Author Archives: babylon crashing

ghost bat

02 Tuesday Apr 2013

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ghost bat

This is not a quoll. It is a ghost bat, Australia’s only carnivorous bat.

Taking a photograph of a ghost bat in near darkness is tricky. Thin depth of field and longish shutter speed are OK for chuditches that sleep a lot, but ghost bats are constantly moving around. This image was just a case of narrowing down the variables (lighting, focus, etc) to something favorable then holding down the shutter release while crossing my fingers.

A bit of backlight would have been nice but you can’t have everything.

taken from Quollism

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in love with color: mariam aslamazyan

02 Tuesday Apr 2013

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Mariam Aslamazyan1

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

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I am working on an article about the Armenian painter Mariam Aslamazyan, from Gyumri. I use to live near her studio on Abovian street. She is amazingly talented, working in oils and ceramics. I’ll post the entire article when I’m done, though it is a bit slow since there is hardly anything written about her in English and it takes forever to get the Russian magazine articles translated. Cheers!

Posted by | Filed under Armenia, Illustration and art

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magic bus

02 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by in Armenia, Illustration and art

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onearmenia1

Ah, this photo brings back so many memories of having to stand the entire 4-5 hours it would take to get from Yerevan to Gyumri. It wasn’t that I didn’t arrive early for a seat but that there would always be some 89 year-old tatik who was obviously going to be forced to stand the entire ride. At least back in the 1990s there was a lot of lip-service paid to how important the elderly was but I never saw in the two years I was there anyone ever doing so much as give up their seat for their own grandmother. My mama-jan didn’t raise no rude boy so I spent a lot of time standing. Such is life.

from OneArmenia.

does anyone know if the lion in the gyumri zoo is still alive?

01 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Armenia, Illustration and art

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Does anyone know if the lion in the Gyumri zoo is still alive

I love Armenia but at least during the two years I lived there (1995-97) the country had a terrible record when it came to animal cruelty. In 1995 I was taken to a bar in Yerevan full of caged monkeys where the patrons would get the monkeys drunk on beer then put their cigarettes out on their out stretched arms. The fact that there is a caged lion in Gyumri probably means it will starve to death as soon as it becomes unprofitable to feed it, if it hasn’t already. My prayers go out to that poor soul, what a hellish fate.