Light in the dark

Sometimes I feel the need to take pictures when it's too dark to go outside with the camera. So here's another piccie taken inside my apartment because my clickfinger was itching. It's a macro closeup of a candlelight holder made of transparent glass with leaf decorations. No flash was used, just the light from the candle inside. I'm experimenting with the camera to see what it can do and the result turn out good every now and then.

Falling water

Two pictures in one. The reflection of the trees in the pond and the colored fall leaves in the water fall. When I see something like this my hand will whip out the camera before I even think about taking a picture.

Don't do that

Every book about photography will tell you to not point your camera into the sun. Whenever I read this particular piece of advice regarding taking pictures I ask myself "Why the hell not?" My camera, my decision, my picture.

So I've stuck my camera lens in the suns face a few times and this is the one of the pictures that came out of it. I guess the sun does always shine above the clouds even though we doubt it sometimes.

And boom...

Since the Danes have been testing different payloads for the Kronborg Castle cannons several days this week I dug out this picture from June this year.

On the birthdays of the Danish Royal family and when the Danish Royal ship passes by Kronborg Castle, the Danes shoot salute with the castles cannons. The above picture was taken on the Danish Queens husbands birthday. I was sitting in a sailboat on my way to Denmark to have lunch with my workmates when we heard several loud bangs. It took a while before I saw the smoke from the castle, we were not exactly close. I was lucky to be able to take a picture despite the distance.

If you want to know what the cannons look like, read this blogpost from 2011:
http://toolbox365.blogspot.se/2011/10/there-be-cannons.html

Halloween

This is the scariest picture I have in my collection at the moment. I was experimenting taking a picture of the moon during a slightly cloudy evening. Well, let's just say it didn't turn out the way I wanted. I like the spooky look though. Happy Halloween to everyone!

Just a pink flower

Yup, exactly that. A pink flower.

Feed me

At Boras Park Zoo, they feed the lions and the tigers on alternate days. This day it was the lions turn to be fed. This hungry male tiger is watching my 17 months old nephew who's walking by on the run from his dad. Thankfully the tiger is behind a glass window and a mote filled with water. All he can do is look.

My favorite

This is truly my favorite piece of art in the whole city. It's carved in a huge round rock outside the old Childrens Hospital here in Helsingborg. The building is from 1888 and was used as childrens hospital until 1944. It's now a museum for medical history.

Living by the sound

 

Living by the sound makes sure I always have something to take pictures off. There's always the sea and the ferrys to Denmark. Walking on the beach with my camera is my favorite pastime. 

Common Wealth War Graves

We have a war graveyard here in Helsingborg. The picture above shows the Common Wealths graveyard with 47 airmen. Two of the men are Australian, nine are from Canada and the rest is British. They all crashed with their planes in southern Sweden during WWII, three of the planes crashed here in Helsingborg. Twenty of them died during the night of August 30, 1944. This particular night is called the Big Airplane Night. Over a hundred airplanes from RAF Bomber Command flew over southern Sweden on their way to Stettin in Germany on a bombing mission. Some of the planes were shot down by German fighter planes that were waiting for them, some were shot down by Swedish anti-aircraft defense. A total of 14 planes crashed in Sweden that night.

This picture show the German part of the war graveyard. 93 Germans are buried here, almost half of them are sailors from a minesweeper that went to the bottom of the sound in a storm in March 1945. Only six sailors survived. The others are airmen that had to crashland in Sweden or was shot down by Swedish anti-aircraft defence.

Even birds love icecream

It seems like even birds like icecream. This seagull is really wringing its neck trying to suck up some of the spilled icecream. You can't do that when I pass by with my camera. If you do, you end up here on my blog. Just saying.

Let's get it over with

 

Yes, let's post the fall picture everybody's expecting in the month of October. I think this one is a real beauty because it shows so many colors including green. The maple trees always turn yellow and red first of all trees here in the city. The maples and the chestnuts. However, the chestnuts are the first to leaf during spring so I guess there's a plan somewhere. This piccie is a week old, summer warmth stayed late so fall came late. That's why there's still trees that are green in this picture. Not anymore though.

When it was still summer

This picture is six weeks old. But today, when it's been grey skies all day and rain for the last few hours, I need to remind myself of days with nicer weather.

I had a dentist appointment this particular day. I go to the dentist in my old hometown, not the city where I live. This time I was there before noon. When working I was always the last patient for the day. That way I didn't have to leave the office so early to catch the bus. Since it was a fine summer day I had decided to stay in town for a few hours afterwards. Therefore, I had my camera with me. Not the usual gear for a dentist appointment but as I said, I had plans.

So I walked across town by the river taking pictures. In summer it's always very green by the river, there's lots of leaf trees and other greenery. And there's several small landing bridges with boats, like the one on the picture. And ducks but none on this picture for some reason.

I ended up at the small childrens zoo where I spent a lot of time when I was a kid. I had icecream. I took more pictures. I almost missed the bus home. But that's a story for another day.

Please bear with me

Sticking to the animal theme while trying to get into the blogging thing again.

This is the Daddy bear taking a nap. With three baby bears I'm sure he's exhausted. Yes, the Zoo had three new cubs this year. Mommy bear was sitting on the other side of the walkway guarding the sleeping cubs. From my point of view (and this was my gameplan when taking the picture), the interesting piece of this photo is not the bear. It's the shadow of two heads to the right. That's my brother and his oldest son watching the bear sleeping. My nephew is hanging over the railing while my brother is hanging on to his legs. I'm hanging on to my camera telling myself over and over "the kid won't fall ".

It ended with an elephant

 

During my July visit to my brother and his family, we went to the Boras Park Zoo as we do every summer. This year it didn't rain (last summer it rained so hard we didn't even go into the park, we went back home instead). There were a few other things that didn't go as planned though.

Like the youngest nephew throwing up in the car around the time we had gotten too far to turn around and go back home.

Like we had forgotten the bag with extra clothes just in case something like this happened. And even if we had had brought the bag, my sister-in-law would still have had to wear the dress he threw up on.

Like when we found a store with a small selection of baby clothes, they didn't have the kids size in shorts so we had to buy a size that made him look like the cutest hip-hopper ever.

Like when we were unloading the car of all the stuff you bring, the button in my sister-in-laws dress decided to break in two so she almost flashed all her assets to the world. Brother found a safety pin in the car for a temporary fix.

Like when we were walking from the car to the park, construction work forced us to take the longest detour into small neighbourhoods we've never seen before. The boys almost fell asleep.

Like when we finally arrived to the park, we were so hungry we ate almost all the sandwiches we had brought. They were supposed to last the day, not just one meal.

But as I mentioned, the weather was fine.

So we started the tour and checked out the penguins, the red panda and so on. I was taking pictures as always. Then we came to the African animals and this year the elephants weren't together with the other animals. They had their own space so we went there to have a look at my favorite animals. They had a new baby elephant running around playing with this mother. And then the handler asked my oldest nephew if he wanted to pet the matriarch elephant. That's the one on the picture for this post. That was the last picture I took that day. Because just after I took that picture and a minute before my nephew actually petted the huge elephant on her trunk, the battery in my camera emptied itself. Quickly I changed to my spare battery. Which turned out to be empty as well. I had forgot to load the battery the day before. I didn't have a battery charger so I had to charge the batteries in the camera and I was using the camera.

So I don't have a picture of my nephew petting the elephant and what are the odds he will be getting another chance in future?