Above/featured: Ruta 5 (highway 5), a ribbon-like cut through the desert in Región de Atacama, Chile – 24 Nov 2009 (450D).
It’s an interesting question: how does one consider, view, or photograph what’s under the sun? There’s a lot of room for interpretation. Modifying the theme for the desert sun, I examine the “quality of sunlight” within the Atacama Desert in northern and north-central Chile, and within the Sonoran Desert in southwest United States.
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.
Since 1996, the Botanical Gardens of Buenos Aires in the affluent neighbourhood of Palermo is one of Argentina’s national cultural monuments. The gardens’ full name is Jardín Botánico Carlos Thays after the French landscape architect Carlos Thays who arrived in Argentina in 1889 and became the Buenos Aires’ Director of Parks and Walkways in 1891. The gardens contain thousands of plant varieties over a seven-hectare spread.
The Gardens also have the unfortunate reputation as the home to unwanted domesticated cats. Early calls to remove or destroy the feline population were met with fierce opposition. Interested volunteers have formed the committee, Asociación Civil Gatos Botánico (on Facebook and Twitter). With several hundred cats in the gardens, people have a tough job keeping up, taking their own time and money to neuter, care, feed, and vaccinate the cats, as well as organizing suitable candidates for adoption into new homes.
• “Everything You Need to Know About the Cats of the JardÃn Botanico”, by Mark Pampanin, The Bubble, 20140604.
• “La tarea de los voluntarios del JardÃn Botánico es enorme – nos ocupamos del bienestar 250 gatos en estado de abandono.” Por Silvina Rufrancos, La Prensa, 20140820.
I made these photographs with a Canon PowerShot A510 on 23 March 2008 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-884.
Since 1995, I’ve been fortunate to experience significant travel: first as green graduate student on my first (of many) trips to Chile; followed by the opportunity to live and work in 3 countries on 3 continents inside a span of 10 years. I didn’t give much thought about their relative importance at the time, but I’m lucky to have visited a number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHS).
Fotoeins Fotografie 