Month: November 2018

art, culture, food, people, photography, still life

Throwback Thursday: picking raisins

solaner

Here we have a German saying: someone is simply picking the raisins. Such a guy is called a raisin-picker. What does this mean?

Raisins are dried grapes and often used as an ingredient for baking cakes, torte or bread or while cooking food. Despite, they don’t have much liquid left after the drying process, they taste great. They are soft and sweet. Most people like them. But, because of the way they are produced, they are quite expensive and thus a valuable ingredient.

So, when we say, someone is picking the raisins, he or she is taking a lot of something good and does not leave enough for the others. In this context the ‘good’ not necessarily needs to be food. It could also be public holidays inside the vacation time. Or, when it comes to pay for a round, one always pay only the cheap drinks and leaves the expensive drinks to be paid by the others. Or doing the easy work while leaving the hard work to be done by the others. I guess, you got the idea.

Do you have a similar saying? Leave me a note in the comments.

This little guy is picking a raisin out from a Dresdner Christstollen (or shorter Dresdener Stollen), a typical German sweet, spiced bread. It’s made with a lot of butter, sugar, raisins, candied orange peel, candied citron peel, nuts, almonds, mild, rum and a lot more. Although, it’s known and made in many more parts of Germany, the Stollen from Dresden is best know.

Take care!

art

My calendars are available

solaner

calendars_2016…. and more :). – an add for my products

Just like in the last years, I’d like to remind you to my calendars with fantastic images from Cuba. But, this year I can also introduce you to puzzle boxes and canvas prints. These new products are also available now i.e. at Amazon. I included the ISBN numbers for ordering the calendars below grouped by country edition (UK, DE, CH and AT).

While checking Amazon.com I found the UK versions in the US, too.

The Corfu calendar for 2019 is also available, now.

Some more interesting products with my images are available at Redbubble.

Wall calendar portrait mode “Havanna” 2019:

DIN A4 hoch / 978-3-669-52434-6
DIN A3 hoch / 978-3-669-52435-3
DIN A2 hoch / 978-3-669-52436-0
DIN A5 Tischkalender / 978-3-669-52437-7

Wall calendar landscape mode “La Habana / Havanna” 2019:

DIN A4 quer / 978-3-669-52352-3
DIN A3 quer / 978-3-669-52353-0
DIN A2 quer / 978-3-669-52354-7
DIN A5 Tischkalender / 978-3-669-52355-4

La Habana / Havanna  2019 landsape
DIN A4 Landscape ISBN 978-1-325-14468-6 (UK-Version)
DIN A3 Landscape ISBN 978-1-325-14469-3 (UK-Version)

Wall calendar landscape mode “Cuba Cars” 2019

DIN A4 Landscape / 978-1-325-32242-8 (UK version)
DIN A3 Landscape / 978-1-325-32243-5 (UK version)

DIN A4 quer / 978-3-669-51465-1 (CH-Version)
DIN A3 quer / 978-3-669-51466-8 (CH-Version)
DIN A2 quer / 978-3-669-51467-5 (CH-Version)
DIN A5 Tisch / 978-3-669-51468-2 (CH-Version)

DIN A4 quer / 978-3-669-51285-5 (DE-Version)
DIN A3 quer / 978-3-669-51286-2 (DE-Version)
DIN A2 quer / 978-3-669-51287-9 (DE-Version)
DIN A5 Tisch / 978-3-669-51288-6 (DE-Version)

New “Cuba Cars” 2019:

Wandkalender for 2019 as Familienplaner sized, 21 cm x 45 cm / 978-3-670-20373-5

Take care!

animals, bird, landscape, nature, photography, seasons, wildlife, world

Throwback Thursday: Endangered species in Iceland

solaner

Earlier this week, I read on an Icelandic news site about puffins (the iconic bird representing Icelandic wildlife) and common seals were critically endangered of being extinct soon, when men don’t manage to reverse this development.

Source of the decrease of population is different for those two species. While the puffins are endangered by the climatic changes around Iceland, despite they are protected by certain laws. But, the warming of the sea makes their food, a special kind of fish, vanish. So, the puffins don’t find enough to feed themselves and their breed.

The common seals, on the other hand, are not protected by any laws in Iceland. They are endangered by hunts and being caught as bycatch. This year’s counting flights yielded the lowest number of common seals ever.

You know, each species depends on other species and relies on other species. The whole planet depends on this balanced system. So, when only one tiny part gets out of balance, this will have a massive impact on other parts. Help getting nature back in balance! Otherwise, we humans will soon live on a planet without any other life (neither plants nor animals). No oxygen, no food and no fresh and unpolluted water. Our only companion might be the roach because of their ability to live even in environments hostile to life.

Take care!

animals, culture, food, landscape, nature, people, photography, review, seasons, street, travel, world

Throwback Thursday: sur la plage de Cancale

solaner

Here we are in Brittany again. At the beach of the picturesque town of Cancale you can find this small square with some booths. They are selling oysters here. Right in front of the coast you can find oyster banks set up by fishermen to breed oysters and harvest them more easily. When enlarging the image you can see some of the banks in the water. The beach right next to this square ist covered over and over with oyster shells. I guess, thousands of generations of oyster shells are laying here, thrown away by the people who bought and eat them. It’s an interesting sound when walking over them.

Take care!

art, landscape, long exposure, nature, photography, review

Monochrome Monday 5-28

solaner

Today, I have an another image taken on the Ilse of Skye in April for you. It’s a long exposure: 25s at f22 and ISO 50 by using my standard zoom.

When we arrived at the parking lot, about a kilometer from the shore, we were already able to see the spray in the air and when we arrived, we were able to see, how strong the surf was. I’ll show you some images of the waves, soon.

Nevertheless, I left my tripod in the back of our rental car, so my beanbag replaced the tripod.

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You know, in the past nearly all of my monochrome images were developed by using Tonality Pro by Skylum (formerly known as MacPhun). Unfortunately, Tonality Pro is considered as a legacy or retired product in the meantime. But, the monochrome skills of Luminar were in my opinion not good enough compared to Tonality Pro. But, I guess, someone at Skylum heard my complaints and startet bringing the monochrome engine from Tonality Pro to Luminar 2018 and converted the presets, too.

This image, is the first monochrome image developed with Luminar, I’m really satisfied with.

There’s also some other news on Luminar: The most recent free update contains a new AI driven filter for enhancing the sky. As always, you can download a preview, in case you don’t have Luminar 2018 already. Everyone else can purchase a copy for a reduced price by using this code: SOLANER

*** </Ad> ***

Take care!

culture, landscape, nature, photography, seasons, wildlife, work, world

Throwback Thursday: the vanishing of animals

solaner

Earlier this week, I noticed a report created by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) stating the massive decrease of vertebrates on earth. Rhinos, tigers, elephants, leopards and many species more: all of them are in danger of getting extinct. The number of all living vertebrates is reduced during the last decades. Between 1970  and 2014 the number of wild living vertebrates shrunk by 60% caused by human activities. The reasons are primarily agriculture, mining and city enlargement.

To make the situation even worse, China allowed more trading with i.e. rhino-horns and tiger bones.

In the past, I also wrote about the vanishing of insects and birds.

There’s a statement assumed to be said by a North American Indian once to the President of the United States of America: “It is only when the white man has destroyed the whole forest, when it has killed all fish and all animals and that all rivers have dried up that he will realize that nobody can eat money. ”

In my opinion, we’re right on the highway to destroy ultimately our own basis of living and nutrition. Despite, many people are warning with loud voices for decades, those in leading positions, in politics as well as in production industries, are increasing the speed of destruction.

See, what’s left

This image is taken back in 2010 here in Germany, not far away from my home. It’s a coal mine. The image is taken by using a fish-eye lens to show the enormous hole in the surface of our planet. It’s nearly 31 km² and up to 250m deep. Huge machines are inside the hole and digging for coal. Therefore, ground-water must be pumped away in huge parts of Western Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands. Water, coming in contact with the coal, is polluted and contaminated. The water-pumping for lowering the ground-water level is a so-called “Ewigkeits-Aufgabe” (= eternal obligation). A few more images you can find here.

We’re acting like having a second planet to live on and to feed us in the luggage trunk. And, we’re trying to find intelligent life outside of our planet in space, although we didn’t have searched for intelligent life among the humans here on earth. The leaders of the world acting like being insane. Everyone is seeing the results of climatic changes, global warming and they do nothing against it. Researchers even found, big carnivores like wolves have an impact on landscape development and thus indirectly on climatic changes. But instead, the carnivores are hunted and killed wherever they are. The whole planet is balanced. Everything is dependent from many other things. No animal or plant is useless. Everything has a reason and is a necessity in the complex web of living. Up to now, there are still a huge number of white pages in the book of life.

Don’t get me wrong. I like technical research and I like space-flights very much. But, I want every single human to keep the nature in perfect shape and fully equipped with all natural beings (i.e. plants and animals) and live side-by-side without harming or bothering each other. Support those, who are working hard to reconstruct and repair the demolitions caused by humans (us, our parents or our ancestors).

Or, think of the plastic problem in the nature. Especially the oceans are plastic collecting areas. Many kinds pf plastic need more than 100 years to decay. In the meantime, the parts become smaller and smaller. While bigger parts of plastic can kill animals, the smaller parts are eaten. So, their stomach is full, but the die of starvation, because there is no nutritive substance in the plastic. Because of, these plastics remain in them, some substances can be absorbed and come back to our tables as a part of our food. Even fruits and vegetables can bring micro-plastic on our plates. That’s how we’re poisoning ourselves.

Take care!