London Heathrow Airport Summer Landside Ambient (2025-07) - Ambient busy big holiday time airport nowhere near any aircraft. #fieldRecording #travel #airport -

London Heathrow Airport Summer Landside Ambient (2025-07)
Ambient busy big holiday time airport nowhere near any aircraft. #fieldRecording #travel #airport

So, I can't eat any fresh greens when I #travel home to #America next week?
This is the type of advice I used to get when traveling to places like #India or

Paris Gard du Nord Train Station Afternoon Piano (2023-09) - Ambient busy big city train station with a talented chap tickling the public piano. #fieldRecording #travel #Paris -

Paris Gard du Nord Train Station Afternoon Piano (2023-09)
Ambient busy big city train station with a talented chap tickling the public piano. #fieldRecording #travel #Paris

Wife and I are thinking about Central America for spring break (March), current suggestions have been Dominican Republic, Costa Rico, Belize, Puerto Rico.
7-10 days.
Recommendations? Strong opinions?
GO!
#boostswelcome #travel

California coming 🔜 | #CowboysCamp #dallascowboys #nfl #travel

Paris Gard du Nord Train Station Afternoon Piano (2023-09) - Ambient busy big city train station with a talented chap tickling the public piano. #fieldRecording #travel #Paris -

Paris Gard du Nord Train Station Afternoon Piano (2023-09)
Ambient busy big city train station with a talented chap tickling the public piano. #fieldRecording #travel #Paris

#Coincidence: I rarely visit Mysore India, but I visited there both this year and the last, that too in the same month and week; just two days apart.
Plus, both years, I returned to Udupi on exactly the same month and day. 🤓
#travel #India

Paris Gard du Nord Train Station Afternoon Piano (2023-09) - Ambient busy big city train station with a talented chap tickling the public piano. #fieldRecording #travel #Paris -

Paris Gard du Nord Train Station Afternoon Piano (2023-09)
Ambient busy big city train station with a talented chap tickling the public piano. #fieldRecording #travel #Paris

get those passports ready 🛂 | @A@AmericanAirlinesDallasCowboys #travel #Brazil #Rio #shorts

📝 Droning on about drones

September 29, 2026
Three years ago I got a DJI Mini 3 Pro for my birthday. Flying it around and getting aerial pictures is great fun. Lately, though, it mostly stays in its bag. This is about why.
It's tiny. The camera is decent: a 1/1.3-inch sensor behind an f/1.7 lens, which is a big sensor for something this size. It has 48 megapixels through the magic of marketing, which means it's 12 megapixels that get upscaled. It does RAW, and 4K video. It has a fancy gimbal head that is surprisingly competent at keeping the camera stable. The drone can autonomously follow a subject, circle a point, or fly preset moves. Handy if you're a narcissist or just not as comfortable with the controls yet.
DJI promises 34 minutes in the air, probably in a vacuum. Real flights, with actual air and wind resistance are around 20 minutes. Range is 8 kilometres, which sounds unrealistic, but probably refers to the antenna. Anyway in the Netherlands you are obliged to keep the drone in your line of sight. Obstacle sensors look forward, back and down, and freak out whenever I get close to Big Hard Things.
And it weighs under 249 grams, which is the whole point of the Mini line. Under 250 grams it flies in the A1 subcategory, the most relaxed one in the EU. You can fly near and even over people, as long as it isn't a crowd. No exam either, just an operator number from the RDW, the Dutch vehicle authority, stuck on the drone. On paper, it's about as free as flying gets. Except all the restrictions that apply anyway because it has a camera. 
It looks easy. It isn't. The Mini holds its position on GPS, so hovering takes no effort at all. Everything else takes practice. Two sticks: the left one handles height and turning, the right one moves you forward, back and sideways. A wheel tilts the camera. A smooth shot usually means using three of those at once, gently, while the drone drifts in the wind. At 249 grams it doesn't take much wind to destabilize it.
Then there's orientation. When the drone faces you, everything is mirrored: left is right, forward is back. At a hundred metres it's a dot, and you can't tell whether it's clearing that tree or about to hit it. The obstacle sensors don't look sideways, so sideways is your problem. And you're supposed to keep your eyes on the drone, while the shot you're making is on the screen in your hands.
Practice is exactly what I'm not getting, and the reason starts at my own front door. 
My home is squeezed in between three no-fly zones. De Horsten, the royal estate, lies in prohibited area EHP-26, the same rectangle of closed airspace that covers Huis ten Bosch, Noordeinde and the Binnenhof. It runs from the ground to about 600 metres, and no drone gets an exemption, whatever it weighs. The King moved out in 2019; the no-fly zone didn't. The other one is Valkenburg, the old naval air base. It closed back in 2006, and the province turned part of it into a test airport for professional drones, called Unmanned Valley. Whether there's still a restricted circle around it depends on which map you ask. Since at least 2022, the official aviation chart has shown one and the official drone map hasn't.
The drone map around Wassenaar. The pink rectangle is EHP-26, with De Horsten at the bottom. The dunes are on the left, and the dots mark the old airfield at Valkenburg.
That's the real problem: nobody can tell you exactly where the lines are. The government points you to two maps, and both say you can't derive any rights from them. The borders don't follow a street or a fence, either. It's a line on a map, and you're standing in a field trying to work out which side of it you're on. And where the air is free, the ground may not be: Dunea, the water company that runs the water extraction in the dunes, simply bans drones in Meijendel.
Then there's the mood. Last year drones turned up over airports and air bases across Europe. Russia is the usual suspect, though whose they are hardly matters. Do you really want to have your drone shot out of the sky and have an inspiring conversation with an arrest team?
Probably not. The police don't publish how many drone fines they hand out, and an investigation counted thousands of illegal flights over The Hague every year. Nobody patrols the Wassenaar wastelands looking for a 249-gram drone.
Then again, nobody has to. Drones under 250 grams are exempt from the EU's Remote ID. But on my generation of drones, DJI's own signal broadcasts the drone's position and the pilot's, unencrypted.
The fines themselves aren't dramatic: €250 for flying in a no-fly zone, €300 over a crowd, €350 near vital infrastructure and €500 for getting in the way of emergency services. They stack, though, and the drone usually gets seized as well.
In a village like Wassenaar, the likeliest detection system is the neighbour. Most people are uneasy about drones, mainly because of privacy. One of my colleagues, who lives in a big city, proudly claims to shoot illegal drones out of the sky with a slingshot.
Even a perfectly legal flight comes with a fair chance that someone walks over to argue about it. That's an argument I'd rather not have. It's supposed to be fun.
The obvious way out is to take it on holiday. I mostly go to Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and surely somewhere out there is a field with room for 249 grams of drone. My Dutch registration is valid everywhere in the EU, so how hard can it be?
Quite hard, it turns out. The EU only sets the basics, and every country adds its own layer on top. Zones, its own map app, its own list of special permissions. Nature parks, castles and towns add theirs. And the rules move: the Czech Republic introduced a whole new zone system only last year. 
Germany wants proof of insurance in your pocket, which I don't need in the Netherlands. The Czech Republic wants a flight plan in its app before almost any flight near a town, road or railway. Slovakia doesn't ask for insurance, but most of its mountain areas are off limits on principle, so that actually limits what there is to take pictures of in the first place.
Read all that back and you'd think I should sell it. I won't. Because when it does go up, it's still awesome. A few seconds after take-off the ground turns into a map, and places you walk past every day look like somewhere you've never been. None of my other cameras can do that. So hopefully I will be more successful at motivating myself to keep trying in the near future. 
Please feel free to add any tips for drone photography you might have, and I may use them to rekindle my interest in the hobby.
#Blog #Article #Drones #Gear #Photography #Travel #Wassenaar

San Francisco skyline as seen from Alameda
#SanFrancisco #EastBay #cities #travel

coming at you, Rio 🤩 | #DallasCowboys #NFL #rio #football

RE: #photography #life #experience #travel #roadTrip #gratitude #Udupi #India #river #windmill #temple #ama

off to work 🚌 | #DALvsSEA #DallasCowboys #travel #arrivals

A thousand dollars if you manage to find and purchase a ticket on the Indian Railways website without having to log in at least twice (more likely thrice). 😒
#travel #India #RailTravel #rail

made to the early ferry (though thankfully not the EARLIEST ferry)
This one has the best view from the foot passenger waiting lounge of any.
Looking out to Gabriola Island from Duke Point.
Wish us sunny skies for the ball game!
#VancouverCanadians #baseball #bcferry #nanaimo #yvr #travel #fensterfritag

I realize local road travel, especially taxi, is always more expensive (time and money) than long distance rail travel, but this #atrocity in and around #Bengaluru #India: 😒
Train, long distance: 386kms, 4.5 hrs, ₹1980 for two.
Taxi, home to station: 30kms, 1.5 hrs, ₹1100 for two.
#travel #rail

Views of the brilliant gilded pavilion and the decorated altar at the end of the Adamaaru main service. The last pic is of the "uthsawa moorthi", the idol used away from the altar. 🛕
Humbly: Such clear, closeup pics of the ritual and the idols are quite rare. 🙇‍♂️
#photography #FotoMontag #PhotoMonday #Hindu #ritual #art #sculpture #travel

Wednesday: Superb day trip to Mysuru #India to participate in "chaaturmaasa" observance by Kaniyooru Swamiji and junior Adamaaru Swamiji. 🙇‍♂️
Adamaaru service pics: As in other mathas, the altar starts simple and progressively enriches. Last pic (not mine) is of the main idol "the 4-armed Krishna subduing the Kaalinga serpent".
More pics 👇
#photography #FotoMontag #PhotoMonday #Hindu #ritual #art #sculpture #travel

Wonderful #experience yesterday at Mantralaya #India. Skipping personal details, participated in the evening processions (1), then sat mere feet from the "brindaawana" (2, shrine) of Shree Raaghawaendra Swami during final service. 🙇‍♂️
Plus, good food. 😋
PS: Pic 1 is mine; 2 is official release (not mine)
#travel #ama

Lodging is a big concern visiting Mantralaya #India but turns out we had the best: Clean, large, AC suite ~100m from temple entry; just walk without footwear. It's also their most expensive lodging but worth it, esp. because it sleeps 4.
Bonus that the lodge gave me some nice pictures. 📷
PS: Shiva at lodge entry is odd given the temple's faith, but 😐
#travel #lodging #photography #amateur

Industrial-strength windshield wiper. 🚎⚙️💪
(Aug. 25, 2024, Shimoga #India)
#WindowFriday #FensterFreitag #Window #rain #bus #travel #photography #video

Sep. 3, *2024*: On the way to and at Bengaluru airport, returning home to the US, completely oblivious to the (awesome) changes to come my life's way; changes because of a just-concluded 3-day road-trip. 🙇‍♂️ 😊
(see alt text)
#photography #India #travel #airport #throwback #throwbackThursday #tbt #life #bliss

Thinking of all the time I spent at Indian airports, awaiting boarding in the gate area for hours each time, not knowing my bank actually gave me free access to lounges with decent comfort and food. 🤦‍♂️
#travel #flying #airTravel #ignorance

My second time in Mantralayam #India. The first was over 4 decades ago, and I've virtually no memory of that visit.
I know the kind of great experiences that can be had here, but I've to set low expectations and let things come to me over the next three days. 🙇‍♂️
"raayariddaare" as they say in these parts.
#photography #amateur #FotoMontag #PhotoMonday #travel