View allAll Photos Tagged foreign
I manually focused this shot using my 30 year old Olympus Lens.
Details: Olympus OM-System G.Zuiko Auto-S 55 mm f/ 1.2 (with radioactive thorium coating)
Used an lens mount/adapter on an Olympus Pen E-PL1.
Ed ecco qua, un'altra recinzione.... un altro venerdì è arrivato, così come l'autunno. Tempo veramente infame oggi! Pioggia e freddo. E voglia di stare al calduccio in casa.
Comunque, buon venerdì a tutti e HFF!!!!
And here, another fence .... another Friday has arrived, as well as the fall. A really infamous weather today! Rain and cold. And longing to keep warm in the house.
Anyway, happy Friday and HFF!!!
"The East Block (officially the Eastern Departmental Building; French: Édifice administratif de l'est) is one of the three buildings on Canada's Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Ontario, containing offices for parliamentarians, as well as some preserved pre-Confederation spaces.
Built in the Victorian High Gothic style, the East Block is, along with the Library of Parliament, one of only two buildings on Parliament Hill to have survived mostly intact since original construction. Though not as renowned as the Centre Block of parliament, the East Block formerly appeared on the face of the Journey Series design of the Canadian hundred-dollar bill. The East Block is open to the public for tours in July and August.
Designed by Thomas Stent and Augustus Laver, the East Block is an asymmetrical structure built in the Victorian High Gothic style, with load bearing masonry walls— being nearly 0.9 m (3 ft) thick at the ground level, expanding to 2.1 m (7 ft) thick at the base of the main tower. These are all clad in a rustic Nepean sandstone exterior and dressed stone trim around windows and other edges, as well as displaying a multitude of stone carvings, including gargoyles, grotesques, and friezes, keeping with the style of the rest of the parliamentary complex.
This detail continues on the interior of the East Block, where emblems, such as wheat sheaves, were carved in stone originally to indicate the various government departments housed nearby. The level of quality and luxury of the offices initially indicated the status of the inhabitant: large, wood panelled chambers with marble fireplaces and richly decorated plaster ceilings served for ministers of the Crown; intricate, but somewhat less detailed cornices were sufficient for senior bureaucrats; and basic, machine-made woodwork and concrete fireplace mantles filled rooms set aside for clerks. Though much of the original decor has been retained or restored, the spaces have been reorganized so that the East Block now houses, as well as ministers, members of parliament, senators, and parliamentary administrators. Corridors and entranceways are also lit by windows filled with stained glass, and contemporary adaptations of the original gas fixtures adorn the walls. Beneath the decor stand 0.6 m (2 ft) wide, double-wythe masonry partitions with a rubble fill core, and concrete floors more than 0.3 m (1 ft) thick.
The main historic spaces in the East Block are restored to reflect the period around 1872. The former office of the Governor General of Canada contains its original furnishings, and the woodwork, fireplace, and plasterwork are finished as they would have been just a decade after Confederation. The office that had been occupied by Sir John A. Macdonald contains a blue-grey Arnprior marble mantle, and the Prime Minister's furniture occupies the room. The previous Queen's Privy Council for Canada chamber holds a reproduction of the original table made at Upper Canada Village, above which hangs the same chandelier that hung there before the Second World War.
Parliament Hill (French: Colline du Parlement), colloquially known as The Hill, is an area of Crown land on the southern bank of the Ottawa River that houses the Parliament of Canada in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It accommodates a suite of Gothic revival buildings whose architectural elements were chosen to evoke the history of parliamentary democracy. Parliament Hill attracts approximately three million visitors each year. The Parliamentary Protective Service is responsible for law enforcement on Parliament Hill and in the parliamentary precinct, while the National Capital Commission is responsible for maintaining the nine-hectare (22-acre) area of the grounds.
Development of the area, which in the 18th and early 19th centuries was the site of a military base, into a governmental precinct began in 1859 after Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the capital of the Province of Canada. Following several extensions to the Parliament and departmental buildings, and a fire in 1916 that destroyed the Centre Block, Parliament Hill took on its present form with the completion of the Peace Tower in 1927. In 1976, the Parliament Buildings and the grounds of Parliament Hill were designated as National Historic Sites of Canada. Since 2002, an extensive $3 billion renovation-and-rehabilitation project has been underway throughout the precinct's buildings that is expected to be completed after 2028.
Ottawa (/ˈɒtəwə/, /ˈɒtəwɑː/; Canadian French: [ɔtawɑ]) is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core of the Ottawa–Gatineau census metropolitan area (CMA) and the National Capital Region (NCR). As of 2021, Ottawa had a city population of 1,017,449 and a metropolitan population of 1,488,307, making it the fourth-largest city and fourth-largest metropolitan area in Canada.
Ottawa is the political centre of Canada and the headquarters of the federal government. The city houses numerous foreign embassies, key buildings, organizations, and institutions of Canada's government; these include the Parliament of Canada, the Supreme Court, the residence of Canada's viceroy, and Office of the Prime Minister.
Founded in 1826 as Bytown, and incorporated as Ottawa in 1855, its original boundaries were expanded through numerous annexations and were ultimately replaced by a new city incorporation and amalgamation in 2001. The municipal government of Ottawa is established and governed by the City of Ottawa Act of the Government of Ontario. It has an elected city council across 24 wards and a mayor elected city-wide.
Ottawa has the highest proportion of university-educated residents among Canadian cities and is home to several colleges and universities, research and cultural institutions, including the University of Ottawa, Carleton University, Algonquin College, Collège La Cité, the National Arts Centre, the National Gallery of Canada; and numerous national museums, monuments, and historic sites. It is one of the most visited cities in Canada, with over 11 million visitors annually contributing more than $2.2B to the city's economy." - info from Wikipedia.
Late June to early July, 2024 I did my 4th major cycling tour. I cycled from Ottawa to London, Ontario on a convoluted route that passed by Niagara Falls. during this journey I cycled 1,876.26 km and took 21,413 photos. As with my other tours a major focus was old architecture.
Find me on Instagram.
Feel free to make a donation if you appreciate my photos.
Popped up to Dunstanburgh Castle to give the new Samyang 14mm f2.8 a run out.
I parked at Dunstan Stead and walked towards the castle along the coast line.
I noticed the Halo effect from the moon so popped the camera out to take a couple of shots!
Still need to sort my focusing out as it could have been sharper...
ISO 800
f2.8
4s
Canon 5d3
Samyang 14mm f2.8
Follow me on Twitter EdBookless
One of the greats of British gardening, Beth Chatto OBE has entered the realm of national treasuredom. Plants-woman, designer, author, 10-time gold-medal winner at Chelsea, holder of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Victoria Medal of Honour and, of course, the owner of the celebrated Beth Chatto Gardens at Elmstead Market, near Colchester, in Essex - her horticultural skills seem boundless. With the concept of “right plant, right place” – in other words, put a plant in conditions close to its natural habitat and it will thrive without help – running as a thread throughout her career, she has inspired a generation of gardeners to take their lead from nature.
The garden has been the inspiration for many of her influential books, including The Dry Garden (1978), The Damp Garden (1992) and Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden (2000). It was created on land that was previously part of a fruit farm, owned by her late husband, Andrew, 14 years her senior, whom she married in 1943. “We met during the war,” she says. “I was a schoolgirl of about 17, considering going to college.”
A scholarly man, who died in 1999 after suffering from emphysema for 25 years, Andrew devoted much of his life to research into plant habitats. Chatto says it was he who inspired her interest in gardening and refers to him frequently, modestly deferring to his superior knowledge. “He’s such an important influence in my life,” she says. “My parents were keen, but they had a conventional garden, using mostly cultivars.”
The couple lived initially in his parents’ in Colchester, but in the late 1950s moved to a modernist house they’d built on the edge of the farm – where Chatto still lives today. Even inside, the garden is a constant presence. Large windows frame views and vignettes of the planting on every side and invite a tapestry of textures, colours and shapes into the house.
Chatto credits her husband almost entirely for her success. “My two daughters were teenagers before I began to think about making a business,” she says. “Andrew had looked after us and given me the security and freedom to experiment.” Her husband’s failing health and the trials of running a fruit farm concentrated her mind on developing the garden commercially, though what we see today took time to emerge.
“For the first seven or eight years, much of the land was a wilderness,” she recalls. Yet there were assets, too, not least a rare natural water source in the drought-prone east of Essex, where rainfall can be as little as 20in a year. “There were a few fine 300-year-old oaks and a spring-fed ditch ran through the hollow.” Today, the ornamental gardens cover about five acres; a further 10 are occupied by the nursery, which opened in 1967, and working areas.
Finding water was not the only challenge. “There was land that was so dry, the native weeds curled up and died. That eventually became my gravel garden,” she says. This she created in 1991, on the site of a car park. Apart from watering in the young, drought-tolerant plants during the first year, she has never artificially irrigated it.
Chatto has a knack for turning problem areas into an asset, and there are several distinct areas in the garden, each requiring a different approach. The large water gardens are dominated by a series of ponds surrounded by bog plants and swathes of lush grass. A long, shady walk runs parallel to one of the boundaries. Here, shade-tolerant planting – including ferns, tiarella and pulmonaria – carpet the ground beneath oaks and other specimen trees added by Chatto. By contrast, the gravel area is a mass of sun-loving perennials, with asters, rudbeckias and sedums glowing through hazy grasses.
The garden may have started out to give pleasure to a family, but it has developed into a self-contained horticultural powerhouse, attracting visitors from all over the world – about 40,000 a year. “It’s like sowing an acorn, which is my symbol,” says Chatto. “I have an acorn and an oak tree on a weather vane, which was a wonderful present from my staff.” Incredibly, it is tended by only one full-time and four part-time gardeners and volunteers – many of whom are foreign students. Chatto remains resolutely hands-on and is keen to pass on the knowledge she has gained through experience.
Chatto uses grasses brilliantly, and was doing so long before it became fashionable. She creates seemingly effortless but thoroughly satisfying combinations. Therein lies her genius – there may be others out there with an equal understanding of plants, but nobody else has her eye. Shape, scale, proportion, texture, colour – all are balanced with the skill of a plate-spinner.
She also factors in horticultural considerations – how big a plant will get, how fast or slowly it will grow, what conditions it needs to thrive and how it is maintained. The result is a garden that works on every level – practical, horticultural and aesthetic – with layer upon layer of carefully placed plants, as enticing asmillefeuillepastry. It all seems entirely uncontrived, but, on closer inspection, one notices geometric lines and angles. The big picture is built up gradually, with small groupings of three or more plants forming a satisfying melange of verticals and horizontals, and fluffy and solid plants. “I need the trees and shrubs to form a background, to paint the sky and lead the eye upwards towards the clouds,” Chatto explains. “Then one adds the embroidery, which I enjoy so much.” Nothing is allowed to get out of hand, but stagnation is not an option, either. “A garden is not a picture hanging on a wall,” she says. “It changes not only from hour to hour, week to week or month to month, but from year to year.”
Chatto has certainly noticed the effects of climate change. Drought is nothing new in her part of the world, where (the past two years aside) there is sometimes no rain for up to 10 weeks in the summer. “The most interesting change is the lack of cold weather,” she says. “Only 10 years ago, we had icicles hanging down, and when the children were little, they used to skate. Now we hardly have enough ice to bear a duck.” From an article by Rachel de Thame
Please visit www.bethchatto.co.uk/ for further information about this inspirational gardener and garden.
In addition to the nice consist that came west earlier that day, the VLPCTAC also rolled into South Seattle with a neat pair of locomotives elephant style: KCS #4849, a GE ES44AC, and KCSM #4520, a GE AC44CW. They were hauling an empty train of newer autoracks that were being repositioned to the Port of Tacoma.
GMTX 700 sits in IHB's Blue Island yard in Riverdale, IL. If anyone knows what kind of switcher this is, please say so!
Former Southern High Hood GP38 CSO 2038 leads a northbound HJRD rescue through Danby on a January afternoon.. Word on the street is that these units will be leaving VTR property in a few weeks..
Mike Oldfield - Foreign Affair (Album Version)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpBzgYU3JFY&list=RDKpBzgYU3JF...
Note:Candid photo, persons not posing.
Nikon 70-200mm VR II AF-S G ED NIKKOR
Military Dots from the last couple of days:
Top left
Apparently replacing the usual French CN235 flight, out of Northolt as GAF 958, refuelling probe equipped Luftwaffe Lockheed C-130J Hercules 55+02 catches the late sun while passing by at FL230
Bottom
Out of RAF Leeming with the Swiss crosses visible on her wings, Swiss Air Force SUI 1523 aka Cessna Citation 560XL T-784 trails over at FL350
Main
Out of RAF Mildenhall and calling 'Quid 31', US Air Force 100ARW's Boeing KC-135R Stratotanker 60-0355. Her stowed 'flying boom' under her fin along with a pair of wing-mounted Hose and Drogue refuelling pods are easily visible in the late afternoon light as she con-trails by at FL350
Note that all types are of US origin
276A3587, 276A3607 & 276A3614
In my day, they called you an enemy of the nation or a class enemy or something of the sort. In these more enlightened, post-Soviet days, it's foreign agent. Seems to me, everywhere I look now, I see a foreign agent.
please watch in bigger size to discover the foreign world:-)
Figure rendered in DazStudio, pic edited in Photoshop;
the foreign world is a screenshot from SL...also edited in Photoshop
Missouri & North Arkansas GP40-2 no. 3025 leads the DGNO Miller Turn through Dallas, Texas. Photo January 13, 2018.
Trainers from the Special Operations Group deployed to help train Barkley Island Defence Force's counter terrorism unit.
Background: Barkley Island is a commonwealth island nation at the Caribbean. In additional to criminal gangs and international drug runners, it is also under threat from neighboring Saint George Island. Barkley Island with the assistance of other nations including Victoria is building its defence capacity against foreign threats.
Note: This is a new story line I am working on, bringing my stories in a new environment. this year. Hope you enjoy and Happy New Year!
NS 12Zs RDPU heads north through the N&W CPLs at Lewis Run as UP 5664 pushes the train north toward Shenandoah Yard in Shenandoah, VA.
[FOREIGN]✨NEW ARRIVAL ALERT✨
📍Our First Drop the Laya Set Available now at The Grand Event!
Plethora of Textures & colorways with a HUD-compatible Megapack
✔️Rigged for Legacy 〰️ Reborn 〰️Kupra 〰️ Muneca
Please try Demo before Purchase✅
Sangaris : première patrouille pour le GTIA Centurion
Le 13 juin 2015, la compagnie VBCI du GTIA (groupement tactique interarmes) Centurion a effectué ses premières patrouilles dans Bangui. Quelques jours après leur arrivée en Centrafrique, les légionnaires ont remplacé les tirailleurs du GTIA Turco. À bord de leurs VBCI, ils patrouillent plusieurs fois par jour, dans Bangui et ses alentours, afin d’appuyer la MINUSCA dans sa mission de sécurisation de la capitale.
La section VBCI du 2eREI (régiment étranger d’infanterie) a quitté en fin de matinée le camp de M’Poko pour rejoindre l’Est de Bangui. Au cours de leur progression, les légionnaires ont été immédiatement au contact de la population en traversant le marché en pleine effervescence qui borde l’avenue reliant l’aéroport au centre-ville. La section s’est ensuite engagée sur des pistes étroites en latérite bordées par des rizières et des hautes herbes, où le VBCI a une fois de plus démontré sa capacité à évoluer sur des terrains difficiles.
Après une demi-heure de trajet, les légionnaires ont débarqué des VBCI pour poursuivre leur patrouille à pied afin de gagner la maison du chef de quartier. En chemin, des villageois ont abordé la section pour signaler la présence de coupeurs de route à quelques kilomètres de là. Le chef de section a donné l’ordre à la section de réembarquer à bord des véhicules blindés afin de rejoindre rapidement la zone indiquée par la population. Après avoir sécurisé les lieux, les légionnaires ont constaté que les brigands avaient déjà fui, dissimulés par une végétation très dense.
Au cours de leur patrouille, les légionnaires ont croisé à plusieurs reprises des détachements de la MINUSCA qui patrouillaient dans le centre-ville de Bangui. Ils sont en effet plus de 2 300 casques bleus à sécuriser la capitale.
Chaque jour, la force Sangaris conduit des patrouilles dans Bangui et en province, de jour comme de nuit, par tous les temps, afin d’appuyer la MINUSCA dans la sécurisation et le retour de l’autorité de l’État en Centrafrique.
Lancée le 5 décembre 2013 par le Président de la République, l’opération Sangaris vise à rétablir un niveau de sécurité minimale en République centrafricaine et à appuyer la mission de l’ONU, désormais pleinement opérationnelle.
Sources : Etat-major des armées
Droits : Ministère de la Défense
I thought a beer had finally been named after me, but closer inpsection proved otherwise. (See the one on the right)
A "cold snap" has descended on Brisbane, but the Sunday morning here is cloudless so sunny, and as soon as the ice melts it will be a lovely day.
Imagine these copper coils as my neck perhaps.
Grolsch Brewery is a Dutch brewery founded in 1615.
Starts With G Challenge
Containers Theme - Contains Beer
A staple for American power, Rossport, MN to Thunder Bay Terminals Ltd., CN 702 coke train has just completed dumping and is secured awaiting a crew to take it back west (then south), begs the question if everytime the train comes in with foreign power, is it really foreign?
CN 702
NS 9722-NS 4398-UP 1111
Thunder Bay Terminals Limited (TBTL)
Thunder Bay, Ontario
September 4, 2022