precisely photos on Flickr

Wolkersdorf, Niederösterreich (Lower Austria), the art of facades of Wolkersdorf - municipalità, ayuntamiento, mairie, town council - Rathaus (Hauptstraße) by Josef Lex (El buen soldado Švejk)

(further information you can get by clicking on the link at the end of page!)

Historical data

The first settlement core of Wolkersdorf was the "Old Market" to the west of the present course of the Brünnerstraße (Brno street) direction Ulrichskirchen. An exact age determination of the emergence of the "Old Market" is not possible, but the evidence points to the time just before 1050. However, it seems that even before a settlement whose provenance cannot precisely determinated has existed. The foundation is often associated with the legendary figure of a Wolfger, who allegedly was a Frankish follower of the Salian king Henry III. (from 1046 Emperor). After him, the naming of the place is supposed to be done, but it is rather to presume that the place-name, as in other places in the Weinviertel, also can be explained from the settlement history and it's the case of a secondary place name, which refers to the surroundings of the actual Nuremberg.

The castle buildings in its present location - about a whatsoever former noble residence in the "Old Market" can only be speculated - in the first half of the 13th Century was built, as well as the "new market" was born. The Lords of Wolkersdorf who called themselves after the place were emerged from a lesser branch of the lords of Ulrichskirchen.

A close binding to the Babenberg Duke House in the connection with the third Crusade should have emerged, which has been rumored frequently, but it is not possible for various reasons. If the close binding to the Babenberg Court, which in the 13th Century undeniably has existed, really through joint crusade participations came off, this only can be the case of the so-called "German Crusade" under the Emperor Henry VI., however, this was canceled very quickly due to the death of Henry.

Thither also suggest other evidences, such as today's Wolkersdorfer city coat of arms, consisting of the colors of the burgraves of Nuremberg (Black/Silver). Even the oldest surviving deed of gift for Wolkersdorf end of the 13th Century comes from the Nuremberg burgraves, the fief relationship but already seems to have existed far longer.

The nobility of the Wolkersdorfer after the extinction of the Babenberg in the 70s of the 13th Century stood in opposition to King Ottokar of Bohemia, what made him object of a mention in Grillparzer's drama "King Ottokar's Fortune and End".

After the nobility of the Wolkersdorfer had left the place, there were frequently changing owners, among them the Dachsberger and the Starhemberger. Since 1481 and completely in 1538 was the domination Wolkersdorf owned by the Habsburgs and was following the testament of Queen Anne in 1547 the Wiener Hofspital (Court Hospital of Vienna) incorporatedl and belonged even after its repeal in 1782 to the endowment fund of the Hofspital until the purchase by Hugo Graf Abensperg-Traun in the year 1870. In 1884, the Wolkersdorfer Savings Bank acquired the castle, in 1967 it became the property of the former market town, since 1969 the municipality of Wolkersdorf.

In the eventful history of the place it came in the wake of the sieges frequently to devastations, such as in 1275 in the course of the siege by King Ottokar of Bohemia, in 1458 by the Bohemian King George of Podebrad or 1605 by the Calvinist Prince of Transylvania Stephan Botchkay. In the course of the Thirty Years' War it were mainly the Swedes under Field Marshal Torstensson Lienhart by which Wolkersdorf was affected. 1809 finally Napoleon's troops burned a portion of the "Old Market" down. 1866, the Rußbach (brook) was the demarcation line between Prussia and Austria, thus separating Wolkersdorf into a northern Prussian and a southern Austrian part.

Wolkersdorf was in the first half of the 14th Century raised to market; 1436 with Lewpolt Gerngrass first a citizen of the market Wolkersdorf documentarily is mentioned. Under King Albert II 1439 the district court Wolkersdorf by transfers from the regional courts Marchegg and Korneuburg was created, as the name suggests, the High Court was located on the Judgment mountain. Sometimes Wolkersdorf even had three judges, one for the "Old Market", one for the "New Market" and one for the approximately 1784 emerged 'settlers line" (New Line), today the Kaiser-Josef-Straße.

A school in Wolkersdorf is first mentioned in 1446. 1460 took place the meeting of the Lower Austrian estates in Wolkersdorf.

Of importance to Wolkersdorf was already in the Middle Ages a trade route that ran from Vienna, at Stadlau crossing the Danube, via Wolkersdorf, Gaweinstal and Mistelbach to Poysdorf and there reaching the old "Nikolsburger road", which was the forerunner of the in 18th Century developed Brünnerstraße. Through the construction of the Brünnerstraße under Joseph II Wolkersdorf quickly developed into the largest settlement of the beginning hill landscape of the Wine Quarter and in 1870 it was connected to the railway network.

Promoted business settlements of the municipality from 1960 made Wolkersdorf to an important economic center. This position was taken into account on 22 June 1969 by elevating Wolkersdorf to the status of the city. In the years 1966-1972 Wolkersdorf grew through the association with the communities Riedenthal, Münichsthal, Pfösing and the market town of Oberndorf.

Intensive infrastructure projects were formative for the 70s and 80s. In 1978, the Provincial Government of Lower Austria founded the industrial center Lower Austria Nord/Wolkersdorf to the south of the Ostbahn (eastern railway) and to the east of Brno road. Intensive residential construction activity, active youth work and the development to school center shape the face and character of the city as a gateway to the Wine Quarter.

Wolkersdorf successfully puts up the gap between urbanized and rural structure. The result is a high quality of life - with high developed infrastructure, diverse recreational spaces, rest areas and green spaces in and around Wolkersdorf. The proximity to Vienna as well as the pronounced Weinviertler cultural landscape attract many guests to Wolkersdorf .

www.wolkersdorf.at/index.php/subsection=Wolkersdorf_-_His...

Diminutive Gipson by Steve Spencer

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How, precisely, are you supposed to spell the contraction of "little?" Several options displayed in Memphis.

Old lab 1990 by Gordon Cook

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Precisely where and what this old lab was in September, 1990, is unknown, but would it have been in the former Arbroath High School building, now Dunde and Angus College? In my world an old lab is something that lies behind the settee, snoring and farting.

Goldsmiths University of London, Design & Environment First Aerial Mapping Session. by Cesar Harada

We went out mapping, or more precisely doing aerial photography, flying a digital camera under a nice big green balloon from the green of Goldsmiths University. The MA is Design at Goldsmiths has an option called “Design & Environment” supervised by Prof Jennifer Gabrys. It is a course that initiates students to alternatives design and environmental methods and pratices. This hands-on experiment was lead by Cesar Harada acting both as Goldsmiths tutor and Public Laboratory instructor. The mappers -who are also the authors of this post- were Anuja Uttamrao Borker, Inessa Demidova, Shan-Yu Hsu, Dk Hajah Hazwani Pg Dato Haji Jaberudin, Federica Sterpos, Chian-Yun Yang, Yifan Zhang, Elvira Grob.

designandenvironment.co.uk/

Goldsmiths University of London, Design & Environment First Aerial Mapping Session. by Cesar Harada

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We went out mapping, or more precisely doing aerial photography, flying a digital camera under a nice big green balloon from the green of Goldsmiths University. The MA is Design at Goldsmiths has an option called “Design & Environment” supervised by Prof Jennifer Gabrys. It is a course that initiates students to alternatives design and environmental methods and pratices. This hands-on experiment was lead by Cesar Harada acting both as Goldsmiths tutor and Public Laboratory instructor. The mappers -who are also the authors of this post- were Anuja Uttamrao Borker, Inessa Demidova, Shan-Yu Hsu, Dk Hajah Hazwani Pg Dato Haji Jaberudin, Federica Sterpos, Chian-Yun Yang, Yifan Zhang, Elvira Grob.

designandenvironment.co.uk/

Mr Oliver Deave by Simon Knott

St Margaret, Reydon, Suffolk

Reydon is a suburb of Southwold. In terms of population, they are about the same size. But which one of the two have you heard of? Precisely. Reydon is agri-industrial, and when you cross over the river from one parish to the other, the houses double in price. Not so long ago, a beach hut changed hands in Southwold for £100,000.

St Margaret sits away from the houses, on the road towards Wangford, anonymously pretty in an overgrown graveyard. It is an older church than Southwold's late-medieval parvenu, although it underwent a serious tarting-up in the 15th century. In the churchyard wall there is a surviving mounting block, so that the gentry could climb straight onto their horses from the churchyard without descending to the muddy road.

On the north side there is a very good late 1980s extension. The architect was Andrew Anderson. The graveyard is wide and spacious, but there are many more modern graves than 19th century ones, a mark of how the town has grown. You can't fail to miss the extraordinary bronze angel to the south of the chancel. To the west of the church are the older memorials. One of them is a cute little child's grave, to Percy Hunt, son of Henry and Harriet, who had died at the age of just ten months in August 1888. Grieve not with helpless sorrow, it reads, Jesus hath felt your pain. He did thy lamb but borrow, he'll bring him back again, the theology of which seems curious, to say the least. The tiny tombstone is covered in a century or more of moss. It was very moving. His parents' larger graves are beside it. His father had died in 1910 at the age of 60, his mother surviving into the 1930s, when she died at 86. There were no other Hunt graves nearby, and I wondered if little Percy had been their only child. Counting backwards, I worked out that she must have had her baby in her mid-forties - was this an unexpected late fruit after barren decades? And were their hopes dashed? It was all very sad.

You step into a clean, bright, neatly-kept interior, perhaps a bit smaller than might be expected from the outside. When I'd last visited in 2002, the church still bore all the hallmarks of enthusiastic Victorians re-ritualising it in the 1870s, the organ up in the chancel blocking a view of the east end. But that has now gone, and the church has a feeling of simplicity and space. There is an image niche in the eastern splay of each window, one with a lovely Blessed Virgin and Child statue in it. The best of the glass is a window by A L Moore of Christ meeting the woman at the well. You can tell at a glance that she's probably had six husbands, and she's not married to the one she's with at the minute. Less good is the east window, Ward & Hughes 'trampolining Jesus' Ascension scene rejigged by the King Workshop in the modern era.

Mom???! Is It Really You??!! by Kathleen Jackson

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Lynn the Wildlife Rehabilitator returned Mama Cherry to her family today at precisely 8:56AM EST. Lynn had picked Cherry up at 4AM from the Sanctuary (Save Our Seabirds). She was so kind to call me when she arrived, and she stayed a short distance from our property until we had confirmed the location of the family. She and I hung up, and 10 seconds later Classic, Fanta and Fresca were outside my office window.

When Lynn arrived with Cherry, the rest of the family had circled around another building. Lynn carried Cherry out; Cherry saw Fanta and started to wriggle. Lynn let Cherry go, and she went straight to Fanta. Fanta has been falling behind since Cherry has been gone. Classic and Fresca had already moved up the sidewalk, but they definitely saw Cherry and started making their way back. The family reunited against the mundane backdrop of office windows, but for me, it was one of the most beautiful scenes I have witnessed.

Lynn was surprised there wasn’t any trumpeting between Classic and Cherry, but I was closer to them and I could hear them purring and cooing and the chicks were peeping. They walked off together and then Cherry moved off to the pond when they got to the corner of the building. Classic, ever the good father, continued the daily foraging round without her as she got a drink and started to get used to her blessed freedom again. I told Lynn, she probably wanted to blow the stink off of her, the smell of humans and other birds at the sanctuary. Not that those stink…it’s an expression, you know. She wanted to freshen up! =o)

Later in the day, Classic and the chicks joined her at the pond for more foraging. I sat on the hill, and I just watched them. Of course I took some shots, but I also just enjoyed the splendor of seeing my family, our family, together again. I felt myself exhale, and while I will keep a close eye on Cherry and the family in the coming weeks, I feel better knowing they are together.

Thank you God for the blessing of Lynn and the good people at Save Our Searbirds who removed the paperclip from Cherry’s beak, gave her antibiotics, and cared for her. Lynn is some sweet lady, and she is incredibly dedicated and passionate. She often gets 6 rescue calls a day, most of them Sandhill Crane related. She showed me a lot of pictures. All of them made my heart ache, and some of them were incredible success stories. Lynn’s eye lit up, sharing the joy of those who were successfully released back into the wild, and I could see her heart ache when she spoke of those she euthanized and held as they passed away. “I wouldn’t want to be alone when I die; so I don’t let them be alone.”

I am going to go to the Sanctuary in a week and a half. I know a lot of what I may see there will be heart wrenching, but if I can help and raise awareness, that would be a great gift. Thank you my Flickr Friends for all of your prayers and good wishes. I met so many awesome and simpatico contacts because of this story. In case I haven’t mentioned lately, I HAVE THE BEST CONTACTS ON FLICKR. I hope you will check them out! You will find many nature lovers, bird nerds, macro-tastic bug lovers, tree-huggers, funny, talented, engaged and artistic people!

These are not necessarily shots of epic quality. Sometimes it is what it is with wildlife, and I was definitely respecting their space even more than usual, but the feelings were epic for me. For more information on these and other cranes visit www.savingcranes.org Hugs and thanks for viewing and oh my goodness, for reading this epic description if you were inclined to do so!!! XXOO

***All rights to my images are STRICTLY reserved. Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing my images or if you are an educator or non-profit interested in use. copyright KathleenJacksonPhotography 2009***

mon lit trop cher by fjennludwig

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tonight i reclaim my room. at precisely one minute till 4am i prepare to lay my head amongst the pillows and embrace the comfort of the solitude of my own room. it is too late to light the candles that lie along the window, however, i am alright with this fact because i know that my duvet will provide me warmth and love and dreams enough for two...one present, being me, and one absent, being him.

Christ and the Woman at the Well (A L Moore, 1887) by Simon Knott

St Margaret, Reydon, Suffolk

Reydon is a suburb of Southwold. In terms of population, they are about the same size. But which one of the two have you heard of? Precisely. Reydon is agri-industrial, and when you cross over the river from one parish to the other, the houses double in price. Not so long ago, a beach hut changed hands in Southwold for £100,000.

St Margaret sits away from the houses, on the road towards Wangford, anonymously pretty in an overgrown graveyard. It is an older church than Southwold's late-medieval parvenu, although it underwent a serious tarting-up in the 15th century. In the churchyard wall there is a surviving mounting block, so that the gentry could climb straight onto their horses from the churchyard without descending to the muddy road.

On the north side there is a very good late 1980s extension. The architect was Andrew Anderson. The graveyard is wide and spacious, but there are many more modern graves than 19th century ones, a mark of how the town has grown. You can't fail to miss the extraordinary bronze angel to the south of the chancel. To the west of the church are the older memorials. One of them is a cute little child's grave, to Percy Hunt, son of Henry and Harriet, who had died at the age of just ten months in August 1888. Grieve not with helpless sorrow, it reads, Jesus hath felt your pain. He did thy lamb but borrow, he'll bring him back again, the theology of which seems curious, to say the least. The tiny tombstone is covered in a century or more of moss. It was very moving. His parents' larger graves are beside it. His father had died in 1910 at the age of 60, his mother surviving into the 1930s, when she died at 86. There were no other Hunt graves nearby, and I wondered if little Percy had been their only child. Counting backwards, I worked out that she must have had her baby in her mid-forties - was this an unexpected late fruit after barren decades? And were their hopes dashed? It was all very sad.

You step into a clean, bright, neatly-kept interior, perhaps a bit smaller than might be expected from the outside. When I'd last visited in 2002, the church still bore all the hallmarks of enthusiastic Victorians re-ritualising it in the 1870s, the organ up in the chancel blocking a view of the east end. But that has now gone, and the church has a feeling of simplicity and space. There is an image niche in the eastern splay of each window, one with a lovely Blessed Virgin and Child statue in it. The best of the glass is a window by A L Moore of Christ meeting the woman at the well. You can tell at a glance that she's probably had six husbands, and she's not married to the one she's with at the minute. Less good is the east window, Ward & Hughes 'trampolining Jesus' Ascension scene rejigged by the King Workshop in the modern era.

Bachstraße, Piesport, Mosel, Rhine Province, Germany by Billy Wilson

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Looking north from Ausoniusufer.

"Piesport is a local community in the Bernkastel-Wittlich district in Rhineland-Palatinate and the largest wine-growing town in the Mosel wine-growing region. She has been a member of the Bernkastel-Kues municipality since January 1, 2012.

The local community is located, surrounded by vineyards, meadows and forests, on a loop of the Moselle that bulges out to the north in the Moselle valley between Bernkastel-Kues and Trier, more precisely between Minheim and Neumagen. The district of Piesport is located on the left bank of the river on the Eifel side. On the opposite, gently rising side of the river on the Hunsrück side is the Müstert district and a little further downstream, at the exit of the loop, is the Reinsport district. The higher district around the church of St. Martin is Emmel. Ferres is located slightly upstream on the left bank of the river. Müstert used to consist of just a few houses that gather around the All Saints Chapel at the bridgehead of the lower of the two Moselle bridges. This district grew together with Emmel and Reinsport over the centuries and formed the independent municipality of Niederemmel until the administrative reform in 1969. The B 53, the Moseluferstrasse, runs through the district of Niederemmel. From here, at a roundabout at the entrance to the town from the direction of Neumagen, the L 50 branches off to the north over the Moselle bridge to Klausen and the L 156 branches off to the south towards Neumagen-Dhron.

It can be assumed that in Roman times there was a ford through the Moselle at the site of today's town, through which wagons could drive when the water level was low. This ford was dedicated to Mercurius Bigentius, a local deity, from which the name Porto Pingontio was derived, which gradually became Piesport.

A sanctuary was also dedicated to Bigentius, which stood on the northern, left-hand bank on the mountain slope and which is now only remembered by the chapel house, which is also popularly known as Michelskirch ( Lage→ ). In Christian times it was replaced by a church dedicated to the Archangel Michael, which was attested in 1350 as the matrix ecclesia (“mother church”). Because of the long and arduous journey to the parish of Piesport on the banks of the Moselle, a new church was finally built, today's parish church of St. Michael.

The Romans already settled in the region around Piesport. The vineyards framed the place “like the tiers of an amphitheater,” wrote the poet Ausonius. The largest Roman wine press north of the Alps was discovered and partially reconstructed in 1985 between the districts of Alt-Piesport and Ferres. It is the center of the Roman Press Festival, which takes place annually on the second weekend in October. In 1950, a Roman diatret jar was found in a sarcophagus in a burial ground near Niederemmel, which is now in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier. Witnesses to the Roman era are also the Roman road (L 157) on the height between Niederemmel and Morbach, where a Roman grave was found near the Tonnkopf hunting lodge, as well as the Römerhof on the southern outskirts of Niederemmel. There was also a Roman milestone at the Tonnkopf.

The first documented mention of Piesport was in 776. Between 1506 and 1508, Piesport lost 82 of its 95 citizens (households) to the plague. In the Middle Ages and early modern times, Piesport was part of Kurtrier. From 1794 the area was under French rule, and in 1815 it was assigned to the Kingdom of Prussia at the Congress of Vienna. Since 1946 it has been part of the then newly formed state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Today's community was re-formed on June 7, 1969 from the dissolved communities of Piesport (then 503 residents) and Niederemmel (1,633 residents).

Mosel (German: [ˈmoːzl̩]) is one of 13 German wine regions (Weinbaugebiete) for quality wines (Qualitätswein, formerly QbA and Prädikatswein), and takes its name from the Mosel River (French: Moselle; Luxembourgish: Musel). Before 1 August 2007 the region was called Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, but changed to a name that was considered more consumer-friendly. The wine region is Germany's third largest in terms of production but some consider it the leading region in terms of international prestige.

The region covers the valleys of the rivers Mosel, Saar, and Ruwer from near the mouth of the Mosel at Koblenz and upstream to the vicinity of Trier in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The area is known for the steep slopes of the region's vineyards overlooking the river. At 65° degrees incline, the steepest recorded vineyard in the world is the Calmont vineyard located on the Mosel and belonging to the village of Bremm, and therefore referred to as Bremmer Calmont. The Mosel is mainly famous for its wines made from the Riesling grape, but Elbling and Müller-Thurgau also contribute to the production, among others.

In the past two decades red wine production, especially from the Spätburgunder (Pinot noir), has increased in the Mosel and throughout the German vignoble and has become of increasing interest to the international wine community. Because of the northerly location of the Mosel, the Riesling wines are often light, tending to lower alcohol, crisp and high in acidity, and often exhibit "flowery" rather than or in addition to "fruity" aromas. Its most common vineyard soil is derived in the main from various kinds of slate deposits, which tend to give the wines a transparent, mineralic aspect, that often exhibit great depth of flavor. In the current era of climate change much work has been done to improve and gain acceptance for completely dry ("Trocken") Rieslings in this region, so that most of the more famous makers have found acceptance for such wines, particularly in Europe." - 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.

Lake District Dec 2014 443 - Yewbarrow and Mosedale from Sca Fell by Mark Schofield

We had a complete change this Christmas – we cancelled it! - we went walking in The Lakes, or Wasdale more precisely. We were staying at Irton Hall B & B, they had over 70 in for Christmas dinner but we ate jam bread on the slopes of Sca Fell Pike. Fantastic. We had a front wheel puncture on a run flat tyre on the new car with a 100 mile still to drive on the afternoon of Christmas eve on our way there. I drove straight to the nearest ATS – where I have an account – they shook their heads and directed me to Westhoughton Tyres, the lads there were fantastic and got us on our way in good time. BMW dealer advice was run on the flat tyre and then throw it away - £250! Where I would have got a tyre on the western side of the Lakes over Christmas I don’t know, ATS didn’t have one to sell me.

The weather was forecast good for Christmas day but after a fine start it was raining before we even left the car park in Wasdale. We headed up Lingmell and ran into snow on the summit. The path onto Sca Fell Pike was very icy, snow covered and visibility was low, the snow kept falling. We didn’t linger long, it was too cold to have dinner up there so we dropped down onto the Corridor Route, where we had our dinner. We went that way to stretch the walk out, having originally intended to cross to Great End. The tops were so icy, glazed, with not enough snow to get a grip on that we decide to leave it for another day. From Styhead we headed back to Wasdale and a dull but fine finish to the day. A drink in the bar at Irton Hall was on the radar.

Every morning we headed into Wasdale early, it got colder, icier and sunnier as the days went by. We went up Yewbarrow, it was an icy scramble up and I decided it was too dangerous to go down Stirrup Crag to Dore Head so went back the same way. It turned out to be the right decision as we lingered on the top, going to view points that we wouldn’t have and getting some decent photos. One morning we walked over the Screes tops, Illgill Head and Whin Rigg, dropping down the steep slope to The southern end of Wast Water. Having said that I would never walk the Screes path alongside Wast Water again the memory of how awful it is in the rain had faded. There is only really a quarter of a mile out of three miles that is really bad, every rock was like glass with the potential to break a leg every step. It seemed a long way and I was getting killer looks from Herself.

We made our way onto Sca Fell on a beautiful morning, clear blue sky. The snow line had got lower most nights but we never had the low level snow that caused problems in the rest of the country. I chose a, sometimes, pathless way to the summit, partly because I’d never been that way but also to stay in the sun, to keep the view and to avoid the ways that would be a touch dangerous, it was -4 and seared with ice for the last 600 feet. After 15 minutes on the summit wispy thin cloud came racing in, crossing the Lake District in minutes, the photos show it heading towards us and I was glad to have got the clear photos first. Looking out to sea a great mattress of cloud was heading straight for us. It was calm and sunny one minute and the next we were engulfed in thick cloud with 30 yards visibility at the most. I have never had a clear sky turn to cloud so fast – ever! We were going down to Slightside next which was OK, about a mile following the ridge down, the problem was getting back to Wasdale from there. We needed to get to Great Howe which meant a pathless trek a mile SW across Quagrigg Moss – a bog full of tarnlets, it would be a nightmare in low visibility. After getting some accurate compass bearings and heading down off Slightside we suddenly dropped out of the cloud and could see our target, brilliant, we legged it across the semi frozen bog and finally felt able to rest and grab a sandwich and cup of tea. We had to find our way down Raven Crags, which was interesting – and steep! We needed to get to the footbridge to get onto the Burnmoor Tarn path back to Wasdale. As we got closer to Burnmoor Tarn the light that I had been cursing gave us a gorgeous sunset. I had one eye on a gap in the cloud low down in the sky out at sea and I was hoping the sun would break through, it did. Burnmoor Tarn was like a mirror, reflecting the surrounding mountains, including Yewbarrow and parts of the Mosedale Horseshoe in the far distance. There was just the two of us, we had barely seen a soul all day, it was a fantastic end to a tough day. As we dropped into Wasdale I caught the deep pink and orange of the last of the sun, I was shooting into it but I had nothing to lose. There would have been quite a few tripods at the opposite end of the lake but I think I was in the better place – for a change.

On our final walking day we decided to head up Great Gable. It was clear of cloud for a change but ominously the surrounding tops, including the Sca Fells were cloud covered. Another beautiful but very cold morning, it was going to be very icy up there so we elected to go via Styhead and the tourist track. We would choose a way off once we were up there. Long before we got to the top, although we couldn’t see it, we knew the cloud was swirling in and out on the summit so it was going to be hit and miss for the photos. The cloud was down for the last 500 feet but once on the frozen top it kept clearing briefly – very briefly. There were more people up there than we had seen the entire trip previously. People were getting out after Christmas, many had parked at the top of Honister for the fairly easy walk in across Green Gable, some were not dressed for winter walking it has to be said. We left for an icy scramble down to Arron Slack, up onto Green Gable them we galloped down Arron Slack to Styhead and back to Wasdale.

Pietari Posti by Creative Tempest

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Pietari Posti precisely paints pleasing patterns for patient patrons, peeping his portfolio. Creative Tempest is not liable for any spit related keyboard damage if you read that sentence out loud. Pietari Posti’s work is full of things Creative Tempest loves. Bold colors, animals, skyscrapers, beautiful people, and that perfect dash of wild, draw-outside-the-lines designing flavor. Find out more at www.creativetempest.com

This is it... by East Java Tourism Indonesia

Lontong Balap

Lontong balap is one of traditional foods from East Java, precisely from Surabaya. Lontong balap is consist of lontong or sticky rice cake, bean sprout, tofu and lentho. Lentho is more or less like fried cake, which is made by cassava and cowpea, it is tasty and make particular crunchy-ness in Lontong balap. It become more yummy by garlic dressing sauce and hot shrimp paste.

Moreover, when eating Lontong balap, do no forget to complete it with Sate Kerang or scallop satai and coconut ice.

Why this food named by Lontong Balap, because formerly, when the people who sell Lontong Balap they used heavy-barrel-shaped and bear it to the whole city. This barrel make the seller had to walk as fast as they can, seems like someone who taking a race. Balap is taken from Javanese language, balapan, means racing. Recently, we can find Lontong balap in stall or barrow.

We can find some Lontong Balap in all over Surabaya, whether in stall or barrow. Fortunately, the most popular Lontong Balap in Surabaya is located in Kranggan street, there are some stalls over the street that offering Lontong balap as their main menu, but the most special one is belong to Lontong Balap Garuda by Pak Gendut. It becomes famous for the different taste within the ingredients, and that makes Lontong Balap Pak Gendut known by people outside Surabaya.

More info visit:

www.eastjava.com

Sewn together from balloons in hospitals, always wanting to fly... by sjemcee

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I’m Sidney. The first question commonly asked is if I’m Jewish or Dutch; I’m never asked what I like to do and what I hope to achieve. That’s precisely who I am, in those unspoken questions. I love art, and I’ve planned on being a costume designer for years now. My career plan is practically mapped out in my mind, and I’m set on achieving the goals I’ve set for myself. I love psychology and media studies. I’m fascinated with history, but I can barely do two-digit number multiplication. My brain is full of pointless statistics and random assortments of memories. I have excessive déjà vu and my dreams come often and come gory. When I was small, my dad called me Morticia after the women from the Addam’s family for my morbid interests. If I’d changed my mind and chose to be confirmed, I’d have taken the name Dymphna for the patron saint of insanity. As you can see, I’m fascinated by the brain and its functions, and most of all art. I’m as complex as anyone else is, but it’s your definition of complex that will define whether I come off obscure or perfectly normal to you.

“With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.” These are the words of the poem Desiderata, which I can practically quote from memory. I’ve lived by this general philosophy for years now, striving every day to just make it a good one. It’s the bad days you remember most, so if you have very few bad days, then what is left? The good ones. You’ll start to remember the good things everyday rather than the bad ones. Yes, the world is terrible – get over it. While there is all that bad out there in the world, there is still so much good it has to offer.

I always wonder what it’s like seeing life through other people’s eyes. People fascinate me, especially the particularly peculiar ones. People like Lady Gaga, for example, with seemingly absurd thoughts and actions, are people that captivate me. Tim Burton is someone I absolutely adore. The stories of his works and the darkness they evoke have always been things I loved. From the moment I was nicknamed Morticia I was morbid. Finding someone so successful and artistic with the same macabre mind as I seemed like a rarity to me; and yet, here he was. I wanted to recreate Burton’s works, only use the same emotions I felt with each piece I’ve seen. I wanted to capture how awe-struck I am when I watch his films, and hopefully show people that just because it’s dark doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful. I edited a ton in Photoshop; just like Burton’s stop-motion productions, my photography, my camera, was just another instrument of the orchestra. I wanted to push my Photoshop skills to the limit. Films such as Beetlejuice didn’t have Photoshop to use to edit a sandworm in, and now with Photoshop I wanted to see how it would look. This final project is a portfolio dedicated to Burton, but with my own twists and turns.

SUPERHERO NEW YEAR PIECE by ztenzila

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THIS PIECE TOOK ME PRECISELY 6 HOURS T OD AND IT WAS SUPPOSE TO BE DONE ON NEW YEARS EVE, NO THANKS TO THOSE TFL AND NEW YEARS PARTY ORGANISING IDIOTS !!!

Plus doing it on NEW YEARS DAY WAS A DAY TO LEARN AND PREPARE FOR NEXT TIME TOO

This is my superhero NEW YEARS PIECE filled with Amalgamte characters,BANANAMAN, BLuntman and Chronic and of COURSE ME GIVING YOU AN AFFIRMATIVE MESSAGE

"BE A HERO THIS YEAR!!"

HAVE A GREAT YEAR PEOPLE AND ALWAYS BE POSITIVE TOO !!

EIN GEDI, ISRAEL - hyrax/ ЭЙН-ГЕДИ, ИЗРАИЛЬ - даман by Anton VG

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Hyraxes (more precisely, Rock hyraxes) are easily spotted on hikes around Ein Gedi reserve. These animals live in family groups and are so used to tourists that allow to be approached to the arm length distance. Hyraxes belong to a distinct order of mammals and have a common ancestor with elephants and manatees. Besides Israel they are widely distributed across Arabian peninsula and the entire African continent, all they was to the Cape of Good Hope.

Даманы (а точнее - Капские даманы) легко встретить на прогулках по заповеднику Эйн-Геди. Живут они семейными группами и настолько привыкли к туристам, что позволяют подойти на расстояние протянутой руки. Даманы относятся к отдельному семейству млекопитающих, имеющих общего предка со слонами и морскими коровами. Кроме Израиля они широко распространены на Аравийском полуострове и по всей Африке, вплоть до мыса Доброй Надежды в ЮАР.

Day 340 - Don't Forget The Battery! by Marcus Peaston

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...which is precisely what I did today. Ordinarily this would simply be highly annoying but I've muddled through in the past with my iPhone. On this occasion, however, I'd decided that I wanted to do a street portrait of a vendor in the centre of Nuneaton, had received permission to do the shot, and had got the 70-200 f/2.8 attached to the camera when I discovered that I'd not put the battery back in after I put it onto charge last night. Needless to say the whole thing was highly embarrasing, not least because the battery didn't really need charging much. I'll try to do the picture on another day but I hardly gave a good impression today and that stuff really matters.

Anyway, I staged this shot in the late evening after I'd got back from badminton using my wife's old compact camera that, thankfully, still had some charge left in its battery (for some reason it seems to drain it even when turned off) and which has a relatively wide lens that would enable me to get the scene I had in my mind in and put emphasis on the charger. Unfortunately, what I could not do (or, at least, work out how to do) was make it focus on a non-central point when using the self-timer. Given this the focusing isn't precise but it has to do.

Tarantula by JustJan

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A close-up of a tarantula. I am not sure which one precisely.

LIVING ON AN ISLAND by DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Four metres, prior to the magic of the Golden hour around sunrise at 05:11am, (sunrise was at precisely 06.15am) on Friday 5th September 2014 off 1st Street and Beacon Avenue, beside the old wooden fish market in beautiful Sidney by the sea on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Here, we are looking past the entrance and exit to Sidney Marina, towards Sheep Island, Forrest Island Ruby Island and Domville Island.

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Nikon D800 82mm 1/8s f/4.5 iso100 RAW (14 bit) Mirror up. 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 57.91s

LONGITUDE: W 123d 23m 34.37s

ALTITUDE: 4.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 11.41MB

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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

Wolkersdorf, Bassa Austria (l’arte delle facciate di Wolkersdorf), Kirchenplatz by Josef Lex (El buen soldado Švejk)