Sunday, October 30, 2011

Clouds over the town

Late this summer I was set on the topic of "clouds" for my contest. Well, clouds are tricky, since when you need them, they just never show. But I did get lucky quite a bit.

This is one of the first few pictures I took for this topic. It is not the photo I uploaded for the contest, in the end, since clouds are not dominant enough to fit the topic.

I still do not want to keep this one in the drawer.



The photo I did finally hand in for the contest, was the one below. That one was taken between Hamm and Paderborn, close to Paderborn. The exact location I do not know.

I just loved the border of little nupps on the bottom. The trees were nicely equal there.


Saturday, October 29, 2011

Venice canal in night illumination

Venice, Spring 2011.

HDR of 3 RAW files with -2 0 +2 bracketing, processed in Dynamic Photo HDR. A main enterance to a building that is worth being called a main enterance is from the water side. The back doors reach out to the alleys and streets.

click to enlarge


Venetian door

In Venice this spring I liked the look of the buildings. They have an impression of being run down. And I do not think it needs to be this way. On the other hand this look is typical of Venice so I took it as what it is. I may like clean better than shaby, but I would never claim that old and run down can not make for a good shot.



When I was a child we had a poster on the wall that had photos of doors, one by one. Just doors, and all where different. When I see beautifuly doors, or special ones, or very old ones I take the picture. Maybe one day I will make a poster like that.

This door I found in Venice in the old Jewish Ghetto.


Friday, October 28, 2011

Venice Canal

Well, the title of the posting is kind of redundant. Venice is full of canals. This one I took a nice HDR of, though. This is an HDR of 3 RAW files, processed in Dynamic Photo HDR. I have started to enter the RAW files straight into the programm as CR2-files. Before I used to develope my CR2 in dgn first, then into TIFF and then into the HDR software. I have stopped doing that, though, when I found out that my program can take the CR2. This keeps as much information undamaged as possible.



click to enlarge


This canal in the ghetto is a typical one for that part of town, I think. The Ghetto is the old Jewish quater of Venice. Because of this place the quaters of Jewish population are called Ghetto in other places. Finally the term got a different meaning and is now used differently.



Jökulsárlón's icebergs

I have to admit: Before this trip to Iceland 2011 I had never seen icebergs in reality. That may be the reason that I took so many photos of them. But also: I just love the turquoise that ice can be through compression and saturation with water.

If you want to know more about Jökulsárlón, this place in southern Iceland, please check the tag on the side of my blog to find all other articles about it. There is lots of info about this location and the developement of it.



 

 
Ich muss es ja zugeben: Vor dieser Reise nach Island 2011 hatte ich noch nie Eisberge im realen Leben gesehen. Vielleicht habe ich deshalb so viele Bilder davon gemacht. Aber außerdem: Ich liebe einfach dieses Türkis das Eis zeigen kann, wenn es genügend komprimiert und mit Wasser gesättigt ist.

Wenn Ihr mehr über die Jökulsárlón, Südisland, wissen wollt, dann guckt bitte unter dem Tag Jökulsárlón an der Seite des Blog. Dann findet Ihr die anderen Artikel, die ich über diese Lagune geschrieben habe. Darin findet Ihr viele Fakten über diesen Ort und dessen Entstehung.



 

Thursday, October 27, 2011

the view

The fox is on the way past us and down the hill. She is not really just enjoying the view. But it really looks like that, doesn't it?

Dieser Fuchs ist auf dem Weg an uns vorbei und den Hang herunter. Sie genießt nicht allein die Aussicht, aber es sieht wirklich so aus, oder?


 

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

stretched dog

I do not usually post funnies or scenes only. But this dog came across my way last weekend and was just too funny not to take a photo. 
Yes, we can start discussing if this is a good breed of dog or if maybe this one is just over fed. But it is what it is: A funny dog photo along the way.




Ich poste normalerweise keine lustigen Tierbilder oder ähnliches. Aber dieser Hund, der mir letztes Wochenende über den Weg gelaufen ist, war einfach zu komisch um ihn nicht zu fotografieren.
Ja, wir können jetzt anfangen, zu diskutieren, ob das eine gute Zuchtlinie ist oder ob dieses Exemplar einfach überfüttert ist. Aber es ist was es ist: Ein lustiger Hund am Wegesrand.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

The Volcano Expedition

Going to see the volcano in March we took a picture of the information sign. To show where every thing was located, I marked the main points of interest on the photo. Red for the erruption of Fimvörduháls, blue for the icy glacier that will later on - just short time after our trip there - will become "that volcano in Iceland" that stopped air trafic forever.

The green marker above these spots is where we parked to watch the erruption and took these pictures and videos. After the Eyjafjallajökull errupted that valley was not visible anymore but turned into the run off for the melt water.

click to enlarge, then you can actually read a lot of it!


On the drive to the volcano we saw the drastic demonstrations of accident risks.


drastic!
valley of Thorsmörk
The valley into Thorsmörk was not drivable on the Throsmörk side but on the opposite side of the valley. On the map you can see where that is. This is the view towards the erruption from the valley side. The steam marks the lava flows.






Amazing view of Eyjafjallajökull from the valley side - when it was still a glacier and all calm.









Friday, October 21, 2011

blue ice

The look of icebergs is amazing. The blue of the condensed and water saturated ice is shining almost out of its own. This is one more picture of Jökulsárlón in Iceland that I posted about earlier.


Thursday, October 20, 2011

Foxes close up

This year in the Westfjords we got to meet a lot of arctic foxes. We really love these encounters and are happy to bring home so much evidence of undisturbed wildlife as this.
Sorry, but we are not going to tell - online anyways - where exactly we met the foxes. We do not want to make people search for them with our help. But I show what I found.








Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Photo Documentation: Maple Syrup - Part 2

This post continues the documentation about Maple Syrup that I started here.


In diesem Post setze ich die Dokumentation über Ahornsirup fort, die ich hier angefangen habe.





The sap is being pre-reduced before it flows into the open pan. It ondulates through the lines, beginning on the very left and cooking down more and more as it flows towards the right. It can then be removed from the pan.

Der Saft wird zunächst vorreduziert, dann fließt er in die offene Pfanne. Diese ist in Schlangenlinien eingeteilt. Der Saft fließt zunächst durch die Reihe ganz links, bis er am Ende an der rechten Seite am weitesten eingekocht ist und abgefüllt werden kann.








To cook down the sap, the boiling pan is fired from underneath. This eats up a lot of wood each winter.

Um den Saft herunter zu kochen, brennt darunter ein Feuer. Das verbraucht jeden Winter eine Menge Holz.

























When the sap cooks down it turns from clear to amber. The temperature guage shows the final temperature of the sap.










Während der Ahornsaft herunterkocht wird er von klar zu bernsteinfarben. Dies ist das Thermometer an der Siedepfanne.








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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Westfjords bay

Another view of the cliff faces along the bay. Kálfatifa this one is called in Hornvík, Iceland. The light hit it just right that day.


Sunday, October 16, 2011

Jökulsárlón in the sunset

The bridge to the Ice.
At Jökulsárlón, southern Iceland, we spent hours and hours once at sunset and once in the daytime and took picutres. Well, seeing the unusual setting there, who would hold it against us?

Jökulsárlón is a unique place in Iceland. I did write about it already, but I didn't fully explain, I guess.

The Vatnajökull glacier flows down of the mountain bowl it lies in in several directions at once. Several of those end in lagoons of a special kind: The glacier tongues are so close to the ocean shore, that there was pretty much just the beach to seperate the ice from the salt water. The ice retreated, partially from climate change but mostly from the contact with saltwater which has a lower freezing point and melts ice faster. The glacier is now 7 kilometers back from the place of the bridge. About 70 years ago it was a little further down than the bridge now is.

The place the lagoon is now in is very deep and wide. The glacier tongue in the back calves these gigantic icebergs, that float in the lagoon until they break appart in pieces small enough that they swim down the little river that this photo was taken on. The river is shallow and therefore only little pieces float down.

The icebergs seen in other postings in my blog are the usual: 10 % above water, 90 % underneath. I thought, they would take a while to melt and break. I was pretty shocked, though, to hear that in average it takes 7 years for the icebergs to melt and swim out.

At the sea shore the ice fragments are thrown back onto the beach a lot so we did take awesome photos there, too. But that is for other posts as well as our amphibic vehicle trip over the lagoon and the awesome other lagoon we went to - without the stream of tourists.



click to enlarge to full size



This bridge photo is a HDR from 3 exposures, merged in Dynamic Photo HDR, my favorite HDR program. I know most people favor Photomatix, which I own, too, but I just love my Dyn. Ph. HDR.

This view is from the sea shore side up towards the glacier. It would have been even more perfect if the seal that we saw swim in and out of the lagoon would have popped his head just this moment. But such luck would be more than improbable with a setting like this and the bracketing setup.


By the way: There are several posts in this blog already about this place (Jökulsárlón). If you want to see more, search the tags or follow this link: Tag Jökulsárlón

Reykjavík in the sunshine

The sun was bright and the colors tried to match up. This photo came about in the harbour of Reykjavík, Iceland.

Bei hellem Sonnenschein haben sich die Farben alle Mühe gegeben. Dieses Photo entstand im Hafen von Reykjavík, Island.




 

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Westfjord sunset

The sunsets around mid summer night up in the Westfjords are just amazing. The sun gets lower than you expect and goes down for so long. Here is what that looks like. Or can look like.









Friday, October 14, 2011

skuas in the air

The great Skua. I really started to have respect of these birds. They are big and their beaks are sharp and strong. You really do not want to mess with them. But they are pretty to look at. These characters we found near Jökulsárlón, southern Iceland.




Die große arktische Raubmöve. Ich habe wirklich langsam Respekt vor diesen Vögeln bekommen. Die sind groß, ihre Schnäbel scharf und kräftig und man will sich wirlich nicht mit ihnen anlegen. Aber sie geben ein gutes Motiv ab. Diese Kandidaten haben wir in der Nähe der Jökulsárlón, Südisland, gefunden.










 

Thursday, October 13, 2011

in Ísafjordur at night

This bike was parked at the Hotel Edda. Someone really loves it,I guess.
Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.2

this rocks...

I have started building these rock pyramids, but I have to admit: This one I did only take the photo - my husband built the stack.
This photo was part of a series of rocks I did on the coast near Vík, southern Iceland, actually near Dyrholaey.






Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Porsche

Why it was there I do not know. But this beautiful Porsche showed up on the edge of Jökulsárlón, southern Iceland, just when we were there. We saw it several times again on our way back west along the southern coast, when we headed to Vík and further on that night. It was traveling on a trailer, of course.

Here is how we saw it.



Ich weiß nicht, warum er dort war, aber dieser Porsche tauchte plötzlich an der Jökulsárlón, Südisland auf, gerade als wir dort mit den Kameras herumliefen. Auf dem Rückweg Richtung Vík und weiter haben wir ihn noch einige Male gesehen, allerdings auf einem Anhänger.

fly over, southern coast

Unfortunately this picture suffered from the airplane window. But the scene and the motive made me show it anyways.
This is Iceland's southern coast, looking down on the Westmaennar Islands in the front. Behind, on land, you see Eyafjallajökull and the flow of debris into the ocean where the 2010 erruption changed the landscape. Behind it you see Mirdralsjökull, then in the back Vatnajökull, just faintly.

This scene was just too nice, especially in the light of the sunrise, one early morning in August 2011. So I needed to post this here.


Tuesday, October 11, 2011

glacial warning

Sometimes you find warning signs in Iceland. This one is at a popluar glacial tongue.

Warnschilder sind in Island eher selten, aber dieses haben wir am Fuße einer beliebten Gletscherzunge gesehen.

 

Monday, October 10, 2011

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Saturday, October 8, 2011

rock in a rock

If you throw enough pebbles in a place you will find one that is really odd.

Wenn man genügend Kiesel an einen Platz wirft, findet man einen, der seltsam ist.