world football. The club holds the record for the largest travelling support in football history, when an estimated 200,000 Rangers fans arrived in the city of Manchester for the 2008 UEFA Cup final. An estimated 100,000 fans arrived in Seville for the 2022 UEFA Europa League final.

One of the eleven original members of the Scottish Football League, Rangers remained in the top division continuously until a financial crisis during the 2011–12 season saw the club enter administration and the original company liquidated with the assets moved to a new company structure. The club was accepted as an associate member of the Scottish Football League and placed in the fourth tier of the Scottish football league system in time for the start of the following season. Rangers then won three promotions in four years, returning to the Premiership for the start of the 2016–17 season; in their climb through the Scottish lower divisions, Rangers became the only club in Scotland to have won every domestic trophy. In 2020–21 Rangers won their first Scottish championship in ten years, a then world record fifty-fifth league win which also stopped rivals Celtic's quest to break the domestic record of nine titles in a row.

Kayak at speed

Trish is competing in a contest with the magazine Max Muscle. At one time she was over 240 lbs and doctors told her the only way for her to lose the weight and be healthy again, was with surgery. Well, she did it on her own! The contest is a celebration of all the hard work put in to get her back to a healthy state of body and mind.

shes proof that hard work, dedication, and determination can all pay off.

you also may notice ive put my JT logo in the corner, with the new flickr changes i need to protect my work alittle

Strobist: EX 150 into softbox cam left high, EX 150 bare bulb far cam left, AB through a beautydish above back cam left for hair and spotlighting triggered via PW's