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Pinstripe Longhorn Beetle (Syllitus rectus)
I thought 'Pinstripe Pat' deserved another look. He found something tasty to eat on the Common Ivy flower
I will catch up this afternoon but we are out this evening. Sarah has her graduation dinner as she finishes primary school.
Happy Beautiful Bug Butt Thursday!
Dinosaur Jr. - „Out there“
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyE0sEHw3cc
I know your name
I know the people out there feel the same
I know you′re gone
I hope you got some friends to come along
I know you're out there
I know you′re gone
You can't say that's fair
Can′t you be wrong?
I feel ok
Sure, I know that′s not what people say
Maybe they're wrong
Maybe you weren′t on my side all along
I know you're out there
I know you′re gone
You can't say that′s fair
Can't you be wrong?
I know you're out there
You′re still a case
It′s still the place
Weren't you invited?
It′s what you can't spare
Whatever′s left, just hide the rest
And bring it right in
I know it's sick
I know you think a game is just a trick
Maybe I′ve changed
Just tell me was this all in vain?
I know you're out there
I know that space is not a race
Weren't you invited?
It′s what you can′t spare
Whatever's left, just hide the rest
And bring it right in
Maintained inside
I′ve lost my range
Feel the strain
Weren't you invited?
Just never try
It′s still the place,
you're still the case,
now bring it right in
An image intended for full-screen viewing sees Freightliner 'Shed' 66564 approaching Nuneaton and take the flyover line towards Birmingham with the 3.00am Felixstowe North - Lawley St (4M86) container working.
I deliberately snapped this in the shadow of the bridge, and gave it a bit of film-noir treatment to coincide with what was generally a dull day. Probably not for everyone.
Comments off, thanks.
9.48am, 14th November 2024
Happy New Year! Photo taken for the Macro Monday “new” theme. I was having problems with my Nikon Z6 which I use for work so I had to replace it.
On the way to the Bloomer gig, some birds alerted me that CN A497 was on the pull from Kankakee after meeting some northbound traffic. A GE Barn and an SD60 are about the closest thing to any coolness you'd see on these IC rails, so a chase ensued. Onarga, IL.
Self-portraiture is a singular in-turned art. Something eerie lurks in its fingering of the edge between seer and seen.
-- Julian Bell
_________________
Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even – all must combine to realize a character.
-- Charles Baudelaire
__________________
I never paint a portrait from a photograph, because a photograph doesn't give enough information about what the person feels.
-- Francesco Clemente
Large burl on old beech. Apparently this gall is caused by the bacterium Agrobacterium tumefacienscrown.
Miley Cyrus - Something Beautiful
__________________________
Sᴘᴏɴsᴇʀᴇᴅ Bʏ:
☣ Top: Vanilla Bae - Dylan Top 2.0 @ Mainstore
☣ Face Skin: Pumec - Ellie @ Mainstore
☣ Earrings: FaeTal - Silas @ Mainstore
☣ Nails: Lexa - Caviar Needle @ Mainstore
I was here on my bike to do some landscapes, but shifted my attention to this fire that broke out across the road. Soon, rubberneckers started showing up, and this guy got into my field of view. Alarm center had already been called before I even took any pictures. This way I got to pretend I was Junior Press photographer for a few minutes.
It was surreal, or rather, eerie. That's because it was so quiet, unlike in movies and literature, where fires "roar". This was such quiet destruction, which gives food for thought. I mean, the idea that we would wake up because of the sound of a fire in our home is unrealistic. Fire is more insidious than I'd imagined it to be, and therefore more dangerous.
Randers, Denmark, 2021. Leica M2, 50/2.5 Summarit-M. Ilford fp4+ developed in Rodinal 1+50.
If I never ever say that I love you
Just remember, girl, I’m saying I do
You can know that from this moment
You are always in my heart
If I never ever say that I love you
Just remember, girl, I’m saying I do
Love you
You’ll be always in my heart
“Always In My Heart” – Tevin Campbell
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
credits:
• hair - doux - lisa (modified in photoshop)
• top - riot - cara knitted halter
• skirt - tres blah - tweed skirt
• boots - gos - claudia slouched boot
• tattoos - by yours truly
• watch - real evil - royalty couple watch
• hat - moon elixer - coven hat
Why didn't the chicken cross the road.
I crossed over to its side, walked behind it, but it never crossed.
????????.....
The questions that haunt us.
just something silly for Sunday
have a good one
Rocky shores and windswept trees are common to the islands of Lake Nipissing in Ontario Canada. Photoshop for reflection
This particular spot, at Ruakura in Hamilton, in the closest railway line to where I live. Naturally, that means it is also the most visited, and thus the most overused. In the never ending search for something other than a plain wedge shot, I have found myself trying some strange things...
As I have shown in some of my previous photos, I quite like the depth of field style, a bit like this. So, I have tried nearly every sign, rock or flower around here to find something, anything nice. The best I've gotten so far is the image above, which has a nice low perspective that is different to many of my other attempts.
A shame about the boring (but not surprising) DL, but otherwise a decent shot, I think.
The continuing story of the wasp nest in my fence. All three of them are touching antennae and communicating: "Hey let's get that guy with the camera - he's getting a little too close." They didn't attack and I still maintained my delicate relationship with the colony. I knew if I took enough shots I'd get something cool like this trio.
They remind me of a tri-blade propeller on an airplane.
Yellow Jacket - Vespula pensylvanica
My Backyard Fence
Lafayette, Colorado
IMPORTANT: for non-pro users who read the info on a computer, just enlarge your screen to 120% (or more), then the full text will appear below the photo with a white background - which makes reading so much easier.
The color version of the photo above is here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:
So far there's only been one photo in my gallery that hasn't been taken in my garden ('The Flame Rider', captured in the Maggia Valley: www.flickr.com/photos/191055893@N07/53563448847/in/datepo... ) - which makes the image above the second time I've "strayed from the path" (although not very far, since the photo was taken only approximately 500 meters from my house).
Overall, I'll stick to my "only-garden rule", but every once in a while I'll show you a little bit of the landscape around my village, because I think it will give you a better sense of just how fascinating this region is, and also of its history.
The title I chose for the photo may seem cheesy, and it's certainly not very original, but I couldn't think of another one, because it's an honest reflection of what I felt when I took it: a profound sense of peace - although if you make it to the end of this text you'll realize my relationship with that word is a bit more complicated.
I got up early that day; it was a beautiful spring morning, and there was still a bit of mist in the valley below my village which I hoped would make for a few nice mood shots, so I quickly grabbed my camera and went down there before the rising sun could dissolve the magical layer on the scenery.
Most human activity hadn't started yet, and I was engulfed in the sounds of the forest as I was walking the narrow trail along the horse pasture; it seemed every little creature around me wanted to make its presence known to potential mates (or rivals) in a myriad of sounds and voices and noises (in case you're interested, here's a taste of what I usually wake up to in spring, but you best use headphones: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfoCTqdAVCE )
Strolling through such an idyllic landscape next to grazing horses and surrounded by birdsong and beautiful trees, I guess it's kind of obvious one would feel the way I described above and choose the title I did, but as I looked at the old stone buildings - the cattle shelter you can see in the foreground and the stable further up ahead on the right - I also realized how fortunate I was.
It's hard to imagine now, because Switzerland is one of the wealthiest countries in the world today, but the men and women who had carried these stones and constructed the walls of these buildings were among the poorest in Europe. The hardships the people in some of the remote and little developed valleys in Ticino endured only a few generations ago are unimaginable to most folks living in my country today.
It wasn't uncommon that people had to sell their own kids as child slaves - the girls had to work in factories or in rice fields, the boys as "living chimney brushes" in northern Italy - just because there wasn't enough food to support the whole family through the harsh Ticino winters.
If you wonder why contemporary Swiss historians speak of "slaves" as opposed to child laborers, it's because that's what many of them actually were: auctioned off for a negotiable prize at the local market, once sold, these kids were not payed and in many cases not even fed by their masters (they had to beg for food in the streets or steal it).
Translated from German Wikipedia: ...The Piazza grande in Locarno, where the Locarno Film Festival is held today, was one of the places where orphans, foundlings and children from poor families were auctioned off. The boys were sold as chimney sweeps, the girls ended up in the textile industry, in tobacco processing in Brissago or in the rice fields of Novara, which was also extremely hard work: the girls had to stand bent over in the water for twelve to fourteen hours in all weathers. The last verse of the Italian folk song 'Amore mio non piangere' reads: “Mamma, papà, non piangere, se sono consumata, è stata la risaia che mi ha rovinata” (Mom, dad, don't cry when I'm used up, it was the rice field that destroyed me.)... de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaminfegerkinder
The conditions for the chimney sweeps - usually boys between the age of 8 and 12 (or younger, because they had to be small enough to be able to crawl into the chimneys) - were so catastrophic that many of them didn't survive; they died of starvation, cold or soot in their lungs - as well as of work-related accidents like breaking their necks when they fell, or suffocatig if they got stuck in inside a chimney. This practice of "child slavery" went on as late as the 1950s (there's a very short article in English on the topic here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spazzacamini and a more in depth account for German speakers in this brief clip: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gda8vZp_zsc ).
Now I don't know if the people who built the old stone houses along my path had to sell any of their kids, but looking at the remnants of their (not so distant) era I felt an immense sense of gratitude that I was born at a time of prosperity - and peace - in my region, my country and my home. Because none of it was my doing: it was simple luck that decided when and where I came into this world.
It also made me think of my own family. Both of my grandparents on my father's side grew up in Ticino (they were both born in 1900), but while they eventually left Switzerland's poorest region to live in its richest, the Kanton of Zurich, my grandfather's parents relocated to northern Italy in the 1920s and unfortunately were still there when WWII broke out.
They lost everything during the war, and it was their youngest daughter - whom I only knew as "Zia" which means "aunt" in Italian - who earned a little money to support herself and my great-grandparents by giving piano lessons to high-ranking Nazi officers and their kids (this was towards the end of the war when German forces had occupied Italy).
I never knew that about her; Zia only very rarely spoke of the war, but one time when I visited her when she was already over a 100 years old (she died at close to 104), I asked her how they had managed to survive, and she told me that she went to the local prefecture nearly every day to teach piano. "And on the way there would be the dangling ones" she said, with a shudder.
I didn't get what she meant, so she explained. Visiting the city center where the high ranking military resided meant she had to walk underneath the executed men and women who were hanging from the lantern posts along the road (these executions - often of civilians - were the Germans' retaliations for attacks by the Italian partisans).
I never forgot her words - nor could I shake the look on her face as she re-lived this memory. And I still can't grasp it; my house in Ticino is only 60 meters from the Italian border, and the idea that there was a brutal war going on three houses down the road from where I live now in Zia's lifetime strikes me as completely surreal.
So, back to my title for the photo above. "Peace". It's such a simple, short word, isn't it? And we use it - or its cousin "peaceful" - quite often when we mean nice and quiet or stress-free. But if I'm honest I don't think I know what it means. My grandaunt Zia did, but I can't know. And I honestly hope I never will.
I'm sorry I led you down such a dark road; I usually intend to make people smile with the anecdotes that go with my photos, but this one demanded a different approach (I guess with this latest image I've strayed from the path in more than one sense, and I hope you'll forgive me).
Ticino today is the region with the second highest average life expectancy in Europe (85.2 years), and "The Human Development Index" of 0.961 in 2021 was one of the highest found anywhere in the world, and northern Italy isn't far behind. But my neighbors, many of whom are now in their 90s, remember well it wasn't always so.
That a region so poor it must have felt like purgatory to many of its inhabitants could turn into something as close to paradise on Earth as I can imagine in a person's lifetime should make us all very hopeful. But, and this is the sad part, it also works the other way 'round. And I believe we'd do well to remember that, too.
To all of you - with my usual tardiness but from the bottom of my heart - a happy, healthy, hopeful 2025 and beyond.
© Leanne Boulton, All Rights Reserved
Close-up candid eye contact street photography from Glasgow, Scotland. Clearly her bright blue hat and scarf caught my eye. Despite the glare I am pleased to say she actually apologised for getting in the way of my shot! Enjoy.
Spat over Napo's empty food bag. Goshii wanted it, She got it, Or maybe he made reference to the old bag!
While watching the sun slowly set over the Aegean Sea I thought of Flickr friends and thought I would set up this glass of Alpha beer to you. Luckily it didn't fall as there were seagulls waiting below hoping for something.
Cheers
Ian
Sorry I am on holiday and not commenting for a while but will be back in about 10 days