Walking in Buckinghamshire
View allAll Photos Tagged raw_landscape
Our guide roused us from our tents at "0-dark-thirty," a time of day that usually shouldn't exist outside of military drills or deep-seated regrets. Before the caffeine could even attempt a rescue mission, we were bouncing along what the locals charitably called a road, but what felt more like a two-track animal trail.
In the distance, strange, glowing lumps pulsed against the Serengeti dirt like luminous mushrooms. As we rattled closer, the mystery was solved: these were hot-air balloons, being blasted into submission by propane torches. What began as sluggish, silken heaps soon swelled into towering giants, straining against their tethers as if they were as eager to leave the ground.
The scene at the launch site was one of organized chaos. Each flight captain acted as a sort of aerial sheepdog, corralling the disoriented tourists spilling out of Land Rovers. We were ushered into wicker baskets that looked--to a cynical eye--like they had survived several decades of both the elements and gravity's occasional victories.
After a safety briefing that we all listened to with the wide-eyed intensity of the doomed, the captain opened the valves. There is a peculiar, eerie magic in watching the earth simply… give up. As we pushed into a sky bleeding with the reds and golds of dawn, the world below shrank into a silent, miniature kingdom.
We floated in a cathedral of air, suspended over a sea of grass while hundreds of animals roamed beneath us, blissfully unaware of the humans dangling in a laundry basket above them. Save for the occasional whoosh of the burner, the Serengeti at dawn is a masterpiece of quiet.
For those of us who survived the "harrowing" vertical commute, the reward was a champagne brunch served in the middle of the wild--a civilized touch in a raw landscape. We eventually piled back into the trucks, clutching our cameras and our mercifully unused barf-bags, and headed for camp. It was, by all accounts, a day worth remembering.
When I step into a wilderness on foot, it feels as if Ihave been transported back to a primeval world, untouched by human hands. This one lies in Montana--a designated wilderness where nature endures in its purest form. There are no roads, buildings, or machines here--only raw landscapes shaped by wind, water, and time. We are merely passing through, brief visitors in a realm that remains as it has for centuries, protected so its beauty and solitude can outlast us and be treasured by generations to come.
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To view photos of this year's overlanding journey in chronological order, click www.flickr.com/photos/stevefrazier/albums/72177720328383895
© Stephen L. Frazier - All Rights Reserved. Reproduction, printing, publication, or any other use of this image without written permission is prohibited.
The mountain Ra Gusela on top of the Passo Giau in Italy. And if it looks like a lake, it´s only a puddle where it reflects in :)
There are times when this unspoilt raw landscape scares me. It is so harsh and hard to cross it is easy to become trapped, or lost or devoured by it and the elements. Here I had gone to the furthermost islet I could get to without swimming in anticipation of a stunning sunset. Having climbed up the granite rocks to the highest point, I patiently waited for the sun to lower and the colours to explode, confident that low tide was going to be late this evening. But as I sat there, the concern started to gnaw at me. Wasn't the water surrounding me was getting deeper. Surely not? It couldn't be. It doesn't get deeper as the tide ebbs.
My nerves started to jangle. Getting here hadn't been easy in the first place, but if I was now cut off by the tide......Memories of being stranded when I first came to this part of the world, and at Crammond Island still haunt me. I decided I better retreat.....sod, the sunset, it wasn't looking good, and in the end it didn't happen either. Newton of Ardtoe, you were a dud.
The fallen Autumn leaves still on this woodland scene in spring added interest and a bit of a lead in through the scene to the light.
Its a while since I posted a proper landscape shot that wasn’t ICM and ive a few still lurking on my hard drive to post process from winter and spring trips!
Late summer 2021, silhouettes at the 3 Cime di Lavaredo. Very early morning, I couldn't resist to press the shutter!
Found this '65 Thunderbird in the rear of an old closed gas station in Oneta, Oklahoma where the aging owner still lives in a small shack. A skeleton of the famous DX gas sign still stands in the background. The lot of the station is now used to sell raw landscape material like dirt, rocks and sod.
“To honor used writing ustensils for the service they rendered”
ACCentaury is the work of Haveit Neox, an RL and SL artist.
This room features art by Silas Merlin.
Past exhibit: vimeo.com/131254248
Visit this location at ACC ALPHA {City of Accentaury} in Second Life
Schönen Abend euch allen :)
heute hab ich es endlich fertig bekommen , ein Bild einer in etwa 4-7 mm großen Kugelspinne (steatoda triangulosa) .
also ich kann euch eines sagen ich habe schon sehr viele schreckliche kleine Tierchen gesehen aber so unruhig und agressiv wie diese kleine Spinne mein objektiv in Augenschein genommen hatte ist mir vorher noch nie unter gekommen 😅😅
nach der Angst sie könnte ins Objektiv wandern saß sie dann noch für 3 Schüße still und verkroch sich danach wieder hinter den Kühlschrank 😁
ich fragte dann aber nicht nach einem 2 Date versteht sich
eigenes Blitz-Setup 90mm Tamron Sp (die alte scheibe)
Iso 320 1/200 und einiges an Geduld :D
it was a wild and crazy surf over the rocks from the trail, just 'round the corner from Whaler's Cove, Point Lobos state natural reserve.
I’ve no idea whether Tolkien ever visited the middle of Iceland on his travels, but it really did feel as if we were leaving The Shire that morning as we drove away from the quiet green pastures of Fludir for our one full day of photography at the edge of the Golden Circle. Within a mile or two of arriving at the entrance to Road 32, the smattering of evidence of humanity in the broad valley rapidly dwindled away to almost nothing. Just the odd farmstead or camping ground, lines of fenceposts, and of course those ever present electricity pylons that seem to lead to everywhere and nowhere in this empty raw landscape. To our right lay the Þjórsá River, ever changing in width, studded with low marshy islands, while further to the east the snow capped summit of Hekla occupied the horizon, hiding behind it a mysterious hinterland that remains for now a place of dreaming imagination.
The plan for the day was to spend three or four hours at the majestic Haifoss, from where I’ve already shared three stories – and fear not, because there are still a couple more of those to come from a location that delivered some very pleasing and unexpected results. Following this, I’d also discovered another subject that could be achieved by following a circular route along Road 26 in the form of Þjófafoss, a lesser known waterfall that stood before a mountain called Búrfell at a spot where the rest of the human race might never have existed for all the evidence that an image of the scene I’d found showed. Þjófafoss, or Thjofafoss if that’s at all helpful – although however I say it I suspect it sounds like I’m trying to talk with a mouthful of marbles – would mean a slightly longer route back to our base at Fludir, but then again if we’d gone to Gulfoss or Geysir, we’d have been arm wrestling a troop of tourists from everywhere just to get a view, never mind compose a passable image.
Road 26 was a bit of a ride. Having now driven the entire length of Road 32, we took a sharp turn to the right at the point that the notorious F road into the highlands began, and headed south again towards our target. And for the next ten miles or more, we might as well have been sitting on top of an elderly washing machine operating at full spin cycle speed, bumping and juddering along a road that didn’t carry a mountain classification, yet made us feel as if we were heading for the bowels of Mordor and straight into Mr Tolkien’s mind space. For a seemingly endless time the road seemed to shake both us and our four wheel drive car to the edges of our wits, but eventually we arrived upon smooth tarmac and celebrated by way of a modest increase of pressure to my foot upon the right hand pedal.
After a few more miles we spotted the small bumpy track on the right hand side of the road that took us that final mile or so to a rough and completely empty car parking area in front of the river once more – the same river we’d seen earlier in the day at a place where it splits into two and encircles Búrfell and what passes in these parts for the forest that bears its name and covers the lower slopes. It wasn’t going to be a long visit in truth. “Well, I’m glad I’ve seen it, but I don’t think I’m going to bother taking a photo of it,” decided Lee as we stared at the mud streaked water passing by at the rate of several thousand gallons of water per second. He did in fact take five shots of the scene – I know this because I still have all his RAW files safely stored on my external hard drive, the one device we took with us for extra backup – but I could understand the lack of enthusiasm. It wasn’t the prettiest of locations for the late afternoon hours of what had been a long day on the road, with more than an hour of driving still to come.
But I decided I was going to give it a go. The natural colours in the scene were dark, brown and brooding and I saw the possibility for a black and white panorama, using five merged landscape images to capture the mood of this remote and foreboding location at the outmost edge of civilisation. With low cloud covering the summit of the big lump of ground on the opposite side of the Þjórsá River, the crudely elemental landscape seemed as if it were warning us away from this place where nobody else had bothered to come to. Behind us day Hekla and the deadly interior, while in front of us lay the view you’re looking at in the picture. Sobering.
We resumed our route on Road 26, not seeing a single car go by in either direction for more than twenty miles, despite now being on a smooth, straight tarmac road. I’ve never been anywhere where I’ve experienced that before. I wish all roads could be like this – don’t you? We passed an occasional guest house, and a farm here and there as gradually we returned from Tolkien’s edge of the map towards The Shire and humanity once more. It had been an experience in the world of places with unpronounceable names.
(I'm just back from Fuerteventura with more stories to share - and I'm way behind on your tales. I'll start catching up now!)
Photo: Lon Winchester
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VAL PELLICE-PIEMONTE-ITALY ( Natura strana)
Non ho capito, se sono radici o rami di un albero, il tronco è sparito, forse sradicato e trascinato a valle dalla corrente del fiume in piena.
I don't understand if they are the roots or branches of a tree, the trunk is gone, perhaps uprooted and dragged downstream by the current of the swollen river.
Looking across buttes in Valley of the Gods towards Monument Valley with the early morning light filtered by a light cloud cover. This region exudes a spiritual grace, not surprisingly as a place of habitation by indigenous peoples for at least the last 12,000 years as well as a popular destination for many seeking peace in the empty raw landscapes of the Colorado Plateau.
Valley of the Gods is likely to be formally reincorporated into the Bears Ears National Monument with recent actions by President Biden, reversing the previous administration's drastic shrinking of the monument established by President Obama.
Named by John Wesley Powell, although there is no actual marble the canyon, he thought the polished limestone looked like marble.
Saved by the Sierra Club, this was the sight of one of the last great dams in the west. Along with others, the Sierra Club fought long and hard to block it, and the idea was officially abandoned in 1968.
On his last day as president, LBJ proclaimed it as a national monument, to protect the canyon from any further attempts to submerge it as a bathtub artificial lake (Proclamation 3889).
Man O'War Cove, Dorset
Please do not use my photos without permission. Feel free to contact me if you have a request.
Cliff Edge in Sunlight. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
DescrSun shines on the sharp edge of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park.iption
Many years ago I was on a two-week backpacking trip through a long section of the Southern Sierra Nevada, covering some of the highest portions of the range on foot. The hike took me across a series of very high passes that were close to 12,000′ hight. In other words, I spent a lot of time in some very rugged and alpine places. I distinctly recall pausing on one of the higher passes to look around and realizing that the entire visible landscape consisted of rock and snow, with not a bit of forest visible to me. That vision of such a raw landscape stuck with me, and I’m always on the look out for such things.
While Zion Canyon is certainly not a place without forests and trees and rivers and lots of other comfortable things, it is possible to find a few ways of viewing this country that reinforce how much of its landscape is built on rock, in this case layers of sedimentary rock laid down, transformed, twisted and tilted over the millennia. This photograph catches the sun-lit edge of a closer buttress (yes, with a few plants!) juxtaposed with another more distant wall in shadow.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
Just a few feet from towering cliffs overlooking a rocky Pacific ocean, these trees lie in peace, awaiting you and your camera.
From the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, Moss Beach, California
Architektur / Interior / Landschaft
Der ruhige Innenraum öffnet sich über das große Fenster zu einer klaren, ikonischen Vulkanform. Die Kombination aus glatten architektonischen Flächen, dem dunklen Naturstein und den beiden runden Kakteen schafft einen spannenden Dialog zwischen gestalteter Umgebung und der rauen Landschaft draußen. Das Zusammenspiel von Licht, Form und Material erzeugt eine stille, präzise Atmosphäre, die typisch für Manriques räumliche Handschrift ist.
The calm interior opens toward a striking volcanic shape framed by the large window. Smooth architectural surfaces, dark natural rock, and the two round cacti create a dialogue between designed space and the raw landscape outside. The interplay of light, form, and material evokes the quiet, precise atmosphere characteristic of Manrique’s spatial language.