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i am hopeless at nameing these photos...
had so much fun taking these... going to do some more tomorrow...
this is my youngest sister - Bene. 13yrs old and she is staying for a week...
#Human #Umbrella #Rural_area #Bank #Grassland #Reservoir #Wetland #Fluvial_landforms_of_streams #Cottage #Floodplain #Paddy_field #Rain #NikonD800
An infinite thought of detail, as an infinite deployment, independent of you and Me,. It just deploys. For no one, not even for himself, not even having a self.
And yet being such detail.
Such a Mystery.
Such a mystère, such a Mystic Thing.
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Chiffchaff, Catkins and blue skies is Spring on the way? We have seen quite a number of Chiffchaffs overwintering on the Somerset Levels this year.
You know it still shocks me after all these years to be witness to the carelessness of others in the treatment of our wildlife and resources. I can't understand why anyone would leave their trash behind...if you ever saw the Santa Cruz beaches and streets nearby those beaches during the summer and holidays I am sure you would be appalled. Trash everywhere, dumped out of cars on the street, thrown all over the beaches...trash floating in the water, etc. This is why I dream of living in a less populated, quieter place.
I refuse to believe someone worked hard their whole life, saved their money and bought their dream home with a great view….just to mess up mine. And the view of countless other people.
I don’t think they thought about it. I wish people would think more.
I would love to have a house with a view of the sunrise. Walk out on my back porch with a cup of coffee and take pictures all morning without having to leave the house. But only if I could figure out a way to do that without messing up that same joy for everyone else.
No one comes to the mountains to view telephone wires, power lines, street lights and trophy homes. We need to learn to protect the very things that bring us to the places of such beauty.
The morning offered an incredible sky for those that get up to see the sunrise, close to Blairsville, Georgia. (Yes, I get up for the sunrise even at the rodeo.)
Nikon D7000 -- Nikon 18-300mm 6.3 ED VR
280mm
F11@1/6th
(DSC_6078)
©Don Brown 2017
"D'you know the Radstocks?" asked the foreman.
He was referring to the highly permutated group of bus services which then linked Bristol to the former Somerset mining towns of Radstock and Midsomer Norton.
"No", I said.
"Well here's your chance to learn", he replied, grimly and, I thought, with a touch of relish.
The foreman, a former wartime sergeant and a member of the Burma Star Asssociation, was an old sweat then nearing retirement. I was a new boy, then in my mid-20s but looking considerably younger, who had lately transferred to "country" services from a city depôt. To such a man I must have represented a new generation of young whipper-snappers who didn't know what the job was "all about". I had never been to Radstock and had only a very slight idea of where it was. That morning I was the bus station's 0430 Spare, whose function was to "cover" for any driver who overslept or reported sick. It was now 6am on a filthy February morning and the scratchy sound against the window-panes told me that the rain was lashing down in the empty streets outside.
Beyond Whitchurch (Black Lion) the sickly orange glare of the city's street lighting receded in the wing mirrors and I was in pitch blackness. The bus I was driving was a Bristol MW-type. As will be seen from the photo, these had a horizontally divided windscreen. The demisters, as they were fancifully known, consisted of two lengths of coiled reistance wire, like miniature electric fire elements, which ran across the bottom of the windscreen's upper section. Their effect was to clear about one inch of the base of the windscreen. In practice you used your sleeve. The wipers reciprocated sluggishly from side to side with a monotonous whirring sound. They had been cunningly positioned not to sweep that part of the windscreen which the driver looked through. The tiny wing mirrors, partially eclipsed on the nearside by the upper part of the folding entrance door, were fogged up and flecked with particles of mud drawn up from the road in the bus's slipstream. It was all seat-of-the-pants stuff. I hadn't a clue where I was supposed to be going and had not yet picked up any passenger whom I could ask. In any case I always felt embarrassed when I had to do this ...after all, I was supposed to be the driver. It looked so unprofessional. When uncertain of a route I preferred to run the slight risk of looking a complete fool if I took a wrong turning to the certainty of looking a partial fool if I turned around to ask for directions.
I cannot now remember the details, but I recall several panic-stricken reversals after I had shot past turnings, and the ommission of a peak-hour deviation from the normal route in Paulton. I also abandoned the attempt to do a school run, being unable even to find the terminus from which the route commenced. Subsequently there was a telephoned complaint from the headmaster. It was not my finest hour.
Yet, in time the "Radstocks" became favourites of mine. There were basically three services, with peak-hour, school and weekend variants. Usually buses worked out on one service and returned on one of the others. One took a certain pride in one's knowledge of the various permutations. I even came to love the MW-type, execrated by almost every bus driver for its heaviness, sluggishness and general recalcitrance.
Here one of these execrated vehicles makes its way into Bristol on the 365 service from Radstock via Midsomer Norton, High Littleton, Farmborough and Keynsham. Bath Road curves away into the distance under the heights of Totterdown. As extensively detailed in the Bentos photostream, the lower parts of Totterdown, in the middle distance of the photograph, had been destroyed in 1973 in readiness for a new road interchange. Only three years later the scheme has already been abandoned. Perhaps the City Council had enough vistigial decency to feel embarrassed, for the ruins which might have reminded passers-by that a lively and vigorous community once thrived here have been landscaped and seeded with grass. The steep valley-side site meant that the houses on the right-hand side of Bath Road had elevated front gardens, reached from the pavement by flights of steps. In the foreground one such flight of steps remains, together with railings and a flagged yard. Not a bad place to live and watch the world go by. The road is now about three times this width. The photo was taken Monday 5th April 1976.
Serene thought's,
Serene thought are all numerous,
take us the bliss,
kill the vice,
Create virtue.
simon ajode
I swear I recognize your breath
Memories like fingerprints are slowly raising...
Hearts and thoughts they fade...away...
_____________________
Pearl Jam: elderly woman behind the counter in a small town...
più che per le parole, scelgo questa canzone per la dolcezza e la tenerezza che mi ha sempre infuso... in ogni caso parla di un incontro...
#152: As of 9/20/18, under Flickr's popularity rankings of my 1200+ pics, this is listed as #152 in "interestingness."
I've been engaging in some short, private crossdressing opportunities at home recently, after acquiring and trying out some new clothes, shoes, and accessories. This is the 254th pic posted from this recent CD activity, and taken just last month.
As usual, I really enjoy color-coordinating attractive/sexy/cute outfits, and this one features a low-neckline Project Runway rose gold satin cami (from JC Penney); a Dolce Gabo "rose creme" lace jacket w/ velvet tie belt, & a Halogen "pink foil" pleated maxi skirt (both from Nordstrom Rack); rose gold Chinese Laundry ultra-high-heel pumps (from Macy's); gold metallic fishnet stockings; plus a Liz Claiborne mini-satchel handbag (from JC Penney), earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and rings, all also in rose gold.
More about this and other new 2017 pics was written up recently in a descriptive Update provided in my profile or "About" page here on Flickr. It details some choices made for these 2017 pics.
Let me know your thoughts... :-)
And now, something completely different.
No, it is not an M38 Sherman tank scope, it is not to be mounted on a Sterling submachine gun. It is a slightly different M38A2 scope that was supposed to be mounted on a project raygun.
But it won't be.
What this does not fit on is a fictional Sci-Fi handgun, or a raygun, if you like, I have been working on (and off) for two years now. It's a completely handcrafted custom gun of my original design, it has an all-steel construction with walnut grips and electronics from Erv' of the Plecterlabs. Every bit of the gun is handmade, even some of the screws keeping it together, the only thing that isn't custom made is the sighting scope.
I wanted to use a real scope, partially as a nod to movie prop guns, but mostly to keep in touch with reality. I went for an old Weaver rifle scope because it's simple sleek tubular form (and cheap price, it cost only $14). The M38, which is all too familiar from the Stormtrooper blaster, is a gorgeous piece of vintage optics and I kept wondering if it would work despite the Star Wars connection. I kept an eye on those for about 18 months on eBay, and boy, were they expensive! Then I found this equivalent with fair price and thought, damn, I gotta try this.
I removed the Weaver and tried the M38A2 on instead. I immediately realized that it just doesn't work. Too heavy, too Star Wars, too obvious. So, it's back with the Weaver.
At the moment the raygun (visible in the background) has almost all the steel parts fitted in place, it still needs some serial and other numbers punched in before it can be polished, blued and worn to look like a hudred+ years old well oiled vintage handgun behind museum glass. Electronics will be fitted in last.
For the record: I do not own any guns or weapons of any kind, never have. This is just a raygun project, albeit a serious one in some levels. I will upload more photos with more info & detail as the project nears it's completion, but it'll be slow, I have too many projects going on. You know what it's like.
The Rudolf W. van der Goot Rose Garden in Colonial Park of Franklin Township, NJ, is such an amazingly beautiful site, with so much meticulous thought and care that went in to the planning and design.
We learned about this garden that is nationally registered and known amongst flower aficionados, and visited it for the first time in August of 2014. The peak period for roses, in particular, was far gone, but a good number of late peaking ones and long lasting species which continued to display the glorious colors and shapes were present for us to appreciate what it might be during the peak season.
On this mid-June day, although the start of the peaking roses, two nights prior had been a severe thunderstorm, and as a result, the majority of the ones that should have been in full bloom were beaten to the ground . . . And for those hanging on by a thread had sustained too much damage to the point of no recovery.
Many new late bloomers were just beginning to show signs of early maturity in a few weeks, and a decent portion of the roses were still in the bud stages. So, those should look quite lovely down the line.
In any event, Colonial Park’s Rose Garden offered some other beautiful photo –ops, and we managed to capture a few beautiful scenes of the inner parts of a buttery, Grandfora Rose, a Prickly Pear Cactus, and a wonderful white Waterlily, along with a handsome Dragonfly by the fountain.
The park is not only about the nationally acclaimed rose park, but also known for its other countless flowers and insects, so it would be a great place for family with kids to enjoy.
This is one of the many NYC bus scenes I've shot with my iPhone....
I thought it was an interesting photo, and I gave it three stars in my Aperture rating system. But not five stars, so it never did get uploaded as a "public" Flickr photo.
Note: moments after I uploaded the photo, several of my Flickr friends "faved" it; so I've changed the status to "public."
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Whether you’re an amateur or professional photographer, it’s hard to walk around with a modern smartphone in your pocket, and not be tempted to use the built-in camera from time-to-time. Veteran photographers typically sneer at such behavior, and most will tell you that they can instantly recognize an iPhone photo, which they mentally reject as being unworthy of any serious attention.
After using many earlier models of smartphones over the past several years, I was inclined to agree; after all, I always (well, almost always) had a “real” camera in my pocket (or backpack or camera-bag), and it was always capable of taking a much better photographic image than the mediocre, grainy images shot with a camera-phone.
But still … there were a few occasions when I desperately wanted to capture some photo-worthy event taking place right in front of me, and inevitably it turned out to be the times when I did not have the “real” camera with me. Or I did have it, but it was buried somewhere in a bag, and I knew that the “event” would have disappeared by the time I found the “real" camera and turned it on. By contrast, the smart-phone was always in my pocket (along with my keys and my wallet, it’s one of the three things I consciously grab every time I walk out the door). And I often found that I could turn it on, point it at the photographic scene, and take the picture much faster than I could do the same thing with a “traditional” camera.
Meanwhile, smartphone cameras have gotten substantially better in the past few years, from a mechanical/hardware perspective; and the software “intelligence” controlling the camera has become amazingly sophisticated. It’s still not on the same level as a “professional” DSLR camera, but for a large majority of the “average” photographic situations we’re likely to encounter in the unplanned moments of our lives, it’s more and more likely to be “good enough.” The old adage of “the best camera is the one you have with you” is more and more relevant these days. For me, 90% of the success in taking a good photo is simply being in the right place at the right time, being aware that the “photo opportunity” is there, and having a camera — any camera — to take advantage of that opportunity. Only 10% of the time does it matter which camera I’m using, or what technical features I’ve managed to use.
And now, with the recent advent of the iPhone5s, there is one more improvement — which, as far as I can tell, simply does not exist in any of the “professional” cameras. You can take an unlimited number of “burst-mode” shots with the new iPhone, simply by keeping your finger on the shutter button; instead of being limited to just six (as a few of the DSLR cameras currently offer), you can take 10, 20, or even a hundred shots. And then — almost magically — the iPhone will show you which one or two of the large burst of photos was optimally sharp and clear. With a couple of clicks, you can then delete everything else, and retain only the very best one or two from the entire burst.
With that in mind, I’ve begun using my iPhone5s for more and more “everyday” photo situations out on the street. Since I’m typically photographing ordinary, mundane events, even the one or two “optimal” shots that the camera-phone retains might not be worth showing anyone else … so there is still a lot of pruning and editing to be done, and I’m lucky if 10% of those “optimal” shots are good enough to justify uploading to Flickr and sharing with the rest of the world. Still, it’s an enormous benefit to know that my editing work can begin with photos that are more-or-less “technically” adequate, and that I don’t have to waste even a second reviewing dozens of technically-mediocre shots that are fuzzy, or blurred.
Oh, yeah, one other minor benefit of the iPhone5s (and presumably most other current brands of smartphone): it automatically geotags every photo and video, without any special effort on the photographer’s part. Only one of my other big, fat cameras (the Sony Alpha SLT A65) has that feature, and I’ve noticed that almost none of the “new” mirrorless cameras have got a built-in GPS thingy that will perform the geotagging...
I’ve had my iPhone5s for a couple of months now, but I’ve only been using the “burst-mode” photography feature aggressively for the past couple of weeks. As a result, the initial batch of photos that I’m uploading are all taken in the greater-NYC area. But as time goes on, and as my normal travel routine takes me to other parts of the world, I hope to add more and more “everyday” scenes in cities that I might not have the opportunity to photograph in a “serious” way.
Stay tuned….
It seems that an exposure is the photograph which became excessive. However, I feel it to use thought so that it is just good...