here’s my project 52 shot for the thirtyth week. the topic was

the big blue.

when i read this topic, i had to think of the morteratsch glacier, especially the dark blue grotto which is visible on some of the photos i took there. but when this topic was announced, my trip to the morteratsch glacier was already three days ago, and we are not supposed to take archive photos. besides that, i had no perfect photo from that grotto. so i waited, until i visited the next glacier: the rhône glacier. as opposed to this view of the glacier, the photo for this topic had to be taken inside the glacier, where it is deep blue. but this is not a problem at the rhône glacier, as every year, they dig a grotto into the glacier which you can enter. they also installed lights, usually hidden behind ice, which amplify the bluish tones. this was the perfect place to take a photo for this topic, in my opinion. and here it is! please click the photo to get a larger version:

technical details: 1/100s, f/2.8, 16mm fisheye, iso 400.

here’s my project 52 shot for the twentyfirst week. the topic was

sucht.

this one wasn’t too hard. instead of photographing chocolate, alcohol, computers, cats, i chose something making me go outside several times a night during the last days: northern lights, also called aurora borealis. these ones i photographed next to my mökki near ivalo, lappland. please click the photo to get a larger version:

technical details: 2s, f/4.5, 16mm fisheye, iso 3200.

while staying near to ivalo, the first night was really, really beautiful. some kind of fog, illuminated by the full moon, and aurorae dancing on the sky. just incredible.

more (daylight) photos will follow later. and in case you didn’t notice, i updated part two and added a few more photos from the trip from kuusamo to ivalo.

i spent the last days in the finnish lakeland, near mikkeli. far away from the rest of the world (more precisely: 9 km to the next village), at a lake. with electricity, though, but without running water. but who needs a shower if you have a whole lake! the water wasn’t exactly warm anymore, but it was warm enough to spend a lot of time inside. if it is too cold, there’s a sauna next to the cottage, wood-operated of course. there’s also a rowing boat, to explore the tiny part of the huge lake (or shall i say, system of lakes?) near enough. also, during this time of the year, the place was essentially bug free. i maybe got one or two bites during one week, without using any repellant. here are a few impressions.

in case you’re interested, the website of the cottage owner can be found here. i had one of the punainen mökit (“red cottages”).

(the birds on the water are probably whooper swans.)

this night, i decided to walk around a bit and take photos. i first walked through the irchelpark to the irchel campus, then continued up to the edge of the forest on the zürichberg, and after that i walked back towards the campus, where i met a black cat, and finally continued into the irchelpark. i started somewhen past 2 am and returned back home after 6:30.

yesterday, a total lunar eclipse (also known as a blood moon in german) occured. the next total one will be visible here in 2015, the previous one was in 2008. the one in 2008 was clouds only for me, as the one yesterday turned out to be as well. anyway, i spent the evening on the üetliberg, and took some nice photos, even though not of the moon.

sunset.

the first photos are from the sunset. in that direction, there weren’t too many clouds. only in the other direction, where the moon was supposed to rise, there were a lot of clouds.

zoomed zürich.

at least, i got some nice zoom shots of zürich. the second photo in the second row shows the eth and university main buildings.

üetliberg.

finally, here are two fisheye shots. the first shows a bit of the cloud cover, and the second one shows the uto kulm. i took the sunset photos from the look-out tower, and the latter ones from around the position that photo was taken. there was a lot of wind upstairs, and for the zürich photos i needed longer exposure times, which resulted in totally wiggled photos when i tried it from up there.

yesterday, i again used my ga to explore a bit of switzerland (and italy). i decided to use an offer by the sbb to drive up the cimetta, a mountain next to locarno at the lago maggiore. the weather report for most of switzerland wasn’t very good yesterday, except for the ticino, whence i ended up there. at ground level it was rather foggy, but when climbing up the mountain by cable car i eventually got out of the sea of fog. around the cardada station, the final destination of said cable car, wasn’t too much snow, but still enough left to take a lot of snow photos! later i took the chair lift up to the top and had lunch there, as well as took out my laptop (which i carried with me all the time… i really need to get a netbook!) and worked a bit. that was a funny moment, sitting over 1600 meters over sea level, surrounded by snow, while programming. i guess i have to do that more often :-)

later, i took the cable car back down to locarno and explored the city a bit. here are some impressions, including the madonna del sasso and the castello visconteo:

finally, i took the train to domodossola, operated by fart (ferrovie autolinee regionali ticinesi). the train ride is really beautiful. unfortunately, i had to shoot all photos through the window, which resulted in not so great ones… anyway, there are a few i really like:

i didn’t stay in domodossola, due to being tired and its getting dark outside, so i hopped onto the next train to brig, going through the simplon tunnel (about whose construction i read a novel called simplon some years ago). eventually, 14 hours after my departure, i arrived back in zürich.

yesterday, as i already mentioned here, i did a boat trip on lake zürich. this time, part of the long round trip, leading me to rapperswil. there, i explored the area of the monestry and the castle a bit, and returned to zürich and took the train up the üetliberg to catch sunset. unfortunately, already during the boat trip the weather got worse, i.e. it got cloudy, and so there wasn’t much left from the sunset…

last weekend, i did a hike through the roseg valley with anmut and nik. the weather was stunning, it was warm (t-shirt time!), sunny, not many clouds. and, of course, snow. not as much as there’s supposed to be that time of the year, but still enough to be happy :-)

here are some impressions from the hike and the rest at the roseg glacier restaurant:

(and yes, most of these photos would have been perfect for project 52 a month ago…)

here’s my project 52 shot for the fourth week. the topic was

als ich klein war…

i’ve been playing around with some old toys yesterday, but after finding out that this seems to be a common idea for this topic, i decided to think more. when today, we made an excursion to a water reservoir nearby, where we often went when i was little, i watched out there if there’s something i can use. near the entry we often used, there’s a old, dead tree lying. when i was little, it was sooo huge, and we climbed on it a lot. well. nowadays it’s little itself, compared to me. so i decided to photograph this tree leftovers, rotting for like 30 years, in a way i might have seen it when i was little. using my fisheye lens, i started playing around, and got a nice shot of the ground end of the tree, which is caved out by now. please click the photo to get a larger version:

technical details: 1/250s, f/2.8, 16mm fisheye, iso 200.