Category: history

animals, art, history, mammal, photography

A wonderful story came to its end!

solaner

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This story started back in April 2010 with a cat giving birth to 4 little kittens in our kitchen. Fritz was the youngest of them, but the biggest from the birth. Out of his 3 sisters, he stayed the longes with us. only the oldest is also still with us. The middle 2 moved to another family in the summer of 2010 when they were a few months old. These were the first of the four kittens who ate cat food and didn’t drink mother milk anymore. So, the first chapter ended well.
Their mother was less than a year when she became pregnant by accident. According to her habit, we guessed, she was born in the summer of 2009. She became only about 1 year old and died as a result of an accident with a car on a Saturday night in mid-September 2010. Luckily, the kittens were already old enough to survive alone (with our help). The second chapter ended not so nicely.

The first 2 girls were black, just like their father and the 2 younger kittens were tabby, just like their mother. The first-born kitten was the smallest from the beginning and stayed quite small. So, she got the name Petite-Fleur (little flower). The second got the name Felina, derived from the Latin name for cats: Felidae (Felis silvestris catus). The third got her name from the very prominent “M” on her forehead: Mchen (little M). And, the youngest was Fritz. He also has the “M” on his forehead, but less distinct than in his elder sister’s fur.

On Sunday, April 30th, 2017, little Petite passed away because of a severe injury and the third chapter also ended badly.

Today, the last chapter ended and it also ended sadly. About a year ago, we had to bring Fritz to the vet clinic because he collapsed a couple of times. his regular vet was unable to help any further. It was too severe. Apparently, he got poisoned. Although we got him back after a couple of days, but he wasn’t the same anymore. From that day, he had to see the doctor quite often. Every couple of weeks he collapsed again. In October last year, he had to have his molars pulled. Unfortunately, one fang also had to come out. Pills helpt him to recover more or less. But, he didn’t eat cat food. He captured mice and rats. He only took water, a bit of cat milk, and dry cat food. So, it was very problematic to give him the medicine. While we’re on vacation, his condition went worse again and our youngest son (he’s still at home) and his girlfriend took action and brought him to the vet clinic again. They took him in after a short examination. Later, they called our son to tell him, that Fritz’s state was already too bad to heal him. He already had water in his lung and they recommended putting him to sleep. So, this noon, the final chapter ended very sadly again.

Another sad Sunday. But, Fritz is reunited with his mother and his oldest sister.

Take care!

history, landscape, nature, photo-of-the-day, review, seasons, travel, world

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge 181: “Double Dipping”

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This week Tina challenges us to show some work out of our own page. hmmm, I usually don’t participate in other challenges than LAPC. So, I don’t have something to say today and I was considering skipping this week. But, I have two other pages for you:

  1. Monochromia: when you’re a lover of monochrome images, this site is for you! You can find images published at least twice a day from many very talented photographers around the world working in different fields of photography. I’m a regular contributor over there. My slot is Friday 13:00h/1 p.m. New York time. But, I’m always reblogging it here, too.
    Here’s one of my last images, I published over there:
  2. The other one is my other, my personal, Blog. Currently, I’m running a poll to find the images for my next calendar. You’re invited to participate. Simply jump over and vote for your favorite images. The instructions are on top of the page in German first and in English below. It’s completely anonymous. I’d be very happy to get a lot of participants.

 

Take care!

 

history, landscape, nature, photo-of-the-day, review, seasons, travel, world

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge 180: “2021 – a review in images”

solaner

Today we have the first day of a new year. I often compare this day with a blank sheet of paper laying in front of me waiting to get written on. But, it’s also the perfect day to look back on the just past year and remember. So, this is kind of a follow-up to my yesterday’s post.

A week ago, I wrote about my yearbook. It’s also a book of memories (photographically). So, for today’s post, I’m just digging a bit more into the image folder to find the absolute essence of 2021.

Winter:

In early January we got a little snow for 3 days and in February ice rain and on top a quite solid layer of snow for about 2 weeks. A few crisp and clear nights gave me the opportunity to go out for photographing the night sky and some deep-sky objects.

 

Spring:

Spring started as usual, but too cold. The bluebells were not ready to get photographed, but the tulip fields were great again. Unfortunately, late snow destroyed many blossoms. So, fewer fruits grew on the trees.

Summer:

While June started great, by mid-June the weather turned. Gray skies and a lot of rain. The worst day was July 14th when huge amounts of rain fell over a very small band of land devasting the areas. Small creeks and rivers got soo much water, that they were overflooding the streets, railways, and towns besides them. Meters of water was standing in the streets. Up to now, the damages are not removed. Many people still have no heating in their houses in those areas. Many people lost everything except their lives while others were not so lucky because those also lost their lives.

Because of the bad weather, I didn’t go on excursions over the summer.

Fall:

Because of the weather, I didn’t go on any excursions during the fall, except using the first opportunity to see the cathedral in Cologne without any scaffold. The whole summer and most of the fall the weather was quite bad. Only a few hours of sunshine but even these days were cold. So, the Namibia trip from the second half of November dominates this section.

During December, I was busy developing my images from Namibia. So, there’s nothing to add.

You can find the corresponding posts published by our hosts here: Tina, Patti, Ann-Christine, and Amy

Take care!

astro, history, nature, night, photography, travel, world

A space trip

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Andromeda galaxy – the galaxy next door – only 2.5 million lightyears away


This past week, the Canadian actor William Shatner flew to space after getting invited by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.  At the age of 90, he finally crossed the so-called final frontier. Shatner got famous for playing Captain James Tiberius Kirk from 1966 to 1969 in 79 episodes of the US TV series “Star Trek”. Later, he took over the role again in a couple of sequel cinema movies.

Although NASA investigated space travel and space exploration at that time, I assume, William Shatner never ever assumed to be once in space himself. He was an actor playing with other actors in a movie studio set-up like a (at that time) hyper-modern and futuristic command bridge of a star sheep. But, times are turning. “Being” the captain of a spaceship made him famous and can be considered as the foundation of his international career. Although there were a couple of further movies dedicated to space travel at that time, I’d consider this one as the archetype of space exploration movies. In my opinion, the egalitarian philosophy (gender and skin color are not important at all – for that time, these sets were extremely progressive although you can see from today’s point of view, that there is room for more) among crew members as well as between crew and aliens: observe but not interfere.

On Twitter, I saw a screenshot showing Shatner after having left the spaceship and quoting him, that would have been the dream of his life. Another commenter was quite upset about it. Why he could have done this at that age and it would have been better, a scientist or at least a younger person were shot to space.

I can understand Shatner and why he had not refused to accept the invitation. Since I’m a child I’m interested in space exploration. In my children’s room, I had a huge poster on one of the walls showing the Space Shuttle in all of its glory while riding on a cushion of fire and smoke up to the stars. I’m admiring the images taken from outside of our planet showing our planet, stars, or deep-sky objects. Over the years a couple of books found their way onto my bookshelf, starting from my childhood. Jesco von Puttkammer and Carl Sagan are among the authors and in the 1990s I started collecting digital images published by NASA on their quite new web page. One of the most impressive images I’ve ever seen is the rising earth about the moon surface taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts as they came from behind the Moon. You see the image on the NASA homepage. When I’d get such an opportunity, I’d try everything to be part of that special party. My perfect destination would be a stay at ISS for a couple of days. I’m so jealous of Alexander Gerst (Astro Alex) and the views he had during his spare time on ISS. You can see some of the images he took while on ISS on Twitter.

I know, I will never ever get such an invitation. Nor will I ever have enough money to pay for my own tourist’s flight. And, to be honest, currently, these tourist flights are only up to about 106 km above sea level and allow only a very short stay. The flight up and down lasts longer than the stay. So, it’s more like a “hey, I was there” than enjoying the experience.

On the other hand, it’s a huge amount of waste and pollution necessary for making such a trip possible.

I took that image above showing the Andromeda galaxy in February this year. I’m not totally happy with the result, but I guess, it’s quite ok. Photographing deep-sky objects from the earth is very challenging. They are not very bright, but very small and light pollution is a serious problem. OK, when knowing where and when to look, you can recognize Andromeda with your bare eyes as a tiny patch different in size, brightness, and color than the surrounding stars. But it’s still a challenge photographing it and for having a view, I’d definitely recommend using a binocular or better a stabilized telescope.

Take care!

Computer, feedback, history, photography, postprocessing, review, software, technical

Throwback Thursday: huge machines

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A few weeks ago, I was on the road quite early for capturing flowers right after sunrise. Unfortunately, they were not blooming when I arrived, because of the too cold temperature we had during the last couple of weeks.

On my way back, I stopped at this huge machine, standing in a vast hole in the ground. I’m standing at the edge of the hole. In the back, you can spot another of these machines right above the edge of the excavation. Also, compare it with the white car. This car is a pickup. So, it’s not that small. I’ve never before been so close to such a huge machine. It’s used as a stacker to put the unusable earth back in the hole because they only want to have the brown coal.

I already published images from that digging pit a couple of times. In this post, published about 10 years ago, you can get a bit of an overview. Or, here, you can see, how it looks at night. While you can here find an image of the hole taken with a fisheye lens.

Although I hate how they treat the earth so badly by grabbing brown coal from the ground for using it inefficiently to burn it for producing electricity power, I find these huge machines really fascinating. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to the day they are not needed anymore.

Take care!