Old fountains

One of all the fountains we have in this city. This one in particular is dedicated to the Danish scientist Tycho Brahe from the 16th century. I don't think the fountain is that old though. The top of the fountain is a big metal ball that shows a star chart. I've tried several times taking a good picture of it but haven't succeded yet and now the ball has been taken down for renovation so it will be awhile until I can try again. If they would only tear down the houses around the fountain I might be able to take a good one.... LOL!

And yes, the ferry Tycho Brahe that goes between Sweden and Denmark was named after this guy.

Don't let the sun go down on me

Sunset over Denmark. Every year I need to take sunset pictures at least once. Now I've done it and here it is.

Tree of flowers

One of my trees again. This one has a touch of faerie feeling I think. It has a huge crown and thousands and thousands of little white flowers. It stands by a pond with ducks in it. I often pass by here looking for opportunities to take pictures of the ducklings in the spring or pictures of the frozen pond in the winter. Actually, I have several places around the city that I visit several times a year to take pictures from the different seasons.

Seamen

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, Helsingborg is a port city and has been for centuries. This anchor is decoration on a huge stone on the cemetery where I live. The stone lists the names of a sea captain and his first mate that went down with their ship outside of Spain in 1928. I've always wondered what happened to them but I haven't been able to find any information anywhere about this shipwreck. Some of the characters spelling out the names of the men and ship are gone. I would guess it was a storm, the Atlantic Ocean can be cruel sometimes.

Mother and son

I like taking pictures of statues. Flowers and trees are nice but I like variety. This one is called Mother and son and stands in a park close to where I live. Once again I used the Aperture setting so the statue would be in focus and not the traffic on the street behind. I love Aperture, wish I had known about it earlier with my other cameras.

A tough object

Oh yes, this little gem has eluded me for a few years. For some reason I've never been able to get a sharp picture of this little door window. Not until my Nikon. Helsingborg is a very old city and we have many old buildings and houses. This object is a small window on a door on an old house. It's not a marvellous piece, it earned its place on my blog just because I FINALLY managed to get a good sharp picture of it!

Rhododendron city

Helsingborg is known for many things and one of them is the many rhododendron bushes we have in the city. They are everywhere, with different shapes, sizes and colours. They started blooming  a couple of weeks ago. This is one of the first full flowers I saw so naturally I needed to take a picture. This is a very light pink sort of rhododendron, in fact it's almost white. Thankfully the bush stands in the shadows, otherwise the petals would have glowed in the sun just like the birds that I posted yesterday, haha!

Raining on my own parade

By now you probably think I'm a terrific photographer (wink). Therefore, I think it's time to post a blooper. Have a look at this one and feel free to laugh it up. I saw an amusing little parade of these birdies and clicked a pic. An analyze of the result: the sun is glaring so much the birdies are glowing. That's bad. And the daylight is so bright, there's not much contrast in the picture. That's also bad. And I didn't get the focus quite right so the picture isn't sharp. That's very bad. So a blooper it is even though the motif was funny.

The ferries

I think it's high time I posted a picture of the ferries that goes between Helsingborg and Denmark three times per hour every day. The ferry on the picture is the biggest one of three, it's called Tycho Brahe. She's 111 metres long and 28 metres wide. She can hold 1250 people and 240 cars. While testing her, the ship tore down the walkway between the ship and the dock in Elsinore, Denmark. She also rammed the wave breaker in Helsingborgs harbour two days later. And finally, during her maiden voyage she rammed the landing dock in Helsingor and 55 people had to go to the hospital for minor injuries and shock treatment. Word of mouth immediately renamed her Psycho Brahe. And others said "This is what you get when you name a ship Tycho Brahe" which is considered an unlucky name.

In the left lower corner you see the lighthouse and the pier where I often to take pictures of the ferries as they come and go. It's my favorite place in the whole city.

Bathing beauty

I spotted this dove yesterday while walking to the bus station. It was a warm day and apparently the dove needed to cool herself off. This picture is taken just before she starts flapping her wings in the water but unfortunately I didn't catch that move. I was desperately looking for the function that would allow me to take six photos in just a few milliseconds but couldn't remember where to find it so I missed the wingflapping. Oh well, sometimes you just have to be thankful for what you get.

At least I remembered there was such a function. When trying to take pictures of a swinging Eddie, I didn't remember my camera has a setting for focusing on moving objects. You lock the focus on the motif and when the motif moves, the focus point moves with it. Cool, huh?

The twins

This is the red tulips I found in the sea of yellow Easter lillies and white Narcissus on the hill. A carpet of yellow and white and one spot of red.

Kid trouble

Taking pictures of a kid in a swing is a challenge, let me tell you. This picture illustrates one side of that particular coin. The kid swings out of the picture and all you get is part of the head. Other pictures in this series shows huge in-your-camera-lens-feet, the sandy ground only, the sky (that's when you fall over because you try not to catch the little guy with your face) and various pieces of the kids feet, head or butt. Believe me when I say, this picture was the best of them all. Therefore I proudly present my nephew Eddie, the cutest rocker baby ever, swinging along one day in April.

Flagpoles in the sunset

No Red Sails in the Sunset and no Black Sails in the Sunset either. Just these flagpoles located outside the station house where you take the bus, the train or the ferry to go someplace else. You cannot see it but the streamers are flying the Swedish flag colors, blue and yellow. And actually it's not sunset yet. I took this picture on my way down to the outer pier to take pictures of the sunset which was almost 30 minutes away. My favorite time to go out with the camera is around one hour before sunset, the light is stunning at that particular time of the day.

Sea pilots

We have two small pilot boats in the harbour. They're smashing red and they get up to an amazing speed considering their size. One evening I had the opportunity to take this picture just after sunset when one of them came in from the sound after a long working day. It sped around the corner of the old sailing ships dock with full blast, I could almost hear the screeching of rubber tires.

Flower pot experiment

This is one of the flower pots I have in my window. The backlight makes the picture look black-and-white but the pot is actually greyish brown with a light beige pattern. One of my playing-with-the-camera-inside-when-the-weather-outside-isn't-nice-pictures.

Bridge to nowhere

This is the bridge between the inner harbour and the outer pier. On the other side of pier is the sound and what you see in the background that looks like trees and houses is actually Denmark. Remember one of my first posts where I said that Swedes and Danes have been able to walk across the sound when the winters were so cold that the sound froze? Denmark is only 4 km/4000 metres away across the sound. That's not very far, is it? My office is a 7 km car ride away. Makes me think I should work in Denmark instead....

Feeling selfconscious

Apparently even birds feel selfconscious. At least that's how I interpret the body language of this fellow. He's hanging out minding his own business, spots me and gives me the cold shoulder. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, haha!

Dried leaves

 

Here's some leftovers from past winter, brown dried leaves on stone stairs with rays of sun. Once again I ventured into the semi-automatic world of the Program setting. I also chose Vivid under Optimize image because I read in a book it would make landscape pictures better. I really like the way the colors turned out.

Tree time

I love trees. I take many pictures of trees, with leaves and without leaves. I especially like taking  pictures of trees without leaves and showing as a silhouette against a blue sky. So today I'm posting one of my tree pictures. This one is obviously taken before spring came to southern Sweden. It has no leaves but several doves are decorating the branches. We have a lot of doves in my city. And also a lot of trees so most likely this isn't the last tree picture posted on my blog.

Easter lillies and Narcissus

On 24th April I posted a picture of blooming Easter lillies and here's that same hill with Easter lillies and Narcissus. The Narcissus starts blooming later so first the hill is all yellow and then it turns yellow and white. Finally it ends up being just white.

However, I did find a couple of intruding red tulips in there when taking the pictures above.

More flowers

You will see a lot of flowers on this blog. Just saying. After the Easter lillies comes the Narcissus, all planted on the same hill. They blend together in an ocean of flowers and at the top of the hill the flowers meet the blue sky. This is Swedish summer colors.

Old sailing ships

This sculpture stands in the harbor on the side where the old sailing ships used to dock when visiting. In the 19th century men used to pull the sailing ships along the dock to move them within the harbor. The whatever-it's-called-in-English-pulling-contraption is the original from 1864, the men made in wood was added in 1994 to illustrate how it was used. I took the picture at sunset standing on the opposite side of the harbor.

Summer is back!

Finally the good weather with warmer temperatures is coming back! It's May, we don't want +10C for crying out loud.

Flowers are now abundant everywhere in the city. I took this picture in the park surrounding the very old castle tower. It was taken with camera setting A which means Aperture. Basically this means objects in front of the picture will be in focus, the background will be blurry. And look at the picture; flowers in focus, tree blurry. Just like magic! And to add to the miracle, I angled the movable display so I didn't have to lay myself flat on the ground to get as low as possible for this picture. People tend to stare at you when you do that...

Birds nest in strange places

Did you notice that as well? Birds seem to build their nests everywhere, this nest is situated in the decorative lower part of a balcony, 9 metres up from the street. There was noone in there though, it might be too early. Last year I took a similar picture of the same nest when it was full with bird babies and the female sitting on the metal bars watching.

What backlight might do to your picture

Believe it or not, this was taken on one of the first spring days. We had sunshine and blue sky this particular day. Color me surprised when looking through the pictures and saw this! It looks like a thunderstorm is coming in, doesn't it? It's taken in backlight of course but still, the final result took me by surprise. It looks almost black-and-white.

The picture shows part of the river walk in my hometown (which isn't the city where I live) with one of the bridges crossing the river in front.

The magnolias are blooming

The magnolias are blooming! For me this event is a true sign of spring. We've been having summer temperatures for a couple of weeks but now we're back to +10C daytime which is not normal May weather. The weather gods seem to be a bit confused at the moment. I hope the magnolia flowers can take the lower  temperature, they don't last long anyway but a few more days would be nice. More sun to my magnolias, please.

The moon is up

Well, no, not at this particular moment but when I took this picture which was around 4 PM (which is 4 o'clock in the afternoon for us Swedes). Very strange feeling seeing both the sun and the moon together on a blue sky. I've never been able to get a good picture of the moon before and I'm so happy about how this picture turned out. Loving it!

Dog days

This is my sisters dog Pluto. He loves playing football with my nephews in the garden. Pluto is one huge dog with very gentle manners. When he looks at you with his brown puppy dog eyes you just have to cuddle with him.

And when you've cuddled, you'll spend time brushing off enough dog hairs to make a Pluto sweater.

Talking about contrast

The contrast between those two pictures is worth a few words. On the left, pink blooming heather. On the right, a thick layer of ice on the walkway through the park. I wanted to go through the park and take pictures of the fountain and almost killed myself trying. No picture of the fountain....  instead a picture of how badly the city keeps the walkways useable.