Random Photos

[berkeman]

@Flyboy

 

[DennisN]

Figure 1. "Peek-a-Billy." Male house finch (Haemorhous mexicanus).

I really like the colors of that bird (red mixed with brown) . A very nice look.

Figure 2. Northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) jumping off the bird feeder.

A very cool photo!
Was it a lucky shot, or something you tried to achieve?
If you tried to achieve it, did you use sequential shooting? High speed?
I know the feeling sitting and waiting for a bird to take off, it's fun.

Over a dozen times I'd finally spot one, raise my camera up, and it would fly into a thicket of trees before I could even aim and focus.

Hehe, I know that feeling all too well.
But I guess that's also why it becomes a bit fun; it becomes a sport hunting for a shot, which I find a bit addictive, actually .

I bought a Canon EF 70-300 IS USM cheap second hand which I intended to use for wildlife, but with the adapter for my Sony camera the autofocus of the lens simply becomes too slow and unreliable.
A review warned about this, but I thought I could use it anyway. No, I can't.
The birds are too quick, and the autofocus is painfully slow.

 

[nsaspook]

1981 GONZO station. We won the Halloween costume contest for a head of the line pass on the ship.

 

[collinsmark]

I really like the colors of that bird (red mixed with brown) . A very nice look.

Thanks!

A very cool photo!
Was it a lucky shot, or something you tried to achieve?
If you tried to achieve it, did you use sequential shooting? High speed?
I know the feeling sitting and waiting for a bird to take off, it's fun.

It was luck. Well, mostly luck.

For flying birds, the settings I try to use are
o Shutter speed of at least 1/1000 sec, more likely at 1/2000 sec or even a bit faster, (1/4000 sec).
o Continuous autofocus
o Image stabilization on, with the particularity mode set for panning, if available.
o Continuous frame rate. (details vary for this one; the sub-choices are between bit depth vs. speed. I usually choose highest bit-depth at the expense of frame rate. Maybe I should rethink that.)

Then when I anticipate flight, I spray and pray.

I'm not sure how optimal my settings were for this shot. Again it was mostly luck. For every frame of a bird in flight that came out focused, and fully within the frame, a dozen or two (or three) were unusable.

 

[DOGE3500]

About the picture in post #3046:
Something is different while I am looking again.

Date & Time Wed Aug 06 2025 at 11:58:43 AKDT
Position 3 N 4797687161121 (? 11 3ft)
Altitude 576 ft +- 17.3ft
Datum WGS-84
Azimuth/Bearing 006 N06E 0107mils True =_10?
Elevation Angle -87 3
Hirizon Angle -34 3
Zoom 05X

Thanks for any modifications you gave just in case you did.

That same wind farm on the ridge center right in photo. I’m not a big “fan” of wind turbines but these seemed pretty robust. Black carbon fiber blades.

 

[symbolipoint]

DOGE3500, your post reports my later observation of the clearer text, three identical times. I guess either your are very impressed with what I found or you want to adjust your posting. But either way, Bless the windfarms!

[LOL, accidental multiple-quote by DOGE fixed by a Mentor in their post]

 

[jtbell]

I'm on another road trip northward... this is at the Veterans Overlook at Clinch Mountain, on highway US-25E north of Bean Station, Tennessee.

The view is towards the southeast, across the Cherokee Reservoir.

(skip to next post in this series)

 

[DennisN]

Simon d'Entremont sums it up more succinctly than I could, in this video:

Many thanks for the video, I've watched it and there are very useful techniques described in it.
I haven't myself worked very much with masks, but I'll keep it in mind .

 

[DennisN]

For flying birds, the settings I try to use are
o Shutter speed of at least 1/1000 sec, more likely at 1/2000 sec or even a bit faster, (1/4000 sec).
o Continuous autofocus
o Image stabilization on
o Continuous frame rate.

That's about the same settings I use.
I've got three possible frame rates for continous shooting, Hi (11 fps), Medium (6 fps) and Low (2.5 fps).
For small and/or flying birds (and e.g. bees ) I usually shoot with 11 fps. If it's a big, more static bird or animal I sometimes shoot with 2.5 fps.

 

[jtbell]

Almost seven years ago, I showed you the Sanders Cafe in Corbin, Kentucky, the birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I stayed in Corbin again last night, and this morning visited the park in downtown Corbin that honors Col. Sanders.

(skip to next post in this series)

 

[collinsmark]

... Round 7 of Nebraska bird pics:

Figure 1. Red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus).

Figure 2. "Partially backlit northern cardinal naturally performing a blood-red Bela Lugosi impersonation." (Cardinalis cardinalis)

Figure 3. "Serendipitous branch symmetry." House finch (Haemorhous mexicanus).

Something about the above image intrigues me (see Fig. 3): the positioning of the bird and the symmetry of the branches in the background. Like, if I was raiding an ancient tomb, and found this photograph attached to a wall full of mysterious Egyptian hieroglyphs, it would fit right in (except for the fact that it's a photograph, of course -- there were no photographs in ancient Egypt. That would be weird).

Figure 4. House sparrows gathering on a branch. (Passer domesticus.)

Figure 5. "Strike a pose." House finch.

Figure 6. House finch with mysterious blood on its beak, apparently. "What have these finches been up to, Billy?!"

More to come ...

 

[DennisN]

naturally performing a blood-red Bela Lugosi impersonation

 

[Point Conception]

At Lam Pho seafood market.

 

[pinball1970]

Ashton United in Oldham, the home of Prof Brian Cox. Hartshead pike on the hill in the back ground.

The football was ok but the sunset stole the show for me.

 

[DennisN]

The football was ok but the sunset stole the show for me.

A very cool photo!

 

[collinsmark]

... Round 8 of Nebraska bird pics (I promise to wrap up these Nebraska bird pics shortly).

At some point during my Nebraska trip, a squirrel succeeded in breaching the squirrel baffle. It sabotaged the bird feeder, spilling all the bird seed onto the ground.

Figure 1. House finch inspecting the damage. (Haemorhous mexicanus.)

Figure 2. House finch continuing to inspect the damage.

Nothing was actually broken or permanently damaged, btw. My mom easily put the bird feeder back together, eventually. All that was lost was some bird seed that was in the feeder. These things happen. The squirrel baffle is effective, but not 100%.

Figure 3. Still, at the time, the birds were none-too-happy about the situation.

Figure 4. "Hmnnf, guys, we 'ould jus' ea' the ol' fashion' way. Mnff nom nom." American robin (Turdus migratorius).

Figure 5. "Whoa, Nelly! I mean Billy. Whoa, Billy." (House finches)

Figure 6. "Okay, a little balancing, and... I'm good." (House finch, I think.)

Figure 7. Bird in flight. I think it's a house sparrow (Passer domesticus). Also, my bird app says it's a house sparrow. But I wouldn't be shocked if I was wrong and it's a house finch. Still, I'm guessing sparrow for now.

Edit: (Bonus Picture)

Figure 8. (Bonus picture). "Possible suspect." Fox squirrel (Sciurus niger).

More to come ...

 

[DennisN]

Figure 3. Still, at the time, the birds were none-too-happy about the situation.

A very cool shot!

Figure 7. Bird in flight.

Also very cool!

Figure 4. "Hmnnf, guys, we 'ould jus' ea' the ol' fashion' way. Mnff nom nom." American robin (Turdus migratorius).

Very nice!

I understand you've had fun shooting flying birds . It's very fun, but quite challenging.
Patience is key to success, I think. But since you've done a lot of astrophotography, you are probably well supplied with patience .

Sadly we are not allowed to put up bird feeders where I live, otherwise I would have done it.
Mostly because I'd like to get bird visits, but also for photo opportunities.

 

[pinball1970]

... Round 8 of Nebraska bird pics (I promise to wrap up these Nebraska bird pics shortly).

At some point during my Nebraska trip, a squirrel succeeded in breaching the squirrel baffle. It sabotaged the bird feeder, spilling all the bird seed onto the ground.

View attachment 364390
Figure 1. House finch inspecting the damage. (Haemorhous mexicanus.)

View attachment 364391
Figure 2. House finch continuing to inspect the damage.

Nothing was actually broken or permanently damaged, btw. My mom easily put the bird feeder back together, eventually. All that was lost was some bird seed that was in the feeder. These things happen. The squirrel baffle is effective, but not 100%.

View attachment 364389
Figure 3. Still, at the time, the birds were none-too-happy about the situation.

View attachment 364388
Figure 4. "Hmnnf, guys, we 'ould jus' ea' the ol' fashion' way. Mnff nom nom." American robin (Turdus migratorius).

View attachment 364392
Figure 5. "Whoa, Nelly! I mean Billy. Whoa, Billy." (House finches)

View attachment 364393
Figure 6. "Okay, a little balancing, and... I'm good." (House finch, I think.)

View attachment 364394
Figure 7. Bird in flight. I think it's a house sparrow (Passer domesticus). Also, my bird app says it's a house sparrow. But I wouldn't be shocked if I was wrong and it's a house finch. Still, I'm guessing sparrow for now.

Edit: (Bonus Picture)
View attachment 364396
Figure 8. (Bonus picture). "Possible suspect." Fox squirrel (Sciurus niger).

More to come ...

Those in flight shots just beautiful.

 

[jtbell]

More from Corbin KY yesterday... near Sanders Park is the former Louisville & Nashville Railroad station, and a preserved L&N loco and caboose.

And over on Main Street, the Corbin Pinball Museum.

(skip to next post in this series)

 

[jtbell]

Later yesterday I visited the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park near Hodgenville KY. Its centerpiece is this monumental building:

It houses a log cabin that was reconstructed from logs that were originally thought to be from the cabin that the Lincoln family lived in when Abraham was born.

Later research established that this was almost certainly not the case. Therefore the National Park Service now calls this a "symbolic Lincoln log cabin."

Nevertheless the property indisputably belonged to Lincoln's family when he was born, and it has a spring which was the reason his father settled there.

The family moved to a different property some miles away, when Abraham was only two years old, and he had no memories of this site. When he was eight, they moved to Indiana, and still later to Illinois where he began his career. So three states can claim pieces of his upbringing.

I visited this site on one of my first road trips with my parents, when I was 7 or 8 years old. The interior of the building feels a lot smaller and cramped now.

The door-pulls on the building's bronze doors are also monumental...

(skip to next post in this series)

 

[jtbell]

Yesterday, the day after the preceding two sets of pics, I drove through Terre Haute, Indiana.

I guess every place has to be famous for something!

(skip to next post in this series)

 

[collinsmark]

'Went to the Henry Doorly Zoo for a few hours while in Omaha. The Henry Doorly Zoo is a fantastic zoo, if you like zoos. It's one of the best zoos in the entire world (again, if you like zoos).

The zoo is big enough that it's not practical to get through the whole thing in just one day. And I was only there for a few hours this trip. So my photos here are very, very limited, and not even close to representative of the zoo as a whole.

Anyway, here's a few snapshots I took in the limited time I had.

Figure 1. Front entrance.

Figure 2. Something or other seen from within an acrylic viewing tube.

Figure 3. Some sort of jellyfish. Sorry for not recording more details about the particular species. I think it's probably a sea nettle (Chrysaora fuscescens).

Figure 4. Cape teal (Anas capensis), I'm pretty sure.

Figure 5. Peccary. Also called a "skunk pig.' (Dicotyles tajacu, I think).

Figure 6. Alligator.

You might think that the alligator shot (see Fig. 6) involved fortunate timing, with it's mouth open. But in fact it was just posing like that, almost completely still. It was deathly still. Until it wasn't.

That's about all the zoo pics I have, but there will be a couple more non-zoo related posts to come to wrap up the Nebraska trip ...

 

[Andy Resnick]

A chance well-lit scene (rudbeckia) gave me the idea to try approximating @collinsmark's post-processing, but doing it optically- this is straight jpg camera output (plus re-scaling to 800 pixels across):

Shot at 800mm f/5.6 to maximize vignetting and near close focus distance (30-ish feet) to minimize the depth-of-field. Exposure was -1.3 EV to control the highlights.

 

[DennisN]

I was walking around eating a pastry when I suddenly spotted this creature, so I put down the pastry and very quickly brought out my gear...

Vanessa cardui (which Wikipedia says is "the most widespread of all butterfly species"):

Vanessa cardui - the other side of one of the wings. Less colorful, but very many details:

Vanessa cardui - another shot where the body is more clearly seen:

Another butterfly, a Cabbage white (Pieris brassicae)... not that good of a photo; the butterfly sat in an annoying location (the previous butterfly did too, actually) with crappy lighting, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing I could do about that ...

And the frogs revisited... (edible frogs (Pelophylax kl. esculentus))... I had more suitable gear this time (a manual 135mm instead of a 35mm lens, but still not the best gear for this thing; a 100mm macro or my 55-210mm zoom lens would probably be more suitable, but I did not have the frogs in mind when I went out)...

Hello...

Full body, half in water:

A close-up of the head*:

Another close-up of the head:

* Here I would like to have had my 55-210mm zoom, because I was able to get quite close to this frog for some reason (ca 60 cm), and I could have tried to get close-ups of the eye)

Lens for all photos: Vivitar Close Focusing 135mm f/2.8

 

[collinsmark]

... Ninth and final round of Nebraska bird and woodland creature pics.

Some of these are my favorites, so I saved them till the end.

Figure 1. "Meep. Billy this big. Meep." House finch (Haemorhous mexicanus).

Figure 2. "I dub this Billy's tree." House finch on a treetop.

Figure 3. House finch in flight.

Figure 4. House finch in flight again.

Figure 5. "Now where did I put the magic leaf." House finch on treetop.

Figure 6. "House sparrows in my mom's backyard." (Passer domesticus.)

The above shot (see Fig. 6) is one of my favorite pictures of the trip. The thing is, it's quite cluttered (clutter is generally bad). But in full resolution, once I see the birds, it drags me in -- right into the clutter along with them. It makes me do a double take and look longer (which is a sign of a good photo, I guess). But this effect gets degraded with image size reduction. So I don't think it really shows here on PF.

Figure 7. "Meep, meep. Billies. Meep." House finches on treetops.

The following two pics are keepers.

Figure 8. House finch landing on treetop.

Figure 9. House finch balancing on treetop.

And that wraps it up for the Nebraska bird and woodland creature pics for this trip.

One more Nebraska trip post to come, to wrap up the trip as a whole. ...

 

[UyScuti]

View attachment 271167
Night sky through trees near Mt. Adams, WA.

May I have it?

 

[jtbell]

I'm spending a few days in the western suburbs of Chicago. The "trigger" for this trip is the big annual stamp show of the American Philatelic Society, which is in Schaumburg this year. I'm also (re)visiting some railroad/streetcar museums.

Yesterday (Thursday) I drove further west to the Illinois Railway Museum, one of the largest, possibly the largest of its kind in the US. Three large exhibit barns are full of electric-railway equipment.

The biggest emphasis is of course on Chicago. Streetcars range from an 1859 horsecar:

to a 1948 PCC-type car.

The entire streetcar system was replaced with buses by 1958.

Rapid-transit ('L') cars of various generations including these two from 1924 and 1947:

Three major interurban electric lines radiated out into the Chicago suburbs and beyond. The North Shore Line ran to Milwaukee, sharing tracks with 'L' trains in Chicago. Its 1947 Electroliners marked the peak of this technology, running until 1963 when the line went out of business.

A North Shore Line car of a more standard type (from 1926 I think) was operating at the museum on Thursday.

Other city and interurban systems are represented, mostly from the midwest. The Illinois Traction System connected central Illinois cities such as Peoria, Springfield and Champaign not with Chicago as one might expect, but with St. Louis. It even ran sleeping-car service!

And that's just the electric equipment. A similar number of barns contain steam and diesel equipment; I had to pass them by completely on this visit. Some items are displayed outdoors.

Note the rotary snowplow at the left.

(skip to next post in this series)

 

[collinsmark]

... Final 2025 Nebraska trip post.

Nearly every day when driving around, we would end up passing this new construction with massive amounts of electrical infrastructure involved (electrical substations galore). My brother in-law questioned if it was some type of new power plant being erected. One day we decided to drive a bit closer and investigate.

Alas, not a new power plant. It's the other side of energy flow (consumption, not production)*: probably a new data center. See Fig. 1.

*(I suppose it could be both to some very limited extent.)

Figure 1. What I'm guessing is a new data center in the area.

Figure 2. Nebraska sunset.

Again, the house is just a house in the neighborhood (Fig. 2). I've never met the people who live there.

Figure 3. Omaha's Eppley Airfield.

And finally, the flight(s) home. Starting with Omaha's Eppley Airfield (Fig. 3), and ending with landing in San Diego (Fig. 4).

Figure 4. Balboa Park as seen from the airplane window.

You can see Balboa Park's Lilly Pond (Fig. 4, slightly above center).

Approximately 1 year ago, I took a photo of the Lilly Pond with an airplane in the background (See post 2061, Page 42 of this thread). The picture here (Fig. 4) is from the opposite direction.

You can make out a couple of people on the bridge/walkway on the other side of the Lilly Pond. Perhaps one is a photographer taking a picture of me!

And that wraps it up for the Nebraska trip pics. Now it's time to get motivated and take some more pictures in San Diego.

 

[jtbell]

Yesterday (Friday) I drove up into Wisconsin to visit the East Troy Railroad Museum. It operates 7 miles of track that were originally part of The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company's system of local streetcars and interurban lines.

When TMER&L abandoned its interurban lines, the village of East Troy bought this section of track so local industries could keep their rail freight service. A group of railfans started running restored cars on weekends. After there was no more need for the freight service, the village turned over the line to the museum.

The museum's station in East Troy was originally the line's electrical substation, which converted AC to DC for powering locomotives and streetcars. A much smaller facility does this now, using modern solid-state technology.

The museum has a nice collection of artifacts mainly from the Milwaukee area, plus some from other Chicago-area systems.

When I arrived, the first of the line's three round trips had just returned, using two Chicago 'L' cars from 1924.

The other two trips, which I rode, used something very different.

Nice and breezy on a hot summer day. This car is actually a modern replica of ones that were common c. 1900-1930. It was built by a local railfan in 1975, using parts from various other cars.

The scenery is mostly cornfields, with a lake near the end of the line.

The Elegant Farmer sells ice cream, pies and other baked goods.

(skip to next post in this series)

 

[jtbell]

As we were returning on the last trip of the day, about 1.5 miles from East Troy we heard a loud "bang!" and the car came to a stop with some smoke coming out of the motorman's controller console. It dissipated before I could get a picture of it. Then we noticed a small fire next to the track about 100 yards behind us. The conductor took a portable extinguisher to put it out.

The motorman called the station to have them send out another car to rescue us.

Then the village's fire and EMS crews showed up.

We didn't need any help, so they left. After about another 20 minutes, the rescue car arrived.

We arrived back in East Troy about 30 minutes late.

A good outcome in the end. All the passengers seemed to take it in stride, even the kids.

(skip to next post in this series)