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Wednesday, August 31 - Frederick, MD (Pics and Pints with Marlene & Virginia)
Polaroid Colorpack III with expired 669 packfilm
I really wanted to get the star anchors (a hallmark of 19th century building techniques) and the nation's largest/oldest Ginkgo tree in the same photo. After looking at the commemorative plaque, we discovered that the tree was planted in 1800.
August 22
Time to move on again, leave Cody and head for the mountains again. We sleep until nearly eight, having finally killed the jet lag. We have breakfast, then a shower and pack. We have a case of dirty laundy, so we decide to seek out a laundramat, which is where I am writing this, as our dirty washing is cleaned.
You see a different America here, but again everyone is friendly, and its no real chore. Later we have an hour’s drive to Lovell, and from there a mountain road will take us to our cabin in the woods. Everyone was friendly though, and wanted to know where we were from, something to do with the accents I suppose. But in 45 minutes, we have two loads washed and dried, and I have filled the car up too, so we were good to go.
But Cody to Lovell was just an hour’s run, so we were hoping for something to do once we got there, maybe some lunch.
The road ran flat through farming country, beside a canal and ralway line in pretty much a dead straight line. Passed through a couple of small towns, didn’t stop, and where the land rose, there were derricks, pumping oil to the surface as they have done for over a hundred years.
We came to Lovel, not in a the “high country” at all, just 3500 feet above sea level, and pretty much stretched out along the main road through town, some run down motels, a cinema that seemed to be closed, but is only open now at weekends, but is a handsme art deco pile.
I hear the whistle of a train, so we race through a residential neighbourhoos to a level crossing, just in time to see two huge locomotives haul three wagons past. A bit over the top with the horsepower there.
We cruise the town looking for a place to eat; we looked at a place called The Branding Iron, but seemed that all parking was taken, so we go to a place called the food court. There are three franchies in there, all run by the same people. So we have subs and soda, and sit down to watch the locals have their lunch. Three smartly dressed young men in shirts and ties from the local church; two workers from Pepsico, stopping by to sample their company’s wares, and various other locals; farmers, mechanics and ladies who luch. Even there.
After eating we drive north into the Bigh Horn Valley park, thing. Through more countryside which then gave way to rolling bleak hills, where it seemed oil was being extracted from sand, big machinery was breaking the land up, and what they were going stained the ground black.
I stop us off at a bend in the river, hoping that this was the famous horseshoe bend, biut it wasn’t. The river was slow and lazy, and the valley sides shallow here anyway. But the air was rich in butterflies and dragonflies, so we spend a good half hour chasing the buggers round.
Back in the car and up the valley, where we see a family of deers or goats feeding at the side of the road, they stay long enough for Jools and I to get shots before they wander off back into the boondocks from whence they came.
Even further up there is a road to the Devil’s Overlook, or something similar. So we go down not expecting much. Nut what we find is a mini, not so mini, Grand Canyon, with an overlook of a sharp bend in the river, hundreds of feet below, and on each side, the canyon walls rise vertically hundreds of feet. We can look down on vultures as they glide by us, maybe them thinking we were not that close to dying, yet.
In three sides of the car park, the ground dropped away to the valley below, and at one point, and Tony would love this, I could see the ground below the cliff through a gap in the rocks, making ot trees the size of moss maybe 500 feet below.
We meet a group of three gentlement, two from UK, so we talk for a good twenty minutes about the eclipse, Yellowstone and Lovell. There are here for three weeks or more, and had just driven up from Houston, Texas to be here in time for the ec;ipse. What a road trip that must have been to do in two days.
We were hot and bothered; the car told us it was 32 degrees outside. We had changed the settings from F to C. But we were thirsty, and so went back down to Lovell to a store to buy supplies and something cool to drink. We get two quarts of orange juice, some beers and cider, so are set for the trip to the lodge and cabins.
To be honest, I just booked the cabins, and that was way back in October, so did not know what to expect. We had tried GSV to see what the area was like, but seemed that down in the valley and up in the hills they liked to name roads with numbers. So instead of looking at Forest Road 13, we were looking at Road 13, which lead to a farm our something.
We followed the intstuctions from the lodge, though more rolling farmalnd, but all the times the hills in the distance were getting nearer. THe road had a warning sign, severe grades ahead. Serious stuff.
The road passed over a causeway of a lake at the foothills of the hills. I mean, I say hills, thurns out they were 5,000 feet above the plain, and anywhere else would be called mountains. Anyway, for 5 miles the road ran in a dead straight line, but above we could see a line in the hills, showing where, we guessed, the road went up. And up.
After a bend to the left, the road began to climb; twising and turning, but climbing at an alarming gradients, going roand hairpin bends, and leaving the plain in a pastel coloured haze far below.
Near the top, trees begen to grow; firs and other evergreen trees. The road had reached the top, and turned away from the cliffs. Through brightly coloured meadows until there was a sign to the lodge, one mile down a rough track through a forest.
Halfway down we came across a doe deer, ears erect and wide eyed, but we passed her by, turning sharp leftdown the final few hundred yards to the lodge. We park up and go in reception and are shown round; this is free, this is free, that is included, there is an honesty bar for beer, and your cabin is the last on the left.
We go down to the cabin, a neat wooden affair, insdie two bunk beds, a fridge, microwave, toilet and shower And we would have no neighbours, and a view onto an alpine meadow and trees leading to a rounded summit. In the wildflowers nearby, I could see a host of butterflies. Without waiting, I grabbed my camera and went hunting.
More blues, more frililleries, more Clouded Yellows and Coppers. Lovely, and all willing to bask, or most were anyway.
Dinner was at half six, all included. Baked chicken and pasta with salad. It is without dount, the healthiest meal we have had since landing in America, and very welcome. We have a bottle of Asti too, seems right to celebrate our wonderful holiday.
Needless to say, a long day in the high temperatures down on the plain, and a bottle of fizz meant we were sleepy heads by half eight, but did stay awake until after dark to see the Milky Way high over the cabin, but photographing it wl have to wait for tomorrow.
First West of England received three random e400s from First Manchester including 33685 SN12AFU. After use in Bath, they moved to Weston super Mare where one gained Excel colours, another moved to Wells, and this stayed but in Urban livery. It did move to Essex in 2022 and has finally had a repaint into the new First Essex Bus livery and is seen here in Benfleet.
While waiting for a friend to get dropped off at Eastgate Mall in Hamilton, Ontario, I decided to wander around a little, camera in hand, and see if I could spot any potential subjects. At the Southeast corner of the mall, I needed to cross a slightly busy section of road in the parking lot and looked down while waiting for the crosswalk to clear. There I spotted an abstract pattern formed by the combination of the crosswalk white striping, the yellow curb edge marking and a red safety plate, all lit by a shaft of sunlight as the sun was beginning to set behind buildings to my right. I am a sucker for abstracts with colour so I grabbed a quick shot and resumed my wandering. - JW
Date Taken: 2024-05-25
Date PP: 2024-05-27
(c) Copyright 2024 JW Vraets
If you are interested in prints or licensing of any of my images, DM me with a brief description of what you may be looking for.
Tech Details:
Taken using a hand-held Nikon D7100 fitted with a AF-P DX Nikkor 70-300mm 1:4.5-6.3 lense set to 70 mm, ISO100 (Auto ISO), Matrix metering, Daylight WB, Shutter Priority mode, f/5.0, 1/250 sec. PP in free, Open Source RAWTherapee from Nikon RAW/NEF source File: set final image size to be 9000px wide, use the Graduated Neutral Density/GND tool to darken the top left diagonal to better match its tonality with the lower part of the image, sample the white stripe to set colour balance, increase Contrast and Chromaticity in L-A-B mode, slightly increase Vibrance, sharpen (edges only), save. PP in free Open Source GIMP: use the Levels Tool in Auto mode to set basic tonality, use the Hue-Saturation-Brightness tool to boost the yellow stripe saturation and brightness a little and then use it to increase the saturation of the red plate and also adjust its Hue toward yellow a little, use the Contrast/Brightness tool to slightly boost overall contrast, sharpen, save, add fine black-and-white frame, add bar and text on left, save, scale image to 6000 px wide, save, add fine black and white frame, add bar and text on left, save, scale image to 3000px wide for posting online, save.Hamilton, Eastgate Mall, crosswalk, abstract, safety plate, red, curb marking, yellow, crosswalk, white, sunset, Open Source, RAWTherapee, GIMP, Nikon, D7100, AF-P DX Nikkor 70-300mm 1:4.5-6.3
"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly." - Guatama Buddha
🎵Painkiller Paradise
Unsere Aufstiegsroute vom Gipfel aus gesehen. Auf dem Gletscher sind die Spuren (von uns und vielen anderen) deutlich zu erkennen.
Auf dem Weg zur Riffelspitz, gegenüber die Kolbenspitze (2.868m)
Aufnahme mit Carl Zeiss Flektogon 35mm F2,4 (M42, DDR-Prod.)
my sister said as I wandered the hills of Positano with my camera.
I didn't have to look too hard for her as I walked around the last corner towards town; I could hear her laughing...as well as the rest of our entourage who were sitting in an outdoor cafe drinking Campari & soda and playing cards....and laughing hysterically. We did alot of that on our journeys :-)
Explore # 278 - July 24, 2008
"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost." 🌲
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Hunting season started on September 1st. Mogli now has to stay really close by. Just in case a hunter thinks that a polar bear got lost in the Swiss Alps. After all our so called summer would have been cold enough for them. ;-)
Today I gave no direction, I just let him be and waited for him to come into the light. I sat back and watched him wander around and enjoyed observing all his little boy tendencies. "Mama, look at my footprints."
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Wadsworth
A bit of photoshop work
Finally some Fashion stuff!
Strobist:
x1600 camera right in octobox as key
Zues Ringmaster for Fill
Sun for highlights!
Taken at the underwater video shoot in the Amersfoort swimming pool for the Wander Project we are working on with Zesbaans.
More info at www.zesbaans.nl