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Squirrel getting airborne… – 05.04.13

5 04 2013

The spring is here, or on it’s way at least… still snow here and some minus degrees in the mornings, but the sun is getting higher and higher now, so the winter is doomed now…

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Categories : Animals, Squirrel

Svalbard – 24.-28.03.13

29 03 2013

Some mountain images – 24.-28.03.13

Some taken in daylight, others in dawn. I left before sunset to capture an almost fullmoon to rise over the horizon with these beautiful colours in Svalbard… did my preparations and everything… checked Google Skymap for location (even though I had seen it yesterday)… lots of clothes to avoid having a miserable time in -25⁰ Celsius… but of course the moon never became visible due to clouds and/or fog… oh well, I like the photos anyway… and a bit of fresh air has never hurt anybody… 🙂

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Categories : Svalbard, Travels

Svalbard – 24.-28.03.13

29 03 2013

“Ice-caving” – 27.03.13

Well, in my definition, it wasn’t really a cave, more like a crevasse (“a crack in the glacier”), but it was a very special experience anyway. Just getting there was a challenge, the weather was really windy and it created a total whiteout. We couldn’t see anything, and had to drive on GPS coordinates alone. Luckily we found the entrance to the igloo, and there we put on crampons and harnesses, and down we went. It was really narrow some places, the ice was squeezing both sides of my shoulders when passing.

The tour company states: “The tour is moderate demanding, and is not suitable for people who suffer badly from claustrophobia.”. Well, I have to agree… 🙂

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Categories : Svalbard, Travels

Svalbard – 24.-28.03.13

28 03 2013

Searching for polar bears at the East Coast – 25.03.13

It is a 200km, 10 hour long ride on a snowmobile to cross Svalbard from Longyearbyen to the East Coast where polar bears can easiest be spotted. The route goes through valleys, over glaciers and finally out on the ice between icebergs where the polar bears are hunting for seals.

I was unfortunately not lucky this time… the closest I got to see polar bears was finding some tracks and holes where they had been sleeping… so instead of getting depressed, I figure it is better to use it as an excuse to return… It is amazingly beautiful out there… 🙂

So, therefore, only landscape photos from this trip… 🙂

However, taking photos in -28⁰ Celsius, with all the clothes, gloves, helmet and so on are very cumbersome and challenging, so coming home with some photos at all is a lot more difficult than one should think, and it makes great memories for me. In fact, we were a group of ten persons, and I was the only taking photos…

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Categories : Svalbard, Travels

Courchevel/Meribel/Val Thorens – 23.02-02.03.13

10 03 2013

The highlight of the year… the one and almost the only thing we start to dream about when the winter fades away… the next ski-vacation…

This time Meribel were choosen…

In the center of The Three Valleys, Courchevel “to the left” and Val Thorens “to the right”… with thousands of km’s with pistes and after 6 days on skies, we had descended 30.000 vertical meters… all good… very good indeed… coming home again, with possible one of the worst flu’s ever, totally knocked out for a week, in fact still knocked out, and of course, editing and having a good time with photos from the trip hasn’t exactly been a priority… more like entering survival mode… well, nevertheless, I have looked at some of the photos, and I like these 🙂

Still could have done a better job with some of them, but hey, sooner or later one has to let go, and sooner is better than later now… ;-P

No colour manipulation have been done to the photos, WhiteBalance is either Auto or Sun, and the photos with the darkest sky have been taken with a Circ.Pol. Filter… that’s it… 🙂