The Big Launch

Trial and error, there was a lot of that, and frustration, but also stubbornness, because I don’t give up easily when I try to solve a problem. I tried to be systematic and logical in my approach, since that is how I do things, but this time, at times, I felt I had taken on a Sisyphean task. I was learning as I went along, but trial and error eventually made me triumph.

I hope that opening paragraph didn’t sound too pompous or self-conceited, because I could simply have said that I had managed to launch my photo web site yesterday. It might develop into something more over time, but for now it will be where I display my photographs in a structured way. The design is straightforward, clean and simple, which wasn’t necessarily easy to achieve. Not using a template meant I had to manage every little detail myself, all from scratch. IT works in mysterious ways, which we all know, but in the end I got it right.

Now I can sit back and catch up on some blog reading, something I sadly have neglected lately. It is very easy to become a “fickle friend” in the blogosphere.

If you do visit my photo web site, bjellerup.com, you’ll see that there are galleries which haven’t yet been linked to any page, but they will be. All the galleries are on auto play, but it is of course possible to override that. Hopefully they will not take too long to load (25 max in each flash gallery).

I tried the Comments page myself without great success. It is supposed to send the comment as an email to contact @ bjellerup.com . Please feel free to comment here or directly to ‘contact…’ if it doesn’t work, because I am understandably very interested in your views, and I promise to reply. So if you don’t get any response from me, it didn’t work.

Apart from continuing work on the “empty” galleries, I will look into any problems on the Comments page. Then of course, I hope to take many more good photos and add them to the site, sometimes replacing old ones of lesser quality.

Happy viewing!

A Week in France

On Sunday we returned from France after a 7 1/2 hr drive in torrential rain, very strong winds and reduced visibility. No wonder I was tired yesterday. We had superb weather all week long though.

When we arrived at our house we were greeted by this sight, our bedroom floor covered with lots of more or less dead flies. Don't know why.

















Most of the week we used these tools.
















Some stuff ended up as kindling ...
















... and some was just left on the ground for now (on the left). What remains of the Mock Orange Blossom on the right!)
















We also went for walks, for instance along this river where the authorities had regulated water levels in order to be able to inspect bridges and locks et cetera. Not many boats could more at this jetty.
















Then, on the last day, our wood-delivering farmer turned up in a monster of a tractor, which he very skillfully managed to manaeuvre between hedges and concrete posts , and promptly left us with a mountain of logs to take care of. With a neighbour's help we managed to stack it all just before sunset.



















So now I am back to using all my spare time to work on my photo web site so I can launch it (sounds a bit pretentious!) some time before my hair grows even whiter.

Building a Photo Web Site

I have been a very absent blogger of late. Sorry about that. The reason for this is that I am building a web site, and I am currently organising and processing lots of photos. The main structure is more or less in place, but the many photo galleries are hard work.

Why do I do this? Well, I just did not know what to do with all my pictures. I post some of them here and some on my photo blog, Camera Digitalis, so I thought I would display them in a much more organised way. I am building a straight-forward, no-frills, no bells-and-whistles site, although I use flash galleries to make it a little lively at least. Everything is done from scratch, no templates, because the only suitable photo site template that came with the software, was inadequate in my opinion.

The great difficulty is of course which photos to choose, how to categorise them and then to create the appropriate folders. After that comes the watermarking, since I want to protect my copyright. I am not so foolish as to think that all of my images are so attractive that people would want to copy them (steal them) all, but out of principle and for practical purposes I watermark every single one.

My particular interest in photography took off when I bought my digital SLR in the spring this year. Together with my previous compact camera photos, I have now many thousand images, although I have learned to be self-critical and I delete loads of them after transferring them to my PC for close inspection.

In the last couple of weeks I have trawled through gigabyte after gigabyte to find photos that I believe would be suitable. I am sure I will have second thoughts about many of them and take them off, and also replace some as I add new pictures.

One big issue is that I am not quite certain how much space they will use up of my total allowance, and also how long they will take to upload, so maybe I should launch the site well before I have completed all my planned galleries. Maybe I have to buy more space, we will see.

I am not far off now, perhaps a couple of weeks, so I hope to be able to announce the news before too long. It might come as a surprise to some readers, but I have decided to lift the veil of anonymity and use my real name on the new photo web site. I have nothing to hide, rather the opposite.

Love padlocks - Liebesschlösser

	Some time ago we came walking across the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne, a railway bridge leading straight into the main station. I had my eyes on the river and had the opportunity to get closer to this iron man who seems to be scared of small birds.
It was not until I looked the other way to try and get some shots through the fence that I noticed something odd, which I actually had seen on the other side before.
	Many people walked past without noticing or paying any attention, but children often spot funny and surprising things, as did this young girl.
There were padlocks everywhere, and they were often interlocked. A few had nothing on them, but most of them had either something written with a permanent marker pen or as the ones on the right here, had names engraved professionally.
	They could be colourful and of different designs. When I moved nearer to take a close-up I discovered something even more unusual, and perhaps clever.
There was advertising! The company that I guess has engraved a great number of all the thousands of love padlocks on this bridge, and possibly in other public places, had their own little padlock with the company name and URL. Will anybody spot it? Well, I did!

I googled and found that this is not an unusual phenomenon. You can find these love padlocks all over the world, as I discovered when I read this Wikipedia page. The fences on this bridge in Cologne will probably with time be full of padlocks. The western side seems to be where it started, and this love-locking has now moved over to the other side where we were. According to Wiki, the railway company threatened to remove all locks, but had to give in to public opinion and leave them as a symbol of people's commitment to each other.

I can just picture the scene when a love couple comes out on the bridge, how they jointly attach the lock to the fence, throw the key into the river and then seal it with a looong kiss. What do you think?

Prima Ballerina

I could have ruined the opportunity to take this very unusual autumn picture had I not spotted something in the air in front of me. I nearly walked into it, but managed to stop in time.

I saw a ballerina in mid-air. She moved this way and that way in the gentle breeze. She danced gracefully in front of the audience, but nobody but me noticed her. There were many people but they did not look up. Everybody had set their focus on something else while I was on the lookout for photo opportunities and tried to see what others did not see.

When I started shooting away most passers-by must have thought I took photos of thin air. People who stopped to take a closer look saw some piece of vegetation suspended by extremely thin cobweb. I saw a ballerina. What do you see?

Flax Market

Yesterday was probably the last summer day. Apart from some chilly mornings, we have had nearly 20 degrees C in the afternoons. Today started with fog and a distinct autumnal feel, so I think the organisers of the annual flax market in one of our little neighbouring towns were quite pleased with the timing.

We have been several times to this event over the years and we are actually familiar by now with the layout of it all and also recognise individuals and their stalls. As you might expect there are all sorts of things to look at, buy and try out, anything artisan, old-fashion or folksy and rural. Since we are so close to both the Dutch and Belgian borders there were quite a few from those countries as well, as you can see in some of the pictures in my Smilebox.

I hope you enjoy my little guided tour around the market as much as we enjoyed our gentle stroll ending with a rewarding glass of beer and sekt (sparkling wine) respectively.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Fougères Castle

Not far from our place in France is Fougères, just inside the Brittany border. I think we have taken nearly all of our visitors through the years to the impressive castle there. In medieval times it was the eastern stronghold of the Duchy of Brittany, trying to keep the French out, which eventually failed. But to this day Bretons have a very strong regional identity. The links with people on the British Isles with a Celtic ancestry are strong and obvious. For instance, whenever there is some cultural celebration you can bet your last cent there will be bagpipes.

Nearly all of the outer wall of the castle is still intact and several towers are also in very good condition. You can hire equipment to go on an audio-guided tour and enjoy a history lesson on-the-go. Or you can do as I did, let your camera lead the way and forget about your company for a while, just wave at them every now and then when your paths cross.

If you want more facts I suggest you google it. In the meantime you might enjoy some of my snaps from last month.

 

Weltkindertag - World Children's Day

We went to Cologne for the weekend and found to our surprise that the World Children's Day is celebrated on 20th September in Germany, not on 20th November as in the rest of the world. So when we went for a Sunday stroll along the river Rhine we were part of a lively crowd trying to negotiate our way between various activities and stalls where charities, associations and companies did their best to promote their merchandise or services. Anything to do with children was present. Although the fire brigade posing for a calendar shoot in front of the mighty cathedral was a coincidence, I guess.

I had my camera at the ready not to miss any interesting in this huge crowd. But I found it increasingly difficult to take photographs for obvious reasons. There is something called privacy and integrity, which are fundamental rights. Yes, we have all taken pictures of people who were unaware of it, or we were unaware of it ourselves and discovered that we had captured the image of a stranger who just happened to be there. That is quite understandable in most people's eyes, I believe.

I certainly find other people fascinating when I am out and about, for instance at a tourist attraction, and I enjoy observing  them as they are being absorbed by the the beauty of something, or they are reading a sign with interesting facts and their faces sometimes reveal their reactions and feelings. In such situations, I have to confess, I find it very difficult to resist taking a photograph secretly. But I am very reluctant to use it on my blog, because I am not absolutely certain where to draw the line.

When it comes to children the issue gets even more important and emotionally charged. I understand that most countries have laws that are extra restrictive to protect children, and we have all seen blurred faces or "headless" children on TV for instance. So you can imagine how hard I found it to take some interesting pictures at the Weltkindertag yesterday! I ended up with lots of abstract pictures and other unobtrusive pictures.

I have however managed to collect some harmless pictures to illustrate the event in Cologne yesterday. You will have to imagine the rest! (Do you find this issue tricky, how intrusive you can be with your camera?)

Genes Work!

I was sitting here at my desk going through photos, old and new ones, and I was looking for new photos in particular that were suitable for turning into black/white. I was looking for pictures that were not reliant on colour but rather shapes and light, which meant I found quite a few abstract pictures but also portraits.

I have come to realise that it is not always easy to "see them" in black/white when you are new to that game. A photographer friend of mine claims that he can see what an object or a view would look like in black/white through his long-life experience. That sounded interesting, so I went trawling through my many gigabytes of images.

That is when I saw the likeness. I have always had this strange feeling when I observe my grandchildren, both in real life and in photographs. It is like looking at myself in a spooky kind of way. I think you might be able to see that these two little boys share some genes, or is it just me imagining the whole thing?

Manna From Heaven?

We went for a mini break to the Loire and Burgundy when we were staying in our Normandy house this summer. One very interesting place we went to was where they produced Cremant, champagne from Burgundy if you like. Normally wine producers keep their barrels in their own cellars or caves, but this particular type of "bubbly" was made in a different way, in Caves de Bailly, which was under this hill.

The farmers delivered their grapes at the top of the hill where they were dropped down a shaft of some sort and then assisted by a screw, pulled down into this gigantic cave (system). When you approached the cave there were not many signs to direct you, but as you got closer you saw a big hole in the limestone hillside and just drove in.

It used to be a quarry but was now dedicated to the making of sparkling wine. During the war however, the occupying German forces used it for military purposes, hence the rusty old tank greeting you.

Then parking the car was easy and since it was a very hot day we appreciated the rather cool 12 degrees C, which made it particularly suitable for storing the five million bottles.

The farmers left their harvest at the top of the hill and collected their bottles several years later. The grapes rained down the shaft like manna to be turned into that wonderful, sparkling liquid. Mmmm!

There is a guided tour which is very interesting, if you understand French that is. Otherwise you just have to wait until you can do some tasting and buying after the tour.

Since the limestone is rather easy to work, sculptors had been invited to carve something out of the stone. Some works of art were somewhat more intriguing than others. The first one is not difficult to understand, but what did the artist have in mind when he created this second piece of art? Any ideas?