On Saturday we have had a quite summerly day. Sunny and warm.
My son’s girlfriend just bought her first DSLR with a kit lens. Before she bought it, she has asked me to show her how to use it properly.
Our first lesson was two or three weeks ago, when I introduced her to the basic functions and terms: aperture, ISO, shutter time, magic triangle, white balance, image stabilizer, focal length, field of depth and so on. This time, we went outside to a park. Here we tried some of the settings in practice lessons. A third lesson, a feedback session with reviewing her images, will be held soon.
I certainly brought back some images on my own. Our Sunday was cold and wet again. Thus, I developed the images, instead of being outside again 😦
You can see the river Wupper, a side river of the river Rhine. The Wupper is about 116 km long and crosses the town Wuppertal. Wuppertal was founded in 1929 by combining the older towns Elberfeld and Barmen, now quarters of Wuppertal. Instead of choosing one of the old names for the new town for several reasons, they created “Wuppertal” (= Wupper valley), because of their location in the valley of river Wupper. Nowadays Wuppertal has about 350.000 citizens, a university and some industry. Only few houses survived the massive attacks with aircraft bombs during WW2, thus Wuppertal is not really attractive from a photographers perspective. Although, there are still a few interesting houses around.
Wuppertal is famous for the Schwebebahn. Also, Aspirin was developed in the Bayer laboratory in Wuppertal. Once, Wuppertal was important for producing textiles in weaving mills (often home weaver) and dyeing yarns. But, these industries died. The last weaving mill was closed more then 40 years ago.
In the 1970s the peek of water pollution was reached. Many companies used the river as a cheap and easy way to get rid of their liquid remains from their production. Lots of chemicals from weaving mills, dyeing mills, groundwood mills and forges were channeled in the river. Locals told me, schools beside the river often got “stink free” in summer. In those times, the water got a different color nearly each day, depending on the different chemicals used for dyeing yearns in different colors.
Now, the river is clean again. Pew! Rare bird are back. You can see dippers, kingfishers and grey herons finishing for larvae and small fishes. Renaturation was successful!
This park has a secret. It’s not hidden. Rather it’s very large. It’s built more than 100 years ago. So, it’s worth its own post. But, not today.
Stay tuned!
MyBlog - solaner 
Lovely :))
Thanks, Laura!