Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place vs. home

Posts from the ‘Photography’ category

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My Stockholm: the colours of Gamla Stan

Buildings with bright beautiful colours.
Narrow cobblestone alleys.
Street signage with few consonants.

This is Gamla Stan: Stockholm’s Old Town.

I love the mystery of trying to parse a different language, even when I’ve twisted my tongue into unrecognizably knotted grunts.

With the summer solstice in late-June, the days are long, and skies remain lit until the wee hours of the morning. You can walk through the streets of the old town by day, like other visitors who’ve come to enjoy the place. But I highly recommend you navigate the streets at night. By mid-evening, activities wind down, and eventually, you’ve basically the quiet streets all to yourself.

Gilded crown, Skeppsholmsbron, Skeppsholmen, Stockholms ström, Stockholm, Sweden, fotoeins.com

View of the Stockholms ström inner harbour from Skeppsholmsbron (Skeppsholm island bridge).

Högvaktsterrassen, Hauptwachsterrassen, Main Guard Terrace, Gamla Stan, Stockholm, Sweden

From Högvaktsterrassen (Main Guard Terrace): Riddarhuset (House of Nobility, left); Mynttorget (Coin Square, centre foreground); Riksdagshuset (Parliament House, centre background)

Kornhamnstorg, Gamla Stan, Stockholm, Sweden

Statue of Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson at Kornhamnstorg (Grain Harbour Square)

Stortorget, Gamla Stan, Stockholm, Sweden

Standing tall, at Stortorget (Great Square)

Mårten Trotzigs Grand, Gamla Stan, Stockholm, Sweden

At Stortorget: Storkyrkan (Grand Church); Börshuset (Stock Exchange Building), now Nobel Museum

Sankt Göran och Draken (St. George & the Dragon), Köpmanbrinken, Gamla Stan, Stockholm, Sweden

Sankt Göran och Draken (St. George & the Dragon), at Köpmanbrinken (Merchant’s Slope)

Gamla Stan from Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Sweden

Grey rainy skies over Gamla Stan, from Skeppsholmen island

Gamla Stan and Strömmen, from Katerinavägen, Södermalm, Sweden

Gamla Stan and Strömmen, from Katerinavägen, Södermalm : 1130pm

Tyska Brinken at Prästgatan, Gamla Stan, Sweden

Tyska Brinken at Prästgatan : midnight

Börshuset, Nobelmuseet, Stortorget, Gamla Stan, Sweden

At Stortorget : Börshuset / Nobelmuseet, minutes after midnight

Please do yourself a favour — go to Stockholm in the summertime. Yes, it’s expensive compared to other European destinations, but worthwhile things to see and do await in Gamla Stan, Östermalm, Södermalm, Djurgården, Skogskyrkogården, and in the archipelago (e.g., Vaxholm by boat).

More

•   Daytrip to Vaxholm in Stockholm’s archipelago
•   Say “Hej!” (and to food) at Lisa Elmqvist in Östermalm’s Saluhall market hall
•   Greeting Greta Garbo in the Skogskyrokogården

I made the photos above on 25 to 27 June 2008, just after northern summer solstice. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com at http://wp.me/p1BIdT-JI.

Words, a thousand of them: one year later

What is a picture or photograph truly worth?

A thousand words or more?

A few cents or dollars from a microstock website? Or far more for commissioned work?

Across the English Channel from Dover, England to Dunkirk, France

For years, I’ve been trained to write as precisely and concisely as possible. The “currency” in professional science is the publishing of research and results as accepted papers in peer-reviewed journals. One pays or collects this “currency” (it’s sometimes unclear which) to secure gainful employment in research science.

My approach to this blog has been more about visuals and less about prose. Photographs can provide perspective far better than a ton of words I might write. Forms, feelings, and opinions are delivered in a package, and all of that gets unwrapped in your heads. I think it’s even better if people make up their own stories when they see my photographs.

I’ve made the following choices:

  • the ability to show galleries with photos each almost 1000 pixels wide,
  • a dark background to emphasize the photos,
  • keeping each photo’s description to a short blurb,
  • where appropriate, a map from Google Maps is provided for the interest of readers,
  • and a minimum of distractions along the top and sidebar.

And now that I’ve more than 200 words in this post, I’d like to end with the following thought. The timing of this post marks the one year mark when I announced my intention to travel this entire year: from La Serena, Chile then to Hong Kong now.

I made the photo above on 23 Nov 2007 on board the Norfolk Line ferry across the English Channel from Dover, England to Dunkerque, France. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress (fotoeins.com).

Hawaii Big Island: along the northeast Hāmākua Coast

While visiting friends in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii this past January (2012), my friend MK and I hop into a rental car, and we drive out on separate days along the northeast Hamakua coast and along the south Ka’u coast. Even though I’d made a number of prior visits for astronomy-related work on the Big Island, I had yet to see much of the northeast or the southern coastlines.

On today’s drive along the northeast Hāmākua coast on the Big Island, I seek out three locations: Laupahoehoe, Waipio Lookout, and Akaka Falls. Why these three?

  1. They’re easy to reach from Hilo.
  2. They’re all related in one way or another to Mauna Kea, that massive and dormant shield-volcano, dominating the south the entire drive along the Hamakua Coast.
  3. They’re beautiful: what else is there?

( Click here for images and more )