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| It's election time here in the US. There was a debate tonight, and there are a lot more debates going on right now on places like facebook. I got involved in one or two, then I realized they don't matter. |
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| Do the politics of a thousand years ago matter? Instead of debating and debating, why don't we figure out what is in the best interest of the human race. Hopefully these quotes will put it into perspective. |
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| An early American Boeing B-17 (notice no dorsal/ventral turrets and the early war American markings) and crew watching the setting sun. This is most likely pre-war. It's amazing how beautiful this photo is. |
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| A German Type BP 42 armored train on the eastern front, 1942 or 1943. It's interesting to note that the Germans and the Russians used armored trains. The Germans gave it up, the Russians didn't. They used several armored trains to move troops in Chechnya in the mid-1990s. I've seen photos of them, but unfortunately I am unable to find them now. Perhaps I will run across them in the future and be able to share them. Anyway, armored trains are an interesting idea. They provide a mobile fortress that can pack quite a bit of firepower, unfortunately the road they run on is rather vulnerable. |
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| A German paratrooper at Monte Cassino in 1944. This is after the US air force bombed the monastery. He has a first model FG-42 automatic rifle. Because of a requirement by the German air force that it be able to fire from a closed bolt on semi-automatic and an open bolt on automatic, it has a much more complex action that one might think. |
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| A Finnish soldier during the Winter War of 1939-1940 armed with an LS/26 light machine gun. It was an indigenous designed from the early days of light machine guns, as you can see from its rather bulky and odd appearance. It definitely looks cold there too. |
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| German SS troops in Russia. One has a Gew. 98 rifle, the predecessor of the Kar98. They were issued in small numbers at the beginning of the war, and some were still kept on with optics for most of the war. The Waffen SS used quite a few non-standard issue weapons (mostly submachine guns. Origins include Czech, French, Russian and others). It's a very well known rifle, the Gew. 98, but it seems rather out of place in WWII. |
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| Silhouette of a German navy man aboard a ship off Tunis, Tunisia, March 1943. They took the time to take a color photo of the sunset. |
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| Dripping Springs, Texas, USA, September 2012 So did I. Are really all that different? We both found this beautiful. |
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| The water falling down this little cascade is long gone. It has evaporated. It has rained down somewhere else. It has fed a plant. The wind blowing through the trees has long since gone other places. It could be halfway across the world. The things going on in the world, the entire universe, are captured here in this photograph. Everything is held still. Gravity cannot play its game here. The water droplets there are suspended for all eternity. People are being born, people are dying, love is blooming, war is being made, stars are exploding, planets are being formed, ice is melting, water is freezing, kids are playing basketball, elderly people are playing checkers, a horse is jumping over a fence, water droplets are falling..... ........all in one photograph |
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| These are some of the photos from an afternoon or two of photography with a friend of mine. This is one of mine, I wasn't trying to get the dragonfly in the picture but it sneaked in there and made the photo even better. |
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| This one was taken by my friend. She hadn't used my camera much and this one got kind of out of focus, but all that did was make it better. This is one of my favorite photos. |
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| If you look closely, there are some birds in this picture. I was hoping to get them in there when I took the shot, and it just happened that I got the bright setting sun in there too. |
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| Another photo taken by my friend. That's me by the way; unshaven, with my film bag (a Chinese RPK 75-round drum mag pouch) over my shoulder. |
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| This one I took over last weekend. Texas has been in a very large drought for the past few years so rain is something of a novelty. I love taking pictures of the rain and just after a rain. |
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| This is from another afternoon with my friend. We were up on the deck of my house watching the sunset and I saw the reflection on the windows. They turned out exactly as planned, with the sunset in focus and the windows out of focus. |
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| I love using focus to present the subject of a photo. |
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| One of my favorite things about Texas is the sunsets. They can be spectacular. |
