Travel at its best
Enjoying travel on a horse trap, a type of carriage, on Inishmore (Inis Mór), the largest Aran Island in Galway Bay.
Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
The effects of the category 5 hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast and New Orleans as the sun rose on the West End of Jones Beach on Long Island, August 28, 2005. This amazing sunrise was an element of the unusual atmospheric effects that are evidence of the power of this storm.
The featured image (heading this blog) is my print, “Katrina Sunrise”. This work is enjoyed by hundreds of my clients. Use the link, below, to acquire your own. Custom framing is available.
Click this link for Katrina Sunrise from my Memory Dreams Reflections Online gallery
The following images are the rough drafts taken in the early morning hours. The beach was literally deserted as I mounted the camera and framed the view for this series. Many image captions include the file time stamp, for example 6:07:13 is 6 am and 7 minutes 13 seconds.
Click this link for my blog “Sunrise Photo Album March 2 2017.”
Images of Newlyweds on the beach
With grandchildren in the Miami Area and a sister in Daytona Beach, Florida was on my mind this morning and memories of this beautiful experience on Cocoa Beach came to mind. After an eventful day touring the NASA launch control center, Pam and I took an evening walk during the golden hour, me with camera in hand.
Full in expectation of catching the passing scene with lots of shot I set to full size jpeg mode using a Sony Alpha 700 dslr with a DT 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 lens. The light was exceptional, so I did not expect much post production work.
My first impression was of the line of cruise ships heading south from Port Canaveral, the starboard side lit perfectly behind human denizens of the Cocoa Beach shore, in full enjoyment mode. A synergy of the images struck me. I took a few experimental shots then, as we progressed down the beach front this unusual tableau came into view.
Pulling back the focal length a bit the reason for the bride and groom on the beach is clear.
The session proceeded smoothly and professionally, it was a pleasure to watch. I felt no compunction for capturing these private moments on a public beach, the transcendence of the images reflect well on all participants.
Pull back to capture the entire environment.
Enjoy!!!
discerning a fascinating species
Gulls, an omnipresent element of any beach stroll. Pestiferous, abounding and incessant the gull is simple to deal with. Keep any and all foodstuffs under wraps.
Conversely, for those who adore a crowd of raucous opportunists simply pull out the food and offer it to the air. There is more about this photograph at this post, “Lady Feeding Gulls, Cocoa Beach Dawn.”
Pam and I developed a habit of hanging out in Florida during Finger Lakes Winters when the gorges are closed for safety and even walking the streets is perilous, stray black ice encounters abound. We trade icy falls for beach walks.
It is natural to become inured to the flight of gulls along the shore. For all my carting along the Sony Alpha 700 with a variable lens ( 18 – 200 mm) there is not a single photograph of a gull in flight. Yet, I have my eye on them until my blindness was lifted by a peculiar individual. It seemed to be a white gull, yet it had a watchful eye.
Gliding shoreline parallel with head down, how could I have mistaken it for a gull?
Osprey occupy an environmental niche along 700,000+ shoreline miles worldwide as a single species Pandion haliaetus. A unique bird with its own family, Pandionidae, and genus, Pandion, some experts recognize sub-species in geographic regions. Ours is the Western Osprey.
The following photograph is of a wing shape very different from the gull.
IPhone 8 always in my pocket, I captured this clip of an Osprey stalking fish in the Atlantic Ocean surf. You will have a better viewing experience by clicking on the title of the embedded YouTube, then click on the Full Screen icon at the lower right.
The Sound of Laughter Among Friends
These are my photographs of Morgan Garden of the Johnson Museum of Art on the Cornell Campus.
References and Further Reading
museum.cornell.edu/morgan-garden
museum.cornell.edu/collections/asian-pacific/japan/three-laughers-tiger-glen
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinus_densiflora
experience a glacier of Patagonia
Click this link for my series of posts about Chilean fjords and glaciers we visited February 2016.
Copyright 2021 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
always without water
Getty requires a signed photo release for each human in a photograph.
For this, the single best overview from our time with the Pintado Geoglyphs, I carefully painted out every human figure, our fellow tourists.
Here are the versions with and without human figures.
Click any photograph for a larger view and use Ctrl-x to zoom in closer.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Rain never falls here
Eternal high clouds that never yield water, we visited these hills just off the Pan American highway, to view shapes formed by moving stones.
The shapes are multifarious, mysterious and majestic. Hundreds of them, rendered for reasons known only to the makers.
I stitched together five images to yield an overall impression.
Click any photograph for a larger view and use Ctrl-x to zoom in closer.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
A place that exists because of water and a roa
The Spanish word pintados translates to painted in English. There are many references to the word, in one it is a war loving tribe known for tattoos. Here, it is the name of a deserted town on an abandoned railroad running roughly parallel to the Pan American highway. As we passed through en route to Geoglifos de Pintados, I captured these shots of the ruined town.
The handprinted sign above the window, top photograph, says in translation, “Here lived the Adolfo Tapia Family, 1940-1956, F.F C.C. del Estado.” Searches on Adolfo Tapia turned up nothing, all we know is the sign attributes the designation to the state government.
The hill of the geoglyphs are the background, some of the figures are visible. There will be more in later posts.
The railroad served the many Saltpeter factories dotting the Tarapacá region. To my knowledge all were closed in the mid-20th century.
Click any photograph for a larger view and use Ctrl-x to zoom in closer.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
fighting for truth and honesty
Pooleys were a firm of mechanical engineers, founded in Liverpool 1790. Shown as Pooley of Liverpool in Heath Mill Lane, Birmingham, the company originally made scale beams, such as shown here, a reminder of the origins of Humberstone.
A demand of the workers was access to a scale to verify company store weights. With this post I close this series of photographs from the Humberstone UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Click any photograph for a larger view and use Ctrl-x to zoom in closer.
References
Websites
Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works World Heritage page
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
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