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MEView :: Galleries :: Pictures Of The Month (Mar. 2007 - Feb. 2008)

Red Tree

The warm light of a Febraury sunset made this tree look red and that makes a beautiful contrast with the blue sky and the white clouds.

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Ice arrows, Radau waterfall, Harz

I've often seen icicles--big and small, clear like glass or opaque white and always beautiful. These ones are obviously a bit different. I found this interesting icicle-ensemble in the concave side of a major rock close to the Radau waterfall in the Harz. I cannot explain, how these icicles could grow like they did, but it seems as if it has something to do with the wind around the little waterfall. More impressions of the Radau waterfall in winter can be found here (or just click on the image).

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Trees

New Years Eve 2007. This was a year of many rather abstract images from me and here's another one of that category. I took this image trying out a new technique making a rather boring scenery more interesting. So I moved the camera upwards during the rather long exposure of almost 1 sec. The original image is mildly "Photoshoped" (levels, saturation, sharpening) resulting in a -- for me -- very pleasing result.

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Shooting Star at Dawn, Torfhaus, Harz	Shooting Star/Gradient map, Torfhaus

A shooting star...
A few days before Christmas I got up early to get to the Harz and see the sunrise in Torfhaus with a view over to the Brocken. On my arrival well before 7am I was the first visitor and could set up my tripod and camera in the dark undisturbed. The sky was clear and the air was crisp and cold and it was just beautiful, BUT it was also still too dark to take reasonable pictures with more than a silhouette of the brocken and the trees in the foreground. Since I was rather enthusiastic about the situation I tried it anyway after a while and took the image above with a 30sec exposure. And then it happened: while taking the shot I saw a shooting star just over the Brocken! Wow--and the shutter was open at that time! When I checked the image I had my fears confirmed that the shooting star was just not bright enough to be seen clearly. But then again this is digital, so I cropped the image, tuned contrast and brightness and played with Photoshop's gradient maps in order to make the shooting star more visible (you can see the difference if you mouseover the right image). Still not great, but, hey, this is my first one.

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First Snow, Fall 2007, Harz

It finally starts to be cold and the first snow of this late fall had fallen the night before. I found this image particularly nice because of the colorful trees together with the powder-sugar-like snow.

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Leafs and water, Harz	Freimarkt 2007, Bremen

Fall at it's best! These pictures were taken at the very same day and it was just at home when I saw that the colors are almost completely alike. Wow! I photographed the tree with the very wonderful strong colors at the Oker reservoir in the Harz and later went to visit the Freimarkt in Bremen. All in all this was quite a productuve day for me. During the weeks before I had visited a few places to take pictures of the colors of fall. Often there was also some fog earlier those days that made the scenery even more interesting. When the sun started to be powerful enough to burn it away it looked like the water was boiling. I made a little summary of my fall impressions 2007 here (or just click on either one of the images).

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Snowy Owl [juvenile], Zoo, Hannover

I visited the zoo in Hanover and saw this juvenile snowy owl begging for food. The old ones seemed to be rather annoyed by the little beggar and ignored his crying.

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Leafs in the wind

The field crops are growing very good right now and this corn field will be harvested in a few weeks. The saturated green caused by the sun shining through the leafs and the wind that was blowing pretty hard made me try again to capture movement. The effect of movement -blurriness- is of course a contradiction to all the photographers efforts to get lenses and then images that are as sharp as possible. So I always try to capture movement in a way that a part of the image is sharp. Here the leafs in the lower left area are sharp enough to understand the scene and yet there is enough softness to make the image "work". This is also a great image to play with different hues and false colors to make it really abstract.

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Silver Curtain

Earlier this year I revisited the Radau Waterfall in the Harz, Germany. Even though it's an artificial waterfall, it has it's charme and especially in the morning the light can be very interesting there. I chose this image with more graphic qualities (over the classical views of a waterfall in a saturated green environment) because of the interesting effect of the motion of the water together with the static background and the interesting light effects from the side. The shutter speed was just fast enough to capture drops and still slow enough to capture the motion.

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Kelp, Cuxhaven

Kelp fascinates me. Wherever I can visit the sea I am eager to find some kelp or flotsam to photograph the incidental placement or shape. I found the one shown above in Cuxhaven, Germany, which is located at the North Sea where the river Elbe ends. This piece of kelp attracted me especially because of the very dark color and the olive-green colored parts that looked like checken feet to me.

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Wildwater Kayaking, Okervalley (Harz)

On one of the first sunny and warmer weekends of this year I went to the Okervalley in the Harz, Germany, to revisit the people who do wildwater-kayaking down the gorge. It was not too busy so I had to wait and could enjoy the great weather and the sound of the waters running down the valley. Eventually the kayaks showed up and I had a great time taking some nice action shots like the one shown here.

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Bellbutton

Another picture I took in the city of Gherla in Romania. This red bellbutton simply jumped into my eyes as it was amidst a cyan-blue wall. What a contrast!

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Boy in Gherla, Romania

I was visiting with friends in Gherla, Romania. One afternoon I strolled through the streets of the city to find some photo oportunities when this boy came by. He was eating potato chips and talked very fast in Romanian to me (which I regretly don't understand). Even though I tried to tell him (in English and German and with hands and feet) that I didn't understand, he accompanied me for a while and kept on talking to me. He was very interested in my picture taking and finally he plucked my jacket and showed me that he wanted to be photographed. He was very serious about it and I could take this nice portrait.

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History of pictures of the week/month:
Pictures Of The Month (Jan. 2011 - current)
Pictures Of The Month (Jan. 2010 - Dec. 2010)
Pictures Of The Month (Jan. 2009 - Dec. 2009)
Pictures Of The Month (Mar. 2008 - Dec. 2008)
Pictures Of The Month (Mar. 2007 - Feb. 2008)
Pictures Of The Week (Mar. 2006 - Feb. 2007)
Pictures Of The Week (Sep. 2005 - Feb. 2006)
Pictures Of The Week (Mar. 2005 - Aug. 2005)
Pictures Of The Week (Oct. 2004 - Feb. 2005)

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