Footprints in the snow

The cemetary is one of my favorite places to wander around and take pictures. I find all kinds of stuff to take piccies of. These footprints were found on the frozen pond in the cemetary last winter. I wonder who made them. Does it look like rabbit feet to you?

Where's the snow?

It's December, one week before Christmas and not a snowflake in sight in my part of Sweden. Therefore, I'm taking the time machine back to last winter when even the birds fell over due to icy streets. Or in this case, a frozen harbor. At least the birdie found a little something to eat.

A copper tower

This tower sits on the chapel in the new cemetary. The whole roof and tower is clad in copper. Since copper thieves are abundant these days, the roof might be gone one day when I walk by. At least I managed to get a picture of it while it's still in place. The picture is taken at sunset and I'm waiting for the bats to fly out of the tower any minute now.

How rude

This bird simply left when I wanted to take a piccie. I had no idea birds could be shy... or rude... take your pick. I don't know if this picture counts as a blooper or not. It wasn't my fault it didn't work out as I had planned.

Sunrise

The positive thing about the sun rising later in the winter is I can get out of bed, head out with my camera and take pictures of the sunrise. Well, not of the sunrise itself but of the effect of sunrise. For instance, during sunrise, the sun shines through the windows in this mausoleum in the old cemetery and makes it look like somebody has turned the lights on to read the morning paper or something. I don't want to speculate in what might be living in a mausoleum. I just liked the way the sun shone through the windows.

Red leaves

Maple leafs have the most amazing colors in fall. Every leaf has several shades of red, orange and yellow. There are no leaves left on the trees here in Sweden. As you can see on the picture, the leaves are now on the ground instead. The usual cycle of life and death in nature. Still waiting for snow though, we had some flakes Monday but they came together with rain so they were here and gone.

Real life art

This is what happens when you let the kids play with food. Nice colors and shapes though.

Flower time

With the winter just around the corner and trees without leaves, I need a flower. Here's a good one that I found one October Sunday. I thought a close-up would be nice and this one actually looks a bit like an anemone from some coral reef somewhere.

The fog

October and November has been very foggy here in Helsingborg. Since I've never taken pictures in the fog, I decided it was high time. I've always wanted to take pictures of the Denmark ferries cutting through the fog so I went straight to the harbour only to find it was so foggy I couldn't even see the dock where the Denmark ferries come  in. I could hear them though, I could hear the bow visor unlock, the walkway go down, the trucks driving off the boat... but I couldn't see a thing.

And then the fog turned dark in one place and suddenly this ship comes through. It didn't make a sound, it just came gliding towards me. Try focus with your camera in the fog. Not easy. The ship had to come pretty close before my Nikon wanted to snap a picture. But the view of the black bow cutting through the fog was pretty amazing.The poor ducks below had to scatter not to be overrun by the ship, they were just as surprised as I was.

Rusty old thing

If I had a rusty old bike like this, I'm not sure I would use it. But it makes for some good pictures. Notice the lamp is in good condition. And the lock looks fairly new. Could be that the bike is waiting for a new coat of paint. Or it's the latest and greatest thing when it comes to bicycles, maybe it's an ecological bike?

Flying high

I took this picture from my living room window just because I wanted to see if my camera could take the shot. I take many of these kind of pictures thinking "Can my Nikon do this?" It's a darn tiny little flying thing, at least on the picture but it stuck so I guess my Nikon could do it this time.

Windy city

In southern Sweden it's very windy, it's such flat country. There's always some kind of wind going on. At the coast it's even worse. This dog knows what it's like to stand in the way of the wind coming in from the sound. He cannot even keep his ears on straight. Too cute!

Old and mossy

I feel the need for another tree. This is one gnarly, mosscovered old tree that stands in the deer pen in the childrens zoo in my hometown, Engelholm. I thought the top roots were quite impressive and deserved a picture and a blog post. Sadly the deer didn't show themselves the day I was there, maybe they are camera shy?

Tower town

Another theme I have when taking pictures, towers. Lots of houses in this city have towers on them so after awhile I developed a sick fascination and started taking pictures of the towers. One of my colleagues lives in the yellow house to the right. He says there's no way to get up in the tower to get out on the flat roof, apparently it's just for decoration. Shame, it would've been a nice place to sit and have coffee in summer evenings.

Scary spikes

Perhaps I should've posted this picture yesterday on Halloween? These spikes are located on the Kronborg Castle wall that is facing the inner courtyard. I have no idea what they was used for. I can only hope that they weren't populated with people that needed to be punished because they had been rude to the Danish Royals or something like that. They sit too high on the wall to be coat hangers or pegs to tie horses. And actually they are too close together to be fit for hanging people on them. I suppose this is just another thing to add to the list of "things-I-know-nothing-about-and-will-most-likely-not-know-ever".

Birds in high places again

I have a couple of themes when I'm out taking pictures. One of them is Birds in high places. We have a lot of birds in this city, you can find them just about anywhere. Doves and seagulls are aplenty and this particular dove found a resting place on a street light. I like to challenge my camera to take these pictures just to see if it can handle it, hehe....

Dreaming myself away

This weekend it's time to set the clock back to wintertime. So from Monday next week, it'll be dark before I come home from work. I feel the need to dream myself away to days with light and sunshine. Like the spring day when I took a picture of these anemones. They are the first flowers to appear in spring and in my mind spring is not really here until the anemones are blooming.

Visiting Memory Lane

Since it's a foggy morning here today, I'm looking back to this summer day when I went to my home town to take pictures. Actually I went to the dentist and decided to take a later bus home so I could shoot some piccies.

This is a view of the river from the old Karl VII bridge. The river flows through the town and I lived close to it for many years. Once upon a time, when I was much younger than I am today, the winter was so cold, the river froze down to the bottom so I could skate on it. Never happened again. I think that was the same winter I could ski on the sea.... never happened again either.

Monkeying around

This kid monkey was playing a bit too much with his food. You can see the red fruit on the picture but in a minute or so after I took the picture, he dropped it in the water. He was lucky enough to be able to fish it up again before it sank though. Apparently his mother never told him to not play with his food.

The family cats

You may not realize it but this is a truly amazing picture. Why? All three cats in the same picture, that is rare. These cats belong to my SIL's parents so they're family. Morris, the red and white in the front, was rescued from Italy by my SIL (Hi Therese). You don't have to speak Italian with him though. They look friendly and happy because they know that in a minute they will be fed.

Hidden objects

This little gem can be found in a backyard behind a closed door. I have no idea who the people are and why they're located in this particular backyard. The guy is holding a house. The girl (the queen?) is holding the City of Helsingborg coat of arms and a scroll. Maybe they are a representation for the historic moment when in 1085 Helsingborg received city status by the Danish king? One day I really need to go to the library and find more information about these two and other statues and ornaments around the city.

Kids and water

This boy could not keep his hands of the Royal fountain in the Kronborg Castle courtyard. He kept coming back to it to play with the water. The fountain is very nice in itself but the picture would most likely be a bit dull without the boy enjoying himself.

Bird time

As a photographer, living by the sea means you always have lots of birds to photograph. The seagulls are aplenty and they often pose for you. Actually, I think the reason that they're easy to photograph is they don't give a birds foot about us humans and are simply ignoring us. Even when we point a camera at them. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Getting colder

I had to use my winter coat for the first time this evening, it's only +3 Celsius here. They say it's supposed to be another cooooold winter. That reminded me of last winter which was very cold with lots of ice on the sound and on the ships. The pictures show one of the two tow boats in Helsingborg, a lot of ice on it.

The dancing women

This is the top part of the fountain I blogged about yesterday. I read somewhere that the artist that made the fountain had three sisters that he loved so much that he decorated the fountain with them dancing. That's a nice gesture, isn't it?

Danish art

These kiddies sit on a fountain in Helsingor, Denmark. There are six different kids around the foot and on top, three dancing women. The detail and different facial expressions of each kid are wonderful. The fountain is located in a small public garden so you can actually sit there looking at this fountain taking in all the details of it. That's what I did.

Kid on the run

Not a great technical picture but I like it anyway. It shows how far my nephew could run when he saw some older kids with a football. That would be a ball used to play soccer for you, Col.

There be cannons

The cannons at Kronborg Castle, pointing against Sweden. They are from the 17th century and are still in use. On the Danish Royals birthdays and when new little Danish Royal babies are born, the cannons are fired as part of the celebrations. The cannons are also fired when the Danish Royal ship Dannebrogen passes the castle in the sound.

A piece of Swedish nature

This is what Sweden looks like deep in the woods where the wolves live. I didn't see any wolves though and I sure hope that's not a pair of shoes in the water between the rocks. This picture was taken in the Boras Zoo, it's supposed to be the wolves pen but as I said, no wolves in sight. Maybe they were hiding somewhere gnawing on the bones of the person that owned the shoes in the water?

A gang of geese

Bring out the bread already! This gang of geese were eyeballing the bread we brought along to feed the birds in the childrens zoo. They were huge, I didn't know geese could get that big. Must be all the bread people bring with them.

The house on the hill

Wasn't there a horror movie with that name? This house is definitely not a horror, it's located in the northern part of the city where the decent people live. If you live in the southern part of the city, you're supposed to be uneducated/unemployed/on welfare/foreigner, most likely a combination. Hmm, let's see; I'm well educated, employed, Swedish and I live in the southern part of the city.

It must be quite expensive to live in this house, it has a great view of the sound. I would love to have a view of the sound but I don't want to move to the northern part of the city to get it.

Weird things

 

I like taking pictures of weird things and I think this qualifies in that category. When I was visiting my brother this summer, this is what I saw one morning. Somebodys trainers hanging from the streetlight. I was asking myself if it was a local custom or just somebodys idea of nightly amusement. The trainers were still hanging out with the streetlight when I left four days later. 

I like you beary much

These two bear cubs had a fantastic playfight during my visit to the zoo. I was on first row with my camera and clicked away. Visitors walk across the bear pond on a wooden bridge so the view over the cubs playing was great. They move so fast, pictures get blurry.

One of the last summer days

 

We're having some of the last summer days here. I like this picture because the trees around the pond is mirrored in the water. The stone in the middle of the pond is often used by ducks to rest on but they were resting somewhere else when I took this picture. One lousy duck would have made the picture even better.

This is what happens when the gardener is bored

I saw this birdshaped bush in the rose garden where I take a lot of pictures every year. And my first thought was (as the title of this post says): The gardener must've been bored. No other bush was shaped like something other than a bush. This one is located a bit off near the fence so perhaps the gardener thought not many would notice. Well, I noticed and I cannot let things like these pass my camera by. So here it is for everybody to look at.

Sun is shining

This is the clocktower on Kronborg Castle. The pictures are taken from different angles, the one to the left with the sun behind it (which wasn't done on purpose), the one to the right was taken as replacement for the left one. But when I had a closer look at the pictures, I liked both of them. On the left, the clocktower looks like something sinister from Mordor in Lord of the Rings. On the right, it could be a tower from the City of Gondor.

Raindrops are falling on my head

It's been raining a lot this summer and it keeps raining in September. I was sneaky and stuck my camera out the window to take this picture of a couple standing in the street in the rain. I think sneakiness is a good quality to have if you like to take pictures. Taking pictures when nobody knows you're taking pictures often end up as good pictures. Or funny pictures but that's another post.

Bluebells

I'm taking a trip back to last month with this picture. These bluebells grows in the wall that surrounds the Danish castle Kronborg. Bluebells are such a cute little flower, I've been told that faeries use them to make dresses. So if you see a moving bluebell, it's probably a faerie wearing a bluebell dress.

What the hell is that?

My exact thought when I saw this strange contraption in the sound. My first thought was "an oil rig or something". And it was "or something". I think the newspaper said it's used when repairing/maintaining oilrigs. Or something like that. This thingie was on its way to Holland I think. The picture was taken August 10th and my memory doesn't stretch that far back.

The thingie was located all the way back at the horizon, many many km from my camera and the weather was not very nice either. Picture quality is not good but I had to photograph this strange piece of equipment.

Signs

I've been thinking about what this combination of signs really means. Does it mean "look out, train's coming"? Does it mean "train coming, please turn left" or "incoming train will turn left" or "traintracks to the left" or "look to the left if you want to see a train"? I could be having too much time on my hands at the moment or I slept badly last night and can't think straight or I'm just typing along because I don't have anything else to say about my picture. Take your pick, it's free!

Arrrr, pirates!

When the boats in the harbour starts flying the skull-and-bones flag, I figure it must be time to leave the city.

Sailing

We were out sailing in the sound one day this summer. Since you share the sound with all kinds of ships, you need to stay alert. This biggie passed our small boat with not much distance. Playing chicken race was not an option. Imagine our joy when we saw the ship was from Tokyo. Maybe it left Tokyo from the same port that ships the cars we import, who knows? The ship was huuuuge, they would probably not have noticed if they had run us over.

Pink skies

When I saw this pink sky one evening I had to take a picture. What an amazing color! And it was there for a few minutes and then gone. It doesn't happen very often that the sky gets this color at sundown so I was very lucky.

Size does matter (sometimes)

Another picture from my visit to Kronborg Castle last month. This is a passage through the thick outer wall surrounding the castle area. I always get claustrofobic walking through it. I'm 5,5" and there's only 10 cm air from the top of my head to the ceiling of the passage. And the passage is longer and darker than on this picture which is taken about halfway along with a flash. People must've been quite short during the 16th and 17th centuries. Maybe I would've been considered tall back in those days?

Funny blooper

Try taking pictures of an orangutang baby that never stays in a one place. This is the result. Major blooper because I didn't have the time to focus appropriately but still a funny blooper due to the little bugger himself. This was taken when I visited Boras Zoo with my brother and his family this summer.

A single rose

I'm posting a single rose today in memory of the Russian icehockey team that was wiped out this past Wednesday in a plane crash. The Swedish goalkeeper Stefan Liv lost his life in the crash, only 30 years old.

The three towers

I've been visiting Helsingor in Denmark at least twice every summer for the past five years and I've never seen this view before. The towers on the left and right are the cathedral and the tower in the middle is the old St Marys convent. It pays to look up every once in a while. I laughed when I saw these towers, I couldn't believe the view.