A big spread of native flowers, shrubs, and trees from West Melbourne's Native Butterfly Flowers, which was selling more than 200 species at Heathcote Gardens' fall garden festival this weekend.

Pine needle baskets.

A bit more at Heathcote. Smoke rising from the hamburger/hot dog cooker.

Back to Labor Day at The Wedge.

Edited: 10/17/2023 at 06:15 PM by ww

Back to Feb. 2018, cheap ticket to Paris. Once there, I decided to see Chartres, home of a famous medieval Gothic cathedral with a new interior paint job, allegedly faithful to how it had looked when new. This isn't a perfect photo, but the focus, exposure, and image quality were outstanding.

The subject is "Carolus", Latin for the emperor we call Charlemagne, ruler of much of present-day France, Italy, and Germany. The empire split up at his death.

Here's how the interior looks with its new paint.

And a not quite so great look at a big rose window. The five windows below show the four writers of Gospels held up on the shoulders of prophets. Luke on Jeremiah, Matthew on Isaiah, Virgin Mary with baby Jesus, John on Ezekiel, Mark on Daniel (?).

During the Allied advance across France, a US Army unit nearly blew up the Cathedral, thinking the towers were being used for the view. A colonel took it upon himself to lead a recon, found nothing, and persuaded the higher-ups to leave the building alone. The colonel was killed in action the next day. A book's available.

Edited: 10/18/2023 at 06:15 PM by ww

I forgot to post these from Sept 5 at The Wedge. For starters, this water photographer was having some fun simply using his housing to protect the camera from splashing. Better than having to stand at a tripod upstairs.

So here he is upstairs with a White Lens nearby.

This smiling shot is my most popular Flickr image of the season

And this is the really popular photo.

Edited: 02/10/2024 at 11:33 PM by ww

I barely noticed these bubbles, which were a momentary phenomenon at the Wedge shore. Above, cropped bubbles from the image below. This guy was having a fine time, as shown above. Didn't get the name, but I bet he's as serious as anyone in the water there.

Central Tokyo. The oldest remaining garden from the Edo period, when the Tokogawa shoguns ruled Japan from their castle. About a quarter of the garden was saved after the Meiji revolt in the 1860s established modern Japan and moved the emperor to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo.

This gate separating the inner and outer parts of the garden was destroyed in World War II and a replica finally built in 2020.

This is from a while back. Pretty sure it's not posted here, or if it is, without location. I was pretty happy to spot it with some help from image searches. Arches National Park, Baby Steps Trail at edge of upper red. Taken from a Cessna flying from NW Wyoming to Santa Monica, California.

An oddball from Labor Day weekend at The Wedge. The shutter speed was too slow, but I was following the bodyboarder, who came in pretty sharp, with everything else a blurry motion.

Lots of lights at Heathcote Botanical Gardens in Ft Pierce, Friday and Saturday evenings, weather permitting. Until New Year.

Since I had an image of surf bubbles, here's the bubbles in an old bathtub at Heathcote

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This one was a mess to edit, with very bright string-light flamingo and peacock, then much softer floodlight illumination. It's the result of using a set of images at different exposures to assemble a "high dynamic range" image, then manipulating the living daylights out of it to lessen the distance between the extremely bright string-light items and the floodlighted palms.

Edited: 12/03/2023 at 01:48 PM by ww

Another Newport Beach Labor Day weekend photo that became popular on Flickr. You work to get decent action photos, good lighting, etc., and it turns out some of the simple snapshots get the attention. BTW, the long Viper swim fins are still in production (moved from California to Mexico) and remain popular with lifeguards and some bodysurfers. Yucca Fins is taking orders for its "longblade" competitor, in a choice of four flexibilities, stiff to really flexy.

Edited: 02/16/2024 at 02:02 AM by ww

Another Wedge shot that I'd passed over. Turned out pretty good. Labor Day weekend, 2023.

Also popular on Flickr

Edited: 02/10/2024 at 11:34 PM by ww

Food!

Food!

That's a wonderful picture.

-------------------------
I was right.

The popularity of food trucks is making for more and better ones.

That photo was a very easy one to take and edit. Past years, Joe the hot dog guy and the glazed nut lady were great subjects

.

My camera has a small sensor and great weatherproofing, making it popular with bird photographers, but for night stuff, you're supposed to use a bigger, fatter, heavier camera and lens combo with a sensor the size of old 35 mm film.

I'm kinda proud of this one. The camera didn't want to distinguish blue and purple string lights, so I selected the ones I knew were purple and made them purple. Lying in the name of truth. The peacock has something like a thousand lights and was a major project for the volunteer who built it. Now that I've figured it out, I can maybe do some other edits....

Santa was not as well lighted as he should have been, but was happy to be photoed. I need to make a print in the morning.

Edited: 12/22/2023 at 10:52 PM by ww

This was a "flower park" north of Tokyo with an incredibly elaborate light show. That sort of curtain in the rear is a huge vine arbor (wisteria) with programmed lights.

They also had a huge rainbow with images.

Knife (and scissor and nail clipper and garden tool) shop in Tokyo's Kitchen Town street, west of the popular Asakusa restaurant-shopping area.

Tokyo's most important Buddhist temple (rebuilt from scratch after being firebombed in 1945) with Sky Tree.

Big trees (Japanese cypress, Cryptomeria) and Drum Tower at Nikko Shrine, the burial site and monument to the first Tokugawa shogun. The elaborate shrine was built by his grandson.