Thursday, November 22, 2012
A Waterfall of Fire – Yosemite National Park BY NEHA
A Waterfall of Fire – Yosemite National Park
A rare sight!! *Yosemite National Park**, California , USA*This park was gazetted as a national park in 1890. It is world famous for its rugged terrain, waterfall and century-old pine trees. It covers 1200 sq km and the "fire" waterfall of El Capitan is one of the most spectacular of all scenery. The spectacular view of the waterfall is created by the reflection of sunlight hitting the falling water at a specific angle.
This rare sight can only be seen at a 2-week period towards the end of February. To photograph this rare event, photographers would often have to wait and endure years of patience in order to capture them.
The reason is because its appearance depend on a few natural phenomenons occurring at the same time. 1st, is the formation of the waterfall – The water is formed by the melting of snow and ice at the top of the mountain. It melts between the month of December and January and by the end of February there might not have much snow left to melt. 2nd, is the specific angle of the sunray hitting the falling water – The sun's position must be exactly at a particular spot in the sky. This occurs only in the month of February and at the short hours of dusk. If it is a day full of clouds or something blocking the sun, you can only take pictures of your own sorry faces on the waterfall.
It coincides with the fact that the weather in the National Park at that time of the year is often volatile and unpredictable. It compounds the difficulty of getting these pictures.
Act now – Save Mother Earth BY NEHA
Act now – Save Mother Earth
We all are living in the present world worrying about our day to day life and not much concerned about what is yet to come to our children. We are sitting on a "Time Bomb" that could end it all and send back us to an ice age of unstability. So lets act before its too late and spread the words!
Church of the Intercession BY SUNNY
The idea to photograph The Church of the Intercession on the Nerl River, the famous monument of medieval Russia, was rather spontaneous. I heard in the news that the territory near Ryazan city was under the state of emergency: nearly 500 houses were flooded by the high water.
I already shot the Church of the Intercession from the air in 2010. I made a few calls asking my friends about how the flood affected Vladimir city. I received several promising images very quickly - the valley, which we crossed by foot last time was flooded up to the railroad tracks. Obviously, we had to move quickly. We had to go right away, before the water goes away. Having no boat in our fleet was a serious problem. My friends told me that it was practically impossible to hire a boat on location. I described all these challenges to my partner, Dima Moisseyenko, and asked him if he was ready to put aside his business (ladies and Facebook) and come with me to Vladimir city. Like a good boy scout, Dima was always prepared. The second "boy scout", prepared to take on challenges for the beautiful photo, was Denis Sinyakov, staff photographer of the Reuters agency.
It was decided to leave immediately to arrive by sunrise. We had to find a floatation device right away, so Dima ordered a boat online. They delivered his order an hour before our departure, which was about midnight. In 3,5 hours of driving a bad road and fighting drowsiness we found ourselves near Bogolyubovo railway station. It was dark and quiet at 4 o'clock in the morning. After several attempts to read the manual for our boat in the deem light of the streetlight, and the group brain storming, we finally assembled the boat. Than we hauled it over the railway tracks and put it in the water. While in a hurry, we completely forgot to break a bottle of Champaign during this Gala launch. Well, we didn't have it with us anyway.
As promised, there was a lot of water. The fog descended on the river and made it look like we were on an ocean shore: there was nothing but the water up to the horizon. The opposite shore was completely invisible. The moment we set to launch, a group of photographers appeared on the shore. They carried a lot of photo gear, even tripods, but they didn't have the main piece of equipment required to photograph the flood - a boat. They looked at our boat, sighed, and went on along the rail tracks, disappearing in the fog...Wasting no more time, we sailed away.
I will skip the details of our glorious voyage through the flooded forest first, then through the valleys and fields. I just want to mention that among three of us only Denis had waders, and that in ten minutes after volunteering to raw the boat, Dima confessed that he's never done it before.
After wondering through river channels for about an hour we saw a blurry silhouette of the Church. Right before the sunrise. The sun painted the sky and the water with such surreal colors that we almost forgot why we were there.
The guys grabbed their cameras and I took the paddles. Only the sound of their shutter clicks disturbed the silence for the following half an hour. Our photographers got so carried away, that only my threats to "misuse the paddles" made Dima focus on shooting aerial spherical panoramas, which you can see now in today's tour...
Photography and text by Stanislav Sedov and Dmitriy Moiseenko
The Church of the Intercession of the Holly Virgin on the Nerl River (1165 AC) near Bogolyubovo village is a greatest monument of Russian architecture. Being an important component of the White Monuments of Vladimir and Suzdal, the Church belongs to the World Heritage of UNESCO. This remarkable Russian heritage attraction was built on the man-made hill, at the confluence of Nerl and Klyazma Rivers. The 5-meter deep foundation of the Church was especially designed to protect it from flood. The amazing fact: it took only one year to build this Church. The Life of Andrey Bogolyubsky says «This church is to by erected within one year and create home for monastics". This chronicle shows that the Church is related to the victorious campaign of Vladimir's army to Bulgarians, and to the death of Knyaz Andrey's son Izyaslav.
It is a miracle that the Church of the Intercession has survived to our days. At the end of 18th century the abbot of the Bogolyubsky monastery, under whose supervision the Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin was kept, decided to disassemble the building - it didn't bring any profit - because the monastery needed bricks to build a belfry. Fortunately, the abbot didn't have enough funds to commence the demolition. Unfortunately, original interior frescos were lost during its reconstruction in 1877.
Grand Canyon West, USA BY DONE
The deepest canyon in the world is one of the most famous US tourist attractions. And it's respectively called the Grand Canyon of Colorado Plateau: "grand" means "big, magnificent, enormous, great" and so on and so forth. The Grand Canyon was added to the famous UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979. The list itself was created in 1972, which makes the Grand Canyon one of its first entries.
The width of the canyon ranges between 20 and 6 kilometers. However, there is one spot where it narrows down to 800 meters. As it narrows down, the walls pull closer together reaching 100 meters gap at the rock bottom.
The canyon has been in the making for 10 million years. 4 different geological eras of Earth are represented in the canyon. Underground forces pushed the Colorado River bed up, forcing the water to gradually cut into the plateau and wash out the canyon's soft rocks. This process is still active: the Colorado River washes out about half a million tons of rock a day, so that even the hardest granite walls of the canyon surrender about quarter of a millimeter each year to this "filing".
The canyon doesn't look like a long narrow hole in the ground at all. It's randomly filled with rocks and cliffs of different shapes: giant pagodas, pyramids, towers, fortified walls and other incredible formations made by nature... Having been thoroughly studied by modern scientists, and being the most famous US tourist attraction, the Grand Canyon receives a lot of visitors. Many of the Grand Canyon cliffs now have their own original names. Such as, Vishnu Temple, Shiva Temple, and Wotan's Throne.
Of course these names are fairly new. Native Americans knew about Grand Canyon thousands of years ago and probably gave those rocks different names. However there is no written evidence of it, only petroglyphs.
The modern human history knows two Grand Canyon discoveries: first one happened in 1540 when a group of Spanish soldiers stumbled upon it in their search for gold. Greedy Spaniards found no gold and no water there, and admiring Grand Canyon scenery wasn't in their plans, so they left and never mentioned this location.
After this incident Europeans have forgotten about the canyon for several centuries. In 1869 professor John Wesley Powell organized first scientific expedition to Grand Canyon. Powell explored and described the canyon. By the way, another US tourist attraction was named after him - Lake Powell .
But let us go back to our canyons. Nowadays a trip to Grand Canyon is on top of the list for almost every tourist coming to the USA. And not so long ago (in the 1940th and 1950th) one could take a picture of the Grand Canyon without actually going there. The thing is that many passenger airlines, flying in this area, intentionally took a scenic route so their passengers could admire the view of the Grand Canyon. It was also common for pilots to make several circles and roll the plane to give the passengers the best view. This was permitted until the collision of 2 passenger aircrafts in 1956. Since then the "dancing" over the Grand Canyon has been prohibited.
Nevertheless, there are several other options for those who want to see the Grand Canyon landscapes: you can take a trip to the USA; or you can enjoy our virtual aerial photo tour. The length of the Grand Canyon is about 450 kilometers. Earlier we published the aerial panoramas' shot at the beginning of the Grand Canyon (link to the Horseshoe), and now we would like to show the West end of the Grand Canyon - which is approximately 100 kilometers from Las Vegas. Let's see!
The width of the canyon ranges between 20 and 6 kilometers. However, there is one spot where it narrows down to 800 meters. As it narrows down, the walls pull closer together reaching 100 meters gap at the rock bottom.
The canyon has been in the making for 10 million years. 4 different geological eras of Earth are represented in the canyon. Underground forces pushed the Colorado River bed up, forcing the water to gradually cut into the plateau and wash out the canyon's soft rocks. This process is still active: the Colorado River washes out about half a million tons of rock a day, so that even the hardest granite walls of the canyon surrender about quarter of a millimeter each year to this "filing".
The canyon doesn't look like a long narrow hole in the ground at all. It's randomly filled with rocks and cliffs of different shapes: giant pagodas, pyramids, towers, fortified walls and other incredible formations made by nature... Having been thoroughly studied by modern scientists, and being the most famous US tourist attraction, the Grand Canyon receives a lot of visitors. Many of the Grand Canyon cliffs now have their own original names. Such as, Vishnu Temple, Shiva Temple, and Wotan's Throne.
Of course these names are fairly new. Native Americans knew about Grand Canyon thousands of years ago and probably gave those rocks different names. However there is no written evidence of it, only petroglyphs.
The modern human history knows two Grand Canyon discoveries: first one happened in 1540 when a group of Spanish soldiers stumbled upon it in their search for gold. Greedy Spaniards found no gold and no water there, and admiring Grand Canyon scenery wasn't in their plans, so they left and never mentioned this location.
After this incident Europeans have forgotten about the canyon for several centuries. In 1869 professor John Wesley Powell organized first scientific expedition to Grand Canyon. Powell explored and described the canyon. By the way, another US tourist attraction was named after him - Lake Powell .
But let us go back to our canyons. Nowadays a trip to Grand Canyon is on top of the list for almost every tourist coming to the USA. And not so long ago (in the 1940th and 1950th) one could take a picture of the Grand Canyon without actually going there. The thing is that many passenger airlines, flying in this area, intentionally took a scenic route so their passengers could admire the view of the Grand Canyon. It was also common for pilots to make several circles and roll the plane to give the passengers the best view. This was permitted until the collision of 2 passenger aircrafts in 1956. Since then the "dancing" over the Grand Canyon has been prohibited.
Nevertheless, there are several other options for those who want to see the Grand Canyon landscapes: you can take a trip to the USA; or you can enjoy our virtual aerial photo tour. The length of the Grand Canyon is about 450 kilometers. Earlier we published the aerial panoramas' shot at the beginning of the Grand Canyon (link to the Horseshoe), and now we would like to show the West end of the Grand Canyon - which is approximately 100 kilometers from Las Vegas. Let's see!
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