New York Hiking, Skiing, Climbing and Paddling
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Any time I get an opportunity to visit Yosemite National Park High Country, I stop to admire Beautiful Tenaya Lake. It is somewhat remote from the vehicles and crowds that swarm the Yosemite Valley Floor, leaving one with a sense of freshness and renewal.
Caught between immense granite domes and clear Sierra Nevada sky, Tenaya Lake is the largest lake in Yosemite National Park. The Lake was named after Chief Tenaya, who was the last chief of the Yosemite Indians.
The lake is located between Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne Meadows. The surface of Tenaya Lake has an elevation of 8,150 feet. The lake basin was formed by glacial action, which left a backdrop of light granite rocks, whose beauty was well known to the Native Americans.
(iPhone 13 Pro Max, 1/5000 @ f/1.5, ISO 50, edited to taste)
A big thank you to Peter Stahl for giving me this great opportunity to photograph a Western Grebe carrying her young ones.
Isle Lake. Parkland County, Alberta.
Member of the Flickr Bird Brigade
Activists for birds and wildlife
an opportunity for a kindness :-)
Seneca
HFF!!
prunus, hybrid flowering cherry, First Lady', j c raulston arboretum, ncsu, raleigh, north carolina
Poor Roy decided not to go shooting with me on this night......Sorry, you missed out!
GPS is not the exact spot of the shot.
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Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them. ~ William Arthur Ward
Sorry to bother you once again with this most-photographed scene on my stream. But once in a while I need to go to this beautiful place to shoot. This time it was really challenging because of many many mosquitos around. So probably this will be the one and only image of that pond this year :-)
Happy Sunday, dear friends!
We're heading north to Snowdonia today for few days on our whistle stop tour of Wales, so can't wait to see what opportunities arise. This was one from my favourite coast a few days ago, Silver Timothy is by Damien Jurado.
Winter Fog..
A sudden fog blanketed the area and presented the opportunity to get some amazing shots.
The snow was cold and a warm front moved into the area bringing thick fog which made for poor visibility and frustrating driving. as you could only see a few hundred feet and even then not very well.
this image taken out the window as Karen was driving me to work. .
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In Parkes, NSW, for the David Malin Awards, I was told the normal floodlighting on The Dish radio telescope would be turned off to allow a timelapse to be made for the CSIRO. I hadn't planned to shoot The Dish as many others already have, but without the excess lighting, and given I didn't find a better site I thought I should try. Sigma lens, processed in Lightroom.
One piece of wood, so many photo ops. Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, just north of Half Moon bay, California.
From my Wild and Weathered Wood, collection.
May I take this opportunity to wish all my Flickr friends a Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and successful New Year. I thank all of you who have taken the time to comment and/or fav my photo's this year. I'm going offline for a couple of months but look forward to catching up with all your fab photos from the beginning of March. Best wishes.
This Barn Owl was perched on the post behind the tree making it difficult to get a good angle for a shot, when a brief gust of wind moved the branches allowing me to capture this photo, hence the title.
These Long Tailed Macaques were to be found in the temple grounds at Chua Linh Ung together with plenty of notices that stated they should not be fed and given a wide birth. Clearly they had been attracted by the visitors who must have fed them or given them opportunities to steal. Whilst I was there I noticed some people ignoring these instructions and feeding them. My camera was too valuable for me to get too close to them.
"Life is nothing but an opportunity for love to blossom."
Since the last weeks were quite busy I haven't had that much time for photography and hence I decided to upload a picture which I took in summer and which I quite like, especially in combination with the quote above. I hope you like it too!
Created for Kreative People Treat This: 2022.09.15
www.flickr.com/groups/1752359@N21/discuss/72157721917323641/
Many thanks to brillianthues for the beautiful source below:
www.flickr.com/photos/brillianthues/52355320658/in/album-...
Top layer created in Wombo using my artwork as a source, mirrored two times; third layer is my own manipulated photo.
Thank you for your visit, faves, invites and kind comments!
I love this angle looking northeast toward downtown St. Paul. This photo took a long wait, as the glaciers probably moved faster than did this manifest trying to make a start down the Mankato Subdivision. This train left Hoffman Yard and slowly worked its way to under the Wabasha Street Bridge then stopped for 10 minutes. The train then moved the distance of two city blocks near Ontario Street then stopped. I figured there had to be opposing traffic or something causing them to be so hesitant. Sure enough, a long manifest was ending its journey on the Mankato Subdivision and coming into St. Paul. Another 30 minutes went by, perhaps to give traffic downtown a break - the first manifest occupied Chestnut Street for 15 minutes. Finally, this westbound finally moved onto the Mankato Subdivision and completed a glorious scene here viewed from the High Bridge. I estimate it took 1 hour and 30 minutes for this to get here from Hoffman Yard - a distance of only three miles away.
(Warning: this is a long one, so grab some popcorn and settle in.)
Photographing landscapes has provided me with countless opportunities to have my mind blown over the past few years. From summits in the Canadian Rockies, to countless sunrises in the Sierras to spectacular night skies in remote corners of Utah to beautiful coastlines in Oregon....so many incredible moments. Of all of these experiences, the one I endured last Friday was truly special. It was a personal triumph and one that I have literally been working toward for the past two years.
Tom Bricker was the first one to mention the Diving Board to me. I had seen the shot by Ansel Adams, of course, and had always wondered where he took that shot from, but I figured you would just...you know. Get closer. I was sure that the location must be just beyond Curry Village. What was the big deal?
The big deal is that the diving board is a location in Yosemite that cannot be reached by taking one of the major, well maintained trails. Back in Ansel's day you just took some ropes and charged up the Leconte Gully. But the gully has long been deemed unstable due to frequent rockfalls. The standard route nowadays begins on the mist trail and winds around behind Lost Lake before heading steeply straight up the side of base of Half Dome. From what we were able to gather from scouting online, this would be a 16 mile round trip hike and the word "strenuous" was being thrown around by some very hard core hikers and climbers. My heart sank as I first heard these reports. After all, the hike up the Upper Falls trail had nearly finished me off a few years before. How in the world could I expect to haul my camera gear up the Mist Trail let alone the nearly vertical sections of this crazy trail to the foot of Half Dome?
But I really wanted that shot. I hit the treadmill and began building up my endurance. (Of course the first night was only 10 minutes, but hey. It was a start.) I also began challenging myself with some more difficult hikes, the most recent of which was up to the Fern Ledge in Yosemite. As the Summer drew to a close, we finally had a chance of thunderstorms and the promise of a possible sunset, and I sent Tom an urgent message: Can we go for it on Friday?
So last Friday, Tom and I took off at 4 AM for Yosemite. By 10:30 AM we were taking off from the Mist Trail parking area. Man I was feeling good! No stops at all on the way up to the first bridge. I was blowing past old people and asian tourists like they were standing still. Then the REAL climbing began. By the time we made it to the top of Nevada Fall, I was wiped. But we hadn't started the tough section yet. Tom and I had found a short cut up from Emerald Pool and we had a GPS map with us on Gaia. We were all set. What could go wrong?
So up we went.
The trip from Emerald Pool to the regular bush trail junction was easily the hardest climbing I've ever done. The nearly 30 pounds on my back turned out to be a huge mistake as I nearly gave up several times. Between the steep terrain and the bushwhacking, I was toast. When we hit the junction, things only got worse. I was having to stop almost every 100 feet and poor Tom just sat there waiting for me. After clawing my way up another 700 feet or so, I finally collapsed, unable to continue. I told Tom to head up without me, but he refused. After a long break, it finally hit me: I could dump whatever I wasn't going to use at the top and grab it on the way down! So out came my 24-70 lens (way too hazy for a valley shot), the tripod, almost all of my food, two jackets and over a liter of water. I dropped by stuff in a neat little pile behind a tree reminding myself that it would be a bad idea to forget those items on the way down.
Suddenly the backpack was WAY lighter and even though it hurt, I continued to force my way up. For the final 500 feet, I hung back and sent Tom up ahead. After another 1/2 hour break, I lurched back onto my feet and with the soundtrack of Rocky playing in my head, I charged up the last 500 feet to the Diving Board...some EIGHT hours after leaving the parking lot.
The view was absolutely spectacular as Half Dome rose far more majestically than I could have ever imagined. Although we didn't get quite the epic sunset we were hoping for, we did get some color during the last few minutes, just enough to give some atmosphere. A goal I had set two years prior had just been achieved. I had made it all the way to the diving board!
Our smiles began to fade as it dawned on us that it was getting dark in a real hurry and my car was still 8 miles away. There would be no "short cut" on the way down as we were pretty sure we would not survive a hike back down the sketchy ravine we had just clambered up. So down we went on the long, normal route around past Lost Lake. About 45 minutes later, I said something like "Hey Tom....where's my stuff?" Both of us were convinced that it must still be below us, so we plowed on. After we had gone another 1/2 hour or so, it dawned on us that we must have passed it. We were both beyond exhausted and nearly out of water. But Tom, being the hero that he is, charged back up to look for it. But didn't find it. He had a quarter of a liter of water left and I had maybe a half. I wasn't even sure if I could make the hike out, so I took a deep breath and told Tom we just needed to leave my lens...and all of my other stuff up there, which would have been roughly $2500 to replace.
Ouch.
Okay...this is taking way to long. I'll skip to the end.
After we passed Lost Lake on the way down, we found water in a creek and used my filter to keep from dying on the way back. Tom made it back to the car around 2:30 AM and very kindly drove the car around to the trailhead as I had some severe blisters. I didn't make it back to the trailhead until 3:30 AM.
Fast forward to last Monday when I drove back to Yosemite to find my stuff. I stayed overnight in El Portal and set off the next morning, this time without the 30 pounds taking only water and food. I left at 4 AM and by 8 AM I found my stuff exactly where I had left it! I made it up there in HALF the time! My lens and gear were undamaged and I breathed a huge sigh of relief before heading back down.
For those of you who might be interested taking this hike, I'll have much more details for you including maps, etc on my blog in the very near future. Sorry for the ridiculously long story and THANK YOU for reading the whole thing if you are still with me! The Diving Board was truly a once in a lifetime trip for me....at least for now. I MIGHT try it again, but if I do, it will be with MUCH less gear and more water!
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Occasionally we see butterflies perch on our ashe juniper trees - not the prettiest setting. But this one sat there for a good minute, giving me a good opportunity to explore the possibilities...
Feeding Osprey at Honeymoon Island State Park, Dunedin, Florida, USA.
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A great opportunity to shoot moon when its full and traveling between the overcast. A bit difficult to set the exposure as the light changes every other second. Too much and you will loose details and too little then you won't get the clouds. Also since the moon is constantly on the move, you cannot do bracketing and later merge as you will get a slight motion and won't get a perfect merge. And I hate photoshopping anything that ain't there on the photograph. So the best option is to take multiple shots and hope one does come out with all details you would want in the shot!
Thanks for your favorites and comments, I highly appreciate them!
On my way to the city centre I noticed that the gate to the back yard of a shop was open with fairy lights sparkling, so I took the opportunity to quickly take a photo of the scene.
I can't resist fairy lights when I have mounted a vintage (or fast) lens onto one of my cameras ; ))
[ manual Ricoh XR Rikenon 50mm f1.4 on a Pentax K-70, stopped down a bit ]
These ducks are at the Reifel bird sanctuary near Vancouver, B.C. They sense someone nearby might have snacks and they aren't about to be last in line!
RKO_6412. “Shall I…”
While trying to get some shots of the European Kestrel I came across this interesting situation. Obviously the Common Buzzard just killed -and was feasting on- a bird while this crow (?) was nearby waiting for the left overs. You can almost read the common buzzards thoughts......
I couldn't resist to upload this image as it was so interesting to watch.
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Sunset Crater Volano National Monument, Arizona
The moon and the Milky Way typically do not make happy photographic partners. But here I managed to capture both in a seconds-long window of opportunity before the moon rose higher and completely washed out the Center of Galaxy. It was a tricky shot, difficult to capture enough light from the stars yet avoid overexposure from the moon. And the light pollution from nearby Flagstaff made it even more challenging. I credit PhotoPills for enabling some solid planning for the photography here.
Sunset Crater is an incredible volcanic landscape, with vast fields of cinders and basalt lava flows that killed all life around for 900 square miles, one thousand years ago. There's ponderosa pine and juniper trees here, but not much life otherwise, and as a result it is stunningly quiet at night.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, made a sound that night.
This national monument is rated a Dark Sky Park. A 3-minute exposure long before moonrise did not bring out any details of the landscape. Only the silhouette of Sunset Crater against the stars provided any hint of the cinder cone's existence.
In near complete darkness, and in complete silence, the mystery of the moon and Milky Way made for a truly majestic experience.
Single long exposure processed in Capture One Pro.
Selected for FLICKR Explore February 22, 2025
# 33
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Most of the US has been dealing with snow, some areas are measuring it in feet. Winter offers such wonderful opportunities for photos if you can persevere through the cold and snow.
Last Sunday, I had a great opportunity to capture images inside a terrain with many young born sheeps. I like the attached a lot, as it creates some smile just when watching. Looking at local weather here today, just the opposite is happening. But there is not bad weather, just...All good weekend ahead. Thanks, Udo.
Windows of Opportunity" have been on my mind a lot. We are tentatively scheduled to take a May tour of Bryce & Zion canyons with Road Scholar in May of 2022. The COVID numbers are rising. If I were in my 40's , I would wait and say that there would be other opportunities "when life becomes more normal (safe)". I am in my mid-70's and healthy. There is still the thought in the back of my mind as to how many windows of opportunity will be in my future. We will decide as the time draws nearer.
I am reflecting, not complaining. We have weathered the pandemic well and our living situation is comfortable. I have also had many opportunities in the past to experience other places. The Irish rover in my genes still longs for a look beyond my present horizon, however, and it's a nagging feeling.
There will be one other post in this "windows of opportunity" series.
Given the opportunity to consider this shot, gave rise to thoughts of time. Have you ever pondered it and tried to explain time? Or listened to those who attempt to do so? Typically. the defining term becomes one of direction. Time appears to move only forward, unlike the other elements that constitute our universe.
As a companion, its meaning lead me to compose this image. Headstones for leading lines, and a tree branch to frame them. This photos purpose is related to the mysteries of time, its "direction", and the enigma that lay ahead.
Another negative that has been rescanned and reprocessed to produce an improved result. The original image, uploaded seven years ago, has been deleted.
The shot was taken at Hartlepool while on a week-long Eastern Region Railrover ticket, and features class 37 unit 37160 hauling a rake of COVHOPS, possibly carrying lime destined for the nearby Steetley Works from Thrislington or Coxhoe Quarry.
Above the loco can be seen the floodlights of the Victoria Ground, home of Hartlepool United FC and, to the left of that, is the dog track - now demolished and replaced by a Morrisons food store. The signal box is just visible through the girders of the barn-like structure on the right.
In the brake van the Guard has his coat hung up, and he's no doubt thinking about the imminent arrival and any tasks he needs to perform before signing off.
The station and surroundings were looking pretty uncared for by this time, hardly unusual for the period. Even so, I suspect there would still be a queue to go back and take a few more snaps, should the opportunity ever come up!
Ilford FP4, rated at 95asa, developed in Acutol.
8th September 1976
Back in 2015 Frank and John and I met up in Arizona copper country. After two days of railfanning the Copper Basin we headed down to San Manuel on good authority that the SMARRCO would be running a train up to the interchange. We were there early and the train was on duty and out a bit after 0900 for its two hour northbound journey. After chasing it all the way north to the interchange we watched them exchange loaded hoppers for empties and then got them at a couple spots headed back south. Here they are just having departed the Hayden interchange as they approach the yard limit board and the North Cam Rio grade crossing. The rear of the train is just coming off the south end of the 1000 ft long Gila River Bridge. The colorful striations of the massive tailings pile from the ASARCO's Hayden copper concentrator and smelter complex
These are special shots for me as the SMA was a railroad I always wanted to shoot, but then it shut down before I ever had the opportunity to visot. I was drawn to it after seeing photos in one of my very first issues of Trains Magazine when I was a young fan. After shutting down in 1999 with the closing of the giant underground San Manuel Copper mine the future looked bleak when the smelter was demolished and the mine haul railroad was scrapped.
I thought I'd never get to see it and my opportunities to admire it would be confined to books like my love of the New Haven and the Milwaukee. But, by a miraculous twist of fate the line was reborn in 2013 to once again hall copper ore. Given the fickle nature of global commodities it turned out that its second life was pretty fleeting. I read that the railroad shut down again in January 2016 by then owner Capstone Mining and most if not all of the equipment has been shipped out. I feel pretty fortunate to have had this opportunity and who knows if the SMARRCO will get a third life?
Rebuilt GP38-2 #18 seen here leading was built as a straight GP38 in Sep 1970 for the B&O as their #4810. Trailing GP38-2 #19 was built for the TP&W as their #2004 in May 1977.
Near Hayden
Pinal County, Arizona
Monday October 19, 2015