raw_landscape photos on Flickr

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.

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"Tree Time" by helmet13

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"Lime Tree in May" by helmet13

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(more than 13000 views - Thank You ! :-)

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(more than 12000 views - Thank You ! :-)

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(inside golden canyon, somewhere underneath Zabriskie Point - from the archives :-)

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(more than 10000 views - Thank You ! :-)

Scotland is heaven by david.meaux.images

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....especially if you find yourself at Neist Point, Isle of Skye. Just be mindful of the midges.

Silhouettes by stefanone71

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Late summer 2021, silhouettes at the 3 Cime di Lavaredo. Very early morning, I couldn't resist to press the shutter!

On The Road to Mordor by Dom Haughton

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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!)

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(more than 11000 views - Thank You ! :-)

"The Tree - May 2017" by helmet13

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(more than 17000 views - Thank You ! :-)

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(more than 12000 views - Thank You ! :-)

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(more than 10000 views - Thank You ! :-)

by hamidreza Askari

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Subbe lighthouse, Varberg Sweden

The Pen Temple at ACCentaury by N4RD1S

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“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.

accalpha.blogspot.com/

Past exhibit: vimeo.com/131254248

Visit this location at ACC ALPHA {City of Accentaury} in Second Life

Tbird lost in the clutter by ranedge

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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.

City of Accentaury by N4RD1S

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Once more must see...

Thanks to Bamboo Barnes - Artist.Com for sharing ! Let's quote her : “Since 1st time I accidently made tp to there,

it is most greatest accident to me.

This amazing sim, I was like a kid catching moon in her hands, unbelievable, so out of ordinary [...] ”

Visit this location at ACC ALPHA {City of Accentaury} in Second Life

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(from the archives :-)

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