Tag: snow

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

Monochrome Monday 7-38

solaner

Under normal circumstances, I probably would have been on Helgoland last week and this post might have been entitled with “I’m back …”. Unfortunately, that’s currently not possible and, to be honest, not suitable. During the pandemic, everyone should travel as little as possible.

Instead, I picked my swap disk containing my backlog of undeveloped images. One folder on that disk contains a couple of folders with images taken during quite larger trips. One of the oldest folders on that disk contains the images taken 5 years ago on Helgoland. So, I transferred them to my computer again and started developing them. In the past, I already developed some of the images. Maybe 20 or 30.

My plan is, to have the images developed by mid-February this year!

The image above is taken on day 1 on the island when we were on our first trip to the seals. Suddenly, a snowstorm started and snow was collected by the stones laying on the beach.

Take care and stay healthy!

 

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

Monochrome Monday 7-36

solaner

Snow! Because of the pandemic, traveling is currently not possible. So, no skiing vacation in Austria, Switzerland or Bavaria. Instead, people try to go to the Eifel (an average mountainous region near the Belgium border) or the Sauerland (an average mountainous region in the middle of North-Rhine Westphalia with hills up to 800 meters). Both regions would be reachable among an hour’s drive and attracting skiing tourists in ‘normal’ winters. But, everything is closed there, too. Why should I go there? Personally, I don’t ever go on a winter sports trip. But, many, many people are going despite the skiing tracks, the ski lifts, the restaurants, the toilets and even the parking lots are closed. Why do they go???? The TV news reported about people from all areas up to 300 km around these areas were found in that areas despite the closing! You can say very easily where people are from because of the licence plate on their cars. The letters in front of the dash in the licence plate are referring to the town or county, where the car is registered.

The above image is taken on Saturday afternoon. It’s neither Sauerland nor Eifel. I simply drove uphill in my town for about 4 or 5 kilometres. Coming from 200m above sea level, where we have no snow anymore (despite we got some the night from Wednesday to Thursday), to 250-300m I saw this right beside the street.

Stay home and us the opportunities you have in your county instead of carrying the virus throughout the whole country, I would like to say to those driving to touristic attractive locations despite the pandemic. This year is not a normal one. Survive the pandemic and you can go skiing again without regulations.

Take care and stay healthy!

 

animals, culture, mammal, photo-of-the-day, photography, world

Monochrome Monday 7-30

solaner
full-frame, 12mm, tripod, graduated ND filter

I guess, nearly everyone immediately connects this image to Iceland. It’s the iconic mountain Kirkjufell, located on a small peninsula on the north coast of the Snæfellsnes peninsula, with the Kirkjufellsfoss waterfall in front, where the river Kirkjufellsá reaches sea level after falling down 16 meters.

It was great being there at a time with nearly no other tourists. Exactly opposite to me, a hiking path follows the river and I suspect many people standing there watching this beautiful waterfall. While I was there, only 3 other guys were watching from there. So, it was easy to wait a couple of minutes.

Take care!

 

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

Throwback Thursday: another photographers roundtable during lockdown

solaner

You know as a regular reader, I’m part of a monthly photographers roundtable. We’re meeting each first Saturday of a month for a photowalk in our region. Under the current condition and rules, although we don’t have a complete lockdown as we had in spring, that’s not possible. So we had a Zoom meeting combined with an exercise to be done during the week before the meeting.

This time I picked a theme for all of us instead of selecting a card from the Inspiracle card deck. Each of has can show up to 5 images wherein a maximum of 2 is allowed to be taken from the archive. We’re in November and in the northern hemisphere, this month is considered dark, unfriendly, and depressing. In Germany, we have a couple of memorial days during November dedicate to the death. When now the Mexican “Día de los Muertos” comes to your mind, you’re completely wrong. Check the link above to learn a bit more about these memorial days. Because of this background, it came to my mind the give us “fading, transient, transience” as a theme for the exercise.

Here are my results:

only the skeleton remains a bit longer

 

make fading sounds visible

 

the flame of a match doesn’t exist for a long time

 

this icy decoration will not stand the rising sun

 

morning fog in its beauty down by the river

 

vanishing smoke

 

the amazing beauty of an aurora changes fast

The first 4 images are taken for the exercise, while the others are from my archive.

Take care!

landscape, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, seasons, travel, winter, world

Monochrome Monday 6-51 – Wanna talk?

solaner

I saw these nice English telephone boxes last year in Wales. As we are currently hindered going out and are locked in our homes to save us from getting infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus for several weeks now life becomes kind of boring.

As so many of us are currently locked at their homes similar to sitting in jail and certainly have talked to nearly every relative and friend. Every housekeeping is done, reading, listening to the radio and watching TV or binge-watching whole seasons becomes boring. So, maybe it’s interesting to talk to a complete stranger, whom you only know slightly from reading her blog posts.

Although I’m not alone, but I’m curious about talking to people and get to know a bot about how they feel these days. Therefore I’m offering a skype call. Simply talk half an hour or so. No specific topic. A bit like you could do when meeting someone in a metro or a bus station.

Therefore I make an offer: do you want to talk to me? I’m offering a skype call. If you’re interested, drop me a line in the comments. I won’t publish that comment and only use the email address you’re leaving me, to contact you for negotiating a suitable time slot. You know, I’m in western Europe and located in CEST, that’s UTC+2 (because of the daylight savings time).

You can find your timezone i.e. when looking on the world map published at Wikipedia and then use Google by saying for example “13 PST CEST” and get back “22:00h”. So, you can see, it’s 10 p.m. (= 22:00h) for me when the people in i.e. San Fransico or LA have 1 p.m. (= 13:00h; PST = Pacific Standard time).

So, anybody interested? I’m curious for you 🙂

Take care!

landscape, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, seasons, travel, winter, world

Monochrome Monday 6-47

solaner

This is another image taken during my winter trip to northern Norway in February/March 2016. I’m standing at the ferry port of Olderdalen and looking over to the other side of the Lyngefjord. You can see a tiny boat on the fjord in some distance. It’s a very big ferry. Even a couple of lorries are fitting in the ferry beside passenger cars. The distance to the mountain range is approximately 9 km. So, it gives you kind of a scale.

Take care!

flowers, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, plants, seasons, winter, world

Throwback Thursday: blossoms in winter

solaner
December 2009: nearly 1 meter of snow in only one night

This morning (while preparing this post for scheduling) I read an article in a news magazine summing up this past winter. The author wrote, the average temperature in Germany was +3.5°C. A winter without winterly weather. During winter 2006/2007 we even had +4.4°C on average in Germany. In Wikipedia, you can find some statistical data on the average temperature during winter even for the last centuries. So, in the period 1761 to 2017, there was an average temperature of  −0,2 °C (1961–1990: 0,2 °C). But, you can also see, that there were some peaks +2,7 °C in 1795/96, +2,3 °C in 1821/22, +2,9 °C in 1833/34  or +2,5 °C in 1868/69. But there were also some negative peaks: −5,0 °C in 1939/40, -3,9 °C in 1941/42, −4,6 °C in 1946/47 or −5,5 °C in 1962/63. You see, varying of average temperatures is normal, but there are some further conditions to consider. How about the amount of rainfall (snowfall) and the physical condition: liquid water drains away quite fast while the snow keeps the soil warm and saves the roots of plants from freezing during icy nights. At the end of the winter the snow cover dews slowly and the soil is able to absorb the water much better to keep it for summer (fill up the groundwater reservoirs).

There are some advantages and many disadvantages. First, plants and animals have more time for growing their descendants (fruits and offsprings). But, vermins also have more time. And, while it is still possible to get some frosty nights ’till April/May, sprouts can grow anew, while blossoms and fruit sets usually can’t be replaced when perished by cold.

Take care!