14 posts tagged “nature”
50+ Most interesting - According to Flickr (Set)
Lucie writes:
The City of Petra was hidden in the mountains of Jordan for thousands of years when a young Swiss explorer Johan Ludwig Burckhardt rediscovered it in 1812. Temples, tombs, and other buildings are all carved out of the sandstone cliffs, which also gives it the name the "rose red city"
You reach the ancient city of Petra it by going through a narrow corridor in a mountain of rock. This corridor is about a mile long and just wide enough to fit a small truck - although most people go through on horseback or on foot. When you emerge, you enter a little hidden valley, which is mountain-locked. Petra was a perfect location for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in part because of its rich sense of history. It was famous around the time of Christ for being the only way through those mountains, and traders bringing back silk from China to Europe often traveled through there. Back then, the people of Petra charged a fee-and of course became quite rich. The valley is a mile long, and more than thirty temples line the canyon sides. The temple that was used was right opposite the narrow opening. Many of these temples or tombs go back to about 600 B.C., but the particular one they used was built around the time of Christ. Nobody knows for sure what it was used for. Behind the temple face are a few small, square rooms, which are completely empty. Whatever they held was stolen long ago. It's quite an incredible place - like a tenth wonder of the world." The Siq twists and turns, the high walls all but shutting out the early morning sunlight, until abruptly, through a cleft in the rock , the first glimpse of the city of Petra can be seen.
The Shiq is a great cleft in the earth, formed in the hazy depths of the geological past by the same earthquake activity that has plagued the area ever since. Its narrow, winding route through the lofty cliffs which protect the site on the east remains one of the great experiences for the visitor today, and is probably responsible for the belief that it was here that Moses struck the rock to secure water for his wandering people after the flight from Egypt - the first of the Moses-linked stories now associated with the whole Petra Basin.
When you visit such a popular place as Petra surely is, you always face the issue to come up with some original view of the place. I hope I managed to come with less traditional view with this result of the stillness of rocks and the motion of the horse and the cart.
Canon 5D Mark II, f/4.0, 0.05 sec (1/20), ISO 320, 17 mm
More on www.luciedebelkova.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9HCk1r4OWg
dafttool writes:
Zebra are in the genus Equus, and are related to both asses and horses. Equine are one-toed herbivores that arose in the early Pleistocene Epoch about 2 million years ago. All equids forage primarily on fibrous foods, such as grasses and sedges, as well as bark, leaves, buds, fruits, and roots. Equids employ a hindgut fermentation system, utilizing an enlarged appendix in which plant cell walls are only incompletely digested. By ingesting large quantities of food, they achieve extraction rates equal to those of ruminants.
Zebras mostly inhabit the grasslands and savannahs of Africa. Like all equid, they are highly social mammals that exist in herds comprising of a senior stallion and his harem of mares. They usually only have one foal a year after undergoing a gestation period of 11.5 months (12.5 months in the Grevy's Zebra).
There are a number of theories surrounding the advantage of zebras having a coat of black and white stripes. It is speculated that the stripes confuse predators, such as lions, making it more difficult for them to isolate and cull a single animal from the herd. A park ranger from Africa I know thinks that the stripes provide camouflage out on the hot savannah plains. He had noticed that the heat vapor rising from the ground could completely conceal an entire herd of zebra standing in front of him.
.sweetcaroline's photostream
Sweet Caroline writes:
Situated in the island of Mindanao, Mt. Apo, the highest mountain in the Philippines . A vast area of 72,796 hectares of mossy tropical forest, flowing rivers & streams, waterfalls, exotic flora & fauna and is home to the endagered Philippine eagle.
Katarina's Most faved, most viewed (Set)
Katarina writes:
The Matterhorn (German), Cervino (Italian) or Cervin (French), is a mountain in the Pennine Alps. With its 4,478 metres (14,692 ft) high summit, lying on the border between Switzerland and Italy, it is one of the highest peaks in the Alps and its 1,200 metres (3,937 ft) north face is one of the Great north faces of the Alps.
The individual pieces of the chocolate bar Toblerone are claimed by its maker Kraft to be formed in the likeness of the Matterhorn.
Zermatt (French: Praborgne) is a municipality in the district of Visp in the German-speaking section of the canton of Valais in Switzerland.
It is located at the northern base of the Matterhorn in the Pennine Alps, about 10 km from the border with Italy.
Zermatt has a permanent population of around 5,500 people, although the actual population varies considerably through the seasons as tourists come and go. The village is situated at the end of Mattertal, a north-facing valley, at an altitude of 1,620m (5,315ft). The valley is a dead end; although the border with Italy is close, it cannot be crossed by road, as it traverses a glacier at an altitude of over 3,000m. Zermatt is the starting point of the Patrouille des Glaciers and the Haute Route.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matterhorn
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermatt
dedicated to my flickr-friend Petra (ps70) ...
Large On Black
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
Explored: 01.12.2008
Don't just look at the pretty picture. Get a compass, straightedge, pencil and graph paper. Start creating yourself. Begin with Albrecht Durer's pentagram and hexagram http://www.geomancygroup.org/pentagram.html.
Pentagrams and hexagrams aren't evil. They are encoded in the universe. They manifest in many places such as flowers (p & h), the 8-year long pentagram-forming orbit of Venus around the Sun as seen from Earth, honeycombs (h), any set of seven identically-sized round objects (h), and Saturn's north pole (h). Now stretch your arms out, stand with feet apart and head up high (p).
Oh baby, I'm a star (from 12:54) http://www.spike.com/video/prince-revolution/2792252.
Martin Heigen writes:
The perfect Ratio of 1:1.618 that occurs everywhere in Nature. In this example I used the Corona (Latin for Crown) of a Stapelia schinzii var. schinzii flower (from Namibia, Africa), to illustrate Nature's divine Ratio. The Inner and Outer Corona, and Corolla Lobes (Petals) all conform to this exact Ratio.
The Golden Ratio (or Golden Mean) can be found in everything from human anatomy, to a nautilus shell, butterflies, insects, plants and flowers.
Architects used this formula (π / Phi) from the Parthenon to the Pyramids, and Renaissance Artists like Leonardo da Vinci used it for the Composition of the Mona Lisa.
Best viewed LARGE.
Read more about The Golden Ratio" at Wikipedia.
Martin
Okinawa Soba writes:
Ca.1898 Hand-tinted glass lantern-slide by T. Enami, Japan's Meiji-era Master of the small format image. www.t-enami.org
