on the third day of the ants, we had half a day off. some of us took the chance to make a small hike to sundance canyon on that afternoon.

on the way to sundance canyon.

to reach the sundance canyon, one has to walk a bit through beautiful nature.

sundance canyon.

the first picture still belongs to the way to the canyon. the canyon itself is going upwards, a small river is floating downwards. it’s pretty steep, as you can see. when one reaches the top, one gets a pretty neat view.

on the way back.

the way back featured several other great views.

finally, we reached the banff hot springs, which are not in use anymore to ensure the living of the banff springs snail. this is a kind of snail which basically only lives at exactly this place.

the banff springs hotel.

after returning to the conference center (which involved a stop in banff and drinking some beer), we took a small walk to the bow river, from where one has a good view on the banff springs hotel.

the bow falls.

another thing one can see from there are the bow falls, a pretty low (just a few meters) waterfall.

well, last but not least, a really big thanks to all involved in making this trip possible!

yesterday, i made a short trip to downtown calgary. the first time during my stay. after a quick walk through downtown, i decided to walk trough some parks. here are some impressions. enjoy!

sometimes, complaining helps: this morning, it was finally snowing here. after nearly half a year of waiting, i finally got my snow. here are some impressions. the first one is the same place as usual:

some less and more snowy impressions:

this is how the world is supposed to look today:

well, some (usual) tree pictures:

the sun was shining, and so i decided to go home earlier and take some pictures on the way… here are a few of the results.

one of the two cats:

a picture of the institute of mathematics at the university of oldenburg:

some pictures from outside:

i recently read that there was a study which showed that in germany, the weather is statistical significantly worse on weekends. well, if i compare the last two day’s sky—filled with clouds—to today’s sky—bright light—, i’d say that’s right. well, on the evening, shortly before it became dark (but, well, there was still way more light than on the two previous days), i took a small walk through the neighborhood and shot some photos. here are some of the results.

birds.

i agan managed to catch a flying bird; see the three pictures to the right. i’m not sure whether the one on the left is the same (or of the same kind) as the one on the right…

nature.

zoom.

i also made a few zooms. two of them i think are especially good. the first is this one:

the second is this one:

instead of hanging around, surfing, chatting, working, idling, waiting for the sun to come out, i did something completely different today, namely helping to chop two trees. which was kind of fun. haven’t done any “real” work for some time, and now i’m feeling quite tired. and happy.

today, the sun was shining bright, even though it was really cold outside. i decided to do a small trip. here are some impressions, taken in another nature protection area nearby:

actually, i was able to catch a bird flying high up in the sky with my telephoto lens:

well. today i did my first outdoor tests with my new toy. here are some of the results, which i like .

landscape.

i took the following pictures in the nature protection area next to the place where i’m staying at the moment.

trees

i like trees, as some of you probably already noticed :)

university.

two views on the more beautiful part (which happens to be the part where mathematics and natural sciences are located) of the carl von ossietzky university oldenburg.

zoom.

besides trees, i also like my new telephoto lens.

yesterday i was making a trip with a friend of mine to the rigi, a 1800 meter high mountain here in switzerland. the weather was great: the sun was shining, it was pretty warm, and the sight was very good. i really like the view of mountains, forests, water and mountains, and fortunately, this time, i had my camera with me, resulting in a lot of pictures. some good, some not so good, and some already deleted :-) this time, i also tried to create some panorama pictures. after lots of hours of trying to figure out how to do this using hugin and after learning a lot about creating panorama photographs (like, that one should not move the camera but simply rotate it) —though learning them a little too late—, i’m able to present some results, which still have some errors (some more and some less obvious). here they are: