a photographer's view to the world – a traveler's blog
A few week ago I got the opportunity to observe these turtles. OK, turtles are not that exciting, but I kind of like them.
Currently we have summer here in the northern hemisphere and luckily it’s really hot. Reptiles, and turtles are reptiles, need a warm or hot environment to be able to move. In the morning they need the sun to get warmed up and reach a proper operating temperature. So, currently they’d feel well at our current temperature around 26 – 36 ° C.
Happy summer 🙂
Todays photograph is my contribution to the weekly photo challenge at “The daily post“. As mentioned in this posts subject, it asks for masterpieces.
There are so many different kinds of genres to pick from, like painting, sculpting and other kinds of artistry. Or think of the awesome buildings made by brilliant architects and so on.
I took a spiderweb. Think of the durable fabrics, the technique to create them in their body and their sustainability.
Take care
In case, you get lost in Havana, you might take a ride at a taxi. They have government operated cabs / taxis with a fixed tariff and a taximeter, private taxis without taximeter and tariff but a wonderful old car, tuktuks (cuba taxi), motorbikes and bike taxis.
The government taxis are cars build in the 1970s or (a bit) younger. Most of them were built in (former) Eastern bloc countries, i.e. Czech Republic or Soviet Union. The really young cars are of chinese production.
The private cabs are private owned vintage cars, build in the USA in the 1950s or earlier, as I mentioned in my last posts on cuban cars. Yellow eggs on 3 wheels and even regular motorbikes are used as a taxi.
Parts of the old town of Havana (and other cities, too) are closed for cars and only pedestrians and bikes are allowed here. So, bike taxis are cruising in these areas and offering their service for the people. Here, you also have to negotiate the price with the driver. In case, you got lost or running out of time, they will be happy to bring you to any place you want: back to your hotel or to a restaurant or any other place.
Even the locals use such vehicles. I saw i.e. private taxis with up to 10 people inside (I noticed them entering the car). It was really enormously, how many people were sitting in such a car without thinking about safety, although they also have busses as a kind of public transportation.
Take care.
And, while waiting for my next post, you might have a look on my previous posts on Cuba!
OK, not literally.
Every action or event has its end. So, this flight also came to its end. We traveled about 4.5 hours and covered 163 km with an average speed of about 30 km driven only by the wind. According to my GPS our maximum height was 2,573 m. Stunning!
But, finally we had had to land again and were collected by a car to be brought back to our starting point.
As you might know, wind during the starting and the landing phases might endanger these phases. We landed right before the wind became too strong. Thus, we were landed smooth and save.
Enjoy the photos taken in this final phases of our flight and right after we landed. Maybe you might also have a look back to the other posts:
nightflight, the rise of aurora, It’s coming, geometric shapes and heaven above.
Today’s assignment for photographers at the daily prompt is: connection.
Stairs connecting levels in a house or also in the streets. They help us to migrate from one level to another. It’s also a synonym for learning, because learning helps to develop another stage or level of education.
This photo is taken in Paris. The stairs will bring you from the Carrousel shopping center in the underground near the Louvre Palais up to the Tuileries, a large garden behind the palais.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I saw many vintages cars over there, for which Cuba is famous for. You know, when the Cuban Revolution took place in the late 1950s, they created a new government model following communistic ideas. As a result, Cuba was isolated and had serious problems getting modern technical equipment. So, the people took serious care i.e. for their cars. As a matter of fact, today still hundred-thousands of cars build back in the 1950s and earlier are still in use. So, they are more the 60 years old and are still rolling. OK, here we also have such old cars on the streets, but they aren’t in daily business anymore. Instead, they are pampered and well-tended, but used only for rare showcase events, because they are so precious (because they are so rare).
In Cuba, I saw many of them in the street, operating as private cars or as private taxis. Yes, although Cuba is a communistic country, they allow private businesses. Most of the cars, I’ve seen, were in perfect optical shape. Well-kept. But, according to our guide, the engines aren’t. They were replaced by Diesel engines by i.e. Toyota back in the 1970s.
If you want to take a ride, you can hire a car for a certain destination or for a certain time. You only have to negotiate the price with the driver, who usually is the owner of the car. There are also government operated taxis in the streets working on a fixed tariff and having a taxi-meter.
There are also other kinds of taxis in the streets, but I’ll show them in my next post.
So, enjoy some of the wonderful, old cars, I attached here.
While waiting for my next post, you might have a look on some past post.
A few days ago a photo calendar was publish, containing some of my photos. Currently you can order a german, an US and an UK version of the calendar. An austrian and a swiss version are on their way and need a few more days. I’d also put up a french and a spanish version, but I’m unable to write the marketing texts in that languages 😦
In case, you’re interested, here are the ISBN numbers for the calendars and a link to a special partner shop at Amazon:
Cuba Cars 2014 (DE)
Cuba Cars 2014 (US)
Cuba Cars 2014 (UK)
Update:
Cuba cars (CH Version)
Cuba cars (A Version)
According to the publishing house, the ISBN numbers are internationally valid, and you should be able to get your copy where you’re living.
Take care.
While flying with a plane is like driving with a bus, flying with a balloon is like riding a bike. Not only when comparing the speed or the amount of people traveling in the same time, but it’s …. more of a direct experience.
You can feel the temperature of the air. You can also feel the warmth of the sun on your skin or the moisture in the air, but no wind. It’s an incomparable experience.
Usually balloons start early in the morning or later in afternoon to avoid thermal winds, that might endanger or at least complicate the landing and the start. When taking a gas balloon you could even start in the early morning and land after sunset, to avoid such problems. Unfortunately gas balloons nowadays are filled with hydrogen again instead of helium, although there was the Zeppelin disaster in Lakehurst near New York back in Mai 1937. But unfortunately helium is too valuable and rare to use it for ballooning.
This weeks photo challenge at “The Daily Post” is “golden hour”. That is the first time after sunrise and the last time before sunset. It’s not literaly an hour long. Because the sun isn’t that high in the sky, the light is very soft and has a warm mood.
I often get up early to use this time of the day because of the beautiful light. Later at the day the is getting worse, while it usually gets better in the afternoon.
In general you can keep this saying in your mind:
from 11 to 3
the photographer has free.
(In German it’s a rhyme, so I tried it here, too).
Here is an example taken in the morning golden hour not far from my home. I’ve chosen this photo, because you can see very easily the mood the light creates during this special times.
While you are here on my page, take some time to click around. I guess, you’ll find some other posts you’d like. 🙂
This lonely tree, I found in Brittany, is my contribution to todays assignment at “The daily Prompt” called singular sensation.
I liked the unique shape of this tree and the fact to be located alone, surrounded by grain and a few lower bushes. So, it’s not only its uniqueness, that made me choose this photo. Also the fact, that it’s standing alone in the fields gave me the idea to choose it.
More on my travels in France (and elsewhere) can be found by using the categories on the right of this post. My most current posts are focused on traveling in Cuba.
Why to visit a cemetery during a vacation, I already wrote about last year. So, I don’t want to repeat it here.
On Cuba we also visited a cemetery: the cemetery of Habana. It’s really huge: 56 hectare with more than 20 kilometres of streets and more than a million funerals the biggest cemetery in whole America. According to Wikipedia you can find more than 53,000 family graves, mausoleums and chapels in the necropolis.
Even the cemetery is that big, that you usually need a map to find a certain grave, I was able to find a celebrity: the grave of Ibrahim Ferrer Planas (20.02.1927 – 06.08.2005), the voice of Buena Vista Social Club.
Here you can find a huge variety of graves and mausoleums. I was kind of surprised of the elaborated construction of the graves and the lack of poverty graves (at least, I didn’t find one). Most of them were in very good shape and rich decorated. My expectation was much different, regarding the cultural state of Cuba.
When having a look from the sky, the ground looks much different and unusual compared to our usual experience. We see our common landscape from a different perspective. Many geometric structures appear below our feet: streets, paths, hedges, field borders or power lines. Most of them are straight. Men tend to build their paths straight, while mother nature builds in unpredictable directions. We differ from this concept only in those cases, when we have to follow with our path a path, mother nature build before, like a creek, a river or a mountain.
Never the less, this concept looks nice from above. Enjoy the view!
Today’s assignment of “The Daily Post” for photographer is mirrored.
This week’s photo challenge of “The Daily Post” is nostalgic.
Thus, I picked a photo taken last year during a photo shooting with the wonderful Katia.
While negotiating the shooting she said, she would like to go into water. I said OK, even I thought, that wouldn’t happen. But, it did. At the end of our shooting she went in the pont and we took several very good photos.
I edited this one in that nostalgic way, so I picked it for this post, because it satisfies both assignments.
I hope, you like it!
My last two posts were focused on kids. Today I focus on kids again.
We saw several kids playing in the streets of the cuban cities and I was wondering, what kind of games they’d play. It seems to me, kids all over the world are playing the same kinds of games: football (soccer), throwing cards, marbles, hide and seek, jumping the rope, riding a bike, playing with animals (dogs, cats, goats, donkeys), catch-me or Continue reading “games children play”
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