Month: October 2019

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

Throwback Thursday: fall

solaner

Recently, Leanne Cole published an image in her blog, which impressed me much.

I tried to get a similar image with one of the images taken during my latest trip 3 weeks ago to Zingst and the wonderful wild forest in the National Park “Nationalpark Vorpommersche Boddenlandschaft”. I love that region for nearly 30 years.

Amazing nature, zillions of interesting locations from a photographic perspective, and usually not that many people. You can still find calm places, despite its much more crowded than in the early 1990s when I first came to that region. You know, most of the German baltic sea coast used to belong to the GDR. So, it was quite impossible for someone from the FRG to come here for a vacation or a photo trip. The state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was formed after the GDR collapsed in 1990 and joined FRG.

Take care!

culture, landscape, work, world

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #69: Seeing double

solaner

This week it’s Tina‘s turn and she asked for doubles.

Here I have 2 common cranes about to land. I took this image 3 weeks ago.

It’s fall and the cranes are coming together after the first part of their trip south. Thousands of them meet in this region near the baltic sea to feed themselves and prepare for the second part of the fall migration to the south of France and southern Spain where they stay during winter.

This is probably a couple. Cranes live in a lifelong partnership. Despite this fact, they have specific courtship behavior: a courtship dance. While there is no specific difference in the appearance, you can’t decide well between males and females. You can only distinguish between males and females when they stand near each other: the female is slightly smaller.

Take care!

animals, bird, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, travel, wildlife, world

Throwback Thursday: fall

solaner

It’s definitely autumn now. Last night at least 2 troops of cranes flew over our house and heading south.

The image above is taken about 3 weeks ago. They were resting near the baltic sea. In that area, they stay for about 4 weeks. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t that good for wildlife photography. But, I’m happy for having seen them again. This time, my wife was with me. She isn’t in photography and not interested in observing wildlife. But, she was also very impressed.

Cranes flee very easy. They have a fleeing distance of about 300 m. And you better not disturb them, because every flight needs energy and they need the energy for their next long-distance flight to the south to their destinations in southern France and Spain. So, either be in the observing place before the cranes come (that’s long before sunrise) and stay there until they left (after sunset) or observe them from a distance (also from a hide).

What I noticed this year was, there were not many adolescents with the adults. You now, they only have one or a maximum of two eggs in a season. But this fall, most of the adults hadn’t had any kid. The most probable reason is the two hot summers and the dry winter between them. So, the wetlands weren’t wet which results in unsafe nest places and less food.

Take care!

culture, landscape, work, world

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #68: Layers

solaner

Long-time followers know, I used to big a big fan of the weekly photo challenges run by the WordPress team each Friday. Unfortunately, the series stopped some time ago. Now, I stumbled upon a post telling me, 4 ladies also missed the challenges and created a follow-up. Round robin, they challenge their followers with a topic. This week Amy, one of the 4 ladies, demands us to show “layers”.

As a first time contributor to this challenge, I’m not perfectly sure, how it works. But, I try to find out.

My image is taken a few years ago at a huge environmental sin here in Germany: open brown coal mining pits.

You can see one kind of the huge machines used at an open brown coal mining pit for digging for brown coal. The machines in the image are so-called stacker. They are at the end of the digging process. The huge diggers standing on a layer and shave the soil with their rotating shovels from the side. The brown coal isn’t that deep in the ground. So, it’s possible to dig for the coal in an open pit instead of digging tunnels deep in the ground. But, it spreads to the sides and the hole in the ground becomes wider and wider. The brown coal isn’t as solid as the stone coal. It’s not pressed that much and contains more moisture. So, it’s much heavier. That’s the reason for not to transport it to the power plants. Instead, the power plants are right beside the pit. Flat conveyors bring the brown coal to the power plants and the useless soil to the stackers.

In the image, you can see 2 stackers in the foreground on 2 different layers and 2 more in the background.

Here you can see an overview image taken with a fisheye lens and some more background information. In this post, you can see some more images taken at daytime. It also contains some of the diggers.

Thanks to the many environmentalists, this will finally come to an end. Unfortunately, the damage will last a few additional years until these mines finally are closed and the renaturation process can be started.

Take care!

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

Throwback Thursday: a magical morning

solaner

Saturday morning 5:30 a.m. I’m laying in my warm bed. It’s only 4°C outside. A free weekend. But, what’s that? What noise. My alarm clock rings. Hey, what’s wrong? Anyone’s playing a joke on me or is trying to annoy me? No, it was me, who set the alarm on this early hour.

After having a shower and a cup of coffee I started to my destination. About 60 km to drive, approximately 45 minutes. It’s still dark outside and only a few cars are on the motorway. I arrived without any problems and met with a friend who came from the opposite direction. We met there for taking some photos. The weather forecast was very proposing. Unfortunately, we only had a little bit of morning fog and hardly any clouds.

From 7:00h until 8:30h we were walking around and photographing the beautiful morning: starting in the blue hour with some morning fog and throughout the golden hour.

Take care!

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

Throwback Thursday: time passes quickly

solaner

Today, my grand-son is celebrating his 3rd birthday. So, we were assumed to buy some toys for him as a birthday present. We still now the brands and some of the stuff is well known. Our youngest son just turned 20. So, our memories of having a young boy bussling around in the house and the garden, stumbling over toys laying aroung everywhere or taking care of wounded knees is quite fresh.

Every now and than, we’re stumbling in our house over some toys at the attic or in some closets leftover by my youngest son. Our grandson get some of them when he is at our house. So, sometimes, when seeing my grandson playing with one of these toys, memories come back to me saying it’s not that long ago, his uncle (our youngest son) used to play with them: wooden puzzles, plastic cars, some stuffed animals or even bricks made by the famous company from Danmark.

The image above was taken during our first walk with the baby in the park beside the hospital with my smartphone.

Take care!