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A soybean load out of Minnesota left UP rails a few miles back in downtown Omaha and is now on the BNSF Omaha Sub starting a trip to Hastings, NE via Lincoln, NE to return to home rails.
Quality-wise this would normally be one of those photos that normally gets either deleted or filed away for eternity, but in this case it gets an airing because it's not something you see very often. This is an adult doe rabbit accompanied by five kittens. I watched these guys for several minutes before they all lolloped off into an adjacent field. Every time the doe stopped, the kittens would try and get underneath her, presumably trying to suckle; this would prompt her to jump up and bound off further down the track with the kits in tow.
Industrial grime at its best! A JS locomotive loads up with coal in the western (active) part of the open pit at Sandaoling. Xinjiang Province, China.
An assignment for a photowalk in January is to take a photo from the same point in different directions. For this diptych I was standing on a bridge and took one looking downstream and one looking upstream then I combined them in Picasa.
Whether it was just the wind and rain overnight or perhaps spring is coming the Mill Lake Bald Eagle pair are getting the old nest cleaned up.
UP 4910 running wrong main account the M-TPTP working Main 1 just ahead. Second time this week that I have caught an SD70M leading a train at this curve in decent light.
Olympus OM-4
Zuiko 50mm f/1.4
Extention ring 25
Kodak Tri-X 400
HC-110B
Scan from print
Paper: Fomatone MG 131
Developer: Adox Warmtone
Toned in Adox Selenium toner
These 3 photos were taken back in 2013 as an exercise in seeing what apertures would do to macro work with this lens. The succulents bloom each year and can easily reach 24" long. They are like just about every other flower in nature. Each flower, along its stem, matures from the bottom up toward the growing tip. Then they wither. As I have about 20 plants, I relieve each plant of its flower stem when it presents itself lest I am in inundated with these long thin flowering stems everywhere.
Well yeah, this is one block up from Main Street Ventura close to where I do my laundry and about three block away from Ventura High School in a pretty rough neighborhood (not! :-))
Music: Morcheeba - Otherwise right click and open in new window/tab
INVITES ARE GREAT, BUT PLEASE IN MODERATION
All my public photos are free for personal use
In case your interested here's a sample of my convoluted workflow:
1. +2,0,-2 RAW (sometimes JPEG) files loaded into Photomatix and processed using the detail enhancer.
2. Base Photomatix Settings:
Main:
> Strength - 85 or less
> Saturation - 65
> Light smoothing - High (The further right, the more realistic)
> Luminosity - 0 (adjust based on the picture)
Tabs:
Tone
> White point - 2% (adjust up/down based on picture)
> Black point - .5% (adjust up/down based on picture)
> Gamma - 1.00 (adjust up/down based on picture)
Color
> Temp - 0
> Highlights - 3
> Shadows - 0
Micro
> Contrast - 10
> Smoothing - 15
S/H
> Highlights - 18 (adjust up/down based on picture)
> Shadows - 18
> Clipping - 18
The light smoothing is the most powerful adjustment, so play with that setting first then adjust the others until you get the right look,
If your sky is a dull gray increase the S/H tab, “Highlights” up a bit
If you have to much light “halos” increase your “Luminosity” and the “White Point” settings.
3. Save as a TIFF file.
4. Open in "The Gimp" and re-size (save as____.tiff)
5. Make a layer copy.
6. Do an auto "levels" and see what it does, if it's cool I'll merge it down if not I'll play around with the setting and opacity then merge.
7. Make another layer copy.
8. Use the "local contrast enhance" script at about 50%, then adjust the opacity to fine tune it, then merge it down.
9. Make another layer copy.
10. Use the "vivid color" script and play with the opacity to fine tune it, then merge it down.
11. Save (still as a tiff) and close the picture.
12. Open in Photoshop (I have and old version and only use it to run the Topaz plug-ins)
13. Run the Topaz Adjust plug-in filter and see what the various presets do.............
14. Run the Topaz Denoise filter.
15. Save (still a tiff)
16. Open the original file (unaltered JPEG or RAW) in "The Gimp"
17. Re-size this to match the modified tiff file (don't worry about keeping the aspect ratio)
18. Drag the modified tiff file in as a layer (it will completely hide the unmodified version) then merge it down, this will recover the lost EXIF information.
19. Use the "smart eg sharpen" script at default settings (it makes it own layer copy) then play with the opacity to fine tune it, then merge it down.
20. Do a "save as" as a jpeg, and it's ready for Flickr!
i first started the roll with the tlr but the lens kept popping out and i gave up and put it in the ft
After meeting the eastbound UP Z train at South Omaha siding, the loaded grain train continues west on the BNSF Omaha Sub through Ralston climbing out of the Big Papillion Creek waterway.
Union Pacific placed UP 4141 and the baggage car 'Council Bluffs', which carried President George H.W. Bush to his final resting place, on public display at the Home Plate track in Omaha for several days after it returned from Texas.
The locomotive, joined by 'Spirit of the Union Pacific' UP 1943 is currently on tour of the UP system on display at certain terminals for employees to view.
[Please don't leave badges, group images or invitations]
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Here's one more shot from my drive up Highway 1! Crazy to think how much the ocean has chipped away at these cliffs!
My aunt's cat, Tyger :) 17.5 years old.
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She was off investigating some rotting seal pups, tangled up in the seaweed line, but of the man and dog team, I was a little higher up the beach looking for flotsam with goose barnacles on it. We both spotted the bright yellow fishing net float at the same time and went that way, to discover a wooden pallet tangled with a plastic and foam float, tangled net, and rope, the whole encrusted with now dead goose barnacles. Ironically there was torn shopping bag in the tangle "proudly proclaiming 100% recycled plastic bottles"
I knew most of this little collection came from far away, perhaps Portugal, Spain or Morocco, as Goose barnacles are found there. Perhaps the bag remnants originated with a British tourist in one of those countries............ But I was more intrigued by the wooden pallet. You know that there is a conservative estimate that there are over 5 billion pallets worldwide. 5 BILLION !!!!! I suspect there are far more, judging by the junk lying around local crofts and cities and our countryside. But what was the thinking of the person who put this pallet in the sea to let it wash up on the beautiful white sands and pristine waters of Sanna bay on the Ardnamurchan peninsula of Highland Scotland ?
Haven't we got enough junk on this planet? Look around and you see wooden pallets lying around all over the place. They are a real blot on the landscape. It may surprise you to hear some of the major pallet manufacturers actually employ staff to locate idle pallets that have fallen out of their systems. I would suggest they have an insurmountable challenge to get all their pallets back once the pallets are unloaded. The fact that they lie, abandoned all over the planet is proof of that. Of course many are chopped up and burnt as firewood, or just burnt to destroy them, and that's not good for the planet either. Of course there is a solution for this, and for responsible, environmentally conscious businesses it's PalletEarth.