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

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

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Icicles, Coroieni

When leaving Coroieni (Maramureş, Romania) towards the north one drives on a serpentine road uphill. At an intersection with a road leading to a small monastery is a little refuge and a triptych to keep evil spirits away from travellers. The small refuge has a nice wooden shingle-roof and is used to pray or meditate. From the tourist point of view it offers a great view over the valley and the setting sun (even natives go up there and enjoy the sunsets). Since it was about -10ºC there were also nice shimmering icicles hanging off the roof.

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Winter Sunset, Coroieni, Maramureş

I went to the county of Maramureş basically to see a bit more of Romania. Maramureş is well known for its wooden churches and its nice landscapes and the promises were kept: nice places, friendly people, beautiful winter landscapes and at day's end a great winter sunset--all in all a good reason to come back in 2009.

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Christmas 2008, Cluj-Napoca

Christmas decorations and especially christmas lights are a major attraction. This year I had the chance to visit Cluj-Napoca around christmas and found that the Avram-Iancu-place with the beautiful orthodox cathedral was very nicely decorated. Merry Christmas to all of you!

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Dragonfly, Romania

I took this image of a dragonfly earlier this year in Romania when I was driving around to check out photo-ops around Cluj-Napoca. Actually there are lots of interesting places and even great possibilities to take pictures of wildlife.

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Orange Water, Okervalley, Harz

Fall--the best time of the year. Well at least from the photographical standpoint. Here are a few images taken in the Oker Valley, Harz, with a particular emphasis on reflections.

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Reflection of fall colors, Okervalley, Harz

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Leaf on mossy rock with fall colors reflection, Okervalley, Harz

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Leafs and Fence, Braunschweig

"What a nice contrast", I thought when I saw the two leafs on the wooden fence. I had scouted this location a few days before for fall related photo ops and literally ran into this place after I had parked the car around the corner.

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Swimming in the Sea, Corfu

While on vacation on the beautiful and astonishingly green Greek island of Corfu, we were hanging out for a few days on the beach. Great! No phone, no laptop--just relaxing, enjoying the sun and the crystal clear water. Of course I couldn't resist taking some pictures from the beach chair. Here's one of them.

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Running Horses

I rarely ever saw horses running around--especially not in an environment that would be worth taking pictures (say: with a good background without fences, wires, people, etc.). When I stopped to take some pictures of the horses they were just having a late breakfast and were walking around slowly (just like horses usually do). Then an old tractor (actually a Lanz Bulldog) came by and had to stop at an intersection not too far away. When the tractor went on, it was very loud and the horses were frightened so that they ran away--luckily I had set the camera to reasonable settings, so that I got some keepers when I shot the action. This is a slightly cropped image.

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Dynamic trees

Some images are still on my list of photographs that have to be taken. This is one of them. I wanted to photograph pine trees in a forest for a long time and either didn�t have the right weather or not the right forest. What I was looking for was quite simple: enough trees standing not too close to each other in low-contrast light in an area with no distractive man-made things like ribbons, painted marks, fences etc.. And on top I wanted an area where I have enough foreground to let the eye wander around. Eventually I ran into a place where I wanted to try to take that picture. When entering this forest I found that it's also a good chance to apply techniques to create a more dynamic image. This image turned out to be the one that I like best of the whole series.

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The Swan, Braunschweig

Trying out new lenses always leads me to old places. Here I tried out a 70-300mm telephoto-lens on an Olympus DSLR at more or less the same place where I took a picture of a swan a couple of years before. I took advantage of the physical factors of the 4/3-lens system and felt that with the rather small camera/lens-combination I was way less disturbing for the birds than I would have been with equivalent Canon equipment.

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Leafs and petals

When I found this mixture of leafs and petals and water I was immediately caught by the interesting combination of objects and colors.

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Orchid detail

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Orchid detail

From time to time I find something that I want to do macro photography with. Flowers and especially orchids are very interesting objects to find new closeup-perspectives and basically new views of the wonders of nature.

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Sunset on Arrival, Amrum

The last ferry of that day taking people from Dagebüll to Wittdün (Amrum) was on time and reached the island at the time of sunset. I was very happy and enjoyed the beauty and peace of this time of the day and of course also took some pictures of the sun setting.. It was low tide and when we entered the narrow harbor a single seagull came by to check, if there was something to pick up from the water.

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Euphoria, Cluj-Napoca

This is the one of the entrances of the club Euphoria in Cluj-Napoca. Sitting outside, watching people and having nice company made a great evening.

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Snow fence in spring, near Kisújszállás, Hungary

In Hungary the snow fences that are set up in winter are taken off the fields and set aside during the rest of the year. Now nature shows its beauty in the background and makes the fence an interesting foreground.

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Mara

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Storks, Báránd, Hungary

On my way through Hungary I saw these storks in their nest growing their young ones. Since Storks have no syrinx and are mute they give no bird call. Instead of a bird-call the characteristic bill-clattering is an important mode of stork communication at the nest. After these two were done with bill-clattering they were interested a bit in that person down there with the camera.

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Dandelion (Blowball), near Rhüden

Who says dandelions are boring? Even though it's just May most of the dandelions are already gone. Well, they are not yellow anymore and have turned into blowballs. Here I found one perfectly round blowball. And if you blow them then it looks like here.

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Apple tree in bloom, near Lutter, Harz

Spring is great this year! Trees are in bloom everywhere and it's like driving through a wonderland that lasts only a few weeks before the trees are having "just" leafs instead of blossoms.

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Rapeseed field and moon, Bad Eilsen

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Rapeseed, Bad Eilsen

Does the world need more images of rapeseed fields? The tragic is that every year these yellow fields are so tempting to photograph because of the intense color and the smell that's around, that one just cannot skip the fields if one has taken a camera along. I was trying to take some different shots and these are the results.

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Shepherds, near Huedin, Romania

This was the first time when I could see a bit more of the countryside of Romania and all I can say is that there are lots of nice places to see and visit. When I stopped to take a few pictures of the herd of sheep I realized that the sunset was going to be the great sensation. So I let the sheep, the shepherds and the herding dog go and concentrated on the setting sun. When reviewing the images I found this image to be the best, because here I had all that was there put together in a rather moody picture.

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Last snow, Okertal reservoir, Harz

Now that we had experienced Almost-T-Shirt-weather a few weeks ago the snow came back and covered trees and ground with a thin layer. It seems as if there is a competition about how nature looks better before spring and summer will take over (hopefully) soon.

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Mandarin duck, Bremen

I found this beautiful Mandarin duck in the Bürgerpark (People's park) in Bremen. It's always amazing to me what nature can do.

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Windmills

Yesterday was the first day of spring--at least I would call it spring with temperatures of around 14C, a light breeze and a beautiful blue sky with just a few clouds. So I took the opportunity and went to a windpark, an area with lots of modern windmills. Being amidst these impressive energy-producing quiet giants let me finally do a shot I had on my mind for quite a while. This image is a composition of 9 images, put together in Photoshop (the EXIF-data shown when you mouseover the image are the settings for each individual shot). I like the artificial look which is the result of the 20%-overlay of each layer.

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Sunset, Söse Reservoir, Harz

I had waited in the cold for this moment. On the way back to the car after a nice walk I saw that there will be a nice sunset. The location was good and when a little bit of fog rose from the water I captured the magic moments. I took some pictures with different settings so that the camera's sensor would be able to capture the high contrast of the scene without losing too much details in the darker parts and it did quite good :-)

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Ice-Structures, Harz

Yes, there was some kind of cold winter weather in parts of Germany even in February. I found this beautiful ice structures on a little creek around the Söse-Reservoir which is close Osterode/Harz. This is not a macro shot! The great look of big crystals (and as if someone scratched the surface of the ice) caught my attention.

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Architectural detail, Volkswagen Halle, Braunschweig

The Volkswagen Halle is not necessarily a must-see in Braunschweig, but it's a fairly big hall with some interesting architectural spots. This specific collection of windows and siding looked particularly interesting to me.

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Colors on a wall, Braunschweig

Again it's Carnival in Braunschweig. But instead of taking pictures of people that celebrate the season in colorful dresses this painted wall caught my attention.

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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