Today's photo is of some mossy rocks atop the Pheasant resturant/inn in Cumbria. Click to enlarge.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Moss
Today's photo is of some mossy rocks atop the Pheasant resturant/inn in Cumbria. Click to enlarge.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Baaaa!
I'm told that my other photo from today is an accidental repost, so here are a few (I hope!) new shots:
There are typical sheep that roam around the countryside of my favorite part of England -- Cumbria. Sheep are quite tasty; something I never realized until I had a classical Cumbrian Shepherd's pie. Here in the states, it's all beef, beef, beef, with occasional pig -- finding lamb in Nebraska usually requires going out of one's way.
One of my favorite aspects of Cumbria was the way they have the land parcelled out; in small lots, separated by loose stone fences. You won't find 10,000 acre farms there.
There are typical sheep that roam around the countryside of my favorite part of England -- Cumbria. Sheep are quite tasty; something I never realized until I had a classical Cumbrian Shepherd's pie. Here in the states, it's all beef, beef, beef, with occasional pig -- finding lamb in Nebraska usually requires going out of one's way.
One of my favorite aspects of Cumbria was the way they have the land parcelled out; in small lots, separated by loose stone fences. You won't find 10,000 acre farms there.
Urban caterpillars
Today's photo is of a London tube train -- above ground. Much of the London Underground's network is, in fact, not really underground. Click to enlarge.
Yorkminster at sunset
Today's photo is from atop Yorkminster in York, England. It's a heck of a view up there at sunset. Click to enlarge.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Tube connections
Today's photo is a shot walking through the tunnels connecting the tube trains in the London Underground. Click to enlarge.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
In Leeds
Today's photo is a candid from Leeds, England, near the Victorian Quarter. This young woman was waiting to cross a crosswalk.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
The Guardian
Alamy makes it hard to find tear sheets (I think they fear the Alamy 'togs will try to solicit licensers, thus cutting them out of the revenue loop), but I managed to find an image of mine in The Guardian licensed back in April:
Spiffy!
Spiffy!
4/24/08 Storm Chase in Kansas
Short attention span? Scroll down for pictures. They clickity-pop larger in new windows, too.
I chased on April 24th with Darren Addy in Kansas. We started out in Kearney, dropped down to Arapahoe, then down to Norton. Caught the initiation atop Goodland and slid over a county to Atwood to try to get in place for it to come over top of us. It didn't look too impressive from Atwood -- but then the thing split and took a right turn; we backtracked to Oberlin and then south to the Seldon intersection to try to get underneath it. About that time it started to go crazy-go-nuts, and took on the appearence of a bit of a mothership -- we couldn't see much of it, because we were right under it. It put down a few very organized wall clouds before we had to jet east and then south to Hoxie to avoid getting run over by the thing. Lots and lots of outflow on it; continued looking like a mothership. We stopped a few times, snapped a few more photos, and followed it east. We stopped briefly somewhere west of Hill City to snap a few shows of the DOW armada; the key to the DOW armada, though, is to leave BEFORE they do, otherwise you get stuck behind their redonkulous convoy, as we did. Not cool when the softballs are on their way and you need to drive fast. We got to Hill City, went atop a hill south of the town, and snapped a few photos of the city while we wondered if they were going to take a hit. Luckily, they didn't. After that we called it a night and drove home. That supercell was still tearing across Kansas and actually put down a cone tornado four hours later -- one HECK of a long lived storm. I'm glad we broke the chase off, though; it would have been a bit of a dangerous storm to keep after at night. Well, that and it kept putting down baseball hail -- I could do without having to get a new windshield this year!
Headed towards Atwood. This is a photo of a large rain foot, which generally indicates some pretty strong winds near the downdraft.
Looking west as we drive south to Seldon. This is a wall cloud in the distance. The storm kept putting these down; they'd cycle away and then cycle back. Rather interesting how fast a storm can go from looking like nothing to putting down something like this.
This is looking back North near Seldon. A chaser is parked at right.
The wall cloud kept cycling. I'm pretty sure the dust below it is from RFD and is not a tornadic circulation.
Lookding west into the circulation. The sun is setting.
Looking back north again. There isn't anything particularly interesting about this storm feature (though there was plenty of rotation evident up there!) -- I was more going for interesting photo compositions. :)
This is where we bumped into the DOW squad, complete with their Discovery Channel overlords. No TIV in sight -- dunno if Sean is chasing with them this year or not. It was interesting to see the film crew doing an Anselesque shot from high atop a platform built on the roof of a van -- looked like a scary-as-hell thing to be doing in an electrical storm. :) This is the only picture I got of the DOW, as the core started catching up with us as we sat there.
Looking north as we wait to see if Hill City will be destroyed. Not this time, mother nature!
All in all, a very rewarding chase. Still zero tornadoes seen for this year, but it's early in the season. If only we could get this weather pattern to move some storms up north a bit -- Texas and Arkansas are outta my range.
BTW, on the way home, we stopped for gas in rural Kansas, and found some heavy debris blown into the gas station parking lot:
I chased on April 24th with Darren Addy in Kansas. We started out in Kearney, dropped down to Arapahoe, then down to Norton. Caught the initiation atop Goodland and slid over a county to Atwood to try to get in place for it to come over top of us. It didn't look too impressive from Atwood -- but then the thing split and took a right turn; we backtracked to Oberlin and then south to the Seldon intersection to try to get underneath it. About that time it started to go crazy-go-nuts, and took on the appearence of a bit of a mothership -- we couldn't see much of it, because we were right under it. It put down a few very organized wall clouds before we had to jet east and then south to Hoxie to avoid getting run over by the thing. Lots and lots of outflow on it; continued looking like a mothership. We stopped a few times, snapped a few more photos, and followed it east. We stopped briefly somewhere west of Hill City to snap a few shows of the DOW armada; the key to the DOW armada, though, is to leave BEFORE they do, otherwise you get stuck behind their redonkulous convoy, as we did. Not cool when the softballs are on their way and you need to drive fast. We got to Hill City, went atop a hill south of the town, and snapped a few photos of the city while we wondered if they were going to take a hit. Luckily, they didn't. After that we called it a night and drove home. That supercell was still tearing across Kansas and actually put down a cone tornado four hours later -- one HECK of a long lived storm. I'm glad we broke the chase off, though; it would have been a bit of a dangerous storm to keep after at night. Well, that and it kept putting down baseball hail -- I could do without having to get a new windshield this year!
Headed towards Atwood. This is a photo of a large rain foot, which generally indicates some pretty strong winds near the downdraft.
Looking west as we drive south to Seldon. This is a wall cloud in the distance. The storm kept putting these down; they'd cycle away and then cycle back. Rather interesting how fast a storm can go from looking like nothing to putting down something like this.
This is looking back North near Seldon. A chaser is parked at right.
The wall cloud kept cycling. I'm pretty sure the dust below it is from RFD and is not a tornadic circulation.
Lookding west into the circulation. The sun is setting.
Looking back north again. There isn't anything particularly interesting about this storm feature (though there was plenty of rotation evident up there!) -- I was more going for interesting photo compositions. :)
This is where we bumped into the DOW squad, complete with their Discovery Channel overlords. No TIV in sight -- dunno if Sean is chasing with them this year or not. It was interesting to see the film crew doing an Anselesque shot from high atop a platform built on the roof of a van -- looked like a scary-as-hell thing to be doing in an electrical storm. :) This is the only picture I got of the DOW, as the core started catching up with us as we sat there.
Looking north as we wait to see if Hill City will be destroyed. Not this time, mother nature!
All in all, a very rewarding chase. Still zero tornadoes seen for this year, but it's early in the season. If only we could get this weather pattern to move some storms up north a bit -- Texas and Arkansas are outta my range.
BTW, on the way home, we stopped for gas in rural Kansas, and found some heavy debris blown into the gas station parking lot:
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Snow Gooseageddon, or HOLY CRAP IT'S RAINING POOP, GET IN THE CAR!
NOTE: Click any of these photos to make them 1024x768 in a new window or tab.
Earlier this week, I took a drive out to Central Nebraska to look for this year's flock of migrating Sandhill Cranes. They're huge, beautiful, noisy birds, and they stop over these parts to chow down on waste corn for a couple weeks to bulk up for the last 5000 miles of their migration north to their breeding grounds.
While looking for cranes, I stumbled on a small, rural lake full of Snow Geese. When I say full, I mean FULL; as my friend Darren remarked, when they land together during migration, from a distance, they actually look like snow on the ground. This lake was pretty much overflowing with geese. I'm not expert enough to give you a count, but I think that 10,000 would be a conservative estimate. Below is a photo that shows you the side of the lake where they were especially thin:
That's the only good photo I got of them on the water. You see, these birds are crafty; they'll gladly pretend they don't see you trying to creep up on them. I had a 300mm 2.8 lens on my camera, so I had some good zoom power -- but despite being a four pound heavy, 16 inch long lens, it's actually a bit on the short end for bird photography, so I had to try to get closer. I crouched, I crept. I thought I was doing rather good. But oh yes, they certainly knew I was there. The moment I crossed in imaginary line, perhaps 50 yards from the birds, I heard one of the most bizarre sounds I've ever heard in my life.
*WHOOSH*
HOLY...!!! I nearly fell over. It was as if the entire lake had suddenly come unmoored and lifted into the sky in a giant flapping mass of honking feathers. There were to many birds to see through, all blasting up into the sky. I don't know how the heck they kept from ramming into each other, but I think air traffic controllers could learn a thing or two from birds. They rose and rose and rose above me. I pointed my camera up:
Now there were many more birds than this -- this is just a small fraction because of the extreme zoom of my lens. To imagine how many birds there were, pretend your monitor is 10 times as wide as it is right now and fill it all with birds. Or just look at the photo below, taken after I back up and put on a wide angle lens:
Some of them aren't in this shot because they're high above me, but as you can see there are still quite a few swooping in circles around on the lake, quite ticked off, from the sound of it. And then I head another set of unusual sounds... *plop*. *plopplopplopplopplop*! HOLY CRAP IT'S RAINING POOP, GET IN THE CAR! Turd bombs were landing all around me. If you've never seen goose poop before, realize that these birds are nearly as large as a small dog and so is their poop, though much wetter and slimier. You could actually see splashes in the lake, as if someone were chucking stones in it. These little buggers were aerial bombing me. Looking up, I felt like I was in London during the Blitz:
So after they circle back over the lake, I run back to the car where my wife is patiently waiting and having a good laugh. We take off, but not before a goose manages to plant a nice one on our windshield. I go and meet up with another photographer friend (her blog is here; I assume at some point in the near future she'll have some pics of her own up and maybe some video too, as she got to video what's coming next) and make our way back to the lake. By this point the birds are back in the water, patiently paddling around. The three of us make our way slowly back through the prairie grass, this time being even more careful to be quiet and low to the ground. They were relatively settled down:
While I figured as some point they might notice us, I didn't plan on getting quite as close, since I did want a shot of them peacefully gliding on the water. But I pushed my luck and...
We called it a day on that lake, and headed out to find some cranes. :)
I am always amazed by the large effects that random interactions can have over extended periods of time; for example, you likely wouldn't be here reading this today if your great-great-great grandpa hadn't sneezed at 2:47PM on some idle Tuesday. It blows my mind that simply walking forward in a field can set off such a massive biological energy expenditure, sending ten thousand birds high into the sky. I imagine several farmers from miles around probably stopped and looked up in the sky that day to admire the enormous flock of geese, and no doubt a few drivers out on the rural roads peered up through their windshields and wondered what the heck was going on up there. You've gotta love applied Chaos. :)
Earlier this week, I took a drive out to Central Nebraska to look for this year's flock of migrating Sandhill Cranes. They're huge, beautiful, noisy birds, and they stop over these parts to chow down on waste corn for a couple weeks to bulk up for the last 5000 miles of their migration north to their breeding grounds.
While looking for cranes, I stumbled on a small, rural lake full of Snow Geese. When I say full, I mean FULL; as my friend Darren remarked, when they land together during migration, from a distance, they actually look like snow on the ground. This lake was pretty much overflowing with geese. I'm not expert enough to give you a count, but I think that 10,000 would be a conservative estimate. Below is a photo that shows you the side of the lake where they were especially thin:
That's the only good photo I got of them on the water. You see, these birds are crafty; they'll gladly pretend they don't see you trying to creep up on them. I had a 300mm 2.8 lens on my camera, so I had some good zoom power -- but despite being a four pound heavy, 16 inch long lens, it's actually a bit on the short end for bird photography, so I had to try to get closer. I crouched, I crept. I thought I was doing rather good. But oh yes, they certainly knew I was there. The moment I crossed in imaginary line, perhaps 50 yards from the birds, I heard one of the most bizarre sounds I've ever heard in my life.
*WHOOSH*
HOLY...!!! I nearly fell over. It was as if the entire lake had suddenly come unmoored and lifted into the sky in a giant flapping mass of honking feathers. There were to many birds to see through, all blasting up into the sky. I don't know how the heck they kept from ramming into each other, but I think air traffic controllers could learn a thing or two from birds. They rose and rose and rose above me. I pointed my camera up:
Now there were many more birds than this -- this is just a small fraction because of the extreme zoom of my lens. To imagine how many birds there were, pretend your monitor is 10 times as wide as it is right now and fill it all with birds. Or just look at the photo below, taken after I back up and put on a wide angle lens:
Some of them aren't in this shot because they're high above me, but as you can see there are still quite a few swooping in circles around on the lake, quite ticked off, from the sound of it. And then I head another set of unusual sounds... *plop*. *plopplopplopplopplop*! HOLY CRAP IT'S RAINING POOP, GET IN THE CAR! Turd bombs were landing all around me. If you've never seen goose poop before, realize that these birds are nearly as large as a small dog and so is their poop, though much wetter and slimier. You could actually see splashes in the lake, as if someone were chucking stones in it. These little buggers were aerial bombing me. Looking up, I felt like I was in London during the Blitz:
So after they circle back over the lake, I run back to the car where my wife is patiently waiting and having a good laugh. We take off, but not before a goose manages to plant a nice one on our windshield. I go and meet up with another photographer friend (her blog is here; I assume at some point in the near future she'll have some pics of her own up and maybe some video too, as she got to video what's coming next) and make our way back to the lake. By this point the birds are back in the water, patiently paddling around. The three of us make our way slowly back through the prairie grass, this time being even more careful to be quiet and low to the ground. They were relatively settled down:
While I figured as some point they might notice us, I didn't plan on getting quite as close, since I did want a shot of them peacefully gliding on the water. But I pushed my luck and...
We called it a day on that lake, and headed out to find some cranes. :)
I am always amazed by the large effects that random interactions can have over extended periods of time; for example, you likely wouldn't be here reading this today if your great-great-great grandpa hadn't sneezed at 2:47PM on some idle Tuesday. It blows my mind that simply walking forward in a field can set off such a massive biological energy expenditure, sending ten thousand birds high into the sky. I imagine several farmers from miles around probably stopped and looked up in the sky that day to admire the enormous flock of geese, and no doubt a few drivers out on the rural roads peered up through their windshields and wondered what the heck was going on up there. You've gotta love applied Chaos. :)
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Mondays
Today's photo is of a man pulling a boat into dock in Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK. Click to enlarge.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
You don't need a car
In London, there aren't many places that can't be reached via public transit. These are the Northern Line trains approaching and departing Finchley Central. Click to enlarge.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
A real ladies' man
This one kinda speaks for itself. Wow. Found this outside the Leeds Parish Church in Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK. (Click to enlarge).
Monday, March 03, 2008
York Minster Chapter House Ceiling Detail, York, North Yorkshire, UK
Today's photo is a detail of the chapter house of York Minster Cathedral in York, UK. Built in the 1300s, the style of the chapter house is of the early Decorated Period where geometric patterns were used in the tracery of the windows, which were wider than those of early styles. This is an HDR photo composed of 8 photos, tripoded and cable locked, assembled and downsampled in Photoshop. Click to enlarge.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Self Portrait in Sedbergh, Cumbria, UK
The sunset casts tree shadows on the local school library in Sedbergh, Cumbria, England. Click to enlarge.
Monday, February 25, 2008
York
View of York, North Yorkshire, England, as shot from the roof of York Minster. Constructed in 1338, York Minster is the second-largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. Shot at sunset; click to enlarge.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Written on the Door of the Anglican Church in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England
Today's photo is from Leeds. This was written on the entrance door of the local Anglican church. Click to enlarge.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Eclipse
This photo was taken at 8:47PM CST just west of the Nebraska State Capitol Building. The sower statue atop the capitol is in the foreground. The moon is about three quarters eclipsed; it is blood red from the last rays of sun filtering through the earth's atmosphere. Click to enlarge.
This photo was taken at 9:13PM CST from roughly the same spot. The moon is just entering total eclipse. Click to enlarge.
Monday, February 18, 2008
York Minster's Buttresses
Today's photo is of York Minster's flying butresses at sunset. Constructed in 1338, York Minster in York, North Yorkshire, England, is the second-largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. Click to enlarge.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
York Minster (I)
This is the interior front entrance of York Minster in York, North Yorkshire, England. Constructed in 1338, York Minster is the second-largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. Click to enlarge.
This is an HDR photo created with 10 photos in 1 stop brackets, tripoded and cable released, merged and downsampled in Photoshop CS3.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
The Corn Exchange, Leeds, UK
Today's photo is of The Corn Exchange in Leeds, England (click to enlarge). Built in the mid 1800's, the building was originally used as (surprise) a corn exchange. It was converted into shops in the 80's (fetching a strong patronage from counterculture clients) and is currently being renovated (i.e., ruined) into a food plaza. It is a beautiful building.
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