Hah - in your defence, I'd been mesmerised by the Slightly Off Disney Characters on initially seeing (and taking a photo of) the van, and only noticed that insulting warning on returning to the car park an hour or two later!
(It's all so ... visually overwhelming!)
Small, slightly leaning tree with otherwise bare branches covered in catkins - right at the water's edge of rough grassland, reflected in a shimmering, disused canal - in hazy, early spring sunshine. Cromford Canal, Derbyshire, March 2026.
Modern ice cream van seen from the back left - white with red edges, painted with Disney characters which are all ... slightly off. It's remarkable how unsettling they are.
For #saturdaySignage - from earlier today! An ice cream van complete with the archetypal Slightly Off Disney Characters...
Do listen to John Finnemore's take on it - and realise just how accurate he was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lray-9F1WP4 […]
[Original post on pixelfed.hylobatidae.org]
Tumbled-down dry stone wall, low on the woodland floor, propping up fallen branches, all covered in thick moss - surrounded by ferns and foliage. Derbyshire, May 2025.
Old wooden telegraph poles, upright in a grid, interconnected by thin wire attached near the top - in dry grassland, with wooded hills in the distance, beneath a hazy blue sky.
In keeping with the Canadian science theme - for #saturdaySolitude, part of the vast old 22MHz 'T' antenna at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, near #Penticton, #BritishColumbia, #Canada. August 2012.
Laminated paper notice on centre of teal, windowed door, edges curled - "OFFICE - NO RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL ALLOWED" with the OFFICE and the word NO both underlined...
For #saturdaySignage - I've no idea what event warranted that underlining beneath the 'NO', but it was clearly serious enough...
(From the #TRIUMF cyclotron, #VancouverBC, Canada - August 2012.)
#physics #signs
In the foreground, a snow-covered field with a few sheep grazing; behind that, a bank of winter trees with more fields on a hillside beyond - all in a hazy, misty winter sunlight. Derbyshire, December 2014.
Lower left corner of a retroreflective street sign, brown with a grey-white border and text - with five truncated 'DO NOT' messages visible. Behind the sky, a blank concrete wall and a bright overcast sky.
For #saturdaySignage - whatever you do, don't!
#Nevada side of the #HooverDam, July 2013.
#signs #doNot
The upgrade worked! I think. Surprisingly painless, too...
Looking up at a vertical, rotten treetrunk - bare of bark, discoloured with faintly shiny darkness and pale fungal bloom - part covered in thick ivy branches, snaking their way up the tree, almost hairy with short, rootlike bristles. At the top, the ivy explodes into dark, glossy green vegetation - silhouetted against a grey, overcast sky.
A somewhat rotten example for #thickTrunkTuesday from #Derbyshire the other week...
(Also testing to see if upgrading Pixelfed has broken anything!)
Under a blue-grey, overcast sky - a perfectly calm lagoon of water surrounded by bleached, skeletal treetrunks with ocean surf in the background, fading out to a obscured, hazy horizon - and to one side, dense coniferous trees. Pacific coast of the Olympic Peninsula, Washington state, September 2009.
Hanging from the branch of a small apple tree - a white laminated sign, reading 'Please DO NOT Pick the apples'.
Behind some small flowering plants in plastic pots in a tray, written in chalk on a rectangular piece of slate - 'Please KEEP OFF'.
For #saturdaySignage - some politely aggressive (aggressively polite?) signage from #VancouverIsland, #Canada - October 2017.
(I have a wide selection of overly polite Canadian signage...)
Leaf-like lichen with little concave cups - all varying through yellow-green-cyan - surrounded by tufts of moss, on a roughly cropped, complex branch in an old hedge.
Blue-green-grey trumpets of lichen, with tiny greenish flakes on them - in a vertical mass covering an old stone wall.
Elongated green trumpets of lichen in a mossy, damp landscape.
Yet more trumpets of lichen surrounded by tufts of moss - this time showing even more close-up detail, with little greenish blobs inside the trumpet.
Today's #lichenSubscribe from #Derbyshire...
#lichen #macrophotography
A flattened, anatomical heart shape - orange-brown and slightly shiny - suspended in horizontal layers of thin, stiff structural wires, above an out-of-focus, illuminated white table with a faint grid inscribed on it. A spatial negative of mine workings - with the heart shape indicating a vast mineral seam, and the horizontal wires the tunnels dug to extract it.
#Fotovorschlag - 'Negative Space'
A model of mine workings at #Jerome, #Arizona - from July 2013.
#mining #museums
Vast grey mudlfats, criss-crossed by water reflecting a hazy, clouded sky - receding to a distant horizon with faint, rugged hills and mountains in the far distance. Two small fishing boats - dinghies with outboard motors - lie on the flat mud in the near foreground. From the train between Seattle and Vancouver BC, August 2012.
A muddy, shallow bank covered with rough, short grass - leading into quiet water reflecting a blank sky, with a small sign emerging from the water - a black-lined yellow triangle with a pictographic person not waving, but drowning, and the word 'DANGER' below, merging with its own reflection.
Also for #saturdaySignage - from #CarsingtonWater, #Derbyshire - March 2025.
Rectangular road sign, brown with grey-white text: "Historic Life-Saving Station Cemetery" with an arrow to the right, at the side of a road with a grassy hill, dark trees and a hazy sky behind.
I have ... many photos of off-kilter signs, which I've been idly trying to find an excuse to share. So, equipped with the imaginatively alliterative #saturdaySignage hashtag whatsit, here's the first - from #PointReyes, #California back in June 2015...
#signs
Very early spring trees - a bank of dense woodland bereft of leaves except for explosions of blue-green ivy - reflected in a near mirror-like pond, with a fallen, moss-covered bleached tree trunk creating complex, writhing reflections in the water.
Alternate angle of previous shot - can't decide which one I prefer? From Shining Cliff Woods, Derbyshire earlier today. (I have ... more dismal photos of derelict buildings as well! So cheerful.)
#reflections #woodlands #Derbyshire #dark
Required […]
[Original post on pixelfed.hylobatidae.org]
View along an old, narrow alleyway - walls of rough plaster and blocky stonework, with graffiti below and shuttered windows and balconies above, and a man in a pinstriped shirt jauntily walking away from the camera at a distance along the alleyway.
Guess what - #Mallorca again, with a conveniently placed random passer-by. October 2019...
Suggested listening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTg-q6Drt0
Long, straight two-lane tarmac road stretching off into the distance, telegraph poles to one side, through a wide plain of sagebrush - steep, eroded mountains in the far distance to one side - and a strange, anonymous, block-like building on the horizon, all beneath a complex, clouded, hazy blue sky.
#FotoVorschlag : 'Im Nirgendwo' / 'In the middle of nowhere'
On the approach to the Experimental Breeder Reactor I, somewhere in #Idaho...
Red hawthorn berries, against an out-of-focus green background - each with a droplet of bright rainwater underneath, sharply focusing distant branches against an overcast sky. Derbyshire, earlier today.
Dense, fluffy, vividly green moss almost completely obscuring a dry stone wall except for its shape - below a dense, bare, hawthorn hedge.
More fluffy green moss on vertical, branching twigs of alder - recently cropped at the top by a flail.
Pale, white bracket fungi on a dark, vertical branch in a hedge.
Strange, flat, dark blue-green leaf-like lichen (?) with orange-brown ovoid fruiting bodies at its edges - surrounded by fluffy green moss and bare bramble branches.
... and some more miscellaneous #mosstodon from today. (With some bonus #lichensubscribe which didn't fit in the previous post...)
#Derbyshire #macrophotography
Close-up of red berries on a cotoneaster - narrow, splayed branches, with colourful yellow-green-blue encrustations of lichen.
Small twigs covered in lichen, against a bright overcast sky - with a dangling droplet of water bright against the twig behind it.
Closely packed blue-green-grey trumpets of lichen in close-up.
Yellow-green and blue-grey lichen, strange flake-like and flattened trumpet-like shapes in an undulating carpet, completely hiding the surface below.
Some #Derbyshire #lichensubscribe from earlier today...
(Light was pretty terrible, so it was amazing I got so much so sharp and in focus...)
#macrophotography
Beetle with long, teardrop-shaped abdomen - a mottled yellow with black spots - seen side-on, perched on the end of a green, broken plant stem - it long, segmented antennae curling downwards. A few drops of water - on its formidable mouth-parts and the pointed tip of its abdomen - reveal how it had just been rescued from a swim in the nearby canal...
#FotoVorschlag 'Alles was Fühler hat' / 'Everything that has feelers'
A likely Rhagium mordax, the black-spotted longhorn beetle - just after being rescued from Cromford Canal, #Derbyshire - May 2021.
https://www.naturespot.org/species/rhagium-mordax
#insects #macrophotography #macroMonday
Night-time photo of a foggy outdoor scene at an airport. A long terminal arm stretches off into the foggy beyond, lit up by tall and bright lamp posts. Outside are roads and logistics equipment, with pedestrian crossings painted on the tarmac. It's all grey, industrial and not very pretty. The fog isn't helping, either.
Finally, something new – and on nearly fresh film, too! Too bad it's out of production, I only have one more roll. Rather liked the colours.
📷 Minolta Hi-Matic 11
🎞 Fuji C200 (2024)
#BelieveInFilm #AnalogPhotography
A duck, dabbling in a pond, surrounded by ripples - but upended, with just the underside of its rear visible - bright orange ankles just poking out of the water, and a slight dimple in the silvery grey feathers where its bumhole would be.
Apparently I've reached 500 followers on this 'ere self-hosted #Pixelfed thingy! Blimey. Thus, I thought I'd post something appropriately celebratory - then my brain declared it had better ideas.
So, have a duck.
Apologies, all.
(From #BushyPark, west London, January 2019. #birds #ducks)
View in through the side of a derelict building into a room with a collapsed ceiling - peeling paint and dangling wooden laths - beneath a dark roofspace with wooden eaves below the backs of roofing tiles. The walls of the room are mottled with algae and mould, the window is boarded shut from the outside with rotting curtains draped over the windowsill, and a tiled fireplace regurgitates a mass of debris on to the rubbish-strewn floor.
For #saturdaySolitude - an abandoned house below #ShiningCliffWoods, #Derbyshire, from August 2021.
#dereliction #abandonedBuildings #abandonedPlaces
White swan with bowed neck, looking back towards camera - caught in bright light on a dark, leaf-strewn stretch of water, with low foliage in the background reaching down to the waterline. Cromford Canal, Derbyshire, September 2025.
Dry, twisting ivy roots growing along and obscuring a near-horizontal branch in an old hedge - a mass of blue-green ivy leaves below, a rough green grassy field behind, all in overcast light.
Wizened, bare branches of possibly alder, in a vague skeletal shape - remains of an old hedge, with wire fencing functionally replacing it.
Twisted, knotted branches in an old hedge, with patches of moss - closely cropped many times in the past by rough machinery.
Bulbous, warty and otherwise smooth branches in another old hedge - with a generous covering of fluffy green moss, in thoroughly overcast, wintry light.
Latest wintry photographic theme - overgrown old hedges by the sides of narrow country lanes. Definitely #mosstodon adjacent? #Derbyshire, yesterday...