View allAll Photos Tagged digging
Echidna, an Australian monotreme which lays an egg in its pouch. The egg hatches & the baby stays in the pouch until it has spines. They live on termites & ants.
Taken at Shoalhaven Zoo, Nowra. A great place to visit
Adjectives to Inspire- spiky
This is what happens when it rains everyday. Because it's so wet, damp and muddy now, I'm predicting a dry summer. By August, I'll be digging through dust.
Episode 2: mechanical jam
The Mamiya 7 (II) is reputably the most advanced Texas Leica ever made, and it is likely to take its place in camera history as the last of its kind. In many ways (not every) it’s a premium crafted piece of photo equipment. But nothing is made to last and both electronics and mechanics are prone to failure, sooner or later.
One beautiful day I put on the 65 mm (no link with the previous post btw), released the light shield curtain, made my shot and cocked the shutter again. A normal sequence of actions using this camera.
But when I tried removing the lens I wasn’t able to bring the curtain in front of the film anymore, and not entirely unexpected the lens release button couldn’t be pressed either. The camera system was totally jammed. The film advance lever on the other hand could be wound endlessly without releasing the shutter, which never got tensioned in the first place.
I wanted to save the exposures that were already made, so I took the camera to a dark room, put on my white gloves, opened the back cover and removed the roll of film. It crossed my mind the last time I did something in complete darkness must have been well over 10 years ago … with my clothes on that is. Anyway, once the back cover was open I hoped I could get something moving, but alas.
It wasn’t too difficult though to realize that this had nothing to do with electronics. Obviously this was all about some sort of a mechanical obstruction. So I decided to take off the lower cover by simply removing the 6 screws holding it in place. There is no need to remove other parts prior to this, so it’s child’s play getting under the hood. The picture above is what you get to see.
When cocking the shutter, a little pen at the bottom of the camera (indicated here above as ’shutter pen') is pulled in, making room for the light shield curtain system to be closed and the lens release button to be pressed. But in this case the pen got stuck by a lever that is supposed to get behind the pen after the shutter has gone off. As long as the shutter stays released and the pen is out, the curtain can’t be closed and the lens can’t be removed. That’s how it is supposed to work. Only now, the lever got in this inexplicable position preventing the shutter pen to retract, blocking everything but the film advance lever. It only required a little manual help to get the pen back in, et voilà … So it only took a couple of minutes to understand what was happening, and in seconds everything was back in place. It probably saved me a couple of hundred euros otherwise spent on another service intervention.
It still puzzles me how it could come to this, but at least I know now the mechanics of the light shield curtain are pretty easy to get access to - without taking any risk - and they’re even easier to fix,
if you’re lucky.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Women laying drainage pipe during airfield construction in Esat Anglia. This photo appeared in the 13 September 1941 issue of The Sphere.
Sometimes you can get so deeply into something you love, that it almost consumes you.
As always, thanks very much for all of your kind comments and favorites. They are greatly appreciated!
The heavy snow that has come lately has covered the bales with quite a heavy blanket. It makes reaching them and loosen them rather trublesome. It often requires all the power that are in the tractor and its hydraulic systems.
On the other side it covers them from the cold and keeps them from freezing.
Defaced sign at the side sidewalk entrance to the Mount Pleasant cemetery. Thought it was a grave digger warning sign. crazy shit. strange sign, Toronto Canada. Monday