Category: TomD

Guest Contributor TomD’s Content

Tom’s World – 28AUG2024 – Statues – 4

photog Guest Contributors, Photography, TomD , , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

Taken on a drizzly early spring day in Atlanta’s Westview Cemetery. This cemetery along with Oakland Cemetery about 3 miles east combined have so many fantastic photo subjects as to be a visual banquet. I can (and have) spent cumulative weeks just trying to see everything.

SONY DSC

 

No intro necessary for this one except it’s the real one. I get up the DC area every few years to visit my parents grave sites in Arlington Nation and took this on one of the trips.

SONY DSC

 

This amusing statue is located at the terminus of a bicycle trail in Alpharetta, Ga.

 

#19 Figurehead for the largest sailing vessel in current use, The Juan Sebastian De Alcano. Juan Sebastián de Elcano is a training ship of the Spanish Navy. It is a four-masted topsail, steel-hulled barquentine (schooner barque). At 113 metres (371 ft) long, it is the third-largest tall ship in the world, and is the sailing vessel that has sailed the furthest, covering more than 2,000,000 nautical miles (3,700,000 km; 2,300,000 mi) in its lifetime.

The JS De Alcano puts in to port in Pensacola for a visit every 4 years or so,

Guest Contributor – TomD – 26AUG2024 – Photo – Military

photog Guest Contributors, Photography, TomD ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

In reply to MasterDiver.

This is a ”disappearing gun” emplacement dating from 130 years ago. It is was a coastal defense weapon.

DSC2804tm2

Sure looks to be that the risings seas have flooded this emplacement out. There is a sea wall on base at NAS Pensacola that has been in place for about the same amount of time and contemporary pictures showing the seawall in the first decade of the 1900’s show no discernible difference from now in water levels.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 24AUG2024 – The Best Camera

photog Guest Contributors, Photography, TomD , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

A lot of my shots aren’t planned shoots, they’re targets of opportunity so to speak. I have 2 cameras; one, like yours is a Sony A7IV and a fair collection of large and expensive lenses. It’s great for planned shoots but is simply too big, too heavy and too expensive to have with me nearly always.

For close to the last 10 years, I’ve also had a camera from the Sony A6000 series (currently A6600). I tend to keep a Zeiss 16-70 f4.0 on it. They’re not exactly cheap but you can get a package 40% the size, 33% the weight, 40% of the cost and 95% of the capability of more upscale Sony (or any) cameras.

I know I’ve used the following analogy here before but when business and practical considerations forced me into concealed carry in downtown Atlanta, when over a 10-year period, I had to survey the structural conditions of old boarded up downtown buildings prior to renovation. Things got pretty scary on a number of occasions and I’m close to dead certain that having that pistol with me, despite never having even been cocked, saved my butt on several occasions.

The best pistol for concealed carry is the one you’re likely to have with you when needed.

The parallel is obvious.

The now-ubiquitous cell phone works for most people and even me on occasion. You can get good snapshots but photographs, no.

 

Here’s a photo of my version of a “concealed carry” camera. By that, I mean it will fit in a coat pocket or a console.

The lens is a f4.0 Zeiss 16-70 which, since the camera has an ASP-C sensor, is the equivalent of a 24-105 in a full frame camera. That’s mild wide angle to mild telephoto and is a pretty good and useful do everything lens. ASP-C lenses are very small compared to their 35mm counterparts.

This camera is probably 90%+ as capable as its much larger and more expensive cousins. Unless I was pushing in extreme conditions, I am unable to identify which camera shot which photo.

And though the margin is decreasing, in virtually all respects this camera is quite superior to phone cameras .

DSC06951

An analogy

DSC00063

Tom’s World – 21AUG2024 – Statues – 3

photog Guest Contributors, Photography, TomD , , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

Jake, a monument to military divers. This statue is located on base at The US Navy Diver Training & Explosive Ordnance Training Center Panama City.

 

Coming home after a long deployment, located on base at NAS Pensacola, National Naval Air Museum.

SONY DSC

 

This monument is from the turn of the 19th-20th century and is located at Atlanta’s Westview Cemetery. I’ve seen lots of cemetery monuments and statues and think that this one is absolutely beautifully done.

SONY DSC

 

This one is a composite. The statue is behind St. Michael’s Episcopal in Milton, FL. I didn’t like the background in the original, it was too busy, towers, other decorations, phone poles, other buildings made a jarring and competing background and destroyed the impact of the statue. So, using Photoshop, I popped it into a photo taken from my house side door as a big storm approached. Much more effective.

SONY DSC

 

Unknown Infant. Every picture should tell a story, this one I think is poignant. I wonder who put the cat there? City Cemetery, Milton, FL.

 

Tom’s World – 14AUG2024 – Statues – 2

photog Guest Contributors, Photography, TomD , , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

This is Jasper Smith, currently “residing” in Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery in downtown Atlanta, across I-20 from the Braves old stadium. I don’t have any history for him though there is a Jasper, Georgia, though I have no idea if there’s a connection.. But Jasper sits on top of his very own mausoleum, mulling things over in mild consternation. And who wouldn’t aspire to such a state?

SONY DSC

 

This is one of the shots I took at a museum display of 18th & 19th century French art.

SONY DSC

 

Trisdan De Luna y Arellano, Conquistador and the founder of a Spanish colony at what in now Pensacola in 1559. Funny thing, I did a quick google of him to make sure I had the dates right and the lead article on google was using one of my pictures from this shoot as the lead without permission or attribution. Theoretically, that’s illegal but, I’ve found, common.

SONY DSC

 

This is a near life sized resin casting of a female that I found in the Porch Creek Indian casino in Atmore Al. The Porch Indians are an offshoot of their brother tribe, the BMW Indians. I absolutely do not have the “gambling bug” but my wife does. On the occasion I take her there, I wander around with my camera shooting interesting stuff of which there is a bunch while she’s hypnotized by the slots. The casino staff gets pretty quirky about cameras in the casino until I assure them that I’m shooting the facility, not the people.

Tom’s World – 07AUG2024 – Statues – 1

photog Guest Contributors, Photography, TomD , , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

Memorial to Confederate soldiers in Atlanta’s Westview Cemetery

 

Memorial to the Unknown Confederate Dead at Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery.

SONY DSC

 

From the grave of the Atlanta newspaper publisher circa the early 1900’s.

SONY DSC

 

Incredibly well done life sized statue from Atlanta’s Westview. The entire background and statue were carved from the same slab. You can see the veins in the rock running continuously. This was done in the early 1900’s by an Italian artist.

 

Guest Contributor – TomD – 31JUL2024 – Lessons of War

photog Current Events, Guest Contributors, TomD , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

I would have thought that the main lesson of the Viet Nam and succeeding regional wars was or should have been: Don’t initiate or enter wars unless you intend to win and pay whatever price necessary to do so. WWII would be a prime example.

But, apparently, that lesson is too esoteric or functionally difficult to be put into practice by our masters. Just what has been accomplished by the US providing Ukraine with just enough weaponry and resources to prolong the war and kill millions on both sides? Not to mention waste God knows how many $100’s of billions of dollars. What was the point? Anyone? Send a message, perhaps?

 

Update:

Comments

photog in reply to TomD

If I had to guess what lesson they think they learned from Vietnam, it was to emulate what the Soviets did in that war. Find a proxy to fight your enemy for you. So Russia had the North Vietnamese. The neo-cons in the State Department have the Ukrainian Azov faction who are willing to burn Ukraine down to punish the Russo-Ukrainians who make up 25% of the population. The fact that millions will die and Russia will become our implacable foe forever is neither here nor there.

 

Chemist in reply to TomD.

Tom D asked: “What was the point?”
10% for the big guy.
Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but this has always been about graft.
At least is has from the US side.
I think the Poles genuinely wanted to get their licks into the Russians but the US congress, State dept and POTUS were all in for their cut.

 

photog in reply to Chemist.

I wonder where they’ll play the game next after Ukraine dries up? Iran?

 

War Pig commented

We leared the lesson of Vietnam when a Vietnam officer, General Schwarzkopf, refused to play Vietnam rules and insisted on using maximum effort to win-the-frigging-war.
It was LBJ who insisted that he knew better than generals how to fight a war. Ditto Biden.

The US won all the battles in both Vietnam and Afghanistan, but lost due to crooked and cowardly politicians. The lesson is that you do not face the US military head on, you nibble at the edges. Be prepared to take a horrible kill to death ratio because you will lose virtually every battle, and outlast American politicians.

 

 

Tom’s World – 31JUL2024 – Gulf of Mexico Oil Field Work Boats- 3

photog Guest Contributors, Photography, TomD , , , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

Moving the focus a little, this is still boats in the gulf and contains two oil field boats but it has two shots from a different view.

 

Captain America, from it’s resume: “Captain America” will be capable of involvement in offshore installation and decommissioning projects worldwide, including installing floating wind farms, says the firm. The vessel’s 399-person accommodations make it suitable for decommissioning preparatory work, platform support for maintenance, field upgrades and allow it to “provide offshore support as a flotel,” adds the firm. It has a 1,000 ton crane.

 

Another of the many tugs seen around here. This one is bringing coal to a local power, a calling that I suspect is short time.  This coal probably come from next door Alabama. We’ve got a great intracoastal system around here, you can go for hundreds of miles from here east or west without ever getting in the Gulf which is a good thing because I’m not sure this particular rig would do well in any seas to speak of.

SONY DSC

 

 

This boat is in a “less prosperous” marina located at the top of Pensacola Bay where the Escambia River empties. Those are tidal flats in the background. If you look at the flats from the vantage of the bridge in the back ground, you will see a fair number grounded boats sprinkled around (some quite big) where they were placed by various hurricanes.

 

 

Speaking of hurricanes, this boat has been here since some hurricane or other sunk it years ago. If I were going to title this picture, this would be, “But the Payments Continue”.

SONY DSC