On Causeway Road there is a turnoff an information placard for Dunseverick Castle near a cottage. This is the left side of the placard with the historical context. The right side is natural history of the area.
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.
Here we can see the two partial wall, remains of a gate house, destroyed in the 17th century. I can imagine making the climb up the foot path, examine the earthworks from before the Viking invasions, middle of the first millennium A.D. Recall a visit by Saint Patrick, trodding the path from his Easter fire on the Hill of Slane.
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.
Checking Google Maps (GM) just now am sorry to see the Breezemount House B&B is closed, even the website is disabled. GM was how I planned our Ireland tour itinerary through late Fall and Winter of 2014, marking locations as “saved.” Keeping up a GM subscription is worthwhile, making it easy to recall the specifics of our lodgings. Pete, the Breezemont proprietor, a gruff Scottsman, gave good advice. Revisiting Dunseverick Castle Ruin our crunch at the end of that June 2014 day brings to mind the jist his words, to the effect his visitors do not plan enough time (for the area).
Dunseverick, on a romantic peninsula location overlooking the Irish sea and distant Scottish coast views, is worth at least a full morning to park at the Causeway Road turnoff, adjacent to a modern cottage, hike the alluring trial to the site to trod historic turf. I remember with a sense of regret setting up the tripod for several distant views, made larger by a variable “zoom” lens.
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.
Perusing the Epcot brochure as we walked beneath “Spaceship Earth” (see photograph, below) we planning the afternoon. Between that moment and Tokyo Dining at 7 pm we had a afternoon “Fast Pass” for Spaceship Earth.
It was natural to wander into”The Seas with Nemo and Friends,”the first attraction after Spaceship Earth, first turn on the right. Pam and I were enthralled for an hour, walking about, viewing a 5.1 million gallon “Sea Base” aquarium.
A metaphor of aquarium occupants stops at the glass edge, the sea creatures on one side of the glass, the humans on the other very much closer to each other, breathing the same air.
Click photograph for larger image. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Spaceship Earth, the icon of Epcot
Orienteering Map within Aquarium
Here is a crowd favorite, the “funny nose” Unicorns.
In the 2000’s the company I worked for was installing software at Walt Disney World and over several trips became familiar with the Team Disney building, especially the wonderful sundial. My coworkers and I took dinner once at the “Rose and Crown” restaurant, Epcot United Kingdom pavilion. At first glance Epcot pavilions have a high cheesiness potential. A saving grace, what most impressed me, was the staffing. Young people from the United Kingdom served us, creating a deep authenticity to the experience.
I always wanted to visit “on my own dime”, January 2020 seemed like a good time. We are not “Disney or Die” (as in “Give Me Liberty AND Give Me Death”), the news available to the public was of an ill defined illness in China. Over that week I researched the park and purchased tickets for Friday, January 10. That morning I greeted the dawn and we headed out later morning for Orlando.
Once Walt Disney World is once again open, as I am sure it will be, two important preparations I recommend are (1) install the “My Disney Experience” app and, on arrival (2) take a photograph of the parking location before boarding the tram. The Disney Experience smart phone app allowed us to book restaurant reservations. Admission fee includes several reservations for attractions, to skip the line. Disney calls it a “Fast Pass.”.
Click photograph for larger image. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Preparations
In keeping with our dangerous position, wandering among COVID-19 spotted crowds, “the invisible enemy,” here are several dangerous inhabitants of the first attraction we enjoyed, “The Seas with Nemo and Friends.”
Today, enjoy two videos of shorebirds taking flight at once. Starlings can flock and swarm in clouds of birds, called murmuration. My videos of a shorebird colony taking fright, at something unknown as the beach was empty, are from my IPhone 7.
This is a still image, high resolution, similar to the view of the second video. A repeat from yesterday.
Click photograph for larger image. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
With a tripod it is simpler to achieve a level horizon….
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
December 3, 2014 President Obama warned of the coming pandemic and passed along plans and a team to the incoming Trump administration. By December 2019, the pandemic unleashed in China, Trump gutted this capability and, while Pam and I were planning out January 10th Walt Disney World trip, hid the truth from United States Citizens.
We were keeping an eye on China, by January 10th the Chinese communist government was lying, “there is no human-to-human” transmission they told the WHO (World Health Organization). Knowing the truth, our plans for that day would be different.
One week before January 10, the dawning of the day photographed here, “the CDC Director Robert Redfield was notified by a counterpart in China that a “mysterious respiratory illness was spreading in Wuhan [China]”. Redfield notified HHS Secretary Alex Azar shortly thereafter, who shared his report with the National Security Council (NSC). According to The Washington Post, warnings about the virus were included in the President’s Daily Brief in early January, an indicator of the emphasis placed on the virus by the intelligence community.” December( and maybe October/November), 2019 through January, 2020: COVID-19 was spreading across the USA as visitors from Wuhan disembarked from planes.
The following images compare IPhone 7 to a dslr mounted on a tripod.
Click photograph for larger image. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
IPhone 7
With a tripod it is simpler to achieve a level horizon….
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
I heard the word “shroomed” (as a verb) used in Episode 1, Season 6, of Bosch. As in “the Federal Government treats us like mushooms”: grown in excrement and kept in the dark.
One day after my “Sunrise Texture” series as the sun rose on Cocoa Beach I was waiting with the same photographic kit. It was perfect weather for a visit to Walt Disney World, planned for that day: unsettled.
This image couple demonstrates the effect of long / short exposure without using filters. I changed the ISO and F-stop to achieve these effects.
Click photograph for larger image. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
ISO 50 F/32
With a tripod it is simpler to achieve a level horizon….
ISO 500 f/6.3
I turned around to observe the colonies of shore birds…..
Weather masonry at the height of Torr Head was there to serve the custom house and as support for a spotting station where ships transiting the Strait of Moyle (Irish Sruth na Maoile), the 12 miles of water to the Mull of Kintyre.
Lloyd’s of London, vitally interested in the appearance of ships’ progress crossing the oceans, had notice of passage via semaphore (and, later, Marconi’s “wireless”). Destination ports were copied in.
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.
