Wormland

A reflection of the Glockenspiel on the Marienplatz, Munich.

Glockenspiel - Marienplatz Munich

A Commanding View

This morning we walked up to the Bijela Tabija (White Bastion) the fort-like structure in Vratnik above Sarajevo to the east. The view of the valley and Miljacka river leading into Sarajevo from the east, and the view of the city itself is fabulous. It is easy to see why they built the walls and fortifications there. Today was another gorgeous day in the low 60's and clear blue skies...except for the dense nasty yellow-brown haze of pollution that hung over the city.

Soiled Blue Sky - Sarajevo BiH



Looking Toward Pale - Vratnik Sarajevo BiH

Back to Skakavac Waterfall

This weekend the weather was wonderful. Blue skies and temperatures in the low 60's. Still, yesterday I took the kids and friends up to Bjelašnica skiing and snowboarding. They say it was getting a bit slushy when we left a little after 1:00. Today I walked up to Skakavac Waterfall again. This time with a friend who is visiting. She used to babysit Carl and Shelby about 12yrs ago. She "ran" into Shelby on the internet, Facebook I think it was. When she found out we were here, and she was relatively nearby (Germany) on an exchange program, she decided to come down for a visit during school break. So we've all been having a good time the past week or so.

I'm relearning, and learning some new stuff with my new lens as is evident in the first photo below. I've already taken my share of boring wide shots, and am trying to deal with how the light can change drastically across the frame, especially at 16mm focal length. This first photo was taken from the trail head back towards town with the snowy mountains near Bjelašnica in the far distance. It is just a quick 3 minute mock-up in photoshop, because I had to do the sky and distant mountains on a vastly different curves layer than the foreground and closer in hills. The second two photos were taken with my 70-200mm at the base of the falls near where I took the photos in last summer's Skakavac blog entry. The veil of ice up the cliff was impressive. The bridge in front of the falls was buried in ice and the railing crushed. Chunks twice the size of basketballs occasionally fell down while we were looking and taking photos...we were pretty careful to stay out of range.


End of the Road, Looking Back - Skakavac



Ice and Mist - Skakavac Waterfall, Sarajevo BiH



Ice, Mist & Moss - Skakavac Waterfall, Sarajevo BiH

Cruisin'

I thought of these photos from our cruise last summer for a few reasons...they are examples of when I could have used my new lens if I had it at the time (shot at 24mm, could have used wider), they are on the list of images I never really processed (where it says "cruise - ship") that sits next to my computer keyboard, I happened to be thinking about cruises and last, they were in the folder I happened to click on when I opened ACR-Bridge to look for a photo for this blog.

Our next cruise will be just the two of us for our 25th, hopefully an Alaskan cruise on CruiseWest. The CruiseWest ship will be far smaller than this Carnival monster, Fantasy.. These are two different views of the "Grand Spectrum".

Glass Elevators in the Grand Spectrum - Carnival Funship Fantasy



Grand Spectrum Piano Bar - Carnival Funship Fantasy

Field of Dreams

My wife gave me a new lens, a combination Valentine's and birthday present. It's a Canon 16-35 2.8L II. My first ultra-wide in a while...it will force me back to good composition or I'll bore you all ("all" is being used loosely here) with "grand vistas" that aren't so grand. Here's one of the first few photos I took with it tonight walking home from Shelby's basketball practice...16mm, f/4 1/4 sec at ISO 3200 hand held.

Walking up Koševo street from Veliki Park, Sarajevo center, you pass four cemeteries on your way to the Zetra sports complex. First on the west side of the street is the Catholic cemetery, then after Ciglane market, also on the west side is the Orthodox cemetery and adjoining it, the Muslim Cemetery - Koševo Šehidsko Mezarje. As you get to Zetra, the east side of the street has hill with the Koševo cemetery and its lion. From what I can tell, the Catholic and Orthodox cemeteries have graves dating back to about 1900, but they quickly filled up with victims of the war and siege in the mid-90's and so a bigger cemetery was built further out. Some day I'll get some photos of it. Anyway, this photo is of the Muslim Cemetery, Šehidsko Mezarje and the great majority of the graves there are casualties of the war...how many dreams died in this war...we'll never know.

Field of Dreams - Koševo Šehidsko Mezarje, Sarajevo

The Hike

Something made me think of this photo I took over Memorial Day weekend last year. It was probably because I saw the Green Visions hike leader (the guy with the red back pack) at the kids' school last Wednesday night. He was finishing a presentation to the middle school parents about their class trip which Green Visions will be doing. The older kids, mine include, will be visiting Romania, mostly Transylvania...I'm jealous.

I'd messed with this photo before, but never really finished it. The wall of water hit us before we made it to that first clump of trees on the left....The hike in general was wet and cold, but somehow a lot of fun. It is a beautiful area with mountain meadows full of flowers.

Hiking Behind Bjelašnica - BiH

More from Munich

Here's a photo I took in the Glyptothek. They have a pretty incredible collection of Greek and Roman sculptures including busts of Homer, Medusa and the Roman Emperors Augustus and Nero.

Sculptures in Glyptothek - Munich

Miracles

While driving up Münchener Straße on the way from Rosenheim to Munich, just a bit north of Bad Aibling you will see a little twin steepled church on the right hand side, a few hundred yards down a side road. The little sign says "Weihenlinden". The village basically consists of the church, a gasthaus, and a few farmhouses. It is so small, it is a suburb of Högling (pop. ~180). Although not much at a glance, the church, Wallfahrtskirche Weihenlinden, is really worth a little bit of time. On the outside, down each side, long alcoves contain colorful painted murals depicting miracles that occurred in the surrounding area. Battles miraculously won, the injured healed, the drowning saved, the blind made to see...heaps of miracles illustrated and annotated (auf deutsch). The inside of the church is ornate, with paintings on the ceiling, fancy pulpits and a dark alcove designed to resemble the crypt of Christ. Here are a few photos, the first one is a scan of of slide I took back in 1996. The others are from last weekend's trip.

Dawn - Wallfahrtskirche Weihenlinden



The Miracles at Wallfahrtskirche Weihenlinden



Ceiling Painting - Wallfahrtskirche Weihenlinden

Road Trip!

We took a quick "road trip" up to Munich on Friday and we were back in time to see the Super Bowl (about 12 midnight our time) on Sunday. The weather was great, the German food was great, the air was clean...in short we remembered why we liked living there so much. So I now have another 200+ photos to go through.

Saturday we went to Königsplatz where we went through the Glyptothek and the Classical Art Museum across the way which was running a feature on the myths of Troy. We stayed right at Karlsplatz, the walking area, and walked the couple blocks to Marienplatz and then on to Hofbräuhaus for dinner on Saturday night. Sunday we went through Nymphenburg Palace before making the 11 hour or so drive back home.

At some point, you'll get to see a selection of photos from the Munich portion of the trip, but in the meantime. here is a photo I took on the drive home Sunday. It's a castle, Burg Hohenwerfen, that grabs your attention as you drive the A10 autobahn between Salzburg and Villach.

Burg Hohenwerfen with the Austrian Alps