Just got back in from our marvelous Berlin weekend. My bag is already repacked for another quick trip to Portland. My alarm will go off at 3:30 am, then I’ll drive to Munich for a 7am flight to Amsterdam and then on to PDX.
The photo above was my personal favorite from the weekend, a shot I took in staircase of the Otto Bock Science Center in Berlin. Taken with the PEN F and the mZuiko 14-150mm F4-5.6 travel zoom. Image specs are 1/60 sec @ f/4.5 and ISO 320, focal length was 22mm.
Will sort through the rest of my Berlin photos on the plane tomorrow and post from the US.
The last stop before finishing our memorable Namibia vacation in Etosha National Park was at a veritable UNESCO World Heritage Site, the world-famous stone-age rock engravings of Twyfelfontein in the Kunene region of north-western Namibia. For more photographs and info about this fascinating place, a glimpse of a petrified forest, some more roadside giraffes and another African sunset photo continue after the jump…
No worries – I did not get lost in the Namib desert. In fact, we successfully crossed it, arriving in the coastal town of Swakopmund today. But the last four days we had no access to the world wide web.
So I’m lagging a bit behind with my posts, but I want to stay in sequence. After visiting the Fish River Canyon I want to show you to a special place in the Namib desert, the Diamond Ghost Town of Kolmanskop. For more info and photos continue after the jump… Continue reading “Namibia Explored – Diamond Ghost Town”→
Fish River Canyon | Namibia | 2017With its breathtaking beauty the Fish River Canyon is one of Namibias prime tourist attractions. Behind only the Grand Canyon in Arizona, it is the second largest canyon in the world with a total length of about 100 miles (160 km), up to 17 miles (27 km) wide and in places almost 1800 feet (550 meters) deep. It was carved out by the Fish River about 600 Million years ago.
The “Streets of Nuremberg” continue with the road trip through Namibia. After leaving the capital Windhoek, we drove around 500 kilometers down south. First stop in the South of Namibia was Keetmanshoop with its famous Quiver Tree Forest.
This unique piece of nature comprises of about 300 trees of “Aloe dichotoma”, more commonly known as “quiver tree” or kokerboom, because bushmen traditionally used its branches to make quivers. The tallest quiver trees are two to three centuries old.
Quiver Tree | Namibia | 2017
African Sunset | Namibia | 2017
We arrived at the Quiver Tree Forest in the late afternoon, it is spectacular in the light of the fading day and to photography the tree silhouettes in front of the golden evening sky.
Tomorrow we will head to Fish River Canyon, the second largest canyon in the world only behind Arizona’s Grand Canyon. Stay tuned for more of Namibia!
26 hours after leaving home we reached Windhoek. The capital is the starting point of our tour around Namibia. After checking into our hotel we did a little stroll through the streets where I captured some scenes of local street life. Early tomorrow morning we head to Southern Namibia, less street life, more great landscapes. Stick around to discover a bit of Namibia. How frequently I can post I can’t promise, finding good Internet to upload photos seems to be often a challenge. Also please bear if I don’t reply to all your comments immediately or stay current on your blogs. I will catch up as I find time.
Africa is calling again! Tomorrow I will once again board a plane for a long distance flight. But this time it is for a family vacation. And the destination is Namibia. 23 years after our first visit we will return to this great country on the Atlantic Ocean side of Southern Africa. I’m looking forward to the immense friendliness and hospitality of the local people, colorful street life, great landscapes with oceans, canyons, mountains and deserts and the wildlife in the bush and the plains.
We are deeply in love with Africa since having lived in Johannesburg in the early nineties. Back than we have toured all of South Africa and the neighboring countries like Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia. We spent our vacation two years ago in South Africa. Last year we visited Tanzania. And this year we are looking forward to see Namibia again.
The equipment I bring is my OM-D E-M1 with the mZuiko 40-150mm F/2.8 Pro Zoom with the 1.4 teleconverter and the PEN-F with the mZuiko 12-40mm F/2.8 Pro Zoom. Additionally my Walimex 7,5mm 1:3.5 Fisheye and the mZuiko 12mm F/2 prime lens.
So stay tuned for some insights into Southern Africa when the Streets of Nuremberg will travel the roads of Namibia.
Watchtower | South Africa | 2015
I see you | South Africa | 2015Hungry | South Africa | 2015
Another ten day stretch in the Pacific Northwest comes to an end, in a few minutes a Delta Airlines Airbus A330 will take me into the afternoon Portland sky for its 10 hour journey across Canada and the North Atlantic Ocean to Amsterdam, from where I take the connecting flight back to Nuremberg.
On the flight I will open the digital darkroom to go through my photos from last weekend’s trip to the Oregon coast, where I had plenty opportunity for some nice travel photography (you might have seen the two appetizers here and here). But there are even better times ahead (not only photographically 😉 )….three more days in the office and then I made it to summer vacation. And my destination will be Namibia.
The photo above was taken with the Olympus PEN F and the mZuiko 14-150mm travel zoom. Image specs are 1/500 sec @ f/8 and ISO 200, focal length was 150mm (equals 300mm in full frame due to the m4/3 crop factor of 2).
I’m back in Portland after a great weekend on the Oregon coast. I took too many photos that will take a few days to sort through and post-process. So like yesterday I show you once more the final image of the day, a sunset scene near Lincoln City. Isn’t this what a drive along the great ocean is all about?
In my free Learning Center is a post how to shoot silhouettes, check it out!
Image was taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the mZuiko 40-150mm F/2.8 Pro Zoom. Image specs 1/2000 sec @ f/9 and ISO 200, 90mm focal length.
Window in the Sky | Germany | 2017The summer has been wild here in Germany, with scorching hot days being interrupted by massive thunder showers causing flooding and heavy damage all over the country.
This photo of some distant cumulonimbus clouds visible between two cloud layers I took with my Olympus PEN-F with the mZuiko14-150mm travel zoom. Image specs are 1/320 sec @ f/6.3, ISO 200 and 135mm focal length.
Raw conversion in Lightroom CC. I cropped the image to 16×9 format. After increasing the dynamic range by manual setting of the white and black points I reduced the highlights and opened up the shadows. After increasing saturation and contrast a tad I played with the tone curves, further bringing out the details in the thunderstorm clouds. Finally I increased the luminance of the reds and oranges in the HSL panel.
I’m thinking of getting a large print from this. Haven’t made up my mind yet.
10 Flights. 19300 miles (31000 km) distance flown. 44 hours of flight time. Nuremberg-Frankfurt-Vancouver-Portland-Vancouver-Taipei-Shanghai-Seoul-Tokyo-Munich-Nuremberg. Amazingly, non of the flights where in any way delayed. After 12 days of traveling westbound around the world I’m safe and sound back home on the Streets of Nuremberg.
It was a very intense but productive business trip, and it included some opportunities to see something outside airports, taxis, hotels, and meeting rooms, and I’m very grateful for that. The best thing was meeting all those great people in Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan. But also revisiting Shanghai‘s amazing citycenter and being able to explore Tokyo for the first time was a treat.
A somehow perfect ending to this special voyage was the last short flight from Munich to Nuremberg, when a rainbow graced the sky above the plane when we boarded and that pointed exactly into the northerly direction towards home.
Home | Franken | 2017
And the special light that flooded the ground near the village we live in during final approach to Nuremberg airport. I love to travel and explore the world. But it’s always good to return home.
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