Salmon Run
Late spring and summer, weekdays, a net is stretched across the bay to catch salmon nosing up the coast, searching for their home spawning stream, here called Altmore Burn. “Burn” is a Scottish term for a fresh water source, evidence of the influence 12 miles across the north channel.
The small harbor seen here from Torr Head is for the salmon fishery. Small boats will seek shelter here from the wind and tides strong enough to roar in passing the Head, like a fast flowing river.
Neolithic Passage Tomb
Taking in a flower meadow, foreground, coaster sheep pastures, the photograph, below, looks north from Torr Head. The high hill, midground, is Greenanmore, notable for a the largest passage tomb of the Antrim Glens. Locally known as “Barrach’s Tomb,” for the Red Branch knight of the 1st Century AD fort on Torr Head, tree ring research of the mid-20th Century dates these tombs in the neolithic The hilltop passage tomb was an ancient relic when the mortar of Barrach’s Torr Head fort was drying.
When I enlarge the original photograph, visible on the ridge is a decommissioned Cold War listening post, the tomb is near that. The distant land across the North Channel water is Rathlin Island.
Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Lima is home to 10 million Peruvians and over 1000 historical sites.
View of Clinica Delgado (hospital) from Lima Peru’s Elias Aguirre (street), Huaca Pucllana filling the foreground. Huacas are commonly located in nearly all regions of Peru outside the deepest parts of the Amazon basin in correlation with the regions populated by the pre-Inca and Inca early civilizations. They can be found in downtown Lima today in almost every district, the city having been built around them. Huaca Pucllana, located in Miraflores district, is an adobe and clay pyramid built from seven staggered platforms. It served as an important ceremonial and administrative center for the advancement of the Lima Culture, a society which developed in the Peruvian Central Coast between the years of 200 AD and 700 AD.
This is the New York Times article that inspired me to remember visiting Huaca Pucllana during our February 2016 tour of Lima, Peru. “3,000 Years of History Are Literally Just Beneath Our Feet.”
Looking east
This the fifth and final of a series of landscape photographs taken from this position.
The peak is named, in the English language, Slievenaglogh. It is so strange as it’s not English, being instead a transliteration of the Irish name “Sliabh na gCloch.” This is “Rock Mountain” translated literally. Slievenaglogh is carried to the townland, a long thin swath of land being the peak and associated ridge-line.
The rocks up there are called “gabbro,” a type of magma slowly cooled under ground. Slievenaglog, Slieve Foy across the valley, and the Morne mountains all formed within volcano magma chamber(s) of the Paleocene, 66 million years ago, a time associated with extensive volcanism and the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event that gave rise to the current age.
Our younger cousin has been up there, optimistically we left it for a later trip.
View of Slieve Foy
This the fourth of a series of landscape photographs taken from this position.
The distant ridge, Slieve Foy, is the site of a mythic battle from the epic “The Cattle Raid of Cooley” (Irish: Táin Bó Cúailnge).
Pam and I did a circuit of the island, returning to the home of my Mom’s first cousin. Our last full day on Ireland a cousin took us on the Tain Trail, over Maeve’s Gap of Slieve Foy and into Carlingford town.
Our route is partly visible to the right of the ridge, hidden in low clouds.
Rural Scenery
These are the second and third of a series of landscape photographs taken from this position. See the previous post for the first.
I visited here early morning of the Monday Pam and I embarked on a trip around the island of Ireland.
Arrived the previous Saturday when, after some sites between Dublin airport and the Cooley Peninsula, we met my Mom’s first cousin who had invited us for a visit. We had a grand time meeting them.
The ruin in this view is on the slopes of the peak. Some of these ruins are former homes with the replacement nearby. This appears to be an abandoned farm.
Click Me for the first post of this series.
Click me for the next post of this series.
It goes on and on and on
Slievenaglogh is the name of a peak on the Cooley Peninsula of County Louth, Ireland near to the birthplace of my Mom, Proleek, a few townlands to the west.
On the northeast slope of Slievenaglogh peak (Irish: Sliabh na gCloch) on the road from Mullaghattin Townland to Riverstown.
Here we look northeast from the Slievenaglogh Townland, the valley between Slieve Foy and Slievenaglogh peaks.
The view includes Little River, Ballycoly Townland and Castletown River.
Adjacent is a sheep pasture with a farm ruin behind the yellow flowered gorse (whin bush, scientific name Ulex).
Slieve Foy is the far ridge lost in clouds. Early morning, late May 2014.
Waiting for the Whooooosh
Whoosh….whoosh. Taking out the garbage Monday evening, July 15th, 2019 I heard the unmistakable sound of a liquid propane burner. As the propane is gasified and ignited, the flame and exhaust are directed into the balloon, all under control of the human operator. What a sound!!
These past years, hot air balloons started launching from West Hill and, when the breeze (balloons never launch in winds, as far as I know) is right the balloon and gondola full of passengers drift in the direction of our home. More than one time, directly overhead, I estimate 200 feet away. We could clearly see and converse with the passengers. What fun.
Each previous viewing I regretted not filming the balloon as the vision floated away. Last Monday, I dropped everything (not literally, I did leave the garbage in the bin), mounted the Canon lens EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM on a EOS 1Ds Mark III body, returning to the north side of our property as the balloon emerged from the trees, only the envelope visible.
We have enjoyed this balloon before, the envelope pattern evokes a classic Navajo Rug, the colors really pop against the blue sky.
Tourists and local residents pay $230 per person for the experience of floating silently over Finger Lakes landscape with a launch from Trumansburg, ending up over Ithaca, in its valley surrounded by hills. Cayuga Lake is visible the entire flight, to the east, then northeast as the path reaches Ithaca. As they approached the balloon elevation was not so high relative to our home. You can see this clearly in the first photograph. With the zoom on 300 mm I was almost able to look into the basket, each of the four riders (the operation, looking at a cell phone, and three passengers) was recognizable.
There are three propane burners, two in front and the edge of a third just visible between the front pair.
Ethereal silence and reveres are broken when the burner lights up. Here it appears only one burner is running, sending the craft high above us.
Seven of the forty images are shared here. The duration was three minutes. With a goal of capturing the action, I had the camera on burst mode, with the shutter pressed the exposures run serially, in close succession.
I perfected these seven photographs to represent the perfection of this colorful event as it passed from the northwest, disappearing in the tree line to the southeast.
I am listening for the next event, camera and lens ready.
Post script….it was my usual early morning blogging time when I heard the familiar Whooooosshh, whoooosssshhh, grabbed my IPhone for a video and captured the following. You will hear the gondola occupants chatting. The burner was turned on at 1:03 when the balloon was fairly distant. The Whoooosssshhhh is low, but audible.
Today, they were headed North/Northwest in the opposite direction from Monday and are backlit. Enjoy!!
One day before the 2019 Total Lunar Eclipse a full moon rose 4:25 pm above the Atlantic Ocean off Cocoa Beach, the “Space Coast” of Florida. We saw a power kite to the south, with the southerly winds there was time before he was on us. I took the following photographs with what was at hand, an iPhone 8.
At 50 minutes post moonrise, I included the orb in this frame as the rider tacked, rising a water crest.
A flick of the fingers to zoom in, the moon and rider are together as he rides toward shore.
This time of, Saturdays, the cruise ships depart Cape Canaveral Port. The kite is above the distant ship. It is amazing the kite allows sailing into the wind, his heading is southwest. The shore limits his progress, forcing a tack towards a southeast heading.
Or not, it seems he plans to tack to the northeast, continuing progress north up the coast. I have to wonder how he will return to the starting point?
three shots in one second
For a change of scene we visited Cape Canaveral, the beach at Cherie Down Park were an informal gathering of Kite Surfers was underway. Here is a series of action shots, one second elapsed from first to last.
Conditions were excellent: good northerly wind, the sun overcast and, it being afternoon, in the west. Surfers stayed relatively close to shore, near their starting point. I had packed the “heavy gun” camera with a tripod.
Panning the scene (swiveling on the tripod), the camera in rapid exposure mode, I pressed the shutter release and held it down.
The surfer was captured mid-jump to landing.
