Photograph taken of the Thanet Offshore Wind Farm at 07:07am on Thursday January 28th 2016 in the magic of The Golden Hour around Sunrise, (Sunrise was at precisely 07:39am), at an altitude of Thirteen metres, off Botany Road and Marine Drive, on the sandy shoreline of Botany Bay in Broadstairs, Kent, England.

Thanet offshore windfarm was officially opened on September 23rd 2010 and was for a time, the largest offshore windfarm project in the world. The eight lines of turbines, one hundred of them in total, run north-west to south-east, covering a total area of 35sq km off Foreness Point near Margate. Each turbine is 115 metres high with 44-metre blades, and the project cost between £780-900million

The seven bays in Broadstairs consist of: (From south to north) Dumpton Gap, Louisa Bay, Viking Bay, Stone Bay, Joss Bay, Kingsgate Bay and Botany Bay.

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Nikon D800 340mm One point three seconds long exposure f/13.0 iso100 RAW (14Bit) Nikon back button focusin. AF-C continuous point focus with 3-D tracking. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance.Auto Active D-lighting. Nikon AF fine tune set to +6

Nikkor AF-S 200-500mm f/5.6E VR, Power UP 95mm HD UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL15 batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap.Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

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LATITUDE: N 51d 23m 19.75s

LONGITUDE: E 1d 26m 13.14s

ALTITUDE: 13.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 24.10MB

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PROCESSING POWER:

Nikon D800 Firmware versions A 1.10 B 1.10 L 2.009 (Lens distortion control version 2)

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU processor. AMD Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB SATA storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX2 Version 2.10.3 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

My sentiments precisely

Photograph taken at an altitude of Seven metres, in the magic of the Golden hour around sunrise at 05:42am, (sunrise was at precisely 06.15am) on Saturday 6th September 2014 off the Patricia Bay Highway 17, on Lochside Drive close to Frost Avenue and the Lochside Waterfront Park, in beautiful Sidney by the sea on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Here, I am standing beside the wooden decked viewing platform, looking over towards Mt Baker in Washington State, USA from beautiful Sidney by the sea on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Also known as Koma Kulshan, she is an active glaciated andesitic stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the North Cascades of Washington State in the United States, standing 3,286 metres tall and was first ascended in 1868, her last eruption recorded in 1880.

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Nikon D800 185mm 1/640s f/2.8 iso100 RAW (14 bit) Manual focus. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance.

Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED IF VRII. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap.Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

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LATITUDE: N 48d 38m 15.76s

LONGITUDE: W 123d 24m 12.94s

ALTITUDE: 7.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 24.26MB

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Processing power:

HP Pavillion Desktop with AMD A10-5700 APU processor. HD graphics. 2TB with 8GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.10.0 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

Please view large on black!

This is my first successful attempt at astrophotography! The first night was a bust, but I learned what not to do. I'm impressed this is even possible with just an (unmodified) dSLR, a fast lens, a tripod, and special software to process a number of images! The entrance to the park area of Tuttle Creek Lake is reasonably dark and shielded from the lights of Manhattan.

I am currently using Deep Sky Stacker, a free program, to process the individual images. It is critical that the stars do not have star trails, otherwise there tends to be problems precisely registering the images so that they align perfectly. I am using the highest ISO that gathers actual data as opposed to just adding noise. This is dependent on the camera model; it seems to be ISO 1600 for the Canon T2i. Prefer a fast prime lens to a zoom lens, especially when no kind of tracking is available. I used other ISO speeds in an attempt to gather more color information.

Be sure to turn off the display when you are taking pictures. The display will add extra heat to the inside of the camera, which will needlessly add extra heat to the CMOS sensor. For a CCD based sensor the noise doubles for every 6C (10.8F) increase in temperature. I don't know if these numbers conform exactly to a CMOS based sensor, but the principle still applies. While running technical tests on the Canon T2i by shooting a series of dark pictures, I found that the sensor noticeably heats up and produces far more noise. With a comparable set of darks with the display turned on, the sensor heated up even faster and produced a corresponding amount of extra noise. As a side note, with all things being equal and with a camera that isn't temperature controlled, it is better to take astrophotographic pictures while it is cooler outside for essentially the same reason. The cooler ambient temperatures keep the CMOS sensor cooler, which keeps the amount of noise down.

I found the Magic Lantern firmware to be immensely helpful in correctly focusing my lens in live preview and also providing an intervalometer. Focusing with the live preview is helpful, but it is best to take test pictures and compare them on a laptop before you get too far. It is just too hard to tell for sure if the focus is perfect on the LCD screen of the camera. It is better to spend more time upfront than to come back and find that all of your pictures are out of focus.

In the 151 image stack there were 3 sets of images. In each set there were about 50 light frames, 20 dark frames, and 100 bias frames. The dark and bias frames help to greatly reduce the noise in the image. I used photoshop to bring out as much detail and color as possible without emphasizing the noise too much.

Comparing visible stars to the catalog in Stellarium, it appears that the faintest recognizable star is around 13.7 apparent magnitude in the 151 stacked image versus 10.8 apparent magnitude in the single non-stacked image. [Apparent Magnitude]

I initially thought that 14x times more light was being picked up in the stacked image. (2.512 ^ (13.7 - 10.8) = 14.46) because the faintest recognizable star went from 10.8 to 13.7 apparent magnitude when comparing the single image to the stacked image. I'm not 100% sure any more. I previously thought that light was being gathered in a non-linear fashion with multiple exposures. A discussion on the Deep Sky Stacker Yahoo group, claims that an additional amount of exposure worth of light isn't being gathered in the stacking process. Instead, they say stacking greatly improves the signal in the resultant image, such that the faintest recorded stars are visible above the noise. The faint stars are in all of the exposures, but they are buried in noise. And additionally Blair MacDonald mentions that "In order to be detectable in the image a single star must be about 3 standard deviations above the noise floor."

However, I'm not convinced that no additional exposure worth of light is being added during the stacking process. In an exchange with someone else he says that "… a modern SLR is truly sensitive enough to capture and digitize individual photons. The read noise is generally between 2-20 equivalent photons, so that definitely gets in the way, because the light source you're trying to measure itself has noise (Poisson distribution). But yes, you can stack almost infinitely dim sub-exposures to get a result. The extra time required goes up dramatically at some point, because the read noise accumulates, but it is possible. This is why, all things being equal, longer exposures are better. But most of the time all things are not equal."--anonymous. If cameras are that sensitive, I can see how given enough sub-exposures and stacking, a periodic photon source at a particular pixel that only shows up in every x sub-exposures could still be translated into a luminosity value above zero.

To my knowledge everyone is recommending a certain number of sub-exposures to deal with practical issues, such as noise and tracking issues over very long exposures. John Smith released a couple of papers that are useful in determining the number of sub-exposures in imaging a particular deep sky object. I have created a spread sheet based on his work that should be useful to others getting started with astrophotography. You put in an initial sub-exposure time and total exposure time and it updates two tables. One table shows different options for keeping the same SNR but adjusting the number of subs-exposures and individual exposure times. The other table shows how SNR changes by keeping the total exposure time constant, but varying the number of subs-exposures and the individual exposure times. You can find it here. You should be able to open the spreadsheet either in Open Office or Excel.

There are some options for choosing the number of sub-exposures, but there is a practical minimum exposure that is needed to record the object. The practical minimum will depend on a number of factors. Some of them include the background sky luminosity, the camera/sensor being used, and the target object's luminosity. Keep this in mind when looking at the spreadsheet.

On a related note, I went out again and took over 1,400 images of the Orion Nebula with 200 dark frames! The outing was a bit of a bust because the images were slightly out of focus and had star trails. Despite the problems, I processed them as a massive stack with sigma clipping in Deep Sky Stacker. The image was virtually noise free and it appeared that there was slightly more exposure, but not by a huge amount given the number of pictures. The faintest recognizable star may have been about .5 magnitude dimmer in the 1,400 image stack. Maybe if it had been more in focus, there would have been a more dramatic improvement?

I am working on building a barn door tracker so that I can take much longer exposures and get images that are not practically possible for me right now. Being limited to 1 to 2 seconds at 85mm is very restrictive! It will use an Arduino and a stepper motor for automated tracking. From what I have read, I should be able to get 15x as long exposures (or more) before star trails show up.

In the process of learning more about lenses and astrophotography, I found out that chromatic aberration can be particularly problematic with the use of lenses. Most photographers are more familiar with the variety known as lateral chromatic aberration. But a special kind of chromatic aberration known as longitudinal chromatic aberration (or axial color), shows up as colored fringing that completely incircles objects such as stars. This is caused by the lens being unable to focus all wave lengths of visible light at the same point. My 85mm lens is not apochromatic and thus exhibits this flaw. I have gone back and replaced the original image that I uploaded with a hand corrected version that attempts to visually minimize the color fringing. Color tends to build up perceived contrast, so I greatly reduced the saturation of color in the purplish fringes and replaced the color with a small amount of random color from the background sky. I feel that this change is a noticeable improvement over the original. If anyone has thoughts on this, I welcome their input.

my identifier: orion nebula d

The cashier is precisely setting up the impulse items waiting for customers. These kind of small, constant activities, make the Quality possible in the point of sales and the business more effective. Well done!

The Pomegranate Seeds - From Tanglewood Tales, 1853

By Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864.

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But Queen Metanira, as was very natural, had a great curiosity to know precisely what the nurse did to her child. One night, therefore, she hid herself in the chamber where Ceres and the little prince were accustomed to sleep. There was a fire in the chimney, and it had now crumbled into great coals and embers, which lay glowing on the hearth, with a blaze flickering up now and then, and flinging a warm and ruddy light upon the walls. Ceres sat before the hearth with the child in her lap, and the firelight making her shadow dance upon the ceiling overhead. She undressed the little prince, and bathed him all over with some fragrant liquid out of a vase. The next thing she did was to rake back the red embers, and make a hollow place among them, just where the backlog had been. At last, while the baby was crowing, and clapping its fat little hands, and laughing in the nurse's face (just as you may have seen your little brother or sister do before going into its warm bath), Ceres suddenly laid him, all naked as he was, in the hollow among the red-hot embers. She then raked the ashes over him, and turned quietly away.

You may imagine, if you can, how Queen Metanira shrieked, thinking nothing less than that her dear child would be burned to a cinder. She burst forth from her hiding-place, and running to the hearth, raked open the fire, and snatched up poor little Prince Demophoön out of his bed of live coals, one of which he was gripping in each of his fists. He immediately set up a grievous cry, as babies are apt to do, when rudely startled out of a sound sleep. To the queen's astonishment and joy, she could perceive no token of the child's being injured by the hot fire in which he had lain. She now turned to Mother Ceres, and asked her to explain the mystery.

"Foolish woman," answered Ceres, "did you not promise to intrust this poor infant entirely to me? You little know the mischief you have done him. Had you left him to my care, he would have grown up like a child of celestial birth, endowed with superhuman strength and intelligence, and would have lived forever. Do you imagine that earthly children are to become immortal without being tempered to it in the fiercest heat of the fire? But you have ruined your own son. For though he will be a strong man and a hero in his day, yet, on account of your folly, he will grow old, and finally die, like the sons of other women. The weak tenderness of his mother has cost the poor boy an immortality. Farewell."

Saying these words, she kissed the little Prince Demophoön, and sighed to think what he had lost, and took her departure without heeding Queen Metanira, who entreated her to remain, and cover up the child among the hot embers as often as she pleased. Poor baby! He never slept so warmly again.

Can be set precisely with just one hand

Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.

~ Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

and a little more blogged here

The third instalment in my mash with the brilliant Cèdric Philippe and Paul Jarvis.

Stanislaw Had A Box For Everything – Part 3

Precisely when Stanislaw had blacked out was not clear to him, but he sensed he was now waking into one of the old nightmares. Like when he was in the clinic and they were drugging his porridge.

From somewhere close by, in the dead tones of a hostage imprisoned in an interminable loop, a vaguely familiar voice was repeating the refrain: “Good evening, this is the news. You can’t box up emotion.” Cold-sweating, Stanislaw looked around him. His cartons had morphed into battered TV sets with screens striving primordially to burst into life, and hellish green swamp vapours were rising from the floorless depths of the Box Chamber. He shuddered.

The voice suddenly dissolved into eerie laughter that caused Stanislaw to start. The bad psychiatrist! Terrified now, he looked up, but the face on the screen was not the one he so feared. It belonged to a wild-eyed macaque which, as it caught his eye, broke off its cackling and enquired facetiously: “How you gonna cope wi’ life as a dwarf penguin, man? You got yourself a cool box wi’ fish?”

Text and vocals by Paul Jarvis: baripaul.blogspot.com/

Matthew Watkins on iPad and harmonica: www.watkinsmedia.com/

Cédric Philippe on iPad and electric guitar: cedricphilippe.blogspot.com/

Photograph taken at an altitude of One hundred and eight metres, in the Golden Hour around Sunset, (Sunset was at precisely 19:38pm), at 19:29pm on Saturday 14th September 2013 Just before Aberfeldy on the shoreline of Loch Tay, nestled in the Tay Forest Park near Kenmore off the A827.

Kenmore (Cheannmhor) is a small village in Perthshire in the Highlands of Scotland where Loch Tay drains into the River Tay.

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Nikon D800 24mm 1/60s f/2.8 iso200 RAW (14Bit)

Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED IF. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL15 batteries. Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod. Manfrotto quick release plate 200PL-14. Manfrotto 327RC2 Grip action ball head. Sandisc 32GB Ultra Class 10 30MB/s SDHC. Nikon DK-17a magnifying eyepiece. Hoodman HGEC soft eyepiece cup. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

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LATITUDE: N 56d 34m 52.39s

LONGITUDE: W 4d 1m 15.46s

ALTITUDE: 108.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED FILE: 15.57MB

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Processing power:

HP Pavillion Desktop with AMD A10-5700 APU processor. HD graphics. 2TB with 8GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.90 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

Photograph taken at an altitude of Seven metres, in the magic prior to the Golden hour around sunrise at 05:41am, (sunrise was at precisely 06.15am) on Saturday 6th September 2014 off the Patricia Bay Highway 17, on Lochside Drive close to Frost Avenue and the Lochside Waterfront Park, in beautiful Sidney by the sea on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Here, I am standing beside the wooden decked viewing platform, looking over towards Mt Baker in Washington State, USA from beautiful Sidney by the sea on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Also known as Koma Kulshan, she is an active glaciated andesitic stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the North Cascades of Washington State in the United States, standing 3,286 metres tall and was first ascended in 1868, her last eruption recorded in 1880.

These Canada Geese, along with many other small groups, fly across the lake from East to West every morning and back again every evening at Sunset, and I love to watch the classic Vee formations and listen to the honking as they pass me by.

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Nikon D800 70mm 1/1000s f/2.8 iso100 RAW (14 bit) Manual focus. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance.

Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED IF VRII. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap.Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

LATITUDE: N 48d 38m 15.79s

LONGITUDE: W 123d 24m 12.85s

ALTITUDE: 7.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 13.81MB

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Processing power:

HP Pavillion P6-2388EA Desktop with AMD A10-5700 APU processor. AMD Radeon HD 7570 graphics. 2TB with 8GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.10.0 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

Welcome to France, more precisely Paris, our second destination on our journey around the world.

In France, the main language they speak is French.

In the book you can see a translation of the English sentence into French.

We've reached 2,000 support!!!

Ayam penyet (Javanese for: smashed fried chicken) is Indonesian — more precisely East Javanese cuisine — fried chicken dish consisting of fried chicken that is smashed with the pestle against mortar to make it softer, served with sambal, slices of cucumbers, fried tofu and tempeh. In Indonesia penyet dishes, such as fried chicken and ribs are commonly associated with Surabaya, the capital city of East Java. The most popular ayam penyet variant is ayam penyet Suroboyo.

It is also known for its spicy sambal, which is made with a mixture of chilli, anchovies, tomatoes, shallots, garlics, shrimp paste, tamarind and lime juice. Like its namesake, the mixture is then smashed into a paste to be eaten with the dish.

Yuri: “Now, I will have to go down to the store myself, which was precisely what I was trying to avoid when I had you pick up the extra supplies on your way over here!”

Kumi: “Don’t get your Chanel in a twist, I’ll go back to the store and get your damn sugar. Geez!” *shoves two cookies into her mouth, dusts her hands off, begins to make her way towards the door*

Yuri: “No, no, by all means, allow me. I have nothing better to do, other than bake seventy dozen cookies, twenty four pies, and eighteen cakes…*follows Kumi out of the kitchen*

Kumi: “Sheesh, just shut up already! I said I’d go get it, didn’t I?”

--Sound of bickering fades as the girls make their way through the dining room--

Hermione: “Huh, I guess you were right, Lizard. They do fight sometimes.”

Lizzy (sagely): “They’re sisters. It’s inevitable. I love Georgie, but she drives me cray-cray some days.”

Hermione: “Bet you a cherry Slurpee they don’t stay mad long, though.”

Lizzy: “Nope. They’ll be over it by the time they come back… *hops off her stool and begins loading cookies into boxes* Hey, wanna help? Miz Yuri said to put a dozen into each box.”

Hermione: “Sure. *hops off her own stool, begins helping Lizzy stuff boxes* So, which one?”

Lizzy: “Huh?”

Lukas: *sticks his head into the kitchen, intent on avoiding teenage detection, and seeing the girls’ backs turned to him, enters stealthily, opening the fridge door slowly (to avoid condiment jingle)*

Hermione: “Which guy would you pick? You never said. You can’t have Mr. Simon. I’ve already dibbed all over his fine ass.”

Lukas: *rolls his eyes, mouths* “Typical.” *scans the fridge*

Lizzy (vehemently): “I don’t want any of them! I just hope Georgie knows what she’s doing by getting messed up with Mr. Hawk. Men suck.”

Lukas: *brow furrows, pulls his head out of the fridge to stare at Lizzy’s back, clearly deciding whether or not to let that sleeping dog of a comment lie*

Hermione: “Yeah! They totally suck! Um, I mean, well, some of them do. Not all of them, though…and I like Mr. Hawk. I thought you did, too.”

Lukas: *nods in relieved agreement, goes back to searching for something snack-y*

Lizzy: “No! All of them! They’re all awful, stupid, mean, cowardly liars.” *slams the lid on her cookie box, denting it in the process*

Lukas: *straightens up, sighing dejectedly, as he quietly closes the fridge door and announces his presence* “Hey, double troubles. What fresh horrors be ye perpetrating in here today?”

Lizzy & Hermione: *whip around, startled*

Hermione (brightly): “Hiya, Mr. Luke!”

Lizzy: *hands landing on her hips* “Hmmph.”

Hermione: *surprised look at Lizzy’s cold greeting, quickly* “Um, would you like a cookie?”

Fashion Credits

**Any doll enhancements (i.e. freckles, piercings, eye color changes) were done by me unless otherwise stated.**

Lizzy

Skirt: Jennifer Sue

Sweater: Christmas ornament (Thank you, Emjay!)

Knee Socks: MGA – High Glam Accessory Pack

Mary Janes: Jennifer Sure

Bow: IT – Poppy Parker – Holiday in the Hamptons

Bracelets: Me

Hello Kitty Pin: Nikki in Wales (Thank you, Nikki!)

Doll is a Lacy Modernist Momoko.

Hermione

Jeans: Lazy Seventeen Momoko

Sweater – Christmas ornament (Thank you, Emjay!)

Sneakers: Momoko Separate

Bracelets: Me

Hair Clip: Me

Doll is a Preppy Girl Momoko.

Lukas

Cords: Gwendolyn’s Treasures

Plaid Shirt: Gwendolyn’s Treasures

T-shirt: IT – Dynamite Boys – Back to Brooklyn Remi

Sneakers: IT – Homme – Euro-Classic Fashion

Necklace: Me

Doll is a Rock Ringmaster Lukas.

Taken in the forest, not far from place where I live.

Bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) is a species of shrub with edible fruit of blue color, more precisely called common bilberry or blue whortleberry. It is found natively in Europe, northern Asia, Greenland, Iceland, Western Canada, and the Western United States. It occurs in the wild on heathlands and acidic soils. Its berry has been long consumed in the Old World. It is related to the widely cultivated North American blueberry. The bilberry fruit is smaller than that of the blueberry and similar in taste. Bilberries are darker in colour, and usually appear near black with a slight shade of blue. While the blueberry's fruit pulp is light green, the bilberry's is red or purple, heavily staining the fingers and lips of consumers eating the raw fruit. Vaccinium myrtillus fruits has been used for nearly 1,000 years in traditional European medicine for treatment of disorders of the gastrointestinal tract and diabetes. In cooking, the bilberry fruit is commonly used for the same purposes as the American blueberry such as pies, cakes, jams, muffins, cookies, sauces, syrups, juices, and candies.

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Jagódki pstryknięte w lesie, niedaleko mojego osiedla :)

Borówka czarna (Vaccinium myrtillus) – gatunek rośliny wieloletniej z rodziny wrzosowatych. Ma wiele nazw zwyczajowych, m.in. jagoda, czarna jagoda, czernica. Roślina jest szeroko rozprzestrzeniona w Azji, Europie i Ameryce Północnej na obszarach o klimacie umiarkowanym i arktycznym. W Polsce jest pospolita zarówno na nizinach, jak i w górach. Jest wykorzystywana szeroko jako roślina jadalna i lecznicza. Znaczenie gospodarcze borówki czarnej pozostaje wysokie mimo silnej konkurencji znacznie bardziej plennych borówek północnoamerykańskich, których owoce mają uboższy skład chemiczny od czernicy. Owoce borówki czarnej były od dawna bardzo istotne dla Słowian i ludów północnej Europy. Używano jej owoców jako lekarstwa przy biegunkach i krwawej dyzenterii. Zastosowanie takie utrzymało się w lecznictwie ludowym, przy czym często zalecano je także w większych dawkach przeciw owsikom. Ponadto owoce borówki czarnej oferowane i spożywane są w postaci świeżej, suszonej, mrożonej oraz jako składnik przetworów takich jak dżemy, ciasta, soki oraz ciekłe lub sproszkowane koncentraty, będące suplementem diety. Przetwory z jagód wyróżniają się długą trwałością.

Photograph taken at an altitude of Sixty six metres, in the first vestiges of light prior to the magic of the Golden Hour around sunrise (Sunrise was at precisely 04:38am), at 02:38am on Thursday 12th June 2014 off Lullingstone Lane and Eagle Heights overlooking a blanket of morning mist as it rolled across the Poppy field by Eynsford Viaduct in the village of Eynsford, Kent, England.

This impressive nine-arched red-brick viaduct is a prominent feature on the line to the 'Bat & Ball' station. The structure was built by the independent ''Sevenoaks Railway'', incorporated in 1859 to link the ''Chatham'' main line with the market town of Sevenoaks. And first services began on 2nd June 1862. The viaduct has nine arches of 30-foot span, and rises to a height of 75-feet above the valley and the River Darent.

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Nikon D800 52mm 5 second exposure f/2.8 iso100 RAW (14 bit) Nikon RC-DC2 remote shutter release. Manual focus. Manual exposure. Matrix metering.

Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED IF. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap.Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

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LATITUDE: N 51d 22m 4.36s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 11m 52.53s

ALTITUDE: 66.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED FILE: 16.74MB

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Processing power:

HP Pavillion Desktop with AMD A10-5700 APU processor. HD graphics. 2TB with 8GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.90 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

In various Mithraic temples there have been found representations of a monstrous figure (according to Hieronymus a monstruosum portentum), generally with a lion's head and a human body entwined by a snake. On none of these, however, is there an inscription to tell us precisely which deity is portrayed. Several attempts have been made, particularly in more recent years, to equate this figure with Ahriman, the god of evil, a suggestion made by Prof. R. Zaehner of Oxford and accepted, with reservation, by the Belgian scholar of Persian, Duchesne-Guillemin. There are, it is true, some dedicatory inscriptions to Ahriman, but they are carved on altars and only three of them are recorded, one each in Rome, England and Austria. They were obviously intended to placate the god of evil and to implore him to avert his magic force, and they must have been inscribed by sorely troubled followers of Mithras who preferred to invoke Ahriman himself rather than place complete trust in their own god who, ultimately and inevitably, was to conquer evil. To us it would seem odd to find an altar dedicated to the devil in a Christian church, but to the ancient way of thinking this was not unusual and even sacrifices of wild boars were made to pacify the malicious Ahriman.

The lion-headed figure is the Time-god called Aion by the Greeks and Zervan in Persian literature. As far as the Persian texts are concerned, three different aspects of the Time-god must be distinguished. According to the orthodox teaching of Zarathushtra, Zervan is a creature of Ahura-Mazda, the God of Good. According to a second theory, however, there were originally two archetypes, that of Good and that of Evil. A separate Sassanid sect regarded Zervan Akarana, Infinite Time, as the cause and the source of all things. Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman both sprang from Zervan and were subject to him, and the followers of this cult called themselves Zervanists. It seems plausible that the same Zervan, after having undergone all kinds of foreign influences, was admitted into the Mithraic pantheon and that the figure with the lion's head is none other than Zervan who, by means of a put on Chronos (Time), was identified in the Greek texts with Kronos and, in the Roman world, with Saturn. This god is mostly portrayed in a stiff hieratic pose, with legs close together. Sometimes he is shown nude, though often his sex is disguised by a loin-cloth or by an enveloping snake, as if it were intended either to leave the deity's sex vague or to convey that both sexes were united in him, and that he was capable of self procreation. In between the coils of the snake, which often winds itself, significantly, seven times round the god, are sometimes seen the signs of the zodiac. The horrifying figure usually has a lion's head with flowing mane and wide-open mouth showing threatening protruding teeth. For even greater effect the mouth is sometimes painted red and the gullet is hollowed out. A statue from Saida in Africa has an opening made in its head, and it is highly likely that this was intended to take a burning torch. The statue would thus appear to breathe fire and so inspire even more respect for the god than his dread visage alone could evoke. In one example he is holding two torches, while a long-pointed flame shoots out of his mouth and fuses with the flames of the burning altar beside him. An unknown author records in an essay on Saturn that he 'is sometimes represented with the appearance of a snake because of excessive cold, and at other times with a wide open lion's mouth on account of scorching heat'. Sometimes this strange creature is carrying a key in both hands, a pointer to a connection with Janus, the ruler of the ianus, the gateway to the underworld of which he possessed the keys. Finally, parallels have been drawn between Saturn and Sarapis, the Egyptian deity of the realm of the dead, and he is in some way related to certain Syrian figures who are found entwined by snakes.

Norwegian, or more precisely Norwegian Air UK, started serving Buenos Aires from Gatwick on 14th February. It runs four times a week, and I caught Dreamliner G-CKOG just before touching down at its European destination.

In line with group policy, it features a 'hero' on the fin, which in this case is Spanish flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucía

London Gatwick

24th February 2018

20180224 IMG_9573 GCKOG

At precisely 17:15 on a Thursday evening, 58046 trundles southward through Stoke with an empty MGR train. From whence it came and where it was going I have no idea!

I did like the original railfreight livery applied to these locos, and for my money, they looked even better when work-stained as in this view.

I don't suppose the Staffordshire Polytechnic is still known as such!

The carpenter cut the wood precisely on angles. The public did not approve and crucified the guy.

Size: 12x12 inches

Paintings for sale: www.shawnshawn.co/store/p204/Wood-Composition-III

Newsletter: www.shawnshawn.co/Site/Contact.html

Art Code: AA01187

Art of the Real

This is precisely what I love about this city.

People can do whatever they want, wherever they want. (ok, there are a few rules. anyways)

This dude was practicing his stuff inside the station. Not for money. Its too cold outside. No-one had a problem.

I was doing my stuff..something like weird crawling on the ground. No-one had an issue. (well, i was interrogated a few days back while taking snaps of a door in the airport, but thats ok. lets accept it, we are weird)

He was done in like 10 mins. I was not too happy to say "c ya mate".

View On Black

It's July 26, 1961 at precisely 7:45 AM. Northern Pacific 855 and 911 find themselves derailed at the north end of Rice's Point in Duluth, Minnesota. While officials (wearing the fancy fedoras) are on the scene trying to figure out how to solve this problem without spending too much money. The very curious fellow who is taking the closest look at the carnage is likely the engineer—hoping that he won't get the blame for today's little mishap. When the lead wheels of the locomotive pick a switch (go the wrong direction) this is the result nearly 100% of the time. It is with good reason why yard speed limits are limited to 10 m.p.h. With so many train movements in the yard and so many switches to navigate—the slower you go—the less damage there will be when things go wrong. NP 855 is an Alco RS-3 built in December of 1953. NP 911 is an Alco RS-11 built in July of 1958. Both will recover after a trip to the roundhouse to put their equalizers back on. the trucks on Alco road switchers had a nasty habit of falling apart if the engine came off the track. An arguably flawed design that Alco's competitors simply didn't have to deal with. Alco went out of business in 1969. FYI, most of the ground between the men in the photo and the turntable is now under the I-35 expressway. The turntable (background-right) belonged to the Soo Line and it would have been located along where Lower Michigan Street is now.

The news of the attacks in Paris had profoundly saddened me. I am shocked and incredibly sad. But they are also an incentive to engage further in tolerance, respect and humanity. Precisely for this reason, it is a matter of heart for me, to continue further on the project "The Human Family" and to promote the humanistic values. Therefore, here is a contribution to the project, which was, however, taken before the horrors of Paris.

At last once again time to continue the project "The Human Family".

Professionally, I'm back on travel, this time on the River Rhine, in Koenigswinter. It's lunchtime break, the weather is acceptable, so already well placed to hold out by strangers. Only problem, there are hardly any people on the street. I wanted to give up almost as if I could see a young woman who was trying to take pictures of her little dog.

When she had finished her photos session, I spoke to her, introduced myself and explained my concerns.

Without hesitation, agreed to my stranger.

So I met here in Koenigswinter Irina. Irina is 25 years old. She's just here for a visit with her grandmother and is walking the dog. Since seven months Irina lives in Berlin; she is a fashion stylist and accompanies photoshoots and is responsible for the outfits. Irina is happy now living and workingin Berlin, because there the career options are very good and they practically operates at the cutting edge. Regularly also the Fashion Weeks are held even in Berlin. An eldorado for fashion enthusiastic people.

What was your biggest challenge so far in life, I asked. My move to Berlin alone and without knowing someone there.

How would you describe yourself? I'm messy, erratic, but clever. (I think these are the attributes that characterize creative people)

Goals: in Berlin to gain a foothold and to succeed professionally; with less Irina does not want to be satisfied.

Yes, Irina agrees with me that it is very ambitious.

What is your motto in life: Do not plan on doing! Do not think, but act.

I do not want to mention how patient Irina posed for my camera. Since I was not completely satisfied with the background, Irina did not mind and so much time to go a few more steps, because I wanted to have a not so troubled background.

Thank you for your patience Irina, and your time, you've diverted for my project. It was a pleasant conversation on the River Rhine. I wish you much success in Berlin and I keep my fingers crossed that you start off really there. All the best to you.

This photo is my 4th submission to new group "The Human Family".

Visit "The Human Family" here and have a look on the photos of the other photographers:

www.flickr.com/groups/thehumanfamily/

*******************************************************************

Die Geschehnisse in Paris sind schockierend und haben mich tief getroffen. Sie sind aber auch ein Ansporn, sich weiter für Tolrenaz, Respekt und Menschlichkeit einzusetzen. Gerade aus diesem Grund ist es für mich eine Herzensangelegenheit, dass Projekt "The Human Family" weiter fortzuführen und für die humanistischen Werte zu werben. Daher hier eine Beitrag zu dem Projekt, der allerdings vor den Erignissen von Paris aufgenommen wurde.

Endlich wieder einmal Zeit, das Projekt "The Human Family" fortzusetzen.

Beruflich bin ich wieder auf Reise, diesmal am Rhein, in Königswinter. Es ist Mittagspause, das Wetter ist passabel, also schon einmal gute Voraussetzungen, nach Fremden Ausschau zu halten. Einziges Problem, es sind kaum Menschen auf der Strasse. Ich wollte fast schon aufgeben, als ich eine junge Frau beobachten konnte, die versuchte, ihren kleinen Hund zu fotografieren.

Als sie ihre Fotossession beendet hatte, sprach ich sie an, stellte mich vor und erklärte mein Anliegen. Ohne zu zögern, stimmte meine Fremde zu.

Ich begegnete also hier in Königswinter Irina. Irina ist 25 Jahre alt. Sie ist gerade hier zu Besuch bei ihrer Großmutter und führt ihren Hund aus. Seit sieben Monaten lebt Irina in Berlin; sie ist Modestyleistin, begleitet Fotoshootings und ist dabei für die outfits zuständig. Irina ist froh, jetzt in Berlin zu leben und zu arbeiten, weil dort die beruflichen Möglichkeiten sehr gut sind und sie quasi am Puls der Zeit arbeitet. Regelmäßig finden in Berlin ja auch die Fashionweeks statt. Ein Eldorado für modebegeisterte Menschen.

Was war Deine größte Herausforderung bisher im Leben, fragte ich. Mein Umzug ganz allein nach Berlin und ohne dort jemanden zu kennen.

Wie würdest Du Dich beschreiben? Ich bin chaotisch, sprunghaft, aber clever. (ich glaube, das sind Attribute, die kreative Menschen kennzeichnen)

Deine Ziele: in Berlin Fuß zu fassen und beruflich Erfolg zu haben; mit weniger möchte Irina sich nicht zufrieden geben. Ja, Irina stimmt mir zu, dass sie sehr ehrgeizig ist.

Was ist Dein Lebensmotto: Nicht planen, machen! Nicht denken, sondern handeln.

Ich möchte nicht unerwähnt lassen, wie geduldig Irina vor meiner Kamera posierte. Da ich nicht ganz zufrieden mit dem Hintergrund war, hatte Irina nichts dagegen und so viel Zeit noch ein paar Schritte zu gehen, weil ich unbedingt einen nicht so unruhigen Hintergrund haben wollte.

Vielen Dank Irina für Deine Geduld, und Deine Zeit, die Du für mein Projekt abgezweigt hast. Es war eine angenehme Plauderei am Rhein. Ich wünsche Dir viel Erfolg in Berlin und drücke Dir die Daumen, dass Du dort so richtig durchstartest. Alles Gute.

Dies ist mein 4. Beitrag zu der neuen Gruppe The Human Family. Mehr Fotos von anderen Fotografen findest Du hier:

www.flickr.com/groups/thehumanfamily/

Little man and I took a walk in the park the other morning and I noticed this between bouts of deep discussion about ducks and geese and precisely which one was the most evil ;)

§ 3 - A tranny princess is by law allowed to dress only and precisely according to her own wish.

Quote: ”The T-girl constitution of 1969”

And so to day I thought to my self, why not try to step down from my throne of femininity and mingle among the more ordinary, the ”common” girls of the realm? Why not just for a glimpse try to identify my self with the subjects of the kingdom, why not ”go slumming” as an ordinary girl?

”Hmmm...” I thought to myself putting on make up and sipping my drink, ”Now there's an idea. Hmmm....”

My mother (who does a LOT of charity work) stumbled over this SWEET SWEET dress and thought of me (sigh) It´s not THAT fortunate at the ”upper” end, but nothing a top won't deal with, as a skirt, it is... silky smooth thin and feel like heaven is breezing around your nylon clad legs * double sigh * I LOVE that dress for it´s skirt-potential and even though you can only see it ”skirt wise” underneath the coat, it is simply perfect as such :o)

But to be honest I DID bring a pair of silver stilettos in the hand bag, as always to be able to change back into a princess if need be, or if being ”ordinary” was feeling a little TOO dull.... it did, but it was still fun :o)

My dear journal I did precisely as I had planned and drank far more than my fill on Sunday night and faced my father on Monday morning in a fairly cheerful mood. Now that I think about it I am sure I was still very drunk, and he was aware of it because by lunchtime was taking delight in making as much noise as he could in his office as my good mood turned to one of the worst headaches I have had in my life. Little did I know that would come later in the night.

At the end of the day, Father thrashed me and left me to my misery with a list of jobs that needed doing before I could go home.

My work was slow as I moved gingerly feeling every agonising little jot until around 11 o'clock when the pain had mostly subsided, and I finally finished. I was gathering my coat and the moneybox to put away in the safe when I heard feet outside the office door and froze. There was no way father had returned to check on me, not at that hour.

I set the box on the desk went to the door quietly hoping the feet would shuffle out, but then I heard a second set creaking down the hall. The bell on the door hadn't gone, they must have come in another way, but it doesn't matter.

What happened next was a blur of motion as two figures burst into the office. Once tackled me and we fell back against fathers’ desk so hard it knocked the air from my lungs. The moneybox went flying as the large desk scraped across the floor with the combined weight of us and crashed to the ground behind it sending coins and notes flying, and one man scrambled away behind the desk to retrieve what he could it while the other was pummelling me.

The pain was unbearable, but I fought hard seeing red, I shoved my attacker away. I do not recall anything afterwards

The next thing I knew they were gone, I was soaked in blood though I was unsure whose it was, and to my relief, the money was still on the floor where it had fallen. I climbed to my feet, and the room spun, but regardless I scooped up the money and put the box away in the safe, I turned around again shaking finding a familiar face in the doorway that hadn't been there before, and he looked very puffed out.

I expect I fainted because I woke up in my bed, confused and numb.

Lucy informed me later in the day that Oliver had come to pick me up and was the one to find me covered from head to toe in blood and the office in a state. As it turns out, the warm patch on my left cheek was a deep but clean cut from my cheekbone to the middle of my cheek about the length of my nose. Unfortunately, it will scar, and it looks awful.

It took me a long time to realise that I was lying in bed in nothing but some loose pants and bandages covering most of my chest. There was a small cut on my chest, but I could not figure out how that had happened or why such a tiny cut would need so many bandages and still be missed, but then it suddenly clicked in my groggy mind that the bandages were for my back.

The way Jane was looking at me from her chair at the side of the bed told me all I needed to know She wasn't stupid and no doubt Lucy had been cursing father was like when they had been cleaning me up... I rolled on my belly and shooed them all away, ashamed and embarrassed.

Lucy told me when I eventually let them come back into the main bedroom that my father had stopped by and much to my surprise told her to keep me off the rest of the day and tomorrow and to see that my face was seen too by a proper doctor, but I would be expected in on Wednesday as usual. He made no mention of the ugly welts on my back a bit daft on my part to think he would really.

Eventually, Jane reappeared and climbed onto the bed and sat beside me. And holding her hand in mine, I caved and told her everything I could think of, from the abuse my family had suffered at fathers hands the constant worry for mother and little Phillip (though he was in boarding school now and I had written requesting they keep an eye on him as they had done for me). To the anger, resentment and embarrassment, I felt that though I was meant to be a grown man now, father frightened me far more than when I was small. And worst of all, I could not stop myself from crying.

I opened my eyes, and she was holding me stroking my hair, and suddenly I was exhausted, Whatever Lucy had given me for the pain had faded and I could still feel every bruise and scrape and welt as I lay there being soothed like a babe but I welcomed the comfort, Jane was gentle, and I could see she was crying too, So very carefully, I sat up ignoring the protests of my entire body and kissed her on the lips. I hate to see her upset and knowing it was my fault; it breaks my heart.

I will leave it here, for now, I am still sore, and I need to sleep. The doctor managed to fit in 7 little stitches on my cheek, and I didn't even ask about my back, according to Lucy, he did an awful job. I won't argue with her, but I do not care how pleasing they are to the eye; I am just glad they are no longer open wounds.

Goodnight. I have work tomorrow, unfortunately, bruises or no. My two days of rest are all the thanks I am going to get from father for saving him a week’s money.

P.S. I run into Jeremiah on my way to the doctors this afternoon he told me Samuel and Jack had disappeared sometime last night, I was sorry to hear that, but those two were not the best company at least from what little I could remember from Sunday night.

He (Jeremiah) asked about my face, and I explained what had happened at the office. When I finished my story, He gives me such a strange look, and I honestly had no idea what to make of it and still do not. The look ended our convocation it seems as he bid me farewell and told me to look after myself. I wished him well and watched him go I do hope he is alright.

Alaa Abd El-Fattah has endured much of the last twelve years in some of the worst prison conditions anywhere for his brave work in promoting democracy in Egypt. He was last arrested in September 2019 while attending Cairo's Dokki Police Station and in December last year was sentenced to five years imprisonment for "spreading false news undermining state security." More precisely, he had shared social media posts explaining the hell-hole reality of Egyptian prison conditions.

PROTEST OUTSIDE THE FOREIGN OFFICE

When this photo was taken, Alaa's two sisters, Mona and Sana'a Seif, were staging a protest in London's King Charles Street outside the British Foreign Office in the hope that the Egyptian government can be pressured to release him, as media attention began to focus on the upcoming COP27 conference at Sharm El Sheikh on Egypt's Red Sea coast.

UPDATE AS OF WEDNESDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2022

Starting from Sunday 6 November, Alaa escalated his hunger strike, and stopped taking water. His sister Sanaa Seif took a flight the same weekend to attend the COP27 conference at Sharm El Sheikh in a last-minute effort to save Alaa's life.

For the latest on Alaa's situation listen to his sister's Sanaa Seif's speech to journalists attending the conference on Tuesday 8 November - "They are very happy for him to die. The only thing they care about is that it doesn't happen while the world is watching."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqXibJ7PUTY

TORA PRISON - "A DAY HERE, IS LIKE A YEAR IN BELMARSH"

In April, Alaa began his hunger strike in a cell in one of the most secure sections of Cairo's sprawling and notorious Tora Prison - a maze of grim high concrete walls and watch towers, which strike fear into even the thousands of commuters who have to pass daily.

In 2012, one young Londoner confined to one of the least uncomfortable and most survivable wings of Tora prison, contrasted it with his own previous experience at Britain's high security Belmarsh. I can never forget his exact words. "A day here, is like a year at Belmarsh!" A little over 12 months later, he died of TB - the prison authorities had refused to listen to the pleas of his aunt, who fell on her knees during a rare visit, begging that he be admitted to the prison hospital.

ALAA'S HUNGER STRIKE CONTINUES AT WADI EL NATRUN PRISON

More than 200 days have passed since Alaa started his hunger strike. He has now been moved to the Wadi El Natrun prison complex in the desert north of Cairo, dubbed by inmates as the "Valley of Hell."

He may not survive much longer. However, as he holds British-Egyptian nationality, one would hope that the British government would be doing everything they could to secure his immediate release and it would be reasonable to suppose that the Foreign Office could get an immediate pledge in this regard, especially given that the British companies, including the likes of British Petroleum and BP, are the biggest investors in Egypt.

NO CONSULAR ACCESS

However, the British government have failed even to get him any consular access - think about that. That's an outrage. Even a convicted mass murderer, if British, would be entitled to consular access while in prison. That meeting would obviously not take place in his cell - but in a designated room in the prison or the highly supervised prison visiting area.

British men and women convicted of drug smuggling and other crimes in Egypt have received consular visits, so why not Alaa? The answer is because Alaa's crime is that he dared to tell the truth about Egypt, and the injustice both inside and outside its many prison walls. Nobody knows exactly how many political prisoners Egypt now has, but the number is estimated to be at least 60,000.

ALAA WAS ONE OF THE LEADERS OF THE MOST INSPIRATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLT THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN

Alaa Abd El-Fattah was one of the leaders of arguably the most inspirational democratic revolt the world has seen in the last hundred years. Although the first phase of the 2011 uprising in Egypt lasted just 18 days, and although it followed the toppling of the dictator Ben Ali in Tunisia - the streets and bridges around Tahrir Square became a deadly stage watched by the world, where protesters from every walk of life were pitted against Egypt's feared state security forces. Against all the odds, and at the cost of many lives, Egyptians refused to leave the square, sleeping in front of the tanks and fending off attacks from government militia.

The Egyptian people's initial success in toppling the dictator Mubarak led to further revolts not just across the Middle East (most notably in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria) - the highly organised Tahrir-Square sit-in provided the inspiration for strikes and workplace sit-ins against austerity across the United States and Europe and to the Occupy Movement of the same year. The people of Egypt showed that it does not matter how brutal, feared and authoritarian a government is, it can be toppled if people act collectively.

THE MILITARY BACKLASH

It's true that Egypt's flirtation with the path to greater freedom seemed to be only temporary - the Egyptian authorities deployed the usual divide and rule tactics - encouraging the less committed protesters to return home - and then rushed to elections without allowing time for genuinely democratic opposition parties to develop.

Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood won the presidential election in 2012 - the Brotherhood (contrary to the perception many people have here in the West) had genuinely progressive elements within it, but the chance for any transformative radical programme was prevented partly by the corruption and self-interest of some of the main political actors and partly by opposition to its democratic mandate from the deep state (the military, the Interior Ministry, State Security, the police etc.)

The army, seeing its chance, seized power in 2013, superficially in the name of the people, but in reality, to advance the interests of the generals. The new president, Abdel Fattah El-Sissi, moved quickly to crush all opposition, and ordering his security forces to attack Muslim Brotherhood supporters who had gathered in eastern Cairo at Rabaa al-Adaweya Square, killing at least 800 people - the bloodiest massacre of civilians in Egypt's modern history.

DON'T ALLOW EGYPT TO USE COP27 TO GREENWASH ITS REGIME - AND PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION TO SAVE ALAA

Now COP27 is scheduled to take place in Sharm El-Sheikh and Sisi has been given a golden opportunity to greenwash his murderous regime, which has also seen ever increasing levels inequality and corruption. While British representatives at COP27 will be given accommodation in the most luxurious five star hotels in Sharm El-Sheikh and fall asleep listening to the sound of the waves, another British citizen, Alaa Abdel El-Fatah is near death, on a painful hunger strike in the darkest of places - his dimly lit cell. The only thing he might hear at night is the desperate cry from some prisoner in another cell appealing for medical help which most likely never comes.

If we care for freedom, real democracy and justice, we can't allow the British Foreign Office to forget Alaa - especially if it's simply not to upset the highly profitable relationship British multinationals have with one of the world's most authoritarian and corrupt regimes - a relationship which only benefits the wealthiest of Egyptians.

If you live in London, please show your support at the protest at King Charles Street - and wherever you live please sign the petition -

www.change.org/p/help-free-my-brother-before-it-s-too-lat...

Norwegen / Buskerud - Hallingskarvet-Nationalpark

On the way to Prestholtskarvet.

Auf dem Weg zum Prestholtskarvet.

Hallingskarvet National Park (Norwegian: Hallingskarvet nasjonalpark) is a national park in central Norway that was established by the government on 22 December 2006. The park is located in the municipalities of Hol (Buskerud county), Ulvik and Aurland (both in Vestland county). More precisely, the park comprises the Hallingskarv plateau and the high mountain areas to the west of it. It includes the Vargebreen glacier as well as the valleys of Såtedalen, Lengjedalen, Ynglesdalen, and parts of Raggsteindalen.

The national park covers 450 square kilometres (170 sq mi) of the Hallingskarvet mountain range and hosts large stocks of wild reindeer, an important factor in the establishment of the park. The highest point in the national park is Folarskardnuten which reaches an elevation of 1,933 metres (6,342 ft) above sea level.

The landscape of Hallingskarvet was shaped by multiple ice ages. The park shows the geological history and the connection between this history and the variation in the species living there. It includes areas of special value and which are home to threatened or vulnerable species such as Draba cacuminum (whitlow-grass) and Botrychium lanceolatum (lance-leaf grapefern).

The Bergen Line runs along the southern boundary of the park. There is no road access to the southern side of the park, so Finse Station, a stop on the railway line, is one of the few ways that people can access this part of the park. The Norwegian County Road 50 runs near the northern boundary of the park.

Protection and use

The main objective of this national park is to preserve a large, unique, and largely untouched area in order to protect the landscape and the biome with its ecosystem, species and populations of, amongst others, the wild reindeer. The protection is designed to safeguard a characteristic element needed to understand the geological history of the Norwegian landscape. It is also designed to protect valuable elements of the cultural heritage.

The park is open to the traditional forms of outdoor activities which require little or no technical means.

Name

The first element is halling (inhabitant of the Hallingdal valley) and the last is the finite form of skarv (mountain or mountainous area without vegetation).

(Wikipedia)

Der Hallingskarvet-Nationalpark (norwegisch Hallingskarvet nasjonalpark) ist ein südnorwegischer Nationalpark. Er umfasst das Hallingskarvet-Hochplateau und erstreckt sich über das Gebiet der Gemeinden Hol (Provinz Buskerud), Ulvik und Aurland (Provinz Vestland) gehört.

Gegründet wurde der Park am 22. Dezember 2006, um die dortige große, unverwechselbare und nahezu unberührte Bergregion, die Artenvielfalt von Flora und Fauna und die dort heimischen Bergrentiere zu schützen. Der Park grenzt an das Naturschutzgebiet Skaupsjøen/Hardangerjøkulen und das Biotop Finse.

Im Süden des Parkes führen sowohl die Bergenbahn als auch die Reichsstraße 7 vorbei.

Geologie, Landschaft und Geografie

Der Nationalpark umfasst größtenteils das Hallingskarvethochplateau, welches aufgrund der Kaledonischen Orogenese entstand. Das vorherrschende Gesteinsmaterial der Bergkette ist präkambrisches Pluton.

Der höchste Berg ist der Folarskardnuten mit 1.933 m. Im Hallingskarvet befindet sich auch Norwegens höchster See, der Flakavatnet, welcher auf 1.453 m Höhe liegt.

Flora

Die Pflanzenwelt gestaltet sich mit über 300 verschiedenen Arten sehr vielfältig. Die am weitesten verbreiteten Pflanzen sind der Weiße Silberwurz, Knöllchen-Knöterich und Herbst-Löwenzahn. In den höheren Lagen kommen vor allem Dreiblatt-Binsen, Polarsimsen, Moosheide und Gletscher-Hahnenfuß vor.

Fauna

Im Park gibt es an größeren Säugetieren Bergrentiere, Elche, Rehe, Polarfüchse und Schneehasen. Nördlich des Parks leben zudem Vielfraße.

Die größten Greifvögel sind Steinadler, Gerfalke, Turmfalke und Raufußbussard. Der Kolkrabe ist im Hallingskarvet ebenfalls heimisch.

Kulturerbe

Im Nationalpark wurden verschiedene Jagdutensilien gefunden, die auf eine prähistorische/historische Nutzung der Berge als Jagd- und/oder Siedlungsgebiet schließen lassen.

Im 17. bis 19. Jahrhundert lag der Park entlang einer wichtigen Handelsroute. Einfache Übernachtungshütten, sog. lægre, zeugen noch heute davon. Im Jahre 1880 ließ der englische Graf Lord Garvagh eine steinerne Jagdhütte, die Lordehytta, errichten, um in der näheren Umgebung auf Rentierjagd zu gehen.

Verwaltung und Tourismus

Der Norwegische Wanderverein unterhält im Park die Hütten Finsehytta im Süden und Geiterygghytta im Norden. Private Unterkünfte gibt es im Raggsteindalen und bei Haugastøl. Zwischen den Hütten gibt es markierte Wanderwege.

Zwischen Finse und Ustaoset verläuft ein Stück des Skarverennet durch den Park. Im Süden des Parks verläuft zudem der Rallarvegen.

(Wikipedia)

"…precisely the figure that fashion decrees."

I found it pretty challenging to work out precisely where this garage was. All my efforts pointed to it having been on Station Road North or possibly on the High Street adjacent to Station Road North. Yesterday Dan Lockton posted an image of much the same location showing an Ultramar garage on the High Street opposite Station Road North. Later on it would be branded Total and currently it is an Esso site and if it is the same place as this then it has finally returned to Esso after maybe forty or fifty years. It may also be of course that the garage was moved to a location very nearby to update the facilities where that might not have been possible at the original site. You can see Dan's photo below, first comment, and here's the Streetview showing it when it was Total branded.

www.google.com/maps/@51.2650023,-0.15256,3a,75y,336.52h,9...

Edit Update:- Thanks to Steve Terry's comment below now identified as being where these flats are now right next door to the railway station and its car park.

www.google.com/maps/@51.2644504,-0.1507554,3a,75y,10.6h,9...

"The Heidenmauer is the best-known Roman monument in the Hesse state capital of Wiesbaden, the Roman Aquae Mattiacorum. According to current opinion, it was built around 370 AD under Emperor Valentinian I and is therefore the oldest surviving building in the city. The purpose of this defensive wall cannot yet be clearly determined, and the dating cannot be narrowed down more precisely than generally to the late phase of Roman Wiesbaden.

During the Wilhelmine period, the Heath Wall was broken through to build Coulinstrasse and the so-called Roman Gate was added in the style of the time. While only a few sections of the wall are visible above ground, the gate that was added later is integrated as a visible monument into the urban development structures of the 19th century in the Quellenviertel. It is a cultural monument for artistic, urban development and local historical reasons, the Heidenmauer for urban historical reasons.

Wiesbaden (German pronunciation: [ˈviːsˌbaːdn̩]) is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. As of June 2020, it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area is home to approximately 560,000 people. Wiesbaden is the second-largest city in Hesse after Frankfurt am Main.

The city, together with nearby Frankfurt am Main, Darmstadt, and Mainz, is part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region, a metropolitan area with a combined population of about 5.8 million people.

Wiesbaden is one of the oldest spa towns in Europe. Its name translates to "meadow baths", a reference to its famed hot springs. It is also internationally famous for its architecture and climate—it is also called the "Nice of the North" in reference to the city in France. At one time, Wiesbaden had 26 hot springs. As of 2008, fourteen of the springs are still flowing.

In 1970, the town hosted the tenth Hessentag Landesfest (English: Hessian Day, a state festival).

The city is considered the tenth richest in Germany (2014) boasting 110.3% of the national average gross domestic product in 2017. The average annual buying power per citizen is €24,783.

Rheingau is one of 13 designated German wine regions (Weinbaugebiete) producing quality wines (QbA and Prädikatswein). It was named after the traditional region of Rheingau (meaning "Rhine district"), the wine region is situated in the state of Hesse, where it constitutes part of the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis administrative district. Although, making up only 3 percent of the total German vineyard area, Rheingau has been the source of many historically important innovations in German wine making, and contains many wine producers of international reputation, such as Schloss Johannisberg. Rheingau, with 3,125 hectares (7,720 acres) of vineyards in 2016, also boasts a higher proportion of Riesling (77.7%) than any other German wine-growing region, with Spätburgunder (Pinot noir) making up most of the rest (12.2%), followed by Müller-Thurgau.

The geography of the Rheingau is very distinct. Around Wiesbaden, the river Rhine detours from its northward flow west for about 30 km before it flows north again. The greater part of the Rheingau is situated here on the river's right bank, but the region also includes the stretch along Rhine after it turns northward again, around the villages Assmannshausen and Lorch. The vineyards in Hochheim on the Main river are also included, just before it flows into Rhine. The Rheingau spans about 50 km from end to end. North of the Rheingau rises the Taunus mountain range, so most of the Rheingau's vineyards are on south-facing slope between hills and streams, which provides excellent wine-growing conditions in these northerly latitudes.

Since the Verona donation in 983, the Rheingau belonged to the archbishopric of Mainz. Legend has it that Charlemagne let the first vineyards be planted in the region, close to present-day Schloss Johannisberg. However finds like a Roman origin grapevine cutting knife point to even earlier cultivation. Better documented is the early influence of the church on Rheingau winemaking, which was controlled from Eberbach Abbey. Augustinians and Benedictines are known to have inhabited the area of the later abbey from 1116, and in 1135 the Cistercians arrived, sent out from Clairvaux. Legend has it that the Cistercians, which are also credited with having founded the wine industry in Burgundy, brought Pinot noir with them to Rheingau, although the earliest record of the grape variety in Rheingau is from 1470. The slopes down from the Taunus mountains belonging to Eberbach Abbey were planted as vineyards in the 12th century, and early in the 13th century the vineyards had reached their present area. In medieval times, more red than white wine was produced, usually as Gemischter Satz, i.e. the vineyards were planted with mixed varieties which were vinified together.

Rheingau Wine Official Classification of 1867

In 2011 it was unveiled, that the Official Wine Classification in the Rheingau has a 150 years history. The classification was the basis for taxation of wineries after the annexation of the Duchy of Nassau by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1866. In the book Der nassauische Weinbau published in 1867 by Friedrich Wilhelm Dünkelberg a historical map Weinbau-Karte des nassauischen Rheingaus (Viticultural map of the Rheingau in the Duchy of Nassau), all known vineyards at that time had been marked up by colour, evaluated and classified in first class vineyards (I. Klasse), second class vineyards (II. Klasse) and the remaining vineyards." - info from Wikipedia.

Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.

Now on Instagram.

Become a patron to my photography on Patreon or donate.

I've started writing this entry a good half-dozen times, but kept starting over because I felt I wasn't explaining well enough the profound changes that have manifested - and sharing a look at those, along with my past, whilst celebrating the sheer awesomeness (I over-use that word, but feel it's entirely appropriate!) of the people who helped me get here is my aim, so that others might be inspired that the journey is worth traveling because there are wonderful destinations along the way!. That, and keeping it shorter than a small novel - yes it's long anyway, but I've tended not to share so much of myself to the 'net at large in the past. I'm cashing in credit for that.

I don't expect there's anything I can write that'll make anyone see precisely how to achieve this for themselves in a step by step fashion; I believe it needs to be personally realised and experienced directly, built from our own individual experiences without coercion or duress. I do hope reading of my experience can generate just a little faith, though, that even for the most depressed and worn-out among us simple, complete and deep happiness exists without the ever-present push against a wall of mercurial moods. I hope to play a part in guiding minds to the doorway out of there. I hope to sow a seed.

I think it's a fine balancing line I have to take, and I respect that for folk deep in mid-depression this may sound like nothing but feel-good platitudes - I may be too far removed from that state to directly relate any more. Still, there are those I know who're starting to see, and taking their first steps out of the mire. If that sounds familiar, then this is probably more for you :)

What I write below will only make any sense if you've already read this little piece I wrote in May 2010 about an event I've come to call my first enlightenment, a night where I stopped the quotidian trudging, step by slow step, and launched further forwards than I knew was possible. I was thrown to a place where discovery of how everything works came in waves that I've still not entirely caught up with. It was a trip!

(If the term 'Enlightenment' bothers you, perhaps a Singularity may sit better; a point where advancement is based on countless preconditions all coming together, and nothing afterwards is anything like before. Indeed, it may describe it all quite a bit better, as it didn't appear from nowhere, but was the result of years of slow change, accelerating in the months beforehand.)

So to it.

Like most folk, over my lifetime I had accumulated so much crud that I believed was my identity - habits, memories, fears, roles, desires and so on. I thought these defined me and couldn't really be changed. I thought I could only add to this built-up collection that was me through learning and experience. And for some horrors within, all I could do was cover up and bury them. If I wanted to truly change anything back then, I expected I could only make waves in the external world, because I saw my Self as fixed. Humanity, I'd been taught, could adapt the world to suit ourselves - that was supposed to be our great legacy over all other life.

But instead, by practicing my existence as no more than consciousness and letting go of all else, my attachment to those things I'd once considered Self eased off. So many things that weren't really Me fell away - great masses of want, desire, clinging and ego. Since almost everything I'd once thought was Me was now equivalent to Not Me, my whole concept of what that Me could be widened further than I could have imagined.

With false identity dissolving, choices far beyond just making changes 'externally' revealed themselves. What I am, what I fear, what I desire and what I believe all became choices - because after seeing 'myself' as merely consciousness, I became aware that all of those other parts to my identity are external to 'Me'. Being human wasn't limited to adapting the world outside myself - I could adapt myself, and all of myself, on a whim!. The world changes constantly, sometimes in tune with but often regardless of my will, what sense is there in not being able to let go and change fully with it?

Especially as in the end it's all the same thing - or at least, the line I used to see demarcating me and everything else is now very very fuzzy. A kind of beautiful Self-bokeh.

I suppose I could better label my old false identity as my random collection of stuff that happened to me identity. Now though, my new identity is a non-identity, no-self, where this consciousness that looks out through my body gets to pick and choose how to be from day to day, in order to best satisfy some core beneficial tenets. Compassion, kindness, openness, respect, love...

I saw firmly on that night 365 days ago how extraordinarily powerful pure consciousness can be, and how everything that manifested in my life began with thought derived from it. It's become more and more obvious since then that thought is a thousand-tonne karma train on a high speed track; every single one has consequences, and everything that happens to me is a consequence that began who knows how far back.

Thoughts don't just include my plans for the day, what I'd like for breakfast, or the occasional large scale decision like moving house or marrying, but every self-doubt, lie, or validation about my worth, every awareness or non-aware presumption, every creative notion or destructive want. They all manifest consequences. I manifest them, by thinking them.

Becoming aware of how this works allowed me to see clearly some chains of consequence and responsibility I'd been ignorant of, and those consequences I'd once thought were simply how-things-were, were the end result of decisions I'd made - and that could change. Of course, it's easy to rationalise that the smallest actions in our lives can have huge effects; I only need look back to some beautiful changes in my life occurring because of a chance meeting in 2006 with someone who became a very close friend - but not everything is so black and white. I can also be aware that every thought or action I perform has a direct chain to consequences I may not know at the time (a buddhist concept of karma), and that's a strong and constant guide to doing aware and thoughtful good by myself and others.

So, with this new-found awareness and without a substantial ego in place, I saw my depression was a choice I made based on what I told myself, and all those lies I believed about myself. I may have had prompting events happen to me, but I chose all my reactions to those. I discovered my anxiety was precisely the same, and I could simply let go of the thoughts that brought it on. Depression and anxiety were both irretrievably lost like smoke in fog. I'm not sure I even remember what anxiety feels like, and the angst-infused tears of depression are becoming difficult to recall...

I cringe now when I read the writing of friends and acquaintainces who're still deep in depression, with statements like I wouldn't be me without this or I've always been too smart to trick myself into being happy and you can't just BE happy, or the worst: This is just who I am. They're words spoken as if the depression is the person, as if the negativity we create for ourselves is something solid and comforting but the happiness we can equally will up from the same place is an ethereal thing with no substance, or even some creepy insidious evil.

I know those lies, I know how shallow and deceptive but appealing they are, because they feel true by cloaking themselves as validation - and I know thinking like that does work to ease the ache, just a little. Ultimately though, it still feeds back into the beast inside and strengthens it. I lived it almost constantly, often suicidally so, since I was 16. Now I'm within spitting distance of forty, I've survived all the tricks of long-term depression, and its not Me. It never was. Depression, like happiness itself, is what I do not what I am.

I realised being overweight was also a choice, and it caused the majority of my health issues. It was a choice reached by the thoughts I entertained about food and movement, and the lies I told myself about them that resulted in a body so out of condition it hurt - I used to tell myself that my weight had little to do with my health, until I saw myself with awareness; as I treated myself better my weight fell away and my health improved simultaneously and dramatically - I'd been overweight for so long I'd forgotten what real physical well-being felt like!.

Dozens of little pains, difficult movement, over-sweating, difficult breathing, fat rashes, postural hypotension, migraines, sleep apnoea, easy bruising and endless other little cumulative physical ills caused by my weight - I now know they were choices. They may have been several steps removed from conscious thought in that chain of consequences, but they were no less a direct result of my own thought. I took responsibility for them and decided no more.

I'd like to reiterate that I didn't consciously choose my ills, of course, by refusing to make choices that'd improve my life - it's that I didn't know how to make those choices, or in many cases simply didn't believe I could. I'd taken on the beliefs of others and made them my own.

I realised that my triggers (for the most part revolving around religiosity, sexual abuse, abandonment and responsibility) weren't events that forced an uncontrollable firestorm of anxiety within me, although it felt like that. They were simply events that reminded me of past horrors, and my head did the rest. It was real terror, but what destroyed me inside was a reaction that I owned. Once again that was based on that false identity I no longer carried. Those memories used to bring on such strong reactions that they could undo a whole week's good mood work - now most of them have no effect, and the ones that still do are... mild. I could never have seen that for what it is, and I would have argued against the description I've just given as fairytale wishful thinking bullshit, if I didn't have the awareness I now carry.

The smell of chai at sunrise in summer with the plaintive call of Koels outside was once enough to sour any good mood. Together they remind me of lost love as they took me back to a time lost too. Now that I know the awful feeling that came upon me with those memories was a choice based on what I carried, and because I choose now to carry love and memories of love, I only remember that was love, and it was beautiful!

I realised getting up off my arse and doing just about anything was worth more than uncountable signatures on a petition, retweets, 'likes' on facebook (or whatever simplified expression of 'support' that isn't really much of one at all is doing the rounds today) and that in the scheme of things it's not that much more difficult. I realised I could fly planes, rescue and ease the suffering of Australia's beautiful wildlife, be a morning person, be a much better photographer, be a better friend, write, love and trust freely without needing love or trust given first, improve and inspire human lives, and be that person who renews others' faith in humanity - so I do that and more. It's not effort, it's fun!

I realised that the dichotomy of Conscious and Unconscious mind is a bit of a lie in itself. It's all Mind, and there's no hard line where the unconscious does its thing without me knowing and then the conscious reacts. They fade into and feed off one another constantly without clear demarcation, and they can be observed with an awareness that's above either; an awareness that holds no words, judgments, or anything but What Is. Unconscious may lie in dappled shadows, but it can still be fed quality food. I choose to feed it love, and it no longer springs horrific surprises on me that leave me feeling small, alone and unfixable at 2am.

If I had to summarise the last twenty something paragraphs succinctly and more colloquially, it's that when I realised everything I lived was all in my head, from my worst terror to my most sublime blissful joys, I was freed from it. 'I' was no longer trapped by having to be 'Me'. Sounds self explanatory, no?

Because I began this journey by being opened to a wisdom I couldn't be sure existed and appeared to make little practical sense (but subsequently changed me entirely overnight) I discovered not only the power of choosing thoughts, but in belief - in faith. I combine those to create my own beliefs so strong they become knowledge that I can't so much explain other than with an analogy.

Imagine being given a placebo, a sugar pill that you've been convinced is the best painkiller for relieving your headache - as placebo demonstrations go, it's a standard one that works effectively, and you'll more than likely get a measurable dose of pain relief. I can now both know it's a placebo and believe it'll work, and still find relief. That's powerful. Choosing to believe is my superpower.

And there's a whole lot of super in my life right now.

So anyway, I couldn't have reached where I was this time last year without some very special people who gave and still give of themselves. I'm sure anyone reading my tumblr has seen the number of entries attributed to l.c.h.; they're the initials of the individuals I credit most with lifting me to a point I could haul myself up and not fall back. They're in no order other than letters that sounded good together - I can't rank friends, or indeed most human capabilities, we're just too complex for that.

I attribute my posts to these friends because it was through their combined aid that I could recognise the sense and usefulness in each (and many more I noticed but wasn't near a computer to place online). Those realisations, my friends, are yours as much as mine.

(I must add that I have many other friends I love and adore, who I know care for me deeply and who're very important to me in all manner of ways. They're no less worthy of my time & love, but when it comes to this particular chapter of my life, not all had the opportunity to play. That's ok!. We have more time, and there's a lot more life to live!)

So to my blessed ones.

Leticia - @sweet_libertine. Thank you Tish, for so pleasantly surprising me. Thank you for being my rescuer when I was at my worst, both to myself and to others. Thank you for being my protector, my white lady. Thank you for picking me up and carrying me, a burden I know was heavy through very important times to you. Thank you for trusting me to know what I needed, and thank you for applying tough love when I showed I didn't. I know my mind is a surreal landscape of strange fruit to you, but that only makes my appreciation for your acceptance stronger. You are my Sergeant major, my commanding officer, my kick in the arse; you know precisely how hard a kick I need, and precisely when.

Char - @cmoliver. Thank you Char, for being my sounding board for Every Goddamned Insecurity I Ever Had. Thank you for propping me up when I couldn't stand, thank you for growing with me, thank you for listening, for sharing of yourself equally, and thank you for keeping in touch with me through all the changes in both our lives for good and bad. You are my Doctor, the psych at the end of my couch, the one I ramble at who agrees wholeheartedly with me whether or not I make sense, and who slips in the tiniest little confronting wisdom, sometimes just a single word, that makes me reconsider so much.

Helen - @Invisiblepixels. Thank you Hamsterkins, for being my bestie for so many years. Thank you for being so very blunt with me, but also for validating my sharing, from the stupidest little obsessions to the most profound changes in my flakey, flitty, oh-so-variable life. Thank you for your entirely practical questioning and criticism, and for sharing that brilliant intelligence of yours. Thank you for sharing and giving so much of yourself, and thank you for so unconditionally accepting everything I was and am. Thank you for sticking around, for laughter, for your patience, thank you for just about bloody everything while you write the story of my life with me. You are my Companion, my reflection, my sparring partner and you are in my pocket when I'm not in yours.

With such praise, it wouldn't be unfair to think that I'm placing dependence of my well-being on my friends in an unnecessarily unhealthy way, and you may have been right in the past. Post-enlightenment though, I've become aware that my appreciation and gratitude is no longer for my wonderful people as a need; I don't and can't cling to that, because I know what I genuinely need is welling up inside, that inside is everywhere, and there's an endless supply to share for everyone.

To survive, I might not need you all - but by Gods I'm glad you're here.

Or as Amanda Palmer sings in her cover of 'I Want You But I Don't Need You':

I like you, and I'd like you to like me to like youBut I don't need you, don't need you to need me to like you Because if you didn't like me, I would still like you, you see.

La la laaa - It's all good.

Of course, my friends are more than just the narrow descriptions above, and we all share each of those roles among one another to some level, but again that's beyond the scope of this piece.So here I am after a year recovered - more than recovered! Twelve months in a state so unlike my old depressed self, where I felt I was constantly looking up and wondering how the hell other folk found happiness. I felt scared, and clueless about how I could get to that point, wondering if it was even possible for broken ol' me to be fixed. Twelve months in a state where now I've arrived at that high, gone way past the other side, and found a few other folk there. Now I'm longing to reach out to my fellow humans and drag everyone forward while screaming "Come in! the water's AWESOME!".

Twelve months with three or four bad days, instead of every previous year containing no more than that number of merely OK ones, and no sign of this bliss abating. Twelve months since I finished pecking at my shell from the inside, cracked it open, and took my first real deep breath of free air with the ability to begin growing. It was rebirth.

That makes today, December 8th, my new birthday - because this is the day the closest thing to Me was born, and not just an arbitrary cutoff remembering when biology laid eyes on even more gooey screaming biology.

I gush, for very good reason, because now I get to share all this with everyone else!

2010; Gods, what a year. I hope for everyone to have a year like this, a year that overflowed with such pure existential bliss that events which would have once unraveled me entirely simply came, passed, and I got to watch and learn. Even now, mortal and painful events are unfolding within my closest family, and will certainly involve some major changes directly to my life - but that's OK, it's not the entirety of anything. Onwards and upwards!

There can't help but be another year as good, and another, and so on... simply because I get to make them so.

Happy birthday, me!

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***** Selected for sale in the GETTY IMAGES COLLECTION on February 24th 2015

CREATIVE RF gty.im/539799645 MOMENT OPEN COLLECTION**

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Seven metres, in the magic of the Golden hour around sunrise at 05:31am, (sunrise was at precisely 06.15am) on Saturday 6th September 2014 off the Patricia Bay Highway 17, on Lochside Drive close to Frost Avenue and the Lochside Waterfront Park, in beautiful Sidney by the sea on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Here, we are looking over towards Mt Baker in Washington State, USA from beautiful Sidney by the sea on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Also known as Koma Kulshan, (pronounced kō-ō’mah’ kool-shän’),she is an active glaciated andesitic stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the North Cascades of Washington State in the United States, standing 3,286 metres tall and was first ascended in 1868, her last eruption recorded in 1880.

The name Mount Baker first appeared in print in Captain Vancouver’s 1798 narrative of his voyage around Vancouver Island. Legend has it that his third-lieutenant, Joseph Baker, was the first to spot the mountain while they sailed into Dungeness Bay on April 30th, 1792. Also known by the Lummi as Kwud-Shad, and Koba (meaning 'high mountain always covered with snow', was the Skagit name.

Every morning around sunrise, the gathering of Canada Geese resting upon the water, take to the wing and fly East to West across the Bay. Each squadron of V formation Gese is known as a Skein, and the flight is reversed around the same time each eavening around sunset. An absolute joy to behold.

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Nikon D800 116mm 1/500s f/2.8 iso100 RAW (14 bit) Manual focus. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance.

Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED IF VRII. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap.Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

LATITUDE: N 48d 38m 15.80s

LONGITUDE: W 123d 24m 12.85s

ALTITUDE: 7.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 15.26MB

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Processing power:

HP Pavillion P6-2388EA Desktop with AMD A10-5700 APU processor. AMD Radeon HD 7570 graphics. 2TB with 8GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.10.0 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

This is precisely how you are most likely to bump into a bear in the wild/forest, literally bumping into each other entirely by accident. Nothing can be hidden from a bears nose, which generally speaking is over 500 times more powerful than a bloodhounds nose, but if the wind is ripping, its easy for them to miss your presence altogether, that happens to me all the time....

... the softest, the lightest, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment. A little makes the way of the best happiness.”

Nietzsche

This was one of those moments.

This opal is a black opal from Australia, more precisely: the Lightning Ridge area where the best black opals on the Earth are mined.

See the large version of this photo here for the best view:

www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1797522628&size=l

The opal and it's colors are real, and not enhanced or changed with photoshop.

The only thing that I did with photoshop is changing the form of

the opal so that it looks like the title - a tear splashed on a surface.

And I am sorry that I had to delete the 1st photo "Opal Tear Splash" but something went wrong during the upload and it was only the very small size of it.

Thank you all for the comments and invites, and it is very much appreciated :)

We are in France...

more precisely, somewhere in a small town on the edge of the Vosges.

Here is a house that already has this beautiful lost-place patina on the facade.

Broken windows and a plot of land where nature is reclaiming everything piece by piece. For us exactly the sign that this place has been abandoned for a long time.

Inside the house, the first thing we notice is how simply the last inhabitants lived here. A beautiful old oil stove in the hallway was still the most modern heating device. Otherwise, wood was used for heating and cooking. In the kitchen, which dates from the middle of the last century, there is also an old wood stove. The walls almost black, which is due to cooking with wood.

The last people who lived here were Pierre and Marie, together with their domestic help Genevieve.

This place was abandoned only in 1997, which was very surprising for me, I would have estimated that it has been empty much longer.

But enough of the words, look for yourself and come with me on a beautiful journey through time ...

Have fun looking at the pictures...!!!!

Made in 1916 by British born, German trained, Melbourne stained glass artist William Montgomery, the William Major Olive Memorial Window features Saint Alban.

St Alban is venerated as the first recorded British Christian martyr. He is traditionally believed to have been beheaded in the Roman city of Verulamium (modern St Albans) sometime during the 3rd or 4th century, and his cult has been celebrated there since ancient times.

The vignette at the base of the memorial window features the following inscription; "In memory of William Major Olive a member chorister of this church killed on active service in France Easter Day 1916". The subject of Saint Alban, England's first martyr saint, may have been chosen to commemorate Lieutenant Olive's service to his country.

The window was ordered by the Reverend A. J. Drewett, and was unveiled by the Dean of Melbourne in a dedication ceremony on the 17th of April 1917, almost a year after Lieutenant Olive was killed. The service included the choir singing "Blessed are the Dead", a tribute to a former member of the choir.

The window, a large fully-painted single light cost £70.00. It was the third window by Melbourne's leading stained glass artist, William Montgomery, to be installed in the north nave, the others being St. Mark (1913) and St. Stephen (1915).

William Major Olive was born on 25 August 1890 to Henry Thomas and Ella Ada Olive at "Surbiton" in Studley Park, Kew. After an excellent studentship at Scotch College where he was a prefect and Senior Cadet, William Olive completed an equally successful bachelor's degree in civil engineering but joined up before the conferring ceremony. He was one of four men whose loss was noted at the Commencement Day ceremony 1917: William Olive; Edward Courtney Thomas MA; Eric Craven Jowett BE; Walter Alan Leckie BE. William Olive joined the 5th Field Company Australian Engineers and proceeded to Alexandria in November 1915, then went on to Marseilles, disembarking on 23 March 1916. Precisely one month later Lieutenant Olive was killed by a shell explosion at Bois Grenier at midday on 23 April. He was buried at Erquinhem Communal Cemetery Extension, France.

Built amid workers' cottages and terrace houses of shopkeepers, St. Mark the Evangelist Church of England sits atop an undulating rise in the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy. Nestled behind a thick bank of agapanthus beyond its original cast-iron palisade fence, it would not look out of place in an English country village with its neat buttresses, bluestone masonry and simple, unadorned belfry.

St. Mark the Evangelist was the first church to be built outside of the original Melbourne grid as Fitzroy developed into the city's first suburb. A working-class suburb, the majority of its residents were Church of England and from 1849 a Mission Church and school served as a centre for religious, educational and recreational facilities. The school was one of a number of denominational schools established by the Church of England and was partly funded by the Denominational School Board.

St. Mark the Evangelist Church of England was designed by architect James Blackburn and built in Early English Gothic style. Richard Grice, Victorian pastoralist and philanthropist, generously contributed almost all the cost of its construction. Work commenced in 1853 to accommodate the growing Church of England congregation of Fitzroy. On July 1st, 1853, the first stone of St. Mark the Evangelist was laid by the first Bishop of Melbourne, The Right Rev. Charles Perry.

Unfortunately, Blackburn did not live to see its completion, dying the following year in 1854 of typhoid. This left St. Mark the Evangelist without an architect to oversee the project, and a series of other notable Melbourne architects helped finish the church including Lloyd Tayler, Leonard Terry and Charles Webb. Even then when St. Mark the Evangelist opened its doors on Sunday, January 21st, 1855, the church was never fully completed with an east tower and spire never realised. The exterior of the church is very plain, constructed of largely unadorned bluestone, with simple buttresses marking structural bays and tall lancet windows. The church's belfry is similarly unadorned, yet features beautiful masonry work. It has a square tower and broach spire.

Inside St. Mark the Evangelist Church of England it is peaceful and serves as a quiet sanctuary from the noisy world outside. I visited it on a hot day, and its enveloping coolness was a welcome relief. Walking across the old, highly polished hardwood floors you cannot help but note the gentle scent of the incense used during mass. The church has an ornately carved timber Gothic narthex screen which you walk through to enter the nave. Once there you can see the unusual two storey arcaded gallery designed by Leonard Terry that runs the entire length of the east side of building. Often spoken of as “The Architect’s Folly” Terry's gallery was a divisive point in the Fritzroy congregation. Some thought it added much beauty to the interior with its massive square pillars and seven arches supporting the principals of the roof. Yet it was generally agreed that the gallery was of little effective use, and came with a costly price tag of £3,000.00! To this day, it has never been fully utlised by the church. St. Mark the Evangelist has been fortunate to have a series of organs installed over its history; in 1854 a modest organ of unknown origin: in 1855 an 1853 Foster and Andrews, Hull, organ which was taken from the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne's Collins Street: in 1877 an organ built by Melbourne organ maker William Anderson: and finally in 1999 as part of major renovation works a 1938 Harrison and Harrison, Durham, organ taken from St. Luke's Church of England in Cowley, Oxfordshire. The church has gone through many renovations over the ensuing years, yet the original marble font and pews have survived these changes and remain in situ to this day. Blackwood reredos in the chancel, dating from 1939, feature a mosaic of the last supper by stained glass and church outfitters Brooks, Robinson and Company. A similar one can be found at St. Matthew's Church of England in High Street in Prahran. The fine lancet stained glass windows on the west side of St. Mark the Evangelist feature the work of the stained glass firms Brooks, Robinson and Company. and William Montgomery. Many of the windows were installed in the late Nineteenth Century.

The St. Mark the Evangelist Parish Hall and verger's cottage were added in 1889 to designs by architects Hyndman and Bates. The hall is arranged as a nave with clerestorey windows and side aisles with buttresses. In 1891 the same architects designed the Choir Vestry and Infants Sunday School on Hodgson Street, to replace the earlier school of 1849 which had been located in the forecourt of the church.

The present St. Mark the Evangelist's vicarage, a two-storey brick structure with cast-iron lacework verandahs, was erected in 1910.

I am very grateful to the staff of Anglicare who run the busy adjoining St. Mark's Community Centre for allowing me to have free range of the inside of St. Mark the Evangelist for a few hours to photograph it so extensively.

James Blackburn (1803 - 1854) was an English civil engineer, surveyor and architect. Born in Upton, West Ham, Essex, James was the third of four sons and one daughter born to his parents. His father was a scalemaker, a trade all his brothers took. At the age of 23, James was employed by the Commissioners of Sewers for Holborn and Finsbury and later became an inspector of sewers. However, his life took a dramatic turn in 1833, when suffering economic hardship, he forged a cheque. He was caught and his penalty was transportation to Van Diemen’s Land (modern day Tasmania). As a convicted prisoner, yet also listed as a civil engineer, James was assigned to the Roads Department under the management of Roderic O’Connor, a wealthy Irishman who was the Inspector of Roads and Bridges at the time. On 3 May 1841 James was pardoned, whereupon he entered private practice with James Thomson, another a former convict. In April 1849, James sailed from Tasmania aboard the "Shamrock" with his wife and ten children to start a new life in Melbourne. Once there he formed a company to sell filtered and purified water to the public, and carried out some minor architectural commissions including St. Mark the Evangelist in Fitzroy. On 24 October he was appointed city surveyor, and between 1850 and 1851 he produced his greatest non-architectural work, the basic design and fundamental conception of the Melbourne water supply from the Yan Yean reservoir via the Plenty River. He was injured in a fall from a horse in January 1852 and died on 3 March 1854 at Brunswick Street, Collingwood, of typhoid. He was buried as a member of St. Mark The Evangelist Church of England. James is best known in Tasmania for his ecclesiastical architectural work including; St Mark's Church of England, Pontville, Tasmania (1839-1841), Holy Trinity Church, Hobart, Tasmania (1841-1848): St. George's Church of England, Battery Point, Tasmania, (1841-1847).

Leonard Terry (1825 - 1884) was an architect born at Scarborough, Yorkshire, England. Son of Leonard Terry, a timber merchant, and his wife Margaret, he arrived in Melbourne in 1853 and after six months was employed by architect C. Laing. By the end of 1856 he had his own practice in Collins Street West (Terry and Oakden). After Mr. Laing's death next year Leonard succeeded him as the principal designer of banks in Victoria and of buildings for the Anglican Church, of which he was appointed diocesan architect in 1860. In addition to the many banks and churches that he designed, Leonard is also known for his design of The Melbourne Club on Collins Street (1858 - 1859) "Braemar" in East Melbourne (1865), "Greenwich House" Toorak (1869) and the Campbell residence on the corner of Collins and Spring Streets (1877). Leonard was first married, at 30, on 26 June 1855 to Theodosia Mary Welch (d.1861), by whom he had six children including Marmaduke, who trained as a surveyor and entered his father's firm in 1880. Terry's second marriage, at 41, on 29 December 1866 was to Esther Hardwick Aspinall, who bore him three children and survived him when on 23 June 1884, at the age of 59, he died of a thoracic tumor in his last home, Campbellfield Lodge, Alexandra Parade, in Collingwood.

Lloyd Tayler (1830 - 1900) was an architect born on 26 October 1830 in London, youngest son of tailor William Tayler, and his wife Priscilla. Educated at Mill Hill Grammar School, Hendon, and King's College, London, he is said to have been a student at the Sorbonne. In June 1851 he left England to join his brother on the land near Albury, New South Wales. He ended up on the Mount Alexander goldfields before setting up an architectural practice with Lewis Vieusseux, a civil engineer in 1854. By 1856 he had his own architectural practice where he designed premises for the Colonial Bank of Australasia. In the 1860s and 1870s he was lauded for his designs for the National Bank of Australasia, including those in the Melbourne suburbs of Richmond and North Fitzroy, and further afield in country Victoria at Warrnambool and Coleraine. His major design for the bank was the Melbourne head office in 1867. With Edmund Wright in 1874 William won the competition for the design of the South Australian Houses of Parliament, which began construction in 1881. The pair also designed the Bank of Australia in Adelaide in 1875. He also designed the Australian Club in Melbourne's William Street and the Melbourne Exchange in Collins Street in 1878. Lloyd's examples of domestic architecture include the mansion "Kamesburgh", Brighton, commissioned by W. K. Thomson in 1872. Other houses include: "Thyra", Brighton (1883): "Leighswood", Toorak, for C. E. Bright: "Roxcraddock", Caulfield: "Cherry Chase", Brighton: and "Blair Athol", Brighton. In addition to his work on St. Mark the Evangelist in Fitzroy, Lloyd also designed St. Mary's Church of England, Hotham (1860); St Philip's, Collingwood, and the Presbyterian Church, Punt Road, South Yarra (1865); and Trinity Church, Bacchus Marsh (1869). The high point of Lloyd's career was the design for the Melbourne head office of the Commercial Bank of Australia. His last important design was the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Headquarters Station, Eastern Hill in 1892. Lloyd was also a judge in 1900 of the competition plans for the new Flinders Street railway station. Lloyd was married to Sarah Toller, daughter of a Congregational minister. They established a comfortable residence, Pen-y-Bryn, in Brighton, and it was from here that he died of cancer of the liver on the 17th of August 1900 survived by his wife, four daughters and a son.

Charles Webb (1821 - 1898) was an architect. Born on 26 November 1821 at Sudbury, Suffolk, England, he was the youngest of nine children of builder William Webb and his wife Elizabeth. He attended Sudbury Academy and was later apprenticed to a London architect. His brother James had migrated to Van Diemen's Land in 1830, married in 1833, gone to Melbourne in 1839 where he set up as a builder in and in 1848 he bought Brighton Park, Brighton. Charles decided to join James and lived with James at Brighton. They went into partnership as architects and surveyors. The commission that established them was in 1850 for St Paul's Church, Swanston Street. It was here that Charles married Emma Bridges, daughter of the chief cashier at the Bank of England. Charles and James built many warehouses, shops and private homes and even a synagogue in the city. After his borther's return to England, Charles designed St. Andrew's Church, Brighton, and receiving an important commission for Melbourne Church of England Grammar School in 1855. In 1857 he added a tower and a slender spire to Scots Church, which James had built in 1841. He designed Wesley College in 1864, the Alfred Hospital and the Royal Arcade in 1869, the South Melbourne Town Hall and the Melbourne Orphan Asylum in 1878 and the Grand Hotel (now the Windsor) in 1884. In 1865 he had designed his own home, "Farleigh", in Park Street, Brighton, where he died on 23 January 1898 of heat exhaustion. Predeceased by Emma in 1893 and survived by five sons and three daughters, he was buried in Brighton cemetery.

William Montgomery (1850 - 1927) was an artist who specialised in stained glass painting and design. He was born in England in 1850, and studied at the School of Art in Newcastle-on-Tyne. In his final year William was awarded one of only three National Art Scholarships that year to study at South Kensington School of Art (now the Royal College of Art). He was employed by the leading London stained glass firm, Clayton and Bell, before joining Franz Mayer and Company in Munich, Germany. Over the next seven years he not only designed windows he also trained others in the English style of glass painting. William arrived in Melbourne, Australia, in 1886 during the Boom Period provided by the Gold Rush. Melbourne was at the time one of the wealthiest cities in the world, and was in the throes of a building boom. He quickly set up his studio at 164 Flinders Street in the heart of Melbourne, bringing with him the latest in European style and design and achieving instant success amongst wealthy patrons. He worked equally for Catholic and Protestant denominations, his windows being found in many churches as well as in mansions, houses and other commercial buildings around the city. This extended to the country beyond as his reputation grew. A painter as well as stained glass window designer William was a founding member of the Victorian Art Society in Albert Street, Eastern Hill. William became President of its Council in 1912, a position he held until 1916. He was a trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria. His commissions included; stained glass windows at Christ Church, Hawthorn: St. John's, Heidelberg, St. Ignatius', Richmond: Christ Church, St Kilda: Geelong Grammar School: the Bathurst Cathedral and private houses "Tay Creggan", Hawthorn (now Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar), and "Earlsbrae Hall", Essendon (now Lowther Hall Anglican Grammar School). The success of William Montgomery made Melbourne the leading centre of stained glass in the Southern Hemisphere. William Montgomery died in 1927.

Precisely sized at 649.5. Dry Clean Only.

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***** Selected for sale in the GETTY IMAGES COLLECTION on April 7th 2015

CREATIVE RF gty.im/553167149 MOMENT OPEN COLLECTION**

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Eight metres, in the magic of the Golden hour around sunrise, (Sunrise was at precisely 06:58am), at 07:04am on Sunday 21st September 2014 off 1st Street between Beacon Avenue and Bevan Avenue, above the shoreline in beautiful Sidney by the sea on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Here, we are looking over towards Mt Baker in Washington State, USA from beautiful Sidney by the sea on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Also known as Koma Kulshan, (pronounced koo’mah’ kool-shän’),she is an active glaciated andesitic stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the North Cascades of Washington State in the United States, standing 3,286 metres tall and was first ascended in 1868, her last eruption recorded in 1880.

The name Mount Baker first appeared in print in Captain Vancouver’s 1798 narrative of his voyage around Vancouver Island. Legend has it that his third-lieutenant, Joseph Baker, was the first to spot the mountain while they sailed into Dungeness Bay on April 30th, 1792. Also known by the Lummi as Kwud-Shad, and Koba (meaning 'high mountain always covered with snow', was the Skagit name.

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Nikon D800 185mm 1/1000s f/2.8 iso100 RAW (14 bit). AF-C Continuous focus mode with 3-D tracking. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance.

Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED IF VRII. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap.Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

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LATITUDE: N 48d 38m 54.88s

LONGITUDE: W 123d 23m 38.68s

ALTITUDE: 8.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 12.46MB

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PROCESSING POWER:

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU processor. AMD Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB SATA storage. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.10.3 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

Photograph taken at an altitude of Forty six metres, prior to the magic of the Golden Hour around sunrise (Sunrise was at precisely 04:42am), at 03:09am on Thursday 19th June 2014 off Lullingstone Lane and overlooking a blanket of morning mist as it rolled across Eynsford Viaduct in the village of Eynsford, Kent, England.

This impressive nine-arched red-brick viaduct is a prominent feature on the line to the 'Bat & Ball' station. The structure was built by the independent ''Sevenoaks Railway'', incorporated in 1859 to link the ''Chatham'' main line with the market town of Sevenoaks. And first services began on 2nd June 1862. The viaduct has nine arches of 30-foot span, and rises to a height of 75-feet above the valley and the River Darent.

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Nikon D800 23mm 1/1/6s f/4.5 iso200 RAW (14 bit) Mirror up. AF-S auto mode. Manual exposure. Matrix metering.Auto white balance.

Nikkor AF-S 14-24mm f/2.8G ED IF. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap.Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

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LATITUDE: N 51d 22m 6.46s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 12m 11.25s

ALTITUDE: 46.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED FILE: 24.39MB

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Processing power:

HP Pavillion Desktop with AMD A10-5700 APU processor. HD graphics. 2TB with 8GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.90 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

Or more precisely, steps in Spain. At a house near Tui, Galicia.

This shot was taken at precisely 18:27 on a Friday evening. It was one of the last shots I took on a 3-day jaunt that saw us visit Norton Bridge, Winwick Jct, Greenholme, Carlisle, Thornaby, Colton Jct, Milford, Knottingley, Barnetby, Doncaster and Tupton.

Back in the day, such adventures were worth the effort. My records show that I saw 203 different locomotives and took 120 exposures. Bearing in mind that this was all on slide film (no servo settings on digital cameras back then) it shows how busy places were 20-odd years ago.

Anyway. Unlike me at that time, I'm afraid I cannot say what this working is, but under the blue sky the mixture of heritage BR Blue locomotive and modern Virgin red stock make for a striking image.

86233 (which spent a relatively short career as a freight loco numbered 86506) went on to be exported to Bulgaria. I believe that she still sees active service today (Feb 21).

via Instagram ift.tt/2su5jgL

This extraordinary helmet is very rare. Only four complete helmets are known from Anglo-Saxon England: at Sutton Hoo, Benty Grange, Wollaston and York. The helmet was badly damaged when the burial chamber collapsed. By precisely locating the remaining fragments and assembling them as if in a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, conservators have reconstructed the helmet. A complete replica made by the Royal Armouries shows how the original would have looked - (this image)The helmet comprised an iron cap, neck guard, cheek pieces and face mask. Its form derives from Late Roman cavalry helmets. The helmet’s surfaces were covered with tinned copper alloy panels that gave it a bright, silvery appearance. Many of these panels were decorated with interlacing animal ornament (‘Style II’) and heroic scenes of warriors. One scene shows two men wearing horned head-gear, holding swords and spears. The other shows a mounted warrior trampling a fallen enemy, who in turn stabs the horse. The rider carries a spear which is supported by a curious small figure, standing on the rump of his horse – perhaps a supernatural helper. Similar scenes were popular in the Germanic world at this time. The face-mask is the helmet’s most remarkable feature. It works as a visual puzzle, with two possible ‘solutions’. The first is of a human face, comprising eye-sockets, eyebrows, moustache, mouth and a nose with two small holes so that the wearer could breathe. The copper alloy eyebrows are inlaid with silver wire and tiny garnets. Each ends in a gilded boar’s head – a symbol of strength and courage appropriate for a warrior. The second ‘solution’ is of a bird or dragon flying upwards. Its tail is formed by the moustache, its body by the nose, and its wings by the eyebrows. Its head extends from between the wings, and lays nose-to-nose with another animal head at the end of a low iron crest that runs over the helmet’s cap. A precious survival, the Sutton Hoo helmet has become an icon of the early medieval period.

Our tourist's snap of the famous fountain. (Or more precisely a stitch of two photos, as the fountains are quite large).

Châteauvieux (literally, “Old Castle”) is a very small village –a hamlet, really– incorporated since 1658 in the not much larger village of Yzeron, a few kilometers west of the city of Lyon. From that city, and more precisely from the venerable abbey of Ainay, came the Benedictine monks who built a small chapel in Châteauvieux, around Year 1000. It seems that it was never meant to be a priory, just a parochial church gifted by the abbey to a growing local Christian community.

I had heard a few years back about the chapel, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and which had only been listed on the secondary list of Historic Landmarks in 1979. Considering the very old age of the monument, this late listing (and not even on the main list) seemed a bit strange, and I went to see it in 2020. It stood in a walled enclosure and all I could do was take a photograph over the wall where it was the lowest, and in a somewhat precarious position (I will post that old photo under the #1 picture in this series).

I returned to Châteauvieux in April 2025 in my capacity as pro bono photographer for the Fondation du Patrimoine, as the chapel needs restoration works largely exceeding the financial means of the village of Yzeron. Thus, the Fondation will launch a fundraising campaign and possibly also use some of its own resources to cover all or part of the cost. To document the monument in its “before” condition, I was granted full access and could see the inside for the first time.

The floor plan is very simply basilical, with a narrower, flat apse protruding at the eastern end. The flat apse, as well as the apparel, are indicative of early 11th century, perhaps even older. Inside, the ever-present long and thin arch stones also point in the same direction. The relieving arches along the side walls rest on massive square pillars of medium to large apparel, and many of them slant visibly —the camera was of course perfectly leveled, as always, before the photos were taken. Many parts of the walls (most notably in the apse, which is probably the oldest part) and all of the rib-vaulted ceilings are plastered or cemented over, which prevent us from reading the history of the monument in the stones.

As announced yesterday, this is a photo of the false transept that shows as well as possible the various relieving arches, sometimes piled up, sometimes staggered, that support the bell tower.

I used a handheld Godox AD200 Pro II studio strobe, equipped with a round H200R head and a half-spherical diffuser, to provide additional lighting for this shot. The flash was set and triggered via a Godox X Pro II radio transmitter mounted on the camera, which was itself triggered via a Pixel Oppilas RW–221 radio remote, allowing me to walk around and pop the flash wherever it was needed.