Foggy landing at Schiphol

Fascinating landing at Schiphol airport, with a very thin layer of fog, with only the chimneys and the top of some buildings showing.

 

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Riga Cathedral

Neuswanstein Castle

This is the Newswanstein castle in Bavaria.

I was told that this castle was Disney’s inspiration for the Disney castle.

 

Landegode lighthouse

Nederlandsche Dok en Scheepsbouw Maatschappij

On December 20th, I arranged a photo walk to the NDSM wharf in Amsterdam. I was recommended this area by several people, as an interesting area for photography, which was confirmed when I got there. The NDSM wharf is very easily accessible by ferry from the Amsterdam Central station, which runs every 30 minutes, and is free.

I invited to a photo walk using MeetUp at the Dutch Photography Meetup Group, and got around 10 responses. I also arranged with model Eva, who also joined us.

I invited to the photo walk…

• on a place where I’d never been before
• with people I’d never met before
• with a model I’d never worked with before.

Recipe for an interesting day :-).

And I think it turned out very good. We had some wind, but the sun was out, with some clouds, giving different light. (The next day it was raining all day). After the walk we ended up at the Noorderlicht Café, where several of us had cocoa with brandy.

I tried to gather everybody for a photo, but there were so many interesting things to see and photograph, that a couple of the most active photographers are missing from this photo. (I guess this confirms the rule that the probability of gathering n people is proportional to the square of n :-))

A piece of good advice, painted on the tiles.

Below are some of my photos from this photo walk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Death Valley Trip – Sunrise at Zabriskie Point

During my trip through Death Valley I wanted to capture the sunrise at Zabriskie Point.

I was up at 5:30, had a beautiful morning sky, with Venus still high in the sky, and the Big Dipper in a very unfamiliar rotation (see the last photo). The temperature was only 6C, which was kind of chilly as I was wearing only shorts and T-shirt.

The sunrise was a fantastic display of colors and shadows, which is impossible to capture on camera. Below are a couple of the shots from this morning.

(1/50s, F8, ISO200, 28mm – Lens 28-70F2.8)

(1/80s, F8, ISO100, 11mm – Lens 11-18)

Below is the first shot this morning, which shows Venus and the Big Dipper.

Death Valley Trip – Death Valley Junction

If you are going to Death Valley Junction, the place to stay is the Armagosa Opera house. Actually it’s the only place to stay 🙂

The population is less than 20, but it does have it’s own airport…

The Armagosa Opera house also holds a motel, where I pre-booked a room for the night. Which was good, because there were no available rooms when I arrived. The contrast to the Palazzo in Las Vegas, where I spent the week before, was huge.

The motel is pretty worn down, but still has it’s charm and is definitely worth a visit. Here is the reception area. Notice the guitar on the chair, which is painted on the wall.

Each room is different, and they have a photo of each room at their web-site. My room looked like this, and I even had a shower with hot and cold water.

After checking in, I went back on the highway to try to capture the sunset. Here is a photo of what I think is called Shadow Mountain.

(1/80s, F9.0, ISO100, 30mm – Lens 24-70F2.8)

And then later during sunset

(1250s, F10, ISO800, 70mm – Lens 24-70F2.8)

Here it is almost dark, and the moon is up in the corner.

(1/50s, F4.5 ISO 100, 12mm – Lens 11-18)

What really amazed me by being in the desert was the silence. I could hear no sounds at all. Except for a car passing by. Even turning the dials on the camera sounded like thunder after a while. Quite amazing, how there can be no sound.

Back at the Opera House the manager was kind enough to let me borrow the key to the stage, so I got to take a couple of photos there as well.

Death Valley Trip – Shoshone

My first stop on my way to Death Valley, was the Shoshone Village. This is a tiny little village, which (according to Wikipedia) had a population of 31 in 2010. And it has it’s own airport 🙂

Fun little place to stop for lunch and some photos.

Below is about half of Shoshone, including the Crowbar Cafe & Saloon.

I had lunch at the cafe. Good food and great service (no, that’s not me in the picture :-)).

The sheriff is located here. Looks like this needs some renovation 🙂

The old gas station. There was actually a real gas station in Shoshone. The price of gas here was 6.65USD/gallon. In Las Vegas it was around 4USD/gallon. So fill up before you go.

The railroad crossing. I didn’t see any rails or trains, though…