View allAll Photos Tagged minimize
Staff kept a watchful eye on Bei Bei overnight. We're happy to say that he is moving and eating well. This morning Bei Bei interacted normally with his keepers, indicating that he feels good. He ate four biscuits and cooked sweet potato with medications. As expected, Mei Xiang is chirping occasionally and seems interested in seeing him. To minimize his movement, Bei Bei will stay in the den for most of the day and Mei will have some access to him based on their behaviors. The panda house will remain closed again today but giant pandas can be seen in their outdoor yards.
No automatic alt text available.
Very handsome male Blakistonia aurea from South Australia. Note that this specimen was not photographed in situ, but in a laboratory setting.
Note (27/12/24): I have elected to reserve some rights on this image - namely I have set the license to Attribution-NonCommercial. This is simply to minimize usage of this image for commercial purposes.
[WellMade] Maddy Set
♥ Fit for Altamura, Freya+Isis, Legacy+Perky, Maitreya+Petite, Hourglass, Tonic (Fine/Curvy/Minimizer)
Available at [WellMade]
More details:
💖
An old photogenic barn on the outskirts of Odell, IL painted by headlights of passing cars on I-55 with the Milky Way and its fellow stars hanging overhead in the southern skies. As I stood there taking photo after photo of this barn, I began to get unnerved at the idea of reviewing one of the photos and finding someone staring back at me from the barn. Walking around the country on dark nights like this is always an adventure in "What IS that noise?" and "Please don't stop. Please don't stop.", as cars pass by. I always manage to work myself into a state of anxiousness.
This is a composition of two photos; the foreground is a 800 ISO 20 second exposure, and the Milky Way is the same spot but at 1600 ISO. I've been frustrated with some of the noise I've been getting in the foreground of my shots, so I tried to minimize that on this go around.
Crossing off another of the photo ideas I have had in my head for years. It's been quite the adventure, first learning how to capture the Milky Way, and then scouting locations when you live hours away. Looking at my photos from a year ago and comparing them to now is very gratifying and humbling.
Samyang/Rokinon 12mm @ f2.0
Reflection Canyon in the darkness of night.
Stitched and composed with multiple 15 second shots for the sky and 4 minute exposures for the canyon foreground. Also trying something new with star minimization to de-focus the sky and make the subject the winding water.
A prominant shoulder hump is one marker of a bear being a Grizzly. I photographed this strikingly beautiful animal earlier this summer, and her shoulder hump, along with other features, identified her as a Grizzly. For those interested, information about Grizzly Bears is presented below.
The grizzly bear is a kind of brown bear. Many people in North America use the common name “grizzly bear” to refer to the smaller and lighter-colored bear that occurs in interior areas and the term “brown bear” to refer to the larger and typically darker-colored bear in coastal areas. However, most of these bears are now considered the same subspecies.
Grizzly bears are large and range in color from very light tan (almost white) to dark brown. They have a dished face, short, rounded ears, and a large shoulder hump. The hump is where a mass of muscles attach to the bear’s backbone and give the bear additional strength for digging. They have very long claws on their front feet that also give them extra ability to dig after food and to dig their dens.
Grizzly bears weigh upward of 700 pounds (315 kilograms). The males are heavier than the females and can weigh 200 to 300 kilograms (about 400 to 600 pounds). A large female can weigh 110 to 160 kilograms (about 250 to 350 pounds).
Grizzly bears are omnivores. The most commonly eaten kinds of plants are fleshy roots, fruits, berries, grasses, and forbs. If grizzly bears are on the hunt, their prey can include fish (especially salmon), rodents like ground squirrels, carrion, and hoofed animals like moose, elk, caribou, and deer. They are especially good at catching the young of these hoofed species. Grizzly bears can also target domestic animals like cattle and sheep.
Grizzly bears use sounds, movement, and smells to communicate. They growl, moan, or grunt, especially when females are communicating with their young or during mating season when male bears can fight each other fiercely for the opportunity to mate with receptive females. Grizzly bears also rub their bodies on trees to scratch and to let other bears know they are there.
Grizzly bears hibernate in warm dens during the winter to minimize energy expenditure at a time when natural foods are not available and to permit their tiny young to be born in a warm and secure environment. Throughout the summer and autumn, grizzly bears build up fat reserves by consuming as much food as they can find. In late fall or winter, the bears find a hillside and dig a hole to serve as their winter den. When inside the den, grizzly bears slow down their heart rate, reduce their temperature and metabolic activity, and live off stored fat reserves. Pregnant females give birth in the dens and nurse their cubs until they are large enough to venture outside in the spring as snow melts and new food become available.
Depending on the length of the winter season, grizzly bears can stay in their dens for up to seven months. Females with newborn cubs are the last to leave their dens in the spring. Females with older cubs emerge earlier and solitary females and males are the first to exit dens in the spring.
Grizzly bears begin to look for mates in the spring and early summer. Females can mate with more than one male during her breeding season. When a female grizzly becomes pregnant, the development of the embryo temporarily stops for several months, a process called “delayed implantation.” If a female bear is unable to gain enough weight during the summer and fall, her body will tell her to not proceed with the pregnancy and the embryo will reabsorb. This gives her a head start on gaining enough weight to have a successful pregnancy the following year. When female grizzly bears enter hibernation, the embryo implants in her uterus and begins gestation. In January or February, female grizzly bears give birth to one to four cubs (usually two). The female will care for her young inside the den until spring, when they finally step out into the world.
The mother cares for her young for at least two more years, feeding and protecting them. When the cubs are two and a half years old, they typically separate from their mother. In areas with little food, the cubs may stay with their mother longer. Typically separation happens when the female enters breeding condition and attracts males, which can be a threat to the cubs. At around five years of age, grizzly bears reach sexual maturity.
Grizzly bears are mainly solitary and territorial, except for mothers and their cubs, or when a plentiful food source is discovered. Grizzly bears are known to congregate at rivers with many fish and at improperly fenced garbage dumps. Grizzlies can run pretty fast, reaching speeds as fast as 35 miles an hour for very short sprints. They are good swimmers too. Cubs can climb trees to evade danger, but they lose this ability as their front claws grow longer. Grizzly bears can live to be 30 years in the wild, but most die before age 25.
While hiking along the Lassen Peak Trail with a view looking down the mountainside and the across to more distant peaks and ridges in Lassen Volcanic National Park and wilderness. In composing this image, I took advantage of the high ground I was located on to create more of a sweeping view across this northern California landscape. I also wanted to minimize any lens artifacts across the upper portion of the image with the sun still present in that portion of the skies above.
Not to minimize the real and significant problem of Global Warming, but our gutter ice sheet is warming and suggests Spring is on the way!
British Columbia, Canada - February 2025
These images were taken in February during steady rain at a small urban pond in central Vancouver, British Columbia. The subject is an adult male Ring-necked Duck (Aythya collaris), photographed at close range while foraging and briefly displaying near the shoreline.
Despite the wet conditions, the bird remained active and showed typical tolerance of human presence, as is common among overwintering individuals in urban settings. The rainfall provided soft, even light and minimized surface glare, making it possible to capture fine plumage detail and natural behavior without disturbance.
One of the main reasons for traveling on to Vancouver from Saskatoon was the accessibility of waterfowl in the city—tame, habituated birds like this offered better photographic opportunities in winter conditions.
With this image, I decided to angle my SLR camera slightly downward, minimizing the river flowing by me and focusing more on the blue skies and clouds above. I later converted the image to black & white using Silver Efex Pro 2 where I used some color filters to bring out a much richer tonal contrast for the final image.
While on a bus ride on the main park service road with a view looking to the east across tundra and a braided river of the East Fork Tolkat River. I decided to angle my Nikon SLR camera slightly down order in order to capture more of a sweeping view across this national park landscape and have the mountain peaks and ridgelines in the upper part of the image, while minimizing what felt was the more negative space of the mostly overcast skies that morning. I did some initial post-processing work making adjustments to contrast, brightness and saturation while playing around as I learned how to work with DxO PhotoLab 3 that I’d recently purchased after moving away from Capture NX2.
Lotus leaves - Nelumbo nucifera
The lotus large leaves have self-cleaning properties that are a result of ultrahydrophobicity.
Dirt particles are picked up by water droplets due to the micro- and nanoscopic architecture on the surface, which minimizes the droplet's adhesion to that surface.
A setting looking to the northwest to the namesake rock formation in Joshua Tree National Park. My thought on composing this image was to zoom in a little with the focal length and have the rock formation fill much of the image. I wanted though to include some nearby landscape with the snow across it while minimizing what I felt was more of a negative space with the cloudy and snowy skies above. Those skies, though, did help to highlight the rock formation itself, I won’t deny.
Update: My first photo to make it to explore! #158
I used a (i think) pretty clever technique for this photo: I took 5 exposures handheld, since i wasn't carrying my tripod with me (used the continuous highspeed shutter mode and machine-gunned it). As you can see, though, there's a lot of movement in the scene.
So what I did was I processed the multiple exposures in photomatix (i only used 3 of the original 5 to minimize alignment issues) which turned out well, but obviously with a lot of ghosting from the people, busses etc.
Then, i took one of the exposures that i used and made a single exposure HDR with that (converted it to 3 tif files before running it through photomatix). I tonemapped this one just concentrating on making the people look good (the rest of the image looked pretty bad actually).
Lastly, i took the two tonemapped files, aligned them in photoshop with the multiexposure on top and masked in the sections that needed ghosting repair from the single exposure hdr. After a couple other photoshop adjustments it was done. Hope you find that helpful!
Tourist shot of the Vienna Opera House.
Shot from the opposite Albertina to minimize vertical perspective distortion.
Re-edited from JPEG.
Crow in the spotlight ...
Sony ILCE-7R
300mm F2.8 G
The mandarin duck (Aix galericulata) is a perching duck species found in East Asia. It is medium-sized, at 41–49 cm (16–19 in) long with a 65–75 cm (26–30 in) wingspan. It is closely related to the North American wood duck, the only other member of the genus Aix. Aix is an Ancient Greek word used by Aristotle to refer to an unknown diving bird, and galericulata is the Latin for a wig, derived from galerum, a cap or bonnet.
The adult male is a striking and unmistakable bird. It has a red bill, large white crescent above the eye and reddish face and "whiskers". The breast is purple with two vertical white bars, and the flanks ruddy, with two orange "sails" at the back. The female is similar to female wood duck, with a white eye-ring and stripe running back from the eye, but is paler below, has a small white flank stripe, and a pale tip to its bill.
Both the males and females have crests, but the crest is more pronounced on the male.
Like many other species of ducks, the male undergoes a moult after the mating season into eclipse plumage. When in eclipse plumage, the male looks similar to the female, but can be told apart by their bright yellow-orange beak, lack of any crest, and a less-pronounced eye-stripe.
Mandarin ducklings are almost identical in appearance to wood ducklings, and very similar to mallard ducklings. The ducklings can be distinguished from mallard ducklings because the eye-stripe of mandarin ducklings (and wood ducklings) stops at the eye, while in mallard ducklings it reaches all the way to the bill.
The hooded crow (Corvus cornix) (also called hoodie is a Eurasian bird species in the Corvus genus. Widely distributed, it is also known locally as Scotch crow and Danish crow. In Ireland it is called grey crow, just as in the Slavic languages and in Danish. In German it is called "mist crow" ("Nebelkrähe"). Found across Northern, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, as well as parts of the Middle East, it is an ashy grey bird with black head, throat, wings, tail, and thigh feathers, as well as a black bill, eyes, and feet. Like other corvids, it is an omnivorous and opportunistic forager and feeder.
It is so similar in morphology and habits to the carrion crow (Corvus corone), for many years they were considered by most authorities to be geographical races of one species. Hybridization observed where their ranges overlapped added weight to this view. However, since 2002, the hooded crow has been elevated to full species status after closer observation; the hybridisation was less than expected and hybrids had decreased vigour. Within the hooded crow species, four subspecies are recognized, with one, the Mesopotamian crow, possibly distinct enough to warrant species status itself.
Except for the head, throat, wings, tail, and thigh feathers, which are black and mostly glossy, the plumage is ash-grey, the dark shafts giving it a streaky appearance. The bill and legs are black; the iris dark brown. Only one moult occurs, in autumn, as in other crow species. The male is the larger bird, otherwise the sexes are alike. Their flight is slow and heavy and usually straight. Their length varies from 48 to 52 cm (19 to 20 in). When first hatched, the young are much blacker than the parents. Juveniles have duller plumage with bluish or greyish eyes and initially a red mouth. Wingspan is 98 cm (39 in) and weight is on average 510 g.
The mallard or wild duck (Anas platyrhynchos) is a dabbling duck which breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Europe, Asia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, the Falkland Islands and South Africa. This duck belongs to the subfamily Anatinae of the waterfowl family Anatidae.
The male birds (drakes) have a glossy green head and are grey on wings and belly, while the females (hens or ducks) have mainly brown-speckled plumage. Both sexes have an area of white-bordered black speculum feathers which commonly also include iridescent blue feathers especially among males. Mallards live in wetlands, eat water plants and small animals, and are social animals preferring to congregate in groups or flocks of varying sizes. This species is the main ancestor of most breeds of domesticated ducks.
The mallard is a medium-sized waterfowl species although it is often slightly heavier than most other dabbling ducks. It is 50–65 cm (20–26 in) long (of which the body makes up around two-thirds), has a wingspan of 81–98 cm (32–39 in),[16] and weighs 0.72–1.58 kg (1.6–3.5 lb). Among standard measurements, the wing chord is 25.7 to 30.6 cm (10.1 to 12.0 in), the bill is 4.4 to 6.1 cm (1.7 to 2.4 in) and the tarsus is 4.1 to 4.8 cm (1.6 to 1.9 in).
The breeding male mallard is unmistakable, with a glossy bottle-green head and white collar which demarcates the head from the purple-tinged brown breast, grey brown wings, and a pale grey belly. The rear of the male is black, with the dark tail having white borders. The bill of the male is a yellowish orange tipped with black while that of the female is generally darker ranging from black to mottled orange. The female mallard is predominantly mottled with each individual feather showing sharp contrast from buff to very dark brown, a coloration shared by most female dabbling ducks, and has buff cheeks, eyebrow, throat and neck with a darker crown and eye-stripe.
Owing to their highly 'malleable' genetic code, Mallards can display a large amount of variation, as seen here with this female, who displays faded or 'apricot' plumage.
Both male and female mallards have distinct iridescent purple blue speculum feathers edged with white, prominent in flight or at rest, though temporarily shed during the annual summer moult. Upon hatching, the plumage colouring of the duckling is yellow on the underside and face (with streaks by the eyes) and black on the back (with some yellow spots) all the way to the top and back of the head. Its legs and bill are also black. As it nears a month in age, the duckling's plumage will start becoming drab, looking more like the female (though its plumage is more streaked) and its legs will lose their dark grey colouring. Two months after hatching, the fledgling period has ended and the duckling is now a juvenile. Between three and four months of age, the juvenile can finally begin flying as its wings are fully developed for flight (which can be confirmed by the sight of purple speculum feathers). Its bill will soon lose its dark grey colouring and its sex can finally be distinguished visually by three factors. The bill colouring is yellow in males, black and orange for females. The breast feathers are reddish-brown for males, brown for females. The centre tail feather is curled for males (called a drake feather), straight for females.[citation needed]
During the final period of maturity leading up to adulthood (6–10 months of age), the plumage of female juveniles remains the same while the plumage of male juveniles slowly changes to its characteristic colours.[citation needed] This plumage change also applies to adult mallard males when they transition in and out of their non-breeding eclipse plumage at the beginning and the end of the summer moulting period. The adulthood age for mallards is 14 months and the average life expectancy is 3 years, but they can live to twenty.
In captivity, domestic ducks come in wild-type plumages, white, and other colours. Most of these colour variants are also known in domestic mallards not bred as livestock, but kept as pets, aviary birds, etc., where they are rare but increasing in availability.
A noisy species, the female has a deeper quack stereotypically associated with ducks. Male mallards also make a sound which is phonetically similar to that of the female, but it is a deep and raspy sound which can also sound like mek or whak. When incubating a nest, or when offspring are present, Females vocalise differently, making a call which sounds like a truncated version of the usual quack. They will also hiss if the nest or their offspring are threatened or interfered with.
The mallard is a rare example of both Allen's Rule and Bergmann's Rule in birds. Bergmann's Rule, which states that polar forms tend to be larger than related ones from warmer climates, has numerous examples in birds. Allen's Rule says that appendages like ears tend to be smaller in polar forms to minimize heat loss, and larger in tropical and desert equivalents to facilitate heat diffusion, and that the polar taxa are stockier overall. Examples of this rule in birds are rare, as they lack external ears. However, the bill of ducks is very well supplied with blood vessels and is vulnerable to cold.[citation needed]
Due to the malleability of the mallard's genetic code, which gives it its vast interbreeding capability, mutations in the genes that decide plumage colour are very common and have resulted in a wide variety of hybrids such as Brewer's duck (mallard × gadwall, Anas strepera).
Source:
Wikipedia
hdr photo -2,0,+2 EV combined in photomatix and Ps.
Had some trouble with gradients in the sky and tried to minimize using blur .
Any suggestions?
Take a sec to see in Lightbox , press L
Thanks for looking !
The area that was to become West Palm Beach was settled in the late 1870s and 1880s by a few hundred settlers who called the vicinity "Lake Worth Country." These settlers were a diverse community from different parts of the United States and the world. They included founding families such at the Potters and the Lainharts, who would go on to become leading members of the business community in the fledgling city. The first white settlers in Palm Beach County lived around Lake Worth, then an enclosed freshwater lake, named for Colonel William Jenkins Worth, who had fought in the Second Seminole War in Florida in 1842. Most settlers engaged in the growing of tropical fruits and vegetables for shipment the north via Lake Worth and the Indian River. By 1890, the U.S. Census counted over 200 people settled along Lake Worth in the vicinity of what would become West Palm Beach. The area at this time also boasted a hotel, the "Cocoanut House", a church, and a post office. The city was platted by Henry Flagler as a community to house the servants working in the two grand hotels on the neighboring island of Palm Beach, across Lake Worth in 1893, coinciding with the arrival of the Florida East Coast railroad. Flagler paid two area settlers, Captain Porter and Louie Hillhouse, a combined sum of $45,000 for the original town site, stretching from Clear Lake to Lake Worth.
On November 5, 1894, 78 people met at the "Calaboose" (the first jail and police station located at Clematis St. and Poinsettia, now Dixie Hwy.) and passed the motion to incorporate the Town of West Palm Beach in what was then Dade County (now Miami-Dade County). This made West Palm Beach the first incorporated municipality in Dade County and in South Florida. The town council quickly addressed the building codes and the tents and shanties were replaced by brick, brick veneer, and stone buildings. The city grew steadily during the 1890s and the first two decades of the 20th century, most residents were engaged in the tourist industry and related services or winter vegetable market and tropical fruit trade. In 1909, Palm Beach County was formed by the Florida State Legislature and West Palm Beach became the county seat. In 1916, a new neo-classical courthouse was opened, which has been painstakingly restored back to its original condition, and is now used as the local history museum.
The city grew rapidly in the 1920s as part of the Florida land boom. The population of West Palm Beach quadrupled from 1920 to 1927, and all kinds of businesses and public services grew along with it. Many of the city's landmark structures and preserved neighborhoods were constructed during this period. Originally, Flagler intended for his Florida East Coast Railway to have its terminus in West Palm, but after the area experienced a deep freeze, he chose to extend the railroad to Miami instead.
The land boom was already faltering when city was devastated by the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane. The Depression years of the 1930s were a quiet time for the area, which saw slight population growth and property values lower than during the 1920s. The city only recovered with the onset of World War II, which saw the construction of Palm Beach Air Force Base, which brought thousands of military personnel to the city. The base was vital to the allied war effort, as it provided an excellent training facility and had unparalleled access to North Africa for a North American city. Also during World War II, German U-Boats sank dozens of merchant ships and oil tankers just off the coast of West Palm Beach. Nearby Palm Beach was under black out conditions to minimize night visibility to German U-boats.
The 1950s saw another boom in population, partly due to the return of many soldiers and airmen who had served in the vicinity during the war. Also, the advent of air conditioning encouraged growth, as year-round living in a tropical climate became more acceptable to northerners. West Palm Beach became the one of the nation's fastest growing metropolitan areas during the 1950s; the city's borders spread west of Military Trail and south to Lake Clarke Shores. However, many of the city's residents still lived within a narrow six-block wide strip from the south to north end. The neighborhoods were strictly segregated between White and African-American populations, a legacy that the city still struggles with today. The primary shopping district remained downtown, centered around Clematis Street.
In the 1960s, Palm Beach County's first enclosed shopping mall, the Palm Beach Mall, and an indoor arena were completed. These projects led to a brief revival for the city, but in the 1970s and 1980s crime continued to be a serious issue and suburban sprawl continued to drain resources and business away from the old downtown area. By the early 1990s there were very high vacancy rates downtown, and serious levels of urban blight.
Since the 1990s, developments such as CityPlace and the preservation and renovation of 1920s architecture in the nightlife hub of Clematis Street have seen a downtown resurgence in the entertainment and shopping district. The city has also placed emphasis on neighborhood development and revitalization, in historic districts such as Northwood, Flamingo Park, and El Cid. Some neighborhoods still struggle with blight and crime, as well as lowered property values caused by the Great Recession, which hit the region particularly hard. Since the recovery, multiple new developments have been completed. The Palm Beach Mall, located at the Interstate 95/Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard interchange became abandoned as downtown revitalized - the very mall that initiated the original abandonment of the downtown. The mall was then redeveloped into the Palm Beach Fashion Outlets in February 2014. A station for All Aboard Florida, a high speed passenger rail service serving Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Orlando, is under construction as of July 2015.
Credit for the data above is given to the following website:
It was a pleasure to see Jonathan Safran Foer at Printer's Row Lit Fest. I just finished his newest novel, Here I Am, a couple of weeks ago. Of course, everyone takes away different things from literature but I liked how he explored human choices, the sense of a Jewish American identity and the differences between Jewish Americans and Israelis, and also the sense of family.
The novel is really complex in it's sense of character development and the way the plot shapes these characters in how they react. In conversation, he talked about the idea of not truly knowing how you'll react until that even occurs. He also spoke about being less terrified over the Trump administration at this point but how he first felt.
As a vegan, I enjoyed how Foer mentioned that he is raising his children vegetarian and how, when some ask him how he can force his own personal choices onto children, he would suggest how could they raise their children as carnivores...that either way you are making that choice. I thought that was interesting. I still haven't read Eating Animals, a nonfiction work even though I have read all of his novels. However, I don't think I am really the person who needs to read Eating Animals as I'm already vegan having done enough research about decreasing methane gas and maximizing land use to minimize world poverty. I also have a fondness for animals and (as I've said since I was 13), if I wouldn't eat my cat, why would I eat another living thing that can feel pain?
**All photos are copyrighted. Please don't use without permission**
Late summer goldenrod at a lookout over Buntzen Lake and the North Shore mountains. I had to work hard to minimize the powerlines in the photo!
While in another images, I'd angled my Nikon SLR camera downward to minimize the overcast skies, here I found it better for creating a sense of depth while using some nearby foreground. My idea was that one could be at this overlook and just stand wide eye while taking in this view in Badlands National Park.
This is the most advanced editing I did on a photo. I generally don't like to spend lots of time post-processing photos so I tend to try optimize my workflow to minimize time spent on post-processing.
But after having taken this photo I hesitated a lot about publishing it online. It had one problem that I couldn't easily solve at shooting: it looked too static. So I decided to jump into Photoshop and give it a try.
First I tried to make the wheels spin. It was pretty easy and quick to do, so I applied it too on my previous shots of Rey and BB-8. But even with the wheels spinning, it still looked way too static to me. So I decided to try to go further and add some dust and particles. After watching on Youtube a few videos to have and idea how I could do it, and a few hours spent in Photoshop, I finally got a result that was closer to what I had in mind when I took the photo.
I waited more than a month to upload the photo. I didn't know what to think about it: I've never modified a photo like this and it doesn't feel like me. I waited because I wanted to see how my opinion about it would evolve after a few weeks. Maybe I would decide it was too much. But after more than a month it doesn't and I am even rather pleased with the result. Moreover I surprisingly enjoyed working on the photo in Photoshop.
👉Jan 2023 UPDATE❗:
Added Belleza Gen.X, Kupra and Reborn rigged sizes.
Arm Pose Hud can now be minimized + no more animation hover text.
Sari-Sari - Mini Cassette Player BENTO WEARABLE
Original mesh, textures, and bento animations, copy/mod
Rigged for Belleza F,M,Gen.X, Gianni, Kupra, Lara, Reborn, Legacy F&M, Slink F&M.
Includes bento hand hold pose for each body & Right Arm Pose HUD
*IMPORTANT: Some bento AO/bento hand AO have priority higher than their intended use. Please check to see if your bento hand AO is interrupting our bento hand hold pose. The bento hand hold pose included should be properly holding the item. If not, please turn off your bento hand AO.
5 color options: black, classic, pink, red, and yellow.
Single colors: all parts come in one color and one tape only.
Fatpack: texture hud for mix and matching plus bonus mixtape.
Previously bought? Hit the Redelivery!
Also updated on our MARKETPLACE
I enjoy photographing this girl after I finally figure out what to photograph her in. She's one of the harder dolls for me to style...Her eyes are amazing, but the hot pink lips can overpower her outfit -- so today I gave up trying to minimize them. :)
(on an aside, I'm trying to get some pretty photography in before the antics of my little town return, lol)
Doll: High Frequency Kumi
Dress: Mattel
Jewelry: IT
While at the trailhead to the Baker Creek Loop with a view looking to the southwest across the sagebrushes and trees present nearby to more distant ridges and peaks. This is in Great Basin National Park with Pyramid Peak as the distinct landmark peak. My thought on composing this image was to capture a look across this high desert, mountainous landscape and have the peak more or less image center. By having the peek higher into the image, I felt it might create more of a sense of grandeur and help minimize any flattening in the image.
This is part of my pandemic project. The project was created to minimize the number of people that I would come into contact with and to help keep my sanity. The location is a local university. From what I can tell the vast majority of classes are being held online leaving the campus empty with the exception of a few nursing students and an occasional group of Frisbee golf players.
The project started when my wife and I used the campus to walk the dog in the evening. I began to notice the architecture and interesting light fixtures. I started to return and photograph and soon had a project.
Canon 6D
Canon 70-200 f4
"It's easier to poke holes in an idea than think of ways to fill them. And it's easier to focus on the 100 reasons you shouldn't do something rather than the one reason you should." -- Wendy Kopp
Who else is guilty of this? I am so good at poking holes in ideas that some of my family members won't share their ideas with me. I think this trait holds me back, and I should be working on ways to minimize the damage I cause by finding fault. I see it as a way to protect from bad ideas, but I don't move forward and am deflated in the end.
I've been going through my archives lately, just trying to clean things up and re-edit stuff that I liked with newer techniques when I ran across this shot. Sunsets in the Eastern Sierras can be difficult to photograph, and as a result, I never really thought much of this shot...too dark, too many shadows, etc. For this shot, I manually blended 2 photos in Photoshop to minimize the noise that was present in the dark shadows of the image. Hopefully it turned out okay, let me know what you think!
High Key Photography
háj kí
High Key is a term to describe images that are bright and contain little to no shadow. The term comes from the early days of broadcast television when scenes with higher contrast were not reproduced well. To make a scene that was easier to properly show on screen, the ratio between the key and fill lights was minimized. It is also sometimes used to describe photos and the photographic style that is simply bright, often with an overexposed background.
IMG_0004-2.jpgh.jpgcol
Had a little fun going back and editing this shot again, the stitching wasn't good in the first edit and I decided to just focus on the sky and keeping a silhouette of the trees and mountain. Tried to minimize stitching errors and making the Milky Way pop while keeping the sharpness this time. Still can't believe how wild the airglow was that night, easily the brightest of the whole year.
The area that was to become West Palm Beach was settled in the late 1870s and 1880s by a few hundred settlers who called the vicinity "Lake Worth Country." These settlers were a diverse community from different parts of the United States and the world. They included founding families such at the Potters and the Lainharts, who would go on to become leading members of the business community in the fledgling city. The first white settlers in Palm Beach County lived around Lake Worth, then an enclosed freshwater lake, named for Colonel William Jenkins Worth, who had fought in the Second Seminole War in Florida in 1842. Most settlers engaged in the growing of tropical fruits and vegetables for shipment the north via Lake Worth and the Indian River. By 1890, the U.S. Census counted over 200 people settled along Lake Worth in the vicinity of what would become West Palm Beach. The area at this time also boasted a hotel, the "Cocoanut House", a church, and a post office. The city was platted by Henry Flagler as a community to house the servants working in the two grand hotels on the neighboring island of Palm Beach, across Lake Worth in 1893, coinciding with the arrival of the Florida East Coast railroad. Flagler paid two area settlers, Captain Porter and Louie Hillhouse, a combined sum of $45,000 for the original town site, stretching from Clear Lake to Lake Worth.
On November 5, 1894, 78 people met at the "Calaboose" (the first jail and police station located at Clematis St. and Poinsettia, now Dixie Hwy.) and passed the motion to incorporate the Town of West Palm Beach in what was then Dade County (now Miami-Dade County). This made West Palm Beach the first incorporated municipality in Dade County and in South Florida. The town council quickly addressed the building codes and the tents and shanties were replaced by brick, brick veneer, and stone buildings. The city grew steadily during the 1890s and the first two decades of the 20th century, most residents were engaged in the tourist industry and related services or winter vegetable market and tropical fruit trade. In 1909, Palm Beach County was formed by the Florida State Legislature and West Palm Beach became the county seat. In 1916, a new neo-classical courthouse was opened, which has been painstakingly restored back to its original condition, and is now used as the local history museum.
The city grew rapidly in the 1920s as part of the Florida land boom. The population of West Palm Beach quadrupled from 1920 to 1927, and all kinds of businesses and public services grew along with it. Many of the city's landmark structures and preserved neighborhoods were constructed during this period. Originally, Flagler intended for his Florida East Coast Railway to have its terminus in West Palm, but after the area experienced a deep freeze, he chose to extend the railroad to Miami instead.
The land boom was already faltering when city was devastated by the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane. The Depression years of the 1930s were a quiet time for the area, which saw slight population growth and property values lower than during the 1920s. The city only recovered with the onset of World War II, which saw the construction of Palm Beach Air Force Base, which brought thousands of military personnel to the city. The base was vital to the allied war effort, as it provided an excellent training facility and had unparalleled access to North Africa for a North American city. Also during World War II, German U-Boats sank dozens of merchant ships and oil tankers just off the coast of West Palm Beach. Nearby Palm Beach was under black out conditions to minimize night visibility to German U-boats.
The 1950s saw another boom in population, partly due to the return of many soldiers and airmen who had served in the vicinity during the war. Also, the advent of air conditioning encouraged growth, as year-round living in a tropical climate became more acceptable to northerners. West Palm Beach became the one of the nation's fastest growing metropolitan areas during the 1950s; the city's borders spread west of Military Trail and south to Lake Clarke Shores. However, many of the city's residents still lived within a narrow six-block wide strip from the south to north end. The neighborhoods were strictly segregated between White and African-American populations, a legacy that the city still struggles with today. The primary shopping district remained downtown, centered around Clematis Street.
In the 1960s, Palm Beach County's first enclosed shopping mall, the Palm Beach Mall, and an indoor arena were completed. These projects led to a brief revival for the city, but in the 1970s and 1980s crime continued to be a serious issue and suburban sprawl continued to drain resources and business away from the old downtown area. By the early 1990s there were very high vacancy rates downtown, and serious levels of urban blight.
Since the 1990s, developments such as CityPlace and the preservation and renovation of 1920s architecture in the nightlife hub of Clematis Street have seen a downtown resurgence in the entertainment and shopping district. The city has also placed emphasis on neighborhood development and revitalization, in historic districts such as Northwood, Flamingo Park, and El Cid. Some neighborhoods still struggle with blight and crime, as well as lowered property values caused by the Great Recession, which hit the region particularly hard. Since the recovery, multiple new developments have been completed. The Palm Beach Mall, located at the Interstate 95/Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard interchange became abandoned as downtown revitalized - the very mall that initiated the original abandonment of the downtown. The mall was then redeveloped into the Palm Beach Fashion Outlets in February 2014. A station for All Aboard Florida, a high-speed passenger rail service serving Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Orlando, is under construction as of July 2015.
Credit for the data above is given to the following website:
#41: burst a water balloon
used the sunny day to do the shots in the backyard to minimize the mess. and the lawn was happy about the water.
tried with darts, but this didn´t worked too well, so i had to use a needle taped to a stick instead. no flash used, just sunlight
A view looking to the southwest. Given the overcast skies and intermittent rain that day, I decided to angle my SLR camera slightly downward capturing the badlands to my front. I could then work an angle to include the upper portions of the butte and pinnacles off in the distance and minimize the road passing through. I later used a Pro Contrast and Skylight CEP filter in Capture NX2 for the final image to address what I felt was the more muted colors from the overcast skies above.
Grass from the back field and late light, plus the ladybug. There's a little of the background in the lower right corner, but most of it was severely underexposed, or darkened in post to minimize distractions. The curve reminds me of the Fibonacci curve (sorta like section one, so to speak).
A roadside pulloff and overlook for The Castle but here I zoomed in and capture another nearby cliff wall further in the distance. I then worked angles and a focal length to minimize some nearby foreground and blue skies above. I later decided to try out this "Ansel Adams Look" I'd read about in Jason Odell's book on Capture NX2. The idea is to work with the LCH editor, making some adjustments, and then use a Black point and White point before converting to black & white. I found that brought out a tonal contrast not readily seen with the layers of rocks and light and shadows.
Seen with star alpha Tauri, Aldebaran. I minimized the camera exposure,only set shutter speed at a long time. Cloudiness served as a good filter in this.
A setting looking to the northwest while taking in views and walking the boarded walkway of the Dune Succession Trail in Indiana Dunes National Park. Given the overcast skies, I decided to minimize what I felt was that negative space and angle my Nikon SLR camera slightly downward, creating a more sweeping view across the dune landscape to my front. A little sliver of the blue waters of Lake Michigan was present beyond a more distant dune ridge.
British Columbia, Canada - February 2025
These images were taken in February during steady rain at a small urban pond in central Vancouver, British Columbia. The subject is an adult male Ring-necked Duck (Aythya collaris), photographed at close range while foraging and briefly displaying near the shoreline.
Despite the wet conditions, the bird remained active and showed typical tolerance of human presence, as is common among overwintering individuals in urban settings. The rainfall provided soft, even light and minimized surface glare, making it possible to capture fine plumage detail and natural behavior without disturbance.
One of the main reasons for traveling on to Vancouver from Saskatoon was the accessibility of waterfowl in the city—tame, habituated birds like this offered better photographic opportunities in winter conditions.
A view looking to the south from a roadside pulloff across a grassy field. I later cropped the image to capture more of a panoramic feel and minimize the overcast skies above.
The lovely Pink Fawn Lily (Erythronium revolutum). These spectacular flowers grow in abundance along riverside floodplains. The mottled leaves, dappled with green and white, are often visible before the flowers appear. When in bloom, the demurely nodding lilies may carpet the ground in a sea of pink. Though locally abundant on parts of Vancouver Island, pink fawn lilies are absent from most of the province. It is important to be aware of the ecological sensitivity of the location. I stay on the trails and minimize my impact on the environment at all times. I practice wildflower-friendly photo techniques only, to prevent damage to flowers and their habitat. Copyright © Kim Toews/All Rights Reserved.
Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) in a telephoto lens close-up on July 19, 2020, showing the straight blue ion tail and the curving whitish-yellow dust tail. Even the ion tail was visible in binoculars and traceable out for 12° or so, or two binocular fields. A bit of cyan colour is visible around the head of the comet. The ninth magnitude galaxy NGC 2841 is visible to the right of the comet.
This is a median stack of four 1.5-minute successive exposures with the Canon EOS Ra at ISO 1600 and Canon L-series 135mm lens at f/2.8, on the iOptron SkyGuider Pro tracker but unguided. Stacked and aligned automatically in Photoshop with the Scripts>Statistics function. I focused the lens with a Bahtinov mask which does help nail focus.
I didn’t stack any more images to keep the relative motion of the comet against the stars to a minimum, to minimize blurring of the subtle structural detail in the ion tail. Residual twilight adds the sky colour. I applied gradient masks to help remove the sky gradients toward the bottom (horizon). Median stacking mode used to eliminate some satellite trails. A high pass filter helped bring out the ion tail details. Other than that I did not apply any local adjustments to the ion tail to accentuate its brightness relative to the dust tail. But as always, the long exposure of a camera reveals more than the eye can see. That’s the point of astrophotography.
This was on a night when the sky cleared after a day of storms and rain, so the air was very damp but quite transparent. The comet was low in the northwest with some light cloud still wafting through adding some subtle red patches. I shot this from home in Alberta.
Shooting something entirely different a few weeks ago, these 3 leaves, all that were left on a branch of a tree caught my eye. A strong wind was blowing at the time, so a fast shutter speed was required to freeze them as well as minimize the DOF.
This image captured was just a short ways into the hike along the Valley View Overlook Trail. Off in the distance is an unnamed hill that would become very prominent further into the hike. What bought me into this image was the setting of tall (and probably a few more tall's!) saguaro cactus and the backdrop of the rugged landscape in Saguaro National Park and the Sonoran Desert. Then there was the clouds present in the skies above. While I normally try to minimize too much empty blue skies above in photos, here I felt including the tops of the cactus with its blooming flowers added to the final image. I finally converted it to black & white using Silver Efex Pro 2.
With this image, I zoomed in on the focal length to have more of Devils Tower (Bear Lodge) that I captured be in the mirror and minimize the area behind.
There must be so much fear amongst certain minorities in the US now. My heart breaks for all trans people and immigrants in that country at the moment.
The scenes witnessed from the inauguration are things I hoped we would never see in this world again.
The way the media is falling over itself to excuse and minimize certain gestures is truly terrifying.
Myself, I choose to to love and I will resist hate in all its forms.
I have seen Swainson's Hawks feed feathers to their young and was excited to see this behavior in the Eared Grebe also.
"The purpose(s) of feather eating is unproven but evidence suggests that the behavior has these benefits for the birds.
1. Some of the ingested feathers form a plug in the pylorus, between the stomach and small intestine, which acts as a strainer to keep fish bones in the stomach long enough to be completely digested.
2. Most swallowed feathers end up in the stomach lumen, mixed with food. They eventually (along with any indigestible matter) form pellets that are ejected through the mouth. The continuous passage of these pellets through the upper digestive system minimizes the buildup of a variety of parasites that are very common there and plague grebes."
www.featheredphotography.com/blog/2010/10/29/why-grebes-e...
Many thanks for your visit and comments. They are very much appreciated.
Griffon vultures have been used as model organisms for the study of soaring and thermoregulation. The energy costs of level flight tend to be high, prompting alternatives to flapping in larger birds. Vultures in particular utilize more efficient flying methods such as soaring. Compared to other birds, which elevate their metabolic rate to upwards of 16 times their basal metabolic rate in flight, soaring griffon vultures expend about 1.43 times their basal metabolic rate in flight. Griffon vultures are also efficient flyers in their ability to return to a resting heart rate after flight within ten minutes.
As large scavengers, griffon vultures have not been observed to seek shelter for thermoregulation. Vultures use their bald heads as a means to thermoregulate in both extreme cold and hot temperatures. Changes in posture can increase bare skin exposure from 7% to 32%. This change allows for the more than doubling of convective heat loss in still air. Griffon vultures have also been found to tolerate increased body temperatures as a response to high ambient temperatures. By allowing their internal body temperature to change independently of their metabolic rate, griffon vultures minimize their loss of water and energy in thermoregulating. One study in particular (Bahat 1995) found that these adaptations have allowed the Griffon vulture to have one of the widest thermal neutral zones of any bird.
A view from outside a motel room in Lone Pine, looking to the west to the peaks and ridges around Mount Whitney. My thinking in composing this image was to zoom in and have those ridgelines and peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains filling up much of the image itself. A little bit of blue skies would be above, but they had a slight haze to it, and I wanted to minimize that. The other thing that caught my attention was the way the ridges seemed to layer themselves one after the other leading to Mount Whitney.