cold winter

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back to cold reality. here in my hometown winter is going strong. the scenery above could well be from astrid lindgren's the tomten, here on youtube.

i don't want to chime into the 'waiting for springtime/i love winter' posts. winter is not my favourite time of the year, but it is the season we will see change all too soon due to the warming of the atmosphere. so i'll catch it while i can.

today i want to pick up ilan breslers idea to feature a blog which i think is worth to be read: a blog from russia, http://photo.alick.ru/. i can't read any letter of the posts, but some of the photographs are fascinating. so feel free to follow the link under the thumbnail to the right. and of course, check ilans blog here.

this photo on flickr

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icycle

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another pre-written post. should give me some time to go shooting and enjoy myself ;)

and the contrast of the hoarfrost and the 30°+ in colombo is just too nice to think of.

this icycle was well locked to the handrail of a culvert, but obviously not in use for quite some time, as there was still snow on the saddle after more than a week without any precipitation.

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footed icicles

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post-dated publishing is nice-to-have. when you get to see this icicle from frozen bavaria, i am supposed to be in abu dhabi, bound for sri lanka.

there should be internet connection in the hotel, so there hopefully will be no break in posting.

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north face over schwarzbach

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easter monday i got some free time and went to an alpine meadow near the 'queralpenstrasse' (alpine transversal road) just 20min far from home. under the north face of Reiteralm there was still a lot of snow, and from time to time avalanches broke free high above our heads. the woods here have suffered a lot from the storms, weakened as they are by the air pollution they toppled over hectar wise. but on the north side there is still hope that a natural mixed forest will grow up again as the density of deer and roe is not as high as in the opposing south faces, where they feed every spring on the buds of the young trees to devastating effects. the young protection forest does not grow up but ends as extremely expensive mash for future trophies on the chimney wall of a hunter.

the second picture is an alpine hut there on the meadows. the cows used to graze right in the woods - with obvious consequences for the young trees - but the administration tries to buy out now those old rights.

this photo on flickr.

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lonesome track

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the art of engineering: removing all uneccessary parts. engineering my picture, i applied the same maxim - killing the clutter.

when my ladies were skiing, i took an hour off and went my own ways in a different, less populated part of this mountain (hard to find, i can tell you). even harder it was to hold the 450mme zoom to get this diagonal line, because with my glasses i don't see all corners of the viewfinder simultaneously. but in the end i had to do only marginal cropping.

matching song might be "freedom's just another word for nothing have to loose" - kudos for the picture/music combination andreas manessinger.

this photo on flickr.

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morning cold

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