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).
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.
July is upon us and with it the time for glorious, fiery summer sunsets. In the colors black, red and gold. The colors of the German flag.
And the start of July treated us German soccer fans to two international titles. First the Under 21 national squad won the European title by defeating Spain 1:0 in the finals. And tonight our National Team won the Confederations Cup in St. Petersburg with a 1:0 win over Chile. And this with a B-squad, as the key players from the 2014 World Cup Winner were given the summer off to get the needed rest before the pending start of the new European soccer season that will be capped with the World Cup 2018 in Russia next summer.
The two victories give is plenty hope we can defend our title next summer.
Image specs are 1/3200 sec @ f/7,1 and ISO 400. The short exposure time ensure the rendering of the landscape as a black silhouette.
We’re in our Capital this weekend. After seeing a marvelous concert in the Berlin Cathedral with music from Karl Jenkins we walked out just in time to see this splendidly colored evening sky behind the Spree river.
Image specs are 1/80 sec at f/4,1 and ISO 200,17mm focal length. Camera was the OM-D E-M1 with the mZuiko 14-150mm F/4.0-5.6.
Took quite a few photos yesterday, but returning to our room only way past midnight and needing to get up early in the morning to go to the next event I just downloaded my photos, but had to time to go through them.
So with this quick sunset snap I wish you a good Friday and a hopefully relaxed start into a blessed and peaceful weekend!
I’m safely back home from my trip to Portland. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a very northerly route, that took my Delta Airlines A330 over the center part of Greenland, I was on the lookout for Northern Lights, as I had a window seat on the left side of the plane. A few weeks ago I saw a Blog Post from someone who actually photographed the Aurea Borealis from a plane. As it is a dream of mine to see the magnetic lights in the sky, I stayed up (watching “The Accountant” with Ben Affleck – a super movie) and waited for the green flares to appear, but I didn’t saw any. As it turned out, I might have missed them by just one night, as from this fantastic blog here I learned the Aurea Borealis was active the night before.
But I got lucky on two very important aspects on my return flight. The first you see in the photo to this post, I was blessed with an incredibly colorful dawn high in the sky above France. The colors were insane. I took the photo with the Olympus PEN-F and the mZuiko 14-150mm F/4.0-5.6 Travel Zoom pressed to the window. Image specs were 1/10 sec @ f/4.9 and ISO 1600. The photo is a jpg out of camera.
Let there be light
Almost more important was the fact I saved 4 hours of lay-over at Paris Charles De Gaulle. The Delta flight got in 30 minutes early, which gave me an outside chance of catching the 8:35 morning flight to Nuremberg instead of the 13:00 connection I was booked on (and believe me, waiting 4 hours in the remote Terminal 2G of CDG is no fun). I gave up hope when we taxied in for 15 minutes and then on top parked at an apron position where buses took us to the terminal 2E once everybody was out of the plane. But then security control went so smooth and there was an immediate shuttle bus connection to Terminal 2G where I arrived just when Boarding started for the Air France / HOP flight to Nuremberg. I went directly to the Transfer Counter (where there was also no other passenger) and asked if they can put me on the early flight. The lady there told me it would not be possible as I was on a Delta ticket, and rebooking that would take too long as boarding was already in progress.
Refusing to give up I went directly to the boarding gate to try my luck once more. And there you go, the great guy at the gate typed something in his computer, made a phone call and then printed my new boarding pass. The flight was not even 1/3 full. Instead of coming home Sunday afternoon I was home in time for breakfast with the family, what a treat!
So the lesson learnt here is: Never give up, always try! Works wonder in travels! And: try to fly with carry on baggage only. With a checked bag this would not have been possible. I can live up to 6 days out of my carry on, I’ve optimized that over the years, so I never check bags unless I absolutely have to.
