On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Balloon Juicers who are on the road, travelling, etc. and wish to share notes, links, pictures, stories, etc. from their escapades. As the US mainland begins the end of the Earth day as we measure it, many of us rise to read about our friends and their transient locales.
So, please, speak up and share some of your adventures, observations, and sights as you explore, no matter where you are. By concentrating travel updates here, it’s easier for all to keep up-to-date on the adventures of our fellow Commentariat. And it makes finding some travel tips or ideas from 6 months ago so much easier to find…
Have at ’em, and have a safe day of travels!
Should you have any pictures (tasteful, relevant, etc….) you can email them to [email protected] or just use this nifty link to start an email: Start an Email to send a Picture to Post on Balloon Juice
After the fold!
For those that celebrate, happy(?) 4/20!
For the rest, have a great day!
For all, here’s a treasure, courtesy of hedgehog the occasional commenter:
Where it was taken: Amica’s Pizza, Salida, Colorado
When: April 9, 2017
Other notes or info about the picture: An informal meetup of (left to right) Miss Bianca, evinfuilt and me. Amica’s has excellent wood-fired pizza and excellent sangria. evinfuilt and I were in Salida for an SCA event and we were able to meet up with Miss Bianca. We had a grand time!
If I were still living in the area, I’d have been there. I love Salida and there’s a good chance I’ll be moving there, Buena Vista, or somewhere nearabouts.
Next up, from BillinGlendaleCA:
Where it was taken: Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, CA
When: April 10, 2017
Other notes or info about the picture: Night view of Downtown Los Angeles.
Where it was taken: Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, CA
When: April 10, 2017
Other notes or info about the picture: Panoramic night view of Los Angeles, with Mt. Washington at the left and Palos Verdes peninsula at the right.
Where it was taken: Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, CA
When: April 10, 2017
Other notes or info about the picture: The Hollywood Sign with the San Fernando Valley at the left.
As always, thank you and do send more!
Last up for Thursday, from RLChina:
Where it was taken: Yongshou China
When: April 2 2017
Other notes or info about the picture: 20,000 karst hills adorn the river valley…Scootered all day to take in the breath-taking scenery
Have a great day all, and travel safely! I’ll get the slider widget working for tomorrow’s post.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I love putting faces to names! Thank you guys!
And Bill – I’m really jealous of you pano work. Great job, especially at night.
Alain the site fixer
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: FYI I’m saving some of your submissions for a later date. You shared so many!
Major Major Major Major
Salida! Well I haven’t been there in years. Always good to put names to faces!
I love the pictures of downtown, Bill.
I wrote up my second blog post on Cambodia here, and I have a lightly annotated album of my day about Hanoi yesterday here.
OzarkHillbilly
Karst!
Major Major Major Major
Don’t know why I didn’t see that China picture on my first pass. Gorgeous. China is so big. I know that’s hardly an observation but it’s really not something I have a frame of reference for.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Thanks, Photoshop is your friend. It’s got a really good panorama module. I’ve got some daytime pano’s that I’m working on that were shot last Friday and last Sunday.
@Major Major Major Major: Thanks, I was going to try for more this past Monday but a fog bank rolled in.
Elizabelle
Good morning, morning crew.
Voila — this “normalize Trump” headline from the Fuck the Fucking New York Times.
Voila. Passing it through the truth-o-meter:
Elizabelle
“Bold, Unpredictable” my ass.
I’d quit the FTFNYTimes before I had to come up with something like that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I’ve never been to China, but I did spend a bit of time at the Huntington’s Chinese Garden yesterday.
Here’s a pic I shot there, I used a technique called focus stacking. Take two shots: one focused on a foreground object and one focused on the background. Worked pretty well.
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Even the iPhone’s isn’t terrible, I took this today.
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Just looked it up – so that’s how they do those pictures of bugs!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Or flowers, macro photographers use it quite a bit.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: My camera(and my Note Edge for that matter) will take pano’s in camera, but I don’t do that since they output jpg’s. I want the added tonal range that shooting RAW gets me and I can make really big pano’s that way as well.
ETA: One of the pano’s I did from the Getty Center was so detailed(I shot it at 136mm with a 50-200mm zoom lens) that I could pick out landmarks as far away as West Covina(that’s probably about 50 miles away from the Getty). I could easily pick out individual stuff in DTLA and Holllywood.
raven
No I ain’t goin down
that long lonely road all by myself
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: ah, yes, that’s a plus. I wasn’t suggesting it as a replacement btw.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Some do, including Samsung. They stopped making real cameras. It’s quite sad, since their last two professional cameras(NX1 and the NX-500) were really good. My primary camera is the NX-500, and my infrared camera is a NX-300.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Tight lines.
MomSense
Wonderful way to start the day!
debbie
There is always something spectacular about China’s mountains.
rikyrah
I loved all the pictures. Never thought that there was such open Green space in China.
hedgehog mobile
Thanks all for the pics and stories! Alain, thanks again for giving us a place for these.
satby
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That’s a wonderful picture, I never heard about that technique.
satby
Up top, loving all these pictures! Thanks hedgehog, Billin, and RLChina.
Steeplejack
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Nice.
Also, thanks for the link on how to neuterize Cortana. I can’t believe how much it was pissing me off with its nattering little questions and suggestions on my nice clean lock screen. Hadn’t been that irritated since the Office paper clip.
satby
@Elizabelle: I know, right? Why is it so impossible for them to just call it what it is?
They’ll be normalizing right up until a neutron bomb takes the entire city out.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: I’ve been taking some Creative Live classes and the Photoshop classes have covered the technique. So when I was at the Huntington yesterday, I saw that shot as a good opportunity to try it. The post-processing steps are rather trivial.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: No problem, Windows has become much better in letting you make it less annoying.
Quinerly
Great pictures! Happy 4/20!
Miss Bianca
Meeting up with hedgehog and mr hedgehog and evinfuilt was so much fun! E, if you are lurking still, come out and join the conversation, you are a stone gas!
Alain, I am looking to relocate away from Westcliffe – would love to go to Salida, but MAAANN is it expensive there now – friend D and I are looking for some commercial space to start our meadery, we may have to hit the Western Slope (also gorgeous!).
Good morning, jackals (or evening, depending on where you are – howdy, M4, am really jealous hearing about your Asian wanderings!)
J R in WV
@Miss Bianca:
You look pretty much as I’d imagined you, just like a neighbor also full of Piss and vinegar. They make way dark beer. Grow everything, big greenhouse, fresh greens year round. Keep chickens, pigs, cattle. Lots of work, but eat really good.
Also sawmill/timbering operation on their place. LAtely all the Ash trees died of emerald ash borer, over 200 trees on the ground, designated the first few for new flooring in the house, the rest may be kept for sale after ash is rarer, pricey.