Posts Tagged ‘Today’

Black 5 Steam train on west Highland line today

Took this shot today (friday) of Black 5 steam train hauling the jacobite between Fort William and Mallaig. This was another railway image I have wanted to get in the right conditions and today the light was good up until around 2pm The island of Rum is in the distance.

TODAYS NEW PICTURE STEAM TRAIN NR MALLAIG

Today I made yet another effort to add more steam train pictures to my portfolio. I drove to a favourite spot of mine between Arisaig and Morar on the west Highland line.It requires a short hike up the hillside but the picture speaks for itself,It all came together perfectly.Canon EOS1Ds mk 3 with f2.8 16-35 lense.More pictures at http://www.scotphoto.com.any/ picture from my blog can be ordered as a A3 or A3+ print.

Oban tour bus crosses the Atlantic

Caught this shot today of the Oban tour bus crossing the Atlantic at Clachan Seil,Argyll, its a picture i wanted to get if only for its title possibilities,”Local bus crosses the atlantic twice a day”etc etc.Designed by Thomas telford and completed in 1791.Known locally as the bridge over the Atlantic.Dennis Hardley http://www.scotphoto.com/

Summer’s Colours

~ Flowers from my garden ~



Join us, won’t you, at Today’s Flowers.


Friday Walkabout

A few scenes from today’s hike.

Gooseneck Cove at high tide.

Along the Twin Ledges Trail in Ballard Park.

The decorative wall around Harbour Court, the home of the Newport annex of the New York Yacht Club.

The Newport municipal pier at high tide.

The Sail Newport sailing class came ashore at King Park for a picnic.

And I’ll close with a little humor:

“Whinin’ Boy, I don’t deny my name”. One of this year’s Herring Gull hatchlings (the brown one to the right) literally whining at the adult to be fed. Which reminded me of this song:

Photos & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

A Sun-drenched Day

flowers from my garden
Take the virtual garden tour at Today’s Flowers.

Ballard Park Organics

Two interesting macros from Ballard Park today.

Remains of a Red-tailed Hawk back in a shaded spot in the Quarry.

Mushrooms along the Valley Trail.

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Utah wedding photographer {Tuscany}

Just a quick one from the wedding I shot a few day ago. I’m not much of a blogger on the weekends, but thought I’d share this one today. :) These two were married in Salt Lake City at Tuscany. It was so beautiful!

Birds Here and There

A few bird pics from Thursday and today. On my way to doing errands on Thursday I took a brief detour to the Cliff Walk in hopes of surf (nope!) but did find some interesting Sandpipers on Belmont Beach at the end of Marine Ave. There were a couple of Spotted Sandpipers that I never got a good shot of, but this little Least Sandpiper came out very well indeed.

Today was the biweekly Sunday bird walk, and today we went down to Third Beach and then over to Sachuest Point. There were Goldfinches everywhere; this is peak season for them because all their favorite flowers are going to seed now. This little male American Goldfinch was in the parking lot at Third Beach, first in a big puddle drinking and bathing (we had a real dumper of a storm come through last evening), then up to some Chicory gone to seed, and then back to the puddle again. I seem to have irritated him; in both of the photos below he seems to be giving me that “Do you mind?” look. [Note: Click to enlarge.]

There was also a Short-billed Dowitcher hanging out with a crowd of Peeps (mostly Semi-Palmated Plovers and Least Sandpipers), but it was in direct, bright sunlight and wasn’t photographing well. My buddy Bob was on the other side of it getting pictures which probably turned out, but by the time I got to where he was the birds had all decided to move elsewhere and flew off in a cloud.

After that we went over to the Sachuest Point National Wildlife refuge. Now, it’s been a hot and humid week here. Yesterday was horrible, with heat in the upper 80s F (31º – 32º C) with relative humidity up in the 90 percentile range, and not a breath of a breeze. Today was starting to turn out the same (at 7:00 AM it was 77º F/25º C with 89% relative humidity) , but lo and behold, when we were out at Sachuest Point (which has absolutely no shade at all) a thin scrim of cloud covered the sun and a nice (and considerably less humid) breeze picked up, so our jaunt on the north loop trail turned out to be pleasant. Lots of Goldfinches, Mockingbirds, Catbirds, and Song Sparrows, and the offshore rocks were full of cormorants and two immature Eider ducks. But the best shot of the day happened as we pulled into the parking lot at the Visitor’s Center – there on the peak of the roof, right over the main entrance, was this Red-tailed Hawk welcoming all comers, as if to say: “Hi there! I’m a wild bird, and if you want to see more wild birds all you have to do is look around and walk the trails. Enjoy your stay and come back often!” Needless to say Bob and I were snapping away!

Nothing from Ballard Park and Gooseneck Cove today. I bumped into some friends on Hazard Rd. at the Cove and we spent most of the time watching the antics of the Blue Crabs at the culvert – there was one small one doing some kind of major excavation and all the others were coming over to bug him about it, and then a big ‘un came over and scared everybody off. There were some Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets flying over but not landing, and an immature Black-crowned Night Heron flew over and perched in a tree across the way from us, but it was out of camera range. Oh well, maybe later in the week…

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Used To Be…

Today’s post was inspired by Tony’s and Alan’s Sepia Saturday posts (no, I’m not jumping on the bandwagon; I really don’t have a collection of old photos to show off). Tony’s been scanning slides of old buildings no longer there in Halifax, and Alan found the park featured in an antique postcard and took his own pictures of the place, antiquing them to match the postcard. Since I don’t have any pictures of places that don’t exist any more, I decided to shoot some places that used to be something else way back when. Well, in one case the building is up for sale and soon will no longer be used for what it was built for (that is, if somebody buys it). And then I played with them in Photoshop to make them look somewhat aged.

The first place I thought of was the old Masonic Temple at School and Church Streets. It’s now used as an apartment house and it really needs some serious working on; there are boarded up windows and it really needs painting. But some of the signs of being a Masonic temple are still there – the square central “tower”, the round windows in the flanking gables, and the pillars at the front entrance. In colonial days and through the 19th Century there were a lot of Masons in Newport, but the movement isn’t what it once was and interest is dying out; I’m sure there are other temples which have suffered the same fate.

The First Church of Christ, Scientist on Touro St. is up for sale; has been for over a year now. There’s no longer a functioning Christian Science congregation here; no new blood and all the ancient members of the congregation have been dying without being replaced. I gather this is a world-wide phenomenon in this particular denomination. Anyhow, if you have $725,000 USD to spare, come to Newport!

I also got shots of a former synagogue now used as a school by one of the more virulent new religious right churches on Center St., and a former fire station converted to residences on Young St., but I couldn’t get those shots to work. And there are a bunch of old churches , some fairly historic, now used as residences which I’ll do a separate post about some day. But for today I’ll leave you with this shot of this old trestle which is part of what used to be the old Walnut St. Bridge over the railroad tracks; Walnut St. no longer goes all the way through to Farewell St. because they built America’s Cup Blvd. in the ’70s and cut the street off so that now it ends at the trestle.


© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

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