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.)

today i did a short excursion to the botanical garden in zürich. the sun was shining and i got some nice pictures. there also was a cat to pet, though after some time it walked away… anyway, it was a nice trip, and here are some of the results. the cat never was in the right position to take a nice photo, so unfortunately there is no photo of the cat…

the trip to the morteratsch glacier was my first hike where i took all my lenses. i also played around with the macro lens, though it is not that easy if there is a bit of wind which makes the plants you want to photograph move slightly (wrecking focus), and if you don’t have a tripod and have to hold the camera yourself, and of course your body is always moving very slightly. since for macro photography every millimeter counts (especially without high f-stops, which increase the focus area, but which really require a tripod and a calm subject), this is not a good combination. i still think i got some nice shots. here are a few impressions:

yesterday, my mind came up with a good excuse to make a strawberry cake, so i went shopping, bought a cake pan, some strawberries, and other necessary ingredients, and this morning i began crafting a strawberry cake:

it tasted pretty good, in my opinion. i could have eaten much more of it, if my colleagues wouldn’t have helped me… anyway, here are two strawberry cake macros, which might make you even more hungry :-)

while doing the glass shot for project 52, i also made the following cork screw shot:

finally, here’s an overview photo of some of the glasses, including the maple leaf bottle used in the glass shot. four of the bottles in the picture are mine, the others belong to a friend of mine. if you want, you can start guessing :-)

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

glas.

i decided to photograph something which reminds me of fall 2006, when i first visited canada. one thing to bring with you for good friends is maple syrup, for which canada is famous. in touristy places, one can get it in very nice bottles, shaped like a maple leaf. i really like these bottles, and yet, i still just own one of them. anyway, here’s a nice glassy excerpt from the bottle:

technical details: 30s, f/20, 105mm, iso 200.

another less glass related shot from the same bottle is the following. it depicts a part of the cap, with some maple syrup leftovers sticking to it, with a nice curly golden band which is especially beautiful when viewed in this size. on the right, you can see a white ribbon with red maple leaves (i.e. the canadian flag) on it which is tied to the golden band.

technical details: 30s, f/32, 105mm, iso 200.

while producing last week’s project 52 photo (which i did in fact today), i threw together a few collages. the first one is a collection of flames:

the second one shows the process of breaking a heart. from a full, nice, unused wonderful heart to broken pieces:

the third one is chocolate related: a chocolate heart being eaten. piece for piece.

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

kontraste.

fire and shade… a strong contrast, allowing the beholder to only see some details, shrouded in black, while being dazzled by the source of light.
please click the photo to get a larger version:

technical details: 1/30s, f/10, 105mm, iso 200; modified using gimp.

for my eighth project 52 photo i took apart a hard disk and made some macro shots. of course, especially since these are my first macro shots, this resulted in a few more shots. in case you’re interested, here are some more:

thanks a lot to the ones who provided me with the (already dead, before opening it up) hard disk! i hope they’ll like the pictures as well…

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

technik, freund oder feind?

i know, this photo comes a bit late, but i had to wait for a new gadget to do this photo. the idea is already a few weeks old :-) harddisks are a piece of computer equipment which can be friend or foe: they store your data, your photos, your videos, your music, for a long time, fast to access. but sometimes, they suffer from head crashes or other fatal injuries, and your data, your photos, your whatever is gone. sometimes it can be recovered, sometimes not. essentially everyone who has been working with computers had a harddisk failure somewhen, i’m sure. i had several. some of them really kicked me in the ass, since i didn’t had a current backup. (this is also the reason why i don’t have any photos from a longer period many years ago…) nowadays, i have a pretty redundant system of backups, so this shouldn’t happen anymore. but who knows… there is no absolute error tolerance. the disk in the photo is pretty much dead, not only since it is open, but already covered by lots of dust, in just a short period of time. dust on the platter is an absolute killer…
please click the photo to get a larger version:

technical details: 15s, f/45, 105mm, iso 200.