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Morning opens, sun does rise
Patterned clouds, fill the skies
Stretching out from the East
Eyes look up and they feast
On the beauty, above the land
Spread over the skies, by creations hand
Galeobdolon flavidum (Hellgelb-Goldnessel / Blassgelbe Taubnessel) Massenberg, Leoben, Steiermark, Austria. Meyer Görlitz Trioplan 2.9/50.
My brother posted a picture, he titled "eat your heart out Prada...", this is a cowboy version of the same shot. Here is a link to his picture
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ou quand tout se transforme et devient organique.
Le mur vert (un peu transformé) du parc Millenium de Chicago.
Photosynthesis (hot version)
or when a transformation becomes organic.
The green Wall (slightly altered!) in Chicago's Millenium park.
I'll share one more from my recent trip to "The North Country" for now.
Some of you may have already seen this photo via railpictures.net or Facebook, however this version is slightly different. In typical railpictures.net fashion, they kept rejecting this photo for being "too dark" before I finally brightened it to their liking. In doing so, however, I lost some of the nice sky you see here. This shot was indeed taken using a graduated ND filter, too, so go figure!
I'd be curious which you like better, but this Flickr version is my favorite and best represents the scene as I saw it that morning. Here's a link to the railpictures.net version: www.railpictures.net/photo/758629/
Regarding the photo, the sun has not quite come up yet on this very cold, December morning as VTR GP18 #801 stands ready to bring today's New York & Ogdensburg train down to the CSX interchange in Norwood.
NYOG
Norfolk, NY
December 29, 2020
Aquilegia.
This is the colour version of the monochrome from yesterday, which you may prefer.
I think I prefer it to be honest, but they say different things so they're both valid I guess.
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy this little flower up close :)
[Tripod; delayed release; reflector to bounce light back; cricked neck :)
The usual culprits: Capture One, Affinity Photo...]
nikon D600
nikkor 50 1.4G
honolulu hawaii
wow, I just noticed how similar both versions are, considering the two different lenses.
I posted the B&W version of this image, so I thought I would post the color one so people could decide which one they liked better. I am mixed on which one I like best. The birds posed so nice for me.
Ghent, 2020
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
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manche behaupten, es wäre das Virus gewesen, das den Erdball vernichtet hatte. Andere hingegen geben der Menschheit selbst die schuld für dieses Desaster .
Eine neue Lebensform hat den Raum für sich entdeckt. Frieden und Sorgfalt bestimmen das Leben !
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.
- thanks for all visits and comments
www.flickriver.com/photos/publik-oberberg/popular-interes...
KENNETH BARKER
304. TREAT THIS version 1. 15 - 22 November 2022
«German flowerstall»
Thanks to Xandram for the following source:
www.flickr.com/photos/xandram/52490486619/in/dateposted/
Stock photos
Paint shop pro/paint
Con una versión de esta fotografía, de este atardecer (una tarde de Enero del 2009), gané un premio en un concurso. Nunca había editado otra de aquel mismo día. Esta la deseché porque no tenía un enfoque tan bueno como la otra, y porque hay un tipo justo ahí tras las rocas, fácil de clonar para internet, aunque no molesta mucho en este caso para la belleza de la escena.
Buenas tardes a tod@s!