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I could get used to this Vacation Bible School. #nofilter
7 Likes on Instagram
2 Comments on Instagram:
heyhildie: My husband is convinced that VBS will try to indoctrinate our kids with all sorts of ideas about the Trinity and baptism by sprinkling. I'm like "so what! It's five mornings a week and costs $20! They can worship Vishnu for all I care!"
seagullfountain: Totally, @heyhildie. My kids are singing terrible songs like "I'm hooked, hooked on Jesus!" And memorizing John 3:16; it's a scandal! (But of course since it's California it costs $50. Still a steal.)
The drawers have been rebuilt and refinished and new green felt liners were installed.
Every drawer is different and the drawer guides are made to match. It can only be assembled with the drawers in a certain position. I laid out the drawer positions with ,050 thousands clearance (less than 1/16 per side) on each drawer.
. The old screw holes for the pulls were filled and finished.
.Some drawer pulls-knobs were missing, and none of the remaining pulls matched. New pulls-knobs were purchased and installed Pulls are of brass w/ an 8/32 screw from behind.
1/8" Red Oak ply has been added to the top of a box made of scrap plywood. The drawer guides are made from clear pine that I cut out of new door frame molding.
The top trim is Oak molding and the bottom trim was cut from Oak Lattice.
The sides are made from pine. Dark Oak Stain and Maple Stain have been used in different area because of the different absorption rates of Oak and Pine.
Carpenters glue, brass screws and finishing nails were used in the box's assembly.
Finish is three coats of Semi-Gloss Varnish, sanded in between coats w/ 220 grit paper,
Final finish is a light rub of 0000# steel wool and a final coat of wiping varnish applied. ( regular varnish thinned 50% w/ spirits )
I drive by this lot a few times each week. Finally decided to stop and photograph it for a bit of fun.
Years ago, it was a dine-in Pizza Hut location that our little league teams would visit after a win. Sadly it was one of the locations that fell by the wayside when a delivery store opened in Munhall.
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© 2015 Joseph G. Heh, all rights reserved
HDR using a Canon 7D and Tokina 11-16mm F2.8 lens. AEB +/-3 total of 7 exposures at F8. Processed with Photomatix.
High-dynamic-range imaging (HDRI) is a high dynamic range (HDR) technique used in imaging and photography to reproduce a greater dynamic range of luminosity than is possible with standard digital imaging or photographic techniques. The aim is to present a similar range of luminance to that experienced through the human visual system. The human eye, through adaptation of the iris and other methods, adjusts constantly to adapt to a broad range of luminance present in the environment. The brain continuously interprets this information so that a viewer can see in a wide range of light conditions.
HDR images can represent a greater range of luminance levels than can be achieved using more 'traditional' methods, such as many real-world scenes containing very bright, direct sunlight to extreme shade, or very faint nebulae. This is often achieved by capturing and then combining several different, narrower range, exposures of the same subject matter. Non-HDR cameras take photographs with a limited exposure range, referred to as LDR, resulting in the loss of detail in highlights or shadows.
The two primary types of HDR images are computer renderings and images resulting from merging multiple low-dynamic-range (LDR) or standard-dynamic-range (SDR) photographs. HDR images can also be acquired using special image sensors, such as an oversampled binary image sensor.
Due to the limitations of printing and display contrast, the extended luminosity range of an HDR image has to be compressed to be made visible. The method of rendering an HDR image to a standard monitor or printing device is called tone mapping. This method reduces the overall contrast of an HDR image to facilitate display on devices or printouts with lower dynamic range, and can be applied to produce images with preserved local contrast (or exaggerated for artistic effect).
In photography, dynamic range is measured in exposure value (EV) differences (known as stops). An increase of one EV, or 'one stop', represents a doubling of the amount of light. Conversely, a decrease of one EV represents a halving of the amount of light. Therefore, revealing detail in the darkest of shadows requires high exposures, while preserving detail in very bright situations requires very low exposures. Most cameras cannot provide this range of exposure values within a single exposure, due to their low dynamic range. High-dynamic-range photographs are generally achieved by capturing multiple standard-exposure images, often using exposure bracketing, and then later merging them into a single HDR image, usually within a photo manipulation program). Digital images are often encoded in a camera's raw image format, because 8-bit JPEG encoding does not offer a wide enough range of values to allow fine transitions (and regarding HDR, later introduces undesirable effects due to lossy compression).
Any camera that allows manual exposure control can make images for HDR work, although one equipped with auto exposure bracketing (AEB) is far better suited. Images from film cameras are less suitable as they often must first be digitized, so that they can later be processed using software HDR methods.
In most imaging devices, the degree of exposure to light applied to the active element (be it film or CCD) can be altered in one of two ways: by either increasing/decreasing the size of the aperture or by increasing/decreasing the time of each exposure. Exposure variation in an HDR set is only done by altering the exposure time and not the aperture size; this is because altering the aperture size also affects the depth of field and so the resultant multiple images would be quite different, preventing their final combination into a single HDR image.
An important limitation for HDR photography is that any movement between successive images will impede or prevent success in combining them afterwards. Also, as one must create several images (often three or five and sometimes more) to obtain the desired luminance range, such a full 'set' of images takes extra time. HDR photographers have developed calculation methods and techniques to partially overcome these problems, but the use of a sturdy tripod is, at least, advised.
Some cameras have an auto exposure bracketing (AEB) feature with a far greater dynamic range than others, from the 3 EV of the Canon EOS 40D, to the 18 EV of the Canon EOS-1D Mark II. As the popularity of this imaging method grows, several camera manufactures are now offering built-in HDR features. For example, the Pentax K-7 DSLR has an HDR mode that captures an HDR image and outputs (only) a tone mapped JPEG file. The Canon PowerShot G12, Canon PowerShot S95 and Canon PowerShot S100 offer similar features in a smaller format.. Nikon's approach is called 'Active D-Lighting' which applies exposure compensation and tone mapping to the image as it comes from the sensor, with the accent being on retaing a realistic effect . Some smartphones provide HDR modes, and most mobile platforms have apps that provide HDR picture taking.
Camera characteristics such as gamma curves, sensor resolution, noise, photometric calibration and color calibration affect resulting high-dynamic-range images.
Color film negatives and slides consist of multiple film layers that respond to light differently. As a consequence, transparent originals (especially positive slides) feature a very high dynamic range
Tone mapping
Tone mapping reduces the dynamic range, or contrast ratio, of an entire image while retaining localized contrast. Although it is a distinct operation, tone mapping is often applied to HDRI files by the same software package.
Several software applications are available on the PC, Mac and Linux platforms for producing HDR files and tone mapped images. Notable titles include
Adobe Photoshop
Aurora HDR
Dynamic Photo HDR
HDR Efex Pro
HDR PhotoStudio
Luminance HDR
MagicRaw
Oloneo PhotoEngine
Photomatix Pro
PTGui
Information stored in high-dynamic-range images typically corresponds to the physical values of luminance or radiance that can be observed in the real world. This is different from traditional digital images, which represent colors as they should appear on a monitor or a paper print. Therefore, HDR image formats are often called scene-referred, in contrast to traditional digital images, which are device-referred or output-referred. Furthermore, traditional images are usually encoded for the human visual system (maximizing the visual information stored in the fixed number of bits), which is usually called gamma encoding or gamma correction. The values stored for HDR images are often gamma compressed (power law) or logarithmically encoded, or floating-point linear values, since fixed-point linear encodings are increasingly inefficient over higher dynamic ranges.
HDR images often don't use fixed ranges per color channel—other than traditional images—to represent many more colors over a much wider dynamic range. For that purpose, they don't use integer values to represent the single color channels (e.g., 0-255 in an 8 bit per pixel interval for red, green and blue) but instead use a floating point representation. Common are 16-bit (half precision) or 32-bit floating point numbers to represent HDR pixels. However, when the appropriate transfer function is used, HDR pixels for some applications can be represented with a color depth that has as few as 10–12 bits for luminance and 8 bits for chrominance without introducing any visible quantization artifacts.
History of HDR photography
The idea of using several exposures to adequately reproduce a too-extreme range of luminance was pioneered as early as the 1850s by Gustave Le Gray to render seascapes showing both the sky and the sea. Such rendering was impossible at the time using standard methods, as the luminosity range was too extreme. Le Gray used one negative for the sky, and another one with a longer exposure for the sea, and combined the two into one picture in positive.
Mid 20th century
Manual tone mapping was accomplished by dodging and burning – selectively increasing or decreasing the exposure of regions of the photograph to yield better tonality reproduction. This was effective because the dynamic range of the negative is significantly higher than would be available on the finished positive paper print when that is exposed via the negative in a uniform manner. An excellent example is the photograph Schweitzer at the Lamp by W. Eugene Smith, from his 1954 photo essay A Man of Mercy on Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his humanitarian work in French Equatorial Africa. The image took 5 days to reproduce the tonal range of the scene, which ranges from a bright lamp (relative to the scene) to a dark shadow.
Ansel Adams elevated dodging and burning to an art form. Many of his famous prints were manipulated in the darkroom with these two methods. Adams wrote a comprehensive book on producing prints called The Print, which prominently features dodging and burning, in the context of his Zone System.
With the advent of color photography, tone mapping in the darkroom was no longer possible due to the specific timing needed during the developing process of color film. Photographers looked to film manufacturers to design new film stocks with improved response, or continued to shoot in black and white to use tone mapping methods.
Color film capable of directly recording high-dynamic-range images was developed by Charles Wyckoff and EG&G "in the course of a contract with the Department of the Air Force". This XR film had three emulsion layers, an upper layer having an ASA speed rating of 400, a middle layer with an intermediate rating, and a lower layer with an ASA rating of 0.004. The film was processed in a manner similar to color films, and each layer produced a different color. The dynamic range of this extended range film has been estimated as 1:108. It has been used to photograph nuclear explosions, for astronomical photography, for spectrographic research, and for medical imaging. Wyckoff's detailed pictures of nuclear explosions appeared on the cover of Life magazine in the mid-1950s.
Late 20th century
Georges Cornuéjols and licensees of his patents (Brdi, Hymatom) introduced the principle of HDR video image, in 1986, by interposing a matricial LCD screen in front of the camera's image sensor, increasing the sensors dynamic by five stops. The concept of neighborhood tone mapping was applied to video cameras by a group from the Technion in Israel led by Dr. Oliver Hilsenrath and Prof. Y.Y.Zeevi who filed for a patent on this concept in 1988.
In February and April 1990, Georges Cornuéjols introduced the first real-time HDR camera that combined two images captured by a sensor3435 or simultaneously3637 by two sensors of the camera. This process is known as bracketing used for a video stream.
In 1991, the first commercial video camera was introduced that performed real-time capturing of multiple images with different exposures, and producing an HDR video image, by Hymatom, licensee of Georges Cornuéjols.
Also in 1991, Georges Cornuéjols introduced the HDR+ image principle by non-linear accumulation of images to increase the sensitivity of the camera: for low-light environments, several successive images are accumulated, thus increasing the signal to noise ratio.
In 1993, another commercial medical camera producing an HDR video image, by the Technion.
Modern HDR imaging uses a completely different approach, based on making a high-dynamic-range luminance or light map using only global image operations (across the entire image), and then tone mapping the result. Global HDR was first introduced in 19931 resulting in a mathematical theory of differently exposed pictures of the same subject matter that was published in 1995 by Steve Mann and Rosalind Picard.
On October 28, 1998, Ben Sarao created one of the first nighttime HDR+G (High Dynamic Range + Graphic image)of STS-95 on the launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. It consisted of four film images of the shuttle at night that were digitally composited with additional digital graphic elements. The image was first exhibited at NASA Headquarters Great Hall, Washington DC in 1999 and then published in Hasselblad Forum, Issue 3 1993, Volume 35 ISSN 0282-5449.
The advent of consumer digital cameras produced a new demand for HDR imaging to improve the light response of digital camera sensors, which had a much smaller dynamic range than film. Steve Mann developed and patented the global-HDR method for producing digital images having extended dynamic range at the MIT Media Laboratory. Mann's method involved a two-step procedure: (1) generate one floating point image array by global-only image operations (operations that affect all pixels identically, without regard to their local neighborhoods); and then (2) convert this image array, using local neighborhood processing (tone-remapping, etc.), into an HDR image. The image array generated by the first step of Mann's process is called a lightspace image, lightspace picture, or radiance map. Another benefit of global-HDR imaging is that it provides access to the intermediate light or radiance map, which has been used for computer vision, and other image processing operations.
21st century
In 2005, Adobe Systems introduced several new features in Photoshop CS2 including Merge to HDR, 32 bit floating point image support, and HDR tone mapping.
On June 30, 2016, Microsoft added support for the digital compositing of HDR images to Windows 10 using the Universal Windows Platform.
HDR sensors
Modern CMOS image sensors can often capture a high dynamic range from a single exposure. The wide dynamic range of the captured image is non-linearly compressed into a smaller dynamic range electronic representation. However, with proper processing, the information from a single exposure can be used to create an HDR image.
Such HDR imaging is used in extreme dynamic range applications like welding or automotive work. Some other cameras designed for use in security applications can automatically provide two or more images for each frame, with changing exposure. For example, a sensor for 30fps video will give out 60fps with the odd frames at a short exposure time and the even frames at a longer exposure time. Some of the sensor may even combine the two images on-chip so that a wider dynamic range without in-pixel compression is directly available to the user for display or processing.
Using pencil, ruler, square and marking gauge, mirror the polygonal outlines from the left to the right half of the car. Use the square and the marking gauge to locate the corners, then connect the corners with straight lines.
Accuracy is important at this step. The final shape of the car will be no more symmetrical than the layout lines drawn onto the block now. Keep your pencil sharp and draw thin lines.
Inconsistently used but enthusiast owned. The owner told me this started life as a dealer demonstrator, being unusually specified as a low-spec model with premium seat/upholstery fitment.
89k mile at last MoT and last keeper change was 2014.
BLM using satellites to study fishers in southern Oregon
By Toshio Suzuki, April 14, 2016
Capturing a fisher in an Oregon forest can be tricky work.
First off, there aren’t many of them.
Secondly, the cat-sized mammal sports retractable claws and a heart rate that can climb to 300 beats per minute when agitated — double a high rate for humans — and like most animals in the wild, they will defend themselves from capture, even if for scientific research.
“They are carnivores and they have amazing capacities of strength and endurance,” said Katie Moriarty, a research wildlife biologist for the U.S. Forest Service.
Moriarty is one of several partners helping the Bureau of Land Management in a first-of-its-kind research project: using GPS collars and satellites to track fisher movements in Oregon.
The end goal is to establish a baseline of habitat information for a species that has been in decline since the trapping and timber industries entered the Western landscape in the 1800s.
In 2014, the West Coast fisher received a “proposed threatened” status by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; but just this week the agency announced the fisher did not warrant listing under the Endangered Species Act.
If land managers like the BLM can learn specific habitat characteristics, they will then be able to make more informed decisions and even potentially figure out why the member of the weasel family is in decline, said Bruce Hollen, a wildlife biologist for the BLM in Oregon and Washington.
“Something about their habitat is affecting their ability to disperse,” said Hollen. “We don't know how come their populations have stayed so small.”
Adult fishers can weigh about 3 to 13 pounds, and can be about 2.5 to 4 feet long. They eat seemingly anything smaller than them that can be discovered in the forest: birds, squirrels, mice, reptiles, insects, vegetation and fruit. They also have the unique ability to hunt and eat porcupines.
Porcupines love to eat Oregon trees and are the reason why there were several efforts to reintroduce fishers to the southern Oregon Cascade Range from the early 1960s to early 1980s.
Those reintroduced fishers were mostly from British Columbia, but also Minnesota, according to a 2003 study published in the international journal Biological Conservation.
Presently, there are only two known fisher populations in Oregon. One is native and one is the reintroduced population. Both home ranges for the distinct fisher populations are slivers in the southwestern portion of the state. Research data now indicates that native fishers have crossed the I-5 boundary from the west and made it into the historic range of the non-native population.
While wildlife biologists agree that any mixed breeding would be interesting, it isn’t always as easy as that for territorial animals.
Moriarty, who works at the Pacific Northwest Research Station, related the moving fishers to a typical American street: “You might be able to walk into somebody’s yard but you won’t be able to live there.”
Chicken meat bait is what draws the curious fishers into the multi-compartment traps. Once inside and anesthetized, the biologists have 30 minutes to affix collars and conduct a number of tests.
Blood, hair and tissue samples are taken for DNA testing. Feet are measured and a tooth is extracted to determine age. The wildlife biologists even check for fleas and ticks during the evaluation, all while monitoring the animal’s temperature.
“You only get them in your hands every so often, so you want to measure as much as you can,” explained Matt Broyles, a BLM wildlife biologist in Klamath Falls contributing to the ongoing research.
Out of the seven fishers captured last October, three adult females got the GPS collars and two adult males were fitted with regular radio telemetry collars. Juveniles were released. The females got priority for the new equipment because they tend to stay within the home range, while males “can decide to go for a long wander,” said Hollen.
“We really want to see what they are doing within their home range — how they use the landscape in that Klamath Falls area,” he said.
The GPS units provided real-time data points every 15 minutes, allowing the team to discern resting sites and den locations inside trees.
So far, the wildlife team, which includes specialists from Oregon State University and the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, is very optimistic about the research study that runs through this July.
“The benefits are exponentially phenomenal,” said Moriarty.
tsuzuki@blm.gov
Photos and videos captured between March of 2015 and April of 2016. All photos by BLM.
There's always an outtake I can distract you with. No matter how far back I might have to go, I've got plenty. lol
Let me tell you about my week since I havent been very sociable. Well it was a week. I had another midterm so I was busy studying and making sure I did good. I also forgot books at home (that I needed to study for said midterm) It was just kind of blah.
I feel like I'm in a general state of tired stress. It's kind of lame. I need to fix that.
Exciting things about the weekend: I have atleast two shoots this weekend I'm getting paid for. 1 is for a couple families. A total of 14, which is kind of frightening. I'm nervous about the whole situation. haha. Hopefully it will go well.
The other shoot is for two college students who need headshots and some fun couple-y pictures,
I'll let you guys see some if anything turns out and it's cool with the peeps.
Thats about all. Life is status quo for now. which I suppose I should be thankful for.
Hope all is well with each of you guys!
:D
The use of modern technology helps peacekeeping missions establish and maintain situational awareness, implement their mandates, and protect themselves and vulnerable populations. Here, a Brazilian peacekeeper serving with the Maritime Task Force (MTF) of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) works in the operations room of the flagship ‘Independencia’, off the coast of Beirut, Lebanon.
31 May 2016.
Credit: UN Photo/Pasqual Gorriz
Terms of Use: Please consider linking directly to our website, www.petful.com, rather than Flickr if you use this photo. Thanks for your support. Kylie Ann is a dog dressed like Katy Perry -- just a California Girl. She is even wearing her cupcake bra and daisy duke denim shorts under her pink tutu. - Halloween costume for pets.
This Santa used to be a local fixture in the small area known as Santa Claus Lane between Ventura and Santa Barbara. It never really caught on and over the years about all that was left of the Santa theme was this figure.
At one point the local powers decided to get rid of the figure. Surprisingly instead of ending up at the dump a small community know as Nyeland Acres adapted it. I like it there.
Cheers.
Hendricks uses a blend of spirits produced from a Carter-Head Still, of which there are only a small number in the world, and a small pot still, originally built in 1864. Both have been restored by full time coppersmiths to a workable order after being bought at auction in the 1960's by the current chairman of William Grant, Charles Gordon. The two stills produced strikingly different styles of gin, the pot still a heavy oily strongly juniper flavoured spirit, while the spirit from the Carter Head is much subtler with light floral, sweet fragrances. It is a blend of these two spirits that produces the distinctive character that is Hendrick's.
It's the best gin I've ever tasted. Lovely with a cucumber.
New Delhi, India. March 2011. Karim piles his used books elegantly on the sidewalk in Nehru Place, one of New Delhi's largest shopping centers. Karim is actually an artist who will show you his work in a nearby gallery if you are interested. At his sidewalk book stall, sales seem secondary to artistic or metaphysical conversations.
Almost everything is for sale somewhere in Nehru Place, but the plazas have a reputation for cut-rate media and clothing. Nehru Place's buildings house big brand storefronts for computers and electronics, as well as countless shops offering supplies and repairs. On the balconies there is more variety in quieter stores, including high-end clothing and fabric boutiques. But the plazas are filled with open-air vendors offering huge discounts on DVDs, software, wallets, shoes, pants, you name it. Some of the best showman vendors work here.
Very convenient Metro station.
used this free pattern: LuLu B's Sedge Cloth
www.lovelulub.com/2013/06/crochet-with-lulu-b-free-patter...
Using a 30 second shutter speed and light by the full moon allowed for me to create this very different image, you can even see some stars. Annoyingly because it was 'dark' i didn't notice the bag of dog crap at the foot of the steps.
Please do not use the photos without my permission.
لطفا از عکسها بدون هماهنگی استفاده نکنید
Kish (Persian: کیش) is a 91.5-square-kilometer (35.3 sq mi) resort island in the Persian Gulf. It is part of the Hormozgān Province of Iran. Due to its free trade zone status it is touted as a consumer's paradise, with numerous malls, shopping centers, tourist attractions, and resort hotels. It is also known for its smuggling activities and organized crime. It has an estimated population of 20,000 residents and about 1 million people visit the island annually. Kish Island was ranked among the world’s 10 most beautiful islands by The New York Times in 2010, and is the fourth most visited vacation destination in Southwest Asia after Dubai, U.A.E, and Sharm el-Sheikh. Foreign nationals wishing to enter Kish Free Zone from legal ports are not required to obtain visas prior to travel. Valid travel permits are stamped for 14 days by airport and Kish port police officials.
جزیره کیش یکی از جزیرههای خلیج فارس و از توابع بخش کیش، شهرستان بندر لنگه در استان هرمزگان و از نقاط دیدنی استان هرمزگان در جنوب ایران است. در گذشته این جزیره را به نام « قیس » میخواندند. شکل این جزیره بیضوی مانند است و در ۱۲ کیلومتری کرانه شیبکوه جای گرفته است. این جزیره یک میلیون نفر گردشگر را سالانه به خود جذب میکند.
.
Used up some scraps to make this with my favorite set.
CL265 - Adorable Baby Girl
CL143 - Two Hearts Wedding (Bird)
CL311 - Valentine Flourishes (Sentiment)
I use the quotations because, technically, they are not hiding anything nor smuggling illegal substances. They are merely making money off the population in China who no longer trust their food supply.
This is the Sheung Shui Station, the last stop before the Hong Kong-China border. There are so many people here because the Chinese Chinese (Chinese nationals from China) don't trust their food supply system (with very good reasons). There have been too many cases of contaminated food, fake food, food made with deadly chemicals and food made with rotten meats etc. So what do the millions of Chinese who live along the Hong Kong border do?
They cross the Hong Kong-Chinese border several times a day to bring Hong Kong food into China, then sell it at a huge profits. This is because food inspection in Hong Kong is much more reliable and stringent. Hong Kong food is "HOT," strangely.
The situation has gotten so bad, particularly for baby powdered milk that, Hong Kong's local population often finds empty shelves when they go shopping. The Hong Kong government had to introduce legislation to restrict the export of powdered milk at the land border controls.
Crazy and sad (that the Chinese cannot even eat safe and healthy food) : (
Other than food, they also bring over hair shampoo, vitamin supplements, skin lotion, and cosmetic supplies for the ladies.
www.dw.de/hong-kong-fights-a-battle-to-save-its-baby-milk...
LEGAL NOTICE • NO use of this image is allowed without photographer’s express prior permission and subject to compensation. All Rights Reserved.
Photographer retains ownership and all copyrights in the work.
• no work-for-hire • no Creative Commons license • no flickr API •
• Todos los Derechos Reservados • Tous droits réservés • Todos os Direitos Reservados • Все права защищены • Tutti i diritti riservati
licence | please contact me to obtain prior a license and to buy the rights to use and publish this photo. A licensing usage agreed upon with Bernard Egger is the only usage granted. |► more...
photographer | Bernard Egger фотография • collections • sets
classic sports cars ☆ vintage motorcycles | Oldtimer Grand Prix
Mille Miglia | Ennstal-Classic ☆ motor sport | legends & passion
event | 2010 Oldtimer Grand Prix Schwanenstadt AT
📷 | side car :: rumoto images # 4816
----
Oldtimer Grand Prix, Schwanenstadt, Aich, Pitzenberg, MSV Schwanenstadt, road racing, road races, Straßenrennen, Hausruckring, Grand Prix, LCR, sidecar race, Seitenwagen, Beiwagen, Kneeler,
sidecar legends, Klaus Enders, Werner Schwärzel, Siegfried Schauzu, Wolfgang Kalauch, Heinz Luthringshauser, Rolf Steinhausen, Rolf Biland, Kurt Waltisperg, Klaus Klaffenböck, Klaffi, Christian Parzer, George O'Dell, Jock Taylor, Alain Michel, Egbert Streuer, Steve Webster, Darren Dixon, Paul Güdel, Steve Abbott, Tim Reeves, Tristan Reeves, Pekka Päivärinta, Adolf Hänni, Ben Birchall, Tom Birchall, Josef Moser, Michael Grabmüller, Gerhard Hauzenberger, Wolfgang Stropek, Helmut Wechselberger, rumoto images, Bernard Egger, Моторспорт, фотография,
Summer holiday 2014
In and around Berlin Germany
Berlin
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This article is about the capital of Germany. For other uses, see Berlin (disambiguation).
Berlin
State of Germany
Clockwise: Charlottenburg Palace, Fernsehturm Berlin, Reichstag building, Berlin Cathedral, Alte Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Platz and Brandenburg Gate.
Clockwise: Charlottenburg Palace, Fernsehturm Berlin, Reichstag building, Berlin Cathedral, Alte Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Platz and Brandenburg Gate.
Flag of Berlin
Flag Coat of arms of Berlin
Coat of arms
Location within European Union and Germany
Location within European Union and Germany
Coordinates: 52°31′N 13°23′ECoordinates: 52°31′N 13°23′E
Country
Germany
Government
• Governing Mayor
Michael Müller (SPD)
• Governing parties
SPD / CDU
• Votes in Bundesrat
4 (of 69)
Area
• City
891.85 km2 (344.35 sq mi)
Elevation
34 m (112 ft)
Population (December 2013)[1]
• City
3,517,424
• Density
3,900/km2 (10,000/sq mi)
Demonym
Berliner
Time zone
CET (UTC+1)
• Summer (DST)
CEST (UTC+2)
Postal code(s)
10115–14199
Area code(s)
030
ISO 3166 code
DE-BE
Vehicle registration
B[2]
GDP/ Nominal
€109.2 billion (2013) [3]
NUTS Region
DE3
Website
berlin.de
Berlin (/bərˈlɪn/; German pronunciation: [bɛɐ̯ˈliːn] ( listen)) is the capital of Germany and one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.5 million people,[4] Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union.[5] Located in northeastern Germany on the River Spree, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, which has about 4.5 million residents from over 180 nations.[6][7][8][9] Due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city's area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.[10]
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (1417), the Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1918), the German Empire (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) and the Third Reich (1933–1945).[11] Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world.[12] After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a de facto West German exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961–1989).[13] Following German reunification in 1990, the city was once more designated as the capital of all Germany, hosting 158 foreign embassies.[14]
Berlin is a world city of culture, politics, media, and science.[15][16][17][18] Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations, and convention venues.[19][20] Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination.[21] Significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction, and electronics.
Modern Berlin is home to renowned universities, orchestras, museums, entertainment venues, and is host to many sporting events.[22] Its urban setting has made it a sought-after location for international film productions.[23] The city is well known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, and a high quality of living.[24] Over the last decade Berlin has seen the upcoming of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene.[25]
20th to 21st centuries[edit]
Street, Berlin (1913) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
After 1910 Berlin had become a fertile ground for the German Expressionist movement. In fields such as architecture, painting and cinema new forms of artistic styles were invented. At the end of World War I in 1918, a republic was proclaimed by Philipp Scheidemann at the Reichstag building. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act incorporated dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into an expanded city. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 to 883 km2 (25 to 341 sq mi). The population almost doubled and Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin underwent political unrest due to economic uncertainties, but also became a renowned center of the Roaring Twenties. The metropolis experienced its heyday as a major world capital and was known for its leadership roles in science, the humanities, city planning, film, higher education, government, and industries. Albert Einstein rose to public prominence during his years in Berlin, being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
In 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. NSDAP rule effectively destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 160,000, representing one-third of all Jews in the country. Berlin's Jewish population fell to about 80,000 as a result of emigration between 1933 and 1939. After Kristallnacht in 1938, thousands of the city's persecuted groups were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, starting in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz.[39] During World War II, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943–45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. Around 125,000 civilians were killed.[40] After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.[41]
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four Allies shared administrative responsibilities for Berlin. However, in 1948, when the Western Allies extended the currency reform in the Western zones of Germany to the three western sectors of Berlin, the Soviet Union imposed a blockade on the access routes to and from West Berlin, which lay entirely inside Soviet-controlled territory. The Berlin airlift, conducted by the three western Allies, overcame this blockade by supplying food and other supplies to the city from June 1948 to May 1949.[42] In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, excluding those three countries' zones in Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin officially remained an occupied city, but it politically was aligned with the Federal Republic of Germany despite West Berlin's geographic isolation. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. On 3 October 1990, the German reunification process was formally finished.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory, and East Germany proclaimed the Eastern part as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the western powers. East Berlin included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government established itself in Bonn.[43] In 1961, East Germany began the building of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin, and events escalated to a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie. West Berlin was now de facto a part of West Germany with a unique legal status, while East Berlin was de facto a part of East Germany. John F. Kennedy gave his "Ich bin ein Berliner" – speech in 1963 underlining the US support for the Western part of the city. Berlin was completely divided. Although it was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other side through strictly controlled checkpoints, for most Easterners travel to West Berlin or West Germany prohibited. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access to and from West Berlin by car or train through East Germany.[44]
In 1989, with the end of the Cold War and pressure from the East German population, the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November and was subsequently mostly demolished. Today, the East Side Gallery preserves a large portion of the Wall. On 3 October 1990, the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin again became the official German capital. In 1991, the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the seat of the (West) German capital from Bonn to Berlin, which was completed in 1999. Berlin's 2001 administrative reform merged several districts. The number of boroughs was reduced from 23 to twelve. In 2006 the FIFA World Cup Final was held in Berlin.
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"The post-and-rail fences stretching across the fields lying between us and the enemy's position, I regard as the fatal obstacle to our complete success on the left, and success there would, doubtless, would have changed the fate of the day. Of the existence of this obstacle none of my division had any previous knowledge, and we learned it at the expense of many valuable lives." Gen. John Walker, Army of Northern Virginia.
Also called Stack Rail, Zig Zag, Appalachian Rail, and Worm Fencing, Virginia Snake Rail Fencing has decorated Virginia and American farmland for centuries. Back then, posts could not be pressure treated as they are done today in order to preserve them. To avoid planting posts in rocky ground that would rot quickly, many homesteaders installed stack rail fencing or some configuration similar to it. Although it took considerably more wood than a split rail fence, it was easy to install. Rails that rot out are easily replaced and the fence is strengthened by its zig-zag configuration.
The Commonwealth of Virginia was primarily a "fence out" state, meaning that landowners were responsible for fencing out neighbors' animals, rather than the other way around. Many livestock owners had communal grazing areas. Snake Rail fences have dotted the landscapes of Virginia since the first settlements in Jamestown Island and still do today.