Out for a Sunday walk the other week I saw these people basking in the autumn sunshine having coffee or possibly hot chocolate, because this place serves a wonderful cup (or pot) of cocoa.
There was a screen of water jets coming up from the fountain, so I thought I would take some pictures of the water with people in the background. At the time I did not, although perhaps I should have, think about the fact that the people were in bright sunshine and the water in the shade. But unwittingly I got a rather strange-looking picture. I have not edited the image at all. I think it looks like I have splashed blue paint on a photograph.
Sometimes photos come out in the most surprising way, giving you an effect you did not envisage. I learn all the time!
Well, two images actually. Since I have not posted many “Pics of the Week” of late, I thought I would put up two in one go. They are from a forest walk this summer when you could hardly see the trees for the heavy mist. It made for some interesting photographs though. I chose monochrome to emphasise the raw and damp conditions.
This beautiful juvenile great spotted woodpecker was just sitting there tucked into the foliage waiting for the parent to provide some food. It is leaning in sync with the leaves on both sides as if it was part of the vegetation, had it not been for the strong colours.
You know that spring is getting a firm grip on nature when the Japanese Cherry Blossom trees in our street look like this.
My study is on the first floor, so I have these wonderful colours outside my windows at eye level, and late in the afternoon the sun shines through the pink foliage, almost setting it alight. Magical!
At the carnival in Maastricht I stood for quite a while on a bench in a crowd in front of a stage. A male choir kept the audience warm with their enthusiastic singing, even at one stage singing about what I was doing. Mrs S said, they are pointing at you, saying something about photo. Neither of us understand much spoken Dutch, and I wondered if I had offended somebody, but my fears were unfounded. It was a song about taking photos, that word being mentioned many times accompanied by the lead singer pointing at me. I could only smile back in return and point my camera at somebody else in the crowd. Nobody seemed to mind, several of them (in particular women for some reason) more or less posing, smiling into the camera. But the best shots are normally of people who are unaware of the photographer.
This week’s picture is not one of outstanding beauty, but more of outstanding happiness on a man’s face. This bespectacled gentleman was dressed as Carmen, red dress with black dots and black wig and all. But the hair piece had been slightly dislodged and looked more like a black version of an English judge’s court wig and a Caribbean pirate’s floppy hair combined!
Judge Carmen had bumped into a couple he knew, but who did not recognise him at first in his outlandish outfit, so he had to “identify” himself. He laughed heartily at their reaction.
What I like in particular about this split-second out of the five seconds it all took, is that it tells a whole story, in a blink, his expression being representative of the atmosphere of this annual event, sheer joy, fun and some silliness.
This week’s picture turned out to have something magical about it. Dusk was setting in and I also underexposed it somewhat. But the total effect was that parts of the bird were highlighted as was the water that its feet disturbed and set in motion.
One’s eyes are immediately drawn to the centre of the image, and with all the dark water and wall of trees in the background, I think it makes the scene look like a fairy tale illustration. Maybe I should write the book to go with it now?
BTW - Since I spend so much time and take such care to display some of my photos here, like this beautiful bird on the lake, I have started to embed info about copyright and ownership, and I also digitally mark the very best ones so they are traceable on the net. Would you like to use it as desktop background, please just ask me nicely in an email or comment and I might just send you a full-size copy.
Initially it looked nothing like this to me as I was walking along the river Mayenne in France last week. First of all, when you walk along a road or path you look at the opaque surface in front of you and your eyes adjust to that optically, if you see what I mean. If you then let your eyes move sideways to look at the water, you tend to focus on the surface just like you did on the ground. Sometimes in order to see the reflection you have to refocus, something the brain does somehow, as if there is another layer under the water surface.
Still my eyes could not pick up the vibrant colours like the camera did. Perhaps my eyes are getting old, or it may be that I am just human, but the camera eye is far superior to any human eye. I was very pleased that I interrupted the walk to take this photo once I saw it on the camera display. I was even more surprised when I saw it in full on my computer screen.
I could not resist posting this before I take a week-long break from blogging. This fluffy, feathery ball is a male bullfinch trying to save energy and keep warm. (Taken yesterday in our garden.)
The snow has all but gone now, so I thought I'd better put this picture up to represent the unusually long spell of wintry weather we've had here.
Many of the children in particular have never seen so much snow before, and not just for a brief spell, but for a prolonged period. There was more earlier, but most of it disappeared before we had this top-up.
Children have made snowmen and igloos in many gardens. They have had snowball fights on their way to, and especially coming from school, our Italian neighbour mum exchanging snowballs with her oldest son, both laughing and shouting, ducking and diving.
People have actually started wearing proper winter clothes, yes, even Brits! But many of them are still reluctant to treat their cars with winter respect. Some still pour hot water down their windscreens; others nip out midway through their morning routines to start the car engine and leave it running to do the snow and ice clearing job for them. They'll do anything to avoid clearing the ice and snow with scraper and brush. So it's not unusual to see people on their way to work in "igloos" with a little peep hole to look out through. Dangerous!
Otherwise I think this picture is one of tranquility. That soft white snow mutes all sounds and brightens up the landscape and it also creates natural harmony and beauty, even in our somewhat monotonous neighbourhood.
One day when I had formatted the camera memory card to make space for new images, I took a photograph just to check that all was OK. Normally I just hold the camera in front of me, which means I get a picture of my desk with the PC screen on it.
This time however I aimed at the floor next to me by the wall, and this is what it looked like.
And I thought, what a mess! How the heck do I know which is which, where do they go and where do they come from? Do I need them all?
Somehow I know them all, even without having labelled them, and should I forget, I just follow them with my fingers. They are all needed for the PC, phone, PDA, iPod, cameras, headphones etc. Is there a better way? Is it possible to organise this ball of spaghetti differently? What does yours look like?
Hopefully one day we won't be needing a physical conductor of signals and electricity at all; everything will be done by Bluetooth, infrared or something even more sophisticated and advanced. I can't wait!
Then I thought, life is a bit like this too, isn't it? But that's another issue all together. Have a wonderful weekend!
On New Year's Day in Sweden we went for e refreshing walk through a small village. The footpath took us not only past people's gardens, but through them. All was quiet and peaceful and I was hoping for some photo opportunities; beautiful houses and views, that sort of thing.
Then I caught sight of this snow-covered garden table with a couple of strange-looking bottles. They had been left out in the cold and had probably been standing there for some time.
What are they? I never examined them closely, did not lift them up or touch them at all. Is there a hole in the bottom where you put a candle of some sort? Can you remove the beautifully shaped cover? It looks like some cotton thread round the neck of the bottle. Or is it metal? If there is a candle involved, how do you light it?
Maybe it is something completely different? I don't know. What do you think?
Spotted in a Düsseldorf shop window. I just had to get my little compact camera out. Window dressing to the letter! Mmmm, I wonder, what kind of shop might this be?
Very clever, and it brought a smile to many passers-by.
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?
We have had some flowers (lilies I think) on very long stalks in some pots in our garden since last year. They have grown tall steadily, taking veeery long to develop. In the last week or so the buds on two of them started to change colour, and this morning they had suddenly opened up completely in the strong morning sunshine (30 degrees Celsius). This is the result.
I could not resist the temptation to get my camera out for this as I was having a coffee in the new Western Harbour area of Malmö where there used to be an enormous shipyard. Now it is full of innovative and interesting buildings with a distinct international feel to it. We all needed a good, strong coffee the day after my brother's birthday party. In Bar Italia I had the best Latte of my life so far.
What you see in the picture is the bridge, part of a link including bridge, tunnel and man-made island, between Malmö in Sweden and Copenhagen in Denmark. But the dominating feature is the rain cloud, which, together with the water, makes up one solid mass of grey-blue with only two dots of orange on the water. So had a fisherman not put out his net there, this photo would have been very close to monochrome.
Or should I call this post “Me and My Camera Having a Night Out”? When we went to France for Easter I was very keen to take some night shots with my new tripod and infra-red remote control. Our house is way out, deep in the dairy countryside of Normandy, where there is very little light pollution at night, so we can often see “the whole universe” and have sometimes had such a clear sky that the blurry, white streak across the sky we call “The Milky Way”, has been clearly visible. It is truly awe-inspiring. You just stand there and feel very insignificant.
I was not lucky enough to see The Milky Way this time, but the sky was relatively clear with masses of stars, so I pointed my camera at a few constellations. I tried different settings, timings and positions, pacing up and down the country lane waiting for the camera to do its work, and trying not to walk into the tripod in the dark; one, two, three, and even five minutes of exposure time. I expected to capture more stars with increasing exposure, but I also experienced one rather unexpected effect (apart from the slight light pollution in the top corners, coming from a couple of villages miles away).
At first I was disappointed with the fuzzy shots, in particular the five-minute shots; that was until I realised I had captured the image of five minutes! Look at the picture in detail and see if you can figure out what the Dickins I am talking about. You might need to click on it to enlarge it, to see the pattern more clearly. This is what five minutes look like.
What five minutes? See the lines, which actually are innumerable stars, stretching in a circular pattern? No, I did not move the camera, the stars did not move, but the earth spun around its axis for five minutes!
My camera was pointing roughly to the North, the earth spun one way, making the stars seemingly draw lines the other way. If you look really closely you might possibly see that there is a centre point towards the bottom around which everything seems to have turned. That is where our earth’s North-South axis is pointing, the North Celestial Pole.
What a dizzying thought! I had captured an image of five minutes. I had truly taken five.
For more Easter pictures (part 2), go to my photo blog, Camera Digitalis.
This week I give you a picture of what this planet is all about, or at least what makes life possible, water. This week the G20 countries will meet in London and environmental protest organisations will be there to remind the delegates of the climate situation.
So I thought it might be appropriate to display an image of free-flowing water that has kept a nearby watermill wheel spinning for centuries. In particular if you enlarge the picture you will see all the wonderful colours reflected in the water. Water is beautiful.
As you might understand I was very keen yesterday to use my new camera. I have not reported much on the bird situation in the garden of late, but there are plenty of them and it is getting to the busiest period of the year now. Many different species visit regularly and they all squabble a little and some bully others from time to time. But the most aggressive ones are definitely the greenfinches. They always fight each other, competing for space on the feeders. I have witnessed many acrobatic aerial confrontations, and now also managed to catch some of them with my camera. So today I give you an example of my first shot at it (no pun intended), and there may be more to follow. In the future I will also use my photo blogto display many more.
I took this picture yesterday in rather dull light and without a tripod, but with a surprisingly steady hand, in particular since I used a heavy 200 mm lens. If you enlarge the picture you will see much more detail.
Pic of the Week this week is in fact the same picture, but in seven different edited versions. I was playing around with one of the photos from Thursday's sunset walk and put them in a Smilebox. Some of them really look like oil paintings, and I thought I would show how much fun you can have with a photo editing program, if you did not know already. Just a little playfulness!
I came across an old rescued slide on my PC the other day, and took a good look at it, which naturally brought back many memories. But the picture is also a statement of the time and reveals something about life in those days, not only for me but perhaps also for others. It has a clear time stamp.
At a first glance it is obvious that I was interested in music, but also expressing myself in art (pencils and brushes). In the right box of LPs I spot a classical album (Baroque I think), and in the left it is definitely “Islands” by The Band.
The reel-to-reel tape recorder, the turntable and the TV in glorious teak absolutely dates the set-up. The newer cassette tape recorder indicates progress.
If you look on the extreme left you will see a strange object (looks like two) in grey wood hanging off the top. The missing bit in the middle is where the user of this object would put his or her neck. Guessed it yet? No, right. It should be carried horizontally on your shoulders. Now then? No, I will have to tell you then. It is a yoke. From the ends of it hang chains with a metal hook to hold for instance buckets with milk. This yoke came from some old relative who had passed away years ago, and sadly, I do not know where I have got it now. I think I have moved too many times in my life perhaps.
I shall mention one final object before I let you enlarge the picture, should you so wish, my son’s first pair of shoes. On the day the photo was taken we celebrated his tenth birthday (a few days too late).
If you did not find it interesting to look at my old shelves, I will give you (in particular youngish readers) one piece of advice anyway; take photographs of your flats and houses as you go through life. I can guarantee that you will enjoy looking at them later in life. It can be rewarding, not just for insurance purposes!
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