Featured photo: NΓ‘mΔstΓ Republiky (Republic Square), Prague, Czech Republic – 6 Nov 2016.
From thousands of photographs over the last year, I have more than enough to highlight numerous examples of travel and urban photography. The following “moments” are selected from Instagram: a second set of 16 for 2016.
Featured image: Luther memorial at Market Square, Eisleben, Germany – 26 Oct 2016.
From thousands of photographs over the last year, I have more than enough to highlight numerous examples of travel and urban photography. The following “instants” are selected from Instagram: my 16 for 2016.
Since 2003, December 11 is International Mountain Day as designated by the United Nations General Assembly. Annually, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) observes the day:
… to create awareness about the importance of mountains to life, to highlight the opportunities and constraints in mountain development and to build alliances that will bring positive change to mountain peoples and environments around the world.
• Mountains cover almost one-quarter (22 percent) of the Earth’s surface.
• Mountains host about 50 percent of the world’s biodiversity hotspots.
• Up to 80 percent of the world’s freshwater supply comes from mountains.
• One in eight people (13 percent) around the world lives in the mountains.
• Mountain tourism accounts for almost 20 percent of the worldwide tourism industry.
The following provides a glimpse to the mountain environments around the world and to the challenging conditions our ancestors would have faced and endured.
Above: Fraser River, east from Port Mann Bridge, between Coquitlam and Surrey, BC (HL).
The fourth Sunday in September is World Rivers Day. The University of Oxford’s Dictionaries defines ‘river‘ as:
“a large natural stream of water flowing in a channel to the sea, a lake, or another river.”
A river has always been water supply and demand: daily use and consumption; farming and agriculture; and where the waste goes, often back into the same supply. A river has always been about transport: trade and delivery of goods; shuttling people between places; and with people travelling, the exchange of language and culture. Throughout history, the establishment of towns and cities and the subsequent development of rivers have been about a mix of urban and rural elements, and about the relationship and interactions between people and their waterways.
I’m a longtime baseball fan, going way back to the days of watching on CBC Television many Montréal Expos’ home games at Jarry Park Stadium, and back to the inaugural seasons for both the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays. I’ve been looking forward to visiting Camden Yards in Baltimore since its completion in 1992. I’m visiting friends in Baltimore as one of many North American stops in my 2012 around-the-world (RTW) trip. With the added bonus of the stadium’s 20th anniversary, we’re on a weekday-afternoon tour of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Although baseball season is already a few weeks in, there are only six of us on the tour. It feels like we have all of Camden Yards to ourselves.
I’m also a fan of sports history. A few weeks earlier, I returned to Toronto for the first time in ten years, and I found some ‘religion’ in the presence of “The Holy Grail” inside the Hockey Hall of Fame. Here at Camden Yards, it’s special to examine an important part of Oriole and baseball lore, reading about Brooks Robinson and Frank Robinson, and seeing the various displays for Cal Ripken Jr.
At home plate, I imagine I’m at bat, and smacking a 3-2 outside fastball towards the warehouse wall in right field, and I’m rounding the bases …
Fotoeins Fotografie 