Month: April 2017

animals, culture, mammal

Another bad Sunday morning

solaner

6,5 years ago I got rang out on an early sunday morning for a death cat.

While friends of us took the middle 2 kittens, the oldest (a black female) and the youngest (a tubby male) stayed with us. Both of them are outdoors every night. 6 weeks ago both went out as usual, but the next morning the black one didn’t come back.

We have search for her for some days and hoped for the best. She was very shy and fearful, even at home. Maybe she was locked in a garage for a weekend or short holiday of the owner. Nothing happened 😦 So, we assumed she’d have passed away because of an accident and someone already had removed the corpse.

Saturday afternoon my daughter saw a post in a local Facebook group about a found black cat. When she got the address, my sons went to that house to look if it could be our cat. She hid under the basement stairs out of their reach. A tiny, shy, injured, black cat. Offering her some food, water and a blanked they left here alone hoping she’d come out. This Sunday morning we got the notice of her having passed away during that night. Probably because of her injuries.

Now, we were able to see that this one was our cat. The size and the white spots forming kind of a bra made us sure she was it.

So, both cats in the above image aren’t with us anymore.

Rest in peace!

architecture, art, culture, history, photography, travel, world

Travel Tuesday: brick building

solaner

 

Today, I have another brick building for you: a pharmacy (Apotheke in German with the stylized letter “A” combined with the Aesculapian staff as a common logo for all pharmacies). As I mentioned in my post last week, people have had to build their houses from burnt bricks formed by using foam or clay and hay. An other options was wood or they have had to fetch stones over big distances. But because of the heavy winds here at the flat country at the coast, wood wasn’t a good solution to last long. Northern Germany is very flat. For more than 100 or 200 km from the coast, you won’t find any remarkable hills or mountains. So, farmers have built large and solid trees around there farms to keep out the storms. Next week, I’m showing you an example of these farms.

Nowadays, you can find these red brick houses nearly all over northern Germany, it’s considered as typical for this huge part of Germany. The houses of different regions differ in shape, but the material is usually the same.

Take care!

 

abstract, art, flowers, macro, nature, photography, plants, world

Monochrome Madness 4-01

solaner

Happy New Year. 🙂

You assume, I’ve mixed up the time or so? No! This is the first post for a new cycle of Monochrome Madness organised by the Australian photographer Leanne Cole. Last week we celebrated 3 years of MMC, the Monochrome Madness Challenge.

This is a blue blooming grape hyacinth. They are blooming in spring in many, many gardens. On Wednesday, I’m showing you a color image of these tiny guys 🙂

This one is taken with my 105mm macro lens and 2 of my extension tubes. Extension tubes are great for these images. I guess, I’ll set up a tech post on them to explain what it is and how they work.

FX full-frame (35mm), 105mm, ISO 200, 1/400s, f36, EV -1/3

This is my contribution to Monochrome Madness organized by Leanne Cole. Look at here site on Thursday (Australian time), to see many more monochrome images created by many other talented photographers from all over the world.

I’d also encourage you to participate. The conditions are  published in each of her Monochrome Madness posts.

Take care!

art, landscape, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, travel, world

Throwback Thursday: apocalypse now?

solaner

2010, April 17th

This HDR image is a result of tone mapping 6 images taken with my DX camera.

The red sky is a result of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull on March, 20th. For several weeks the sky was polluted by volcanic ashes. No aviation was allowed during these weeks because of the ashes in the sky. The evening skies became more reddish than usual.

Take care!

art, photography, travel, world

Monochrome Madness 3-52

solaner

Another year of “Monochrome Madness” is over. This was the third year and we have seen lots of interesting monochrome images taken by so many different photographers throughout the world. And, we have seen, the time of monochrome images isn’t over.

For this final post of the third year, I have looked through my images of the past 52 weeks and picked my 5 favourite images.

A huge “thank you” to Leanne Cole for all of her work to assemble a nice gallery every week during the last 12 months and certainly during the last 3 years, too.

This is my contribution to Monochrome Madness organized by Leanne Cole. Look at here site on Thursday (Australian time), to see many more monochrome images created by many other talented photographers from all over the world.

I’d also encourage you to participate. The conditions are  published in each of her Monochrome Madness posts.

Take care!

culture, history, people, photography, travel, world

Travel Tuesday: Neuharlingersiel harbour

solaner

 

Here we have a building made from bricks. That’s very typical for that region, because they have not much stone for building houses.

On the right side you can see the words “Oll School”. That’s “old school” in Low German. When aligning German – Low German – English you can see many words as tight relatives (In some cases, Dutch builds another bridge between Low German and English): i.e.
– Schule – School – school
– Tag – dag – day
– Alt – oll – old

and many more.

Take care!

 

abstract, art, flowers, macro, nature, photography, plants

Monochrome Madness 3-51

solaner

 

This is my contribution to Monochrome Madness organized by Leanne Cole. Look at here site on Thursday (Australian time), to see many more monochrome images created by many other talented photographers from all over the world.

I’d also encourage you to participate. The conditions are  published in each of her Monochrome Madness posts.

Take care!

culture, people, photography, sport, world

refreshing sports

solaner

For these couple of girls and boys stand-up paddling isn’t challenging enough. they combine stand-up paddling with hockey. Two teams trying to push the yellow ball in the opposite team’s goal. As you might imagine, they take a bath in the cold lake quite often. 🙂 But, it seemed to me, they have had a lot of fun.

Here, a few members of both teams are fighting. One team wants to push the ball into the goal, while the other team try to defend this goal.

Take care!

culture, history, people, photography, travel, world

Travel Tuesday: beach chairs

solaner

 

Here we have a beach chair. In German it’s called a Strandkorb. Strand = beach and korb = (a woven wicker) basked.

It’s very common along the German coasts. You can find them at the beach, but also in private gardens or in other public places. As we have much of wind at the coasts, you sit inside very comfortable. I keeps the wind away and you can adjust the back to lean back. On the top you have a small adjustable sun shield. All the fabrics are weather resistant. They stay outside from carry spring until late fall. On one side (and sometimes on both sides) you can find a foldaway table i.e. for a drink.

At the public beaches you can find beach chairs to rent for your stay (a day, a part or your full holiday).

Take care!

 

art, flowers, macro, nature, photography, plants, world

Monochrome Madness 3-50

solaner

“Culture” has different meanings in German.

First of all, it describes how a community is organised. Each group of people can develop a certain kind of culture. How to treat each other, hierarchies or styles of music, theatre, art, poetry and so on. Common roots ensure common and similar ideas in how communities work.

Another meaning is in agriculture and in farming. There are culture plants and animals: domesticated plants or animals. They are usually planted or raised for human needs: either as  a source of food or to have other advantages from them i.e. cats hunting mice and rats, horses and donkeys carry loads or oxen pull the plow.

More than 2000 years ago, the Romans came north to conquer Europe. They brought their style of living, their ideas of art, their architecture and their plants, like vine and their knowledge how to produce wine from the grapes. As a result you can find wine yards everywhere, where the Romand have settled, when the soil made wine bars possible.

This is my contribution to Monochrome Madness organized by Leanne Cole. Look at here site on Thursday (Australian time), to see many more monochrome images created by many other talented photographers from all over the world.

I’d also encourage you to participate. The conditions are  published in each of her Monochrome Madness posts.

Take care!