Monday, April 16, 2012

Action in the pond

Every spring, the small pond in the garden is full of alpine newts. It's quite entertaining to watch them but not so easy to take pictures without a water proof camera. The other day they didn't seem to care if the big shadows from above were dangerous or not so I got a few nice shots.
Male and female next to each other:


Another male coming along:

Take me!

Seconds later the female had enough and was gone leaving the two guys a little perplexed. Tough.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Marble

Marble is not really that spectacular but this is the first orange coloured marble I have seen. And quite a bit of cat's gold plus a few mines the geologist just has to explore ;)




Thursday, April 12, 2012

Kvernes Stave Church

Kvernes is apparently the youngest stave church in Norway (built ~1300). It doesn't really look much like a stave church anymore due to several rebuilds and repairs. Relatively close to the church grave fields, a historical Thing circle and some kind of phallus stone interpreted to represent some kind of fertility worship have been found. The Thing circle doesn't look that spectacular ... Stonehenge is definitely better but the view from the church hill is quite nice.







Saturday, April 7, 2012

Atlanterhavsveien

Some time ago I have already posted a few pictures of the Atlanterhavsveien. Here are a few more impressions.

The bridge of no return:

Trying to spot some seals or whales but only catching some water:

Almost getting wet feet:

Spotting some animals after all. Well ok, caddisfly larvae are not really that spectacular and taking a picture without reflection from the water but not scaring them was not that easy either ;)

Friday, April 6, 2012

Strokkur

A digital SLR camera spoils you. Most of the time I am quite pleased with the pictures I get with my camera and since I am not trying to be professional I usually don't use any software to make them look "better" than reality.
Unfortunately, there was a time before digital photography and thus I have a collection of slides from Iceland. Not a big deal nowadays though (at least I thought so) just get a slide scanner and you'll have all your pictures digitized. Ha! The scanner is capable of 3600 dpi which should be sufficient for slides yet I am not really happy with the result even after having worked on the pictures for quite a bit. Anyway, lots of time invested so I'll show the pictures anyway. Sorry for the poor quality. The weather wasn't too great at the time either so that didn't help (and the camera was not really that good).
Nevertheless, you can probably spot that I have tried to shoot a few eruption stages of the geysir Strokkur.
Looks like I have to visit Iceland again, with a good camera :D




Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Romsdal

A few impressions of the valley through which the Raumabanen, a railway between Dombås and Åndalsnes has been contructed. Probably the most impressive out of the 103 bridges is the Kylling Bridge.







Mølen II

Some places have a special athmosphere. One of these for me is Mølen. Lots of pebbles meet the ocean and the Viking graves in the form of ships. And the wind ...
You can just sit there and listen to the waves and the wind and forget the rest of the world around you. I love places like that.