Newsblog
Our first stay in Patagonia. After our arrival in Punta Arenas we spent one night in this room. This was our last bed for two months and we put it to good use to check and repack our gear (from flight-suitable to trekking-suitable) ;) We knew we'll have to carry this 50kg of stuff all the time from now on. So in our case that was everything we needed (or wanted) to exist when we were out there. The backpacks were quite heavy but actually we felt freedom not weight.
Spring disco part II
Friday, 12 May 2017
Today I would like to continue with the next handful images of the first spring flowers. In the meantime actually all of them are already faded, but new flowers like orchids are on the way and can be found now. And in areas closer to the mountains, where there's still early spring, flowers like the Common Hepaticas or Oxlips are still in full bloom.
... before it left towards the rising sun. Same bird at almost the same time but in a completely different position regarding the light resulted in a totally different image.
Actually I was out trying to capture the milky way at night at Lake Almsee, but unfortunately as soon as I arrived the clouds also appeared. So I got some sleep and went out again later in the morning. As I was finally shooting this lovely landscape scenery, I suddenly heard these geese in the distance. As quickly as I could I changed the ISO from 100 to 4000 and the aperture from 16 to 10 to get an acceptable shutter speed of 1/200sec. During this second the birds already appeared behind the trees and since I was shooting the landscape with a 2 sec. selftimer I just tried to release the shutter in the right moment.
One of nature’s extraordinary sculptures in front of the Cuernos del Paine.
Canon EOS 7DII, Sigma 120-300mm F2,8 DG OS HSM Sports, Sigma TC 1401, handheld
f10, ISO200, +2.33EV, 1/200sec., 271mm
One day I took a rest under this tree. But actually I didn’t notice this owl until I finally moved on.
A portrait shot right after sundown.
Hopefully I could manage to show a bit of the beauty and grace of these fragile creatures and you could enjoy browsing through the pictures. Take care and see you soon.
As they finally left the area and disappeared at the horizon I took this picture.
... we experienced a pod of Orcas patrolling along the coast very close to the beach. These particular moments were certainly among our most exciting ones during the whole trip. We had a pretty exhausting day with constant heavy storm (which damaged the front door of our car), hard rain, sand storms and way too long gravel roads. We were caught in the car for several hours vainly hoping for the weather to get a little better. But since we knew that the best time to spot the Orcas will be in the evening, we just put on all our rain gear and hiked down to the coast. And just about 30 minutes later we witnessed the whales passing by right infront of us and once more we instantly forgot all the efforts, because they were so much worth it. And to our extra pleasure the rain finally stopped and the skies cleared up a bit as you could see on the previous picture and we could observe the Orcas in the distance for some more hours until the night fell in.
Wild roses where in full bloom all over the place and the always quickly changing weather conditions offered some exciting sceneries.
Chaltén - Patagonia part IV
Thursday, 23 February 2017
As I wrote in my first Patagonia-posting, we were forced to visit Argentina‘s Los Glaciares National Park first, before we could hike in Chile‘s Torres del Paine National Park. After traveling to the lovely townlet of El Chaltén we could start our very first hikes of the trip in the mountains around this area. So our first real Patagonian experiences already started with one of the world‘s probably most stunning mountain ranges. Actually I‘m no mountain addict, but this summits are jaw-dropping beautiful and they just leave you standing there as a dwarf in awe and humility. In this blog entry I would like to show you some images of this impressive peaks surrounded by inspiring wilderness.
Canon EOS 7DII, Sigma 120-300mm F2,8 DG OS HSM Sports, handheld
f3.5, ISO160, 1/1000sec., 120mm
It’s not often to see an ibex beside a tree, because they actually live above the tree line.
It started raining as I was out that morning looking for birds in the Neusiedlersee-Seewinkel National Park. So I sat down under a tree to wait a little bit as this deer suddenly approached in the high meadow. It often amazes me, how close you can get to even very shy animals when you just completely stop moving.
I don’t know what happened to this one, but it looked very photogenic to me. Maybe this flower is already fading away.
Whenever we turned our heads in the direction of the sun …
Canon EOS 50D, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM, handheld
f5.6, ISO400, -1EV, 1/200sec., 400mm
As soon as I pushed the shutter for this 30 sec. exposure this amazing falling star made its final show right beside the milky way. On the one hand I was extremely lucky with this meteor appearing already on my first image, on the other hand I haven't set up everything properly at this moment, especially the focus wasn't adjusted 100%. Nevertheless I’m happy with the result.
Finally I would like to kindly point to my new categories
Prints and
Workshops on this website again. I still invite you to check them out. Take care and see you soon!
You can find moss and lichen almost everywhere in Norway.
… before the night falls in peacefully and the stage is ready for the fire flies.
I find they look pretty mystic in this pose. Taken also with my eyes closed. Otherwise I think I would have gone blind.
Disappearing into the woods long before the sun finally rises.
Also all these images were taken either at the Danube Floodplains National Park or the Carinthian part of the High Tauern National Park. Hope you liked them, have a good one everybody!
Just a rather invisible grey silhoutte in a grey surrounding. Hardly to see and almost impossibel to set the focus.
Still in love part I
Thursday, 29 June 2017
Long time no see. Mostly I just cannot arrange that time of the year with writing blog posts ;) ... this spring I did some more trips to Lake Almsee, because after my first visit this year, I really fell in love with this place again. Although I've been there already very often. It's actually a little photographers paradise because it offers so many different very photogenic subjects and it also provides very lovely conditions most of the time. Of course there is the extremely charismatic lake itself and the stunning backdrop of the mountain range showing the Totes Gebirge ("dead mountain range"), but that's just the main eye catchers. Along the shores of the lake you can find numerous wonderful dead and alive trees, fields of reed and other swamp-liking plants. You can hear the rutting red deer bulls in autumn, there are chances to spot a red fox from time to time, you will find narcissuses in late spring and there are quite a lot of different water birds like grebes, ducks, swans, herons and kingfishers on the lake which all fit so well into this mostly untouched scenery. And last but not least there's the fog which occurs almost every night there and when it scatters in the morning and reveals the mountains and trees or when it's lit up by the first rays of the rising sun it's just magic. So one can easily take completely different landscape, wildlife and detail shot in great conditions during three hours. ... enough of that now, let's continue whith some images ;) Today I will show a few landscape impressions and later I will dedicate a second set of images to some of the birds I encountered there.
Although the whole scenery looks quite gorgeous, it has its down sides too, of course. A Caracara feeding on a penguin chick.
Another view into the valley of Rio de las Vueltas.
RK on