An occasional Photo Blog
Walking past this very large building site at least once a day I can’t help but be fascinated by the large number of cranes. I have captured one or two images of the site during the last year or so, and the last crane photos appeared on this blog in July last year. The buildings are shooting skywards at an alarming rate and I imagine that some of the fourteen cranes may well be dismantled during the next few months, so I decided to make an image or two while I still can.
Driving ‘through’ Basel on the way to England it appears to be a city consisting solely of very large pharmaceutical companies, railway sidings and urban motorways. Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find it has a beautiful old town oozing 15th century charm, and can be proud of its cyclists who not only stop for pedestrians at zebra crossings, but also don’t harass people on the pavements either, I certainly hope to visit again.
Magazine articles, blog posts and forums (yes I know that ‘fora’ is correct) discuss the question of motivation and inspiration constantly. I’ve even mentioned the subject here on my homepage. Fresh places inspire me a lot, and last Monday I was inspired by Basel. The first three images show absolutely nothing of the city, but I hope you like the newest selfie!
nbsp;
Somehow I just can’t get the hang of photographing Christmas lights. All the shops are dripping with them, the Christmas markets are ablaze with them and the pedestrian streets are all aglow. But it doesn’t matter where I point my lens my images just don’t look ‘right’. But there’s no mistake, Christmas is just a few days away and a blog without Christmas cheer is just not on, so below I’ve included just two of yesterday afternoon’s efforts taken in the town and one taken in the garden upon returning home.
Despite its simplicity I’m quite pleased with the garden image. The logs symbolising Yule logs and a few fairy lights to give it a seasonal flavour – Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!
A stroll in November, the golden leaves are disappearing rapidly and winter will be upon us very soon. All the more reason to go for a brisk walk through the local countryside…. well it would have been brisk if I hadn’t kept making photo stops 😉
Stepping out into the garden on Saturday morning I had a whole list of things to do. There were some urgent rabbit hutch repairs to be done, the tortoises needed to be bedded down for the winter, I ought to do something with the garden gate and of course there were numerous leaves to be gathered up. But first things first, I fetched the camera and captured a few ‘Saturday morning in the garden’ images.
I’m happy to say I did manage to get all my jobs done by late afternoon, and in the evening was able to enjoy a pumpkin show in one of the neighbouring villages. The decorated pumpkins were fantastic to look at, but photographically the event was quite a challenge. Despite the bright moon and the orange glow of dimly lit pumpkins it was dark, very dark. Several of my photos were at best mediocre, but I was quite pleased with the elderly pumpkin couple with their pumpkin cat… rather due to the subject matter than the image quality.
Today’s images were captured today whilst walking around a nearby lake. I had intended to simply lake a photo or two of the lake, but of course there were piles of sugar beet lurking nearby and of course couldn’t resist a steaming field.
In the last post I mentioned that during our short break I had been prompted to start a new B&W project. Although the project is currently still in the planning phase, I can say that I was very inspired by a visit to the Swiss Open Air Museum in Ballenberg. A museum exhibiting over one hundred old houses and farm buildings in a rural atmosphere. Today’s images are just a small selection captured whilst wandering through the museum.
Having a bit of holiday, wife and I decided to have a few days away. The photos I took were nothing particularly startling, but I did take several indoor B&W images using natural light which prompted me to lance a new photo project… more about that in a later blog post.
To cut a long story short we travelled up a mountain pass or two and spent the first night in Interlaken and the second night in a very large cream tub in Bulle. (We enjoyed our first cheese fondue of the season at Hotel/Restaurant La Cabriolle in Bulle, spending the night in one of their theme rooms. We chose the cream tub which we thought very appropriate, being in the Gruyere region. It also caused much amusement climbing in and out of bed).
Today was one of those rare occasions when I was very happy to have a reasonable zoom lens. It’s not the newest, it’s doesn’t have auto focus, but over 30 years ago not many lenses did. Just a quick fiddle with a couple of the K-30s settings and I was able to use it with comparative ease, but I missed several ‘birds in flight’ shots because by the time I had focused our little feathered friends had already landed.