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Photo captured via Minolta MD W.Rokkor-X 24mm F/2.8 Lens. John A. Finch Arboretum. Sunset Hill Neighborhood. City of Spokane. Selkirk Mountains Range. Northern Rockies Region. Inland Northwest. Spokane County, Washington. Early October 2017.
Exposure Time: 1/200 sec. * ISO Speed: ISO-100 * Aperture: F/8 * Bracketing: None * Color Temperature: 4550 K
Pentax K-30, SMC Takumar 55/1.8
For the Pentax Forums Single in December Challenge
Tonight was my last class of the semester (Art Appreciation - Art history's laid-back, cool cousin). The kids turned in their final project and took the last test. It was a really good group of students. I liked that bunch. We all seemed to connect for the most part.
I took some parting shots of the classroom. Looking forward to coming back next semester! (Fingers crossed that enough students enroll!)
(Not photoshopped)
The Northern Gannet is one of three subspecies of Gannet Morus bassanus in the world: the other two occur along the south coast of Africa and in Tasmania and New Zealand.
Adult gannets have dazzling white plumage except for narrow grey spectacles and jet black, tapering wingtips. During the breeding season, the head and neck assume a delicate saffron yellow tinge. The eyes are an icy blue, and the bill is blue to grey-blue.
Young gannets in autumn plumage are brown, with many white flecks. With the passing of each season, they become progressively whiter, reaching the complete adult plumage in their fourth or fifth year.
The Northern Gannet is well equipped by nature for its spectacular plunges for fish from great heights. Unlike most birds, it has binocular vision—that is, its eyes are positioned such that it can see forward with both. This presumably gives it the ability to estimate how far the fish are from the surface of the water. Its strong, streamlined bill is 100 mm long. It has no nostril holes, and its upper and lower bills fit tightly together so that little if any water is forced into the mouth on impact with the surface. Its streamlined body has a system of air cells between the skin of its neck and shoulders and the muscle beneath. As the gannet prepares to dive, its air cells are inflated to cushion its body when it strikes the water.
A Northern Gannet in flight is supremely graceful. The wings of an adult bird may span almost 2 m and are narrow, tapered toward the ends, and swept back slightly, like those of a gull. Its long strong bill extends forward in flight, tapering smoothly into the small head, which merges with a thick neck that in turn joins the body in a clean, smooth contour. The legs are tucked well up under the smoothly tapering tail. The gannet’s shape appears to offer minimum resistance to air flow.
With its strong powerful flight, a gannet can travel far in almost any weather. Or it may glide for hours, just above the wave-tips, seldom moving its wings. Taking advantage of the updrafts of air caused by the upward deflection of the wind off the windward slope of the wave, it skims the wave-tips, rises on the updraft of a wave, and glides in a shallow dive to the updraft of the following wave. Thus it makes headway against a stiff breeze without flapping its wings. Gliding flight across the wind or downwind is also possible for this aerial mariner. This type of "wave-hopping" demands almost perfect control on the part of the flyer—a type of control impossible for even the best designed gliders.
Usually first breeds at age of 5-6 years, and may mate for life. Breeds in tightly packed colonies, with much competition for prime nest sites. Male claims nest territory and displays to attract mate, with exaggerated sideways shaking of head. Mated pairs greet each other by standing face to face, wings out, knocking bills together and bowing. Nest: Site is on ledge or flat ground, often within 2-3 feet of other nesting gannets. Nest (built mostly by male) is pile of grass, seaweed, dirt, feathers, compacted and held together by droppings, used by same pair for years and gradually building up to tall mound.
Gannets, similar to Puffins, are considered climate endangered, because of the disappearance of the arctic sea ice.
For more information, please visit www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/northern-gannet
When you can’t be with the one you love,
“Masturdate /
[Take Yourself Out To Eat]”
_____
Copyright © 2016 Howard T. Reginald Miller.
All rights reserved.
St Ethelburga, Bishopsgate, London
A drawing from London City Churches by AE Daniell, 1907.
To all intents and purposes, this is a tiny medieval church sandwiched between office blocks and cowering under the City's largest towers off of Bishopsgate. Early 20th Century photographs show it fronted by shops as at St Peter Cornhill and St Mary Moorgate, the large spectacles of the opticians particularly pleasing. This is what many small City churches were like at the start of the 20th Century.
Now, the conventional story of the City churches is one of medieval churches serving more than a hundred little parishes, the Great Fire coming along,and the consequent rebuilding of some of them, especially by Wren. Before the Great Fire, there were lots of little churches scattered throughout the City, but those on the edge like St Ethelburga survived the advance of the flames. However, many of them were later demolished, being in the way of huge building projects like the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange and Queen Victoria Street, and St Ethelburga was one of the few survivors. There was a major restoration in the early 20th Century by Ninian Comper, the rood screen being his, the glass too. As Simon Bradley notes, its atmosphere was that of a sleepy village church. The church survived the Blitz intact, and with its frontage onto Bishopsgate it was a visible reminder of the City's long past. It would be fair to say that it was much loved.
On Saturday 24th April 1993, the Irish Republican Army parked a one tonne ammonium nitrate/fuel oil bomb in a truck outside the front of St Ethelburga. Warnings were given more than an hour before the device was timed to go off - as with the Baltic Exchange bomb the previous year, the main idea of the attack was to cause as much damage to buildings as possible. When it exploded just before half past ten, the little church was vaporised. All that survived was the arcade and part of the south wall.
The explosion caused more than £350 million worth of damage in the Square Mile - the Baltic Exchange bombing a hundred yards off the previous year had caused £800 million worth of damage. There's no doubt that the insurance companies told the Major government that the City was unsustainable if further attacks continued. A ring of steel was enforced around the Square Mile, and by 1997 the Good Friday agreement had been signed.
But where did this leave St Ethelburga? A number of schemes were put forward, including that the site should be enclosed in a glass box as a memorial to the victims of terrorism. However, it was eventually decided that the church should be rebuilt as far as possible on its original lines, and that is how you see it today. Many of the furnishings salvaged from the wreckage were reinstated, although of course the Comper glass was lost. The church is now a centre for reconciliation and peace. I noticed recently that it is also being used for the services of the Orthodox Church on a Saturday evening.
(c)Simon Knott, December 2015
Shot with a Minolta CLE
Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 lens
Kodak Vision3 500T film
Shot at EI 500
Developed by the Atlanta Film Company (ECN-2 process)
Scanned on a Super Coolscan 5000ED
He was very curiously looking at my 10mm ;-)
Shot at Avenue road during BWS portrait hunt on 22may2010.
Found throughout the savannah regions of Sub-Saharan Africa the red-billed quelea is the most common wild bird in the world, in Zakouma there may be as many as 10 million of these little grain eating birds. The birds in this colony are able to find sufficient food inside the national park elsewhere flocks of queleas are a huge agricultural pest able to devastate entire grain crops. Colonies are sometimes destroyed by blowing up their roost trees using dynamite and barrels of petrol and diesel mixed together, flocks are also sometimes killed by aerial spraying with the chemical Queleatox. Fortunately this colony is entirely safe inside Zakouma National Park and provides visitors with one of the most extraordinary wildlife spectacles anywhere in the world.
© All rights reserved. Use without permission is illegal. Please contact me if you wish to use/purchase this photo.
Items belonging to Bruce Ismay, chairman of White Star Line. Checkbook, letter, & spectacles case.
Nikon F4. Ilford Delta 3200 35m B&W film.
Street art is visual art created in public locations, usually unsanctioned artwork executed outside of the context of traditional art venues. The term gained popularity during the graffiti art boom of the early 1980s and continues to be applied to subsequent incarnations. Stencil graffiti, wheatpasted poster art or sticker art, and street installation or sculpture are common forms of modern street art. Video projection, yarn bombing and Lock On sculpture became popularized at the turn of the 21st century.
The terms "urban art", "guerrilla art", "post-graffiti" and "neo-graffiti" are also sometimes used when referring to artwork created in these contexts.[1] Traditional spray-painted graffiti artwork itself is often included in this category, excluding territorial graffiti or pure vandalism.
Street art is often motivated by a preference on the part of the artist to communicate directly with the public at large, free from perceived confines of the formal art world.[2] Street artists sometimes present socially relevant content infused with esthetic value, to attract attention to a cause or as a form of "art provocation".[3]
Street artists often travel between countries to spread their designs. Some artists have gained cult-followings, media and art world attention, and have gone on to work commercially in the styles which made their work known on the streets.