View allAll Photos Tagged shells
Sliced Nautilus shell showing inside chambers.
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sail the unshadowed main,--
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,--
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn;
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
"The Chambered Nautilus"
-Oliver Wendall Holmes
A panorama of a nearly whole iridescent shell I found while walking along Fort Myers Beach. Merged from a series of photos around the shell to create a wider and higher res shot. Biggest challenge as getting the shots before the next wave came in and changed things around.
Photographed with Sony Alpha A6000/ICLE-6000 with FE55-210 lens. Fort Myers Beach, Florida. Photomerged and processed in Adobe Lightroom.
Perhaps because seashells are so inappropriate in a rainforest mountain garden, they appear randomly and unexpectedly in ours
A little pile of shells that have all been found and collected from Siesta Key Beach, Florida ... hoping to come across some more in the near future!!
Flickr Lounge ~ Weekly Theme (Week 4) ~ Piles of Things ...
Stay Safe and Healthy Everyone!
Thanks to everyone who views this photo, adds a note, leaves a comment and of course BIG thanks to anyone who chooses to favourite my photo .... Thanks to you all!
I always wanted to document this style of Shell gas station in a Bernd and Hilla Becher kind of way. I haven't gotten to this yet, as the subject matter is a hard one to shoot effectively with numerous problems like power lines, lots full of cars (even on Sundays), and surrounding distractions. I did try years ago, but the day I went to shoot the one station I had in mind, I arrived to discover it had been completely torn down the day before. This shot is effectively out of focus...
The unknown story of the broken sea shells collectors
At Uadaypur sea beach (3km from Digha at the Bengal-Orissa state border), hundreds of poor villagers (80% of them are women) gather on a particular time of the day at the peak of the low tide. They all carry a small net basket for collecting broken shells following the line of the waves. When the baskets are half-filled they empty their catch at the beach and go back to the waves again. Finally the shells are packed in bags for selling. After two hours of continuous hard work, two people together can fill only a 30-kg bag selling for INR Rs 30 (USD 50 cents) only.
The shells are rich source of calcium carbonate, use in feeder mainly at the India's growing poultry industry. Also, it has great demand in making the white (lime) paint. Traders and middlemen are always waiting to exploit these poor villagers. They make on-the-spot payment, collect the bags and transport them to the local market for a hefty profit of 300% by selling each bag for at least Rs 100 (USD $ 2).
I personally talked to the shell collectors and found no Govt. intervention to stop this exploitation. The state government can easily intervene by forming a cooperative and collecting the shells themselves by their nodal agencies with a reasonable price.
Udaypur Sea Beach, Bay of Bengal
Images of Bengal, India