Suffering tree, Naukluft mountains, Namibia

When we started travelling through Namibia, my first impressions was how incredibly dry, sandy, rocky, and dusty everything is. It was therefore unexpected to find large, grand trees that either seem to wait for water or have lived long ago, when it may have been wetter. However, there are many impressive trees in Namibia. Especially the suffering, mourning tree in the first photograph was really remarkable.

 Dead Quiver tree, Deadvlei, Sossusvlei, Namibia

 Dead Quiver tree shadow, Deadvlei, Sossusvlei, Namibia

 Quiver tree forest, Naukluft mountains, Namibia

 Corkwood (Commiphora glaucescens), Spitzkoppe, Namibia

 Rocks and boulders, Spitzkoppe, Namibia

Last year, I have published only one single post. Hopefully, this year I will manage to show new photographs here and on my website again more regularly. Due to the long pause, I have plenty of compositions from last year that I would like to share. Let's start with a few posts and photographs from our summer holiday from last year - in wintery Namibia.
I will keep the text to a minimum unless you, the anonymous visitors, have questions or comments that would start a "conversation". You are all invited to comment! In either case, I hope you enjoy the photographs.

 Rocks and lonely trees, Erongo mountains, Namibia

 Rocks and wimpy, lonely tree, Spitzkoppe, Namibia

 Organ pipes, Namibia

 Rock fissure patterns, Naukluft mountains, Namibia

 The last autumnal maple leaf, Zurich, Switzerland

This time it is not two, but only one leaf. Close to where we live, there is a square with a collection of small maple trees that turn beautifully red and yellow in autumn. Usually on the weekends, I pass by and create a few photographs; often of the same leaf every week. Most of the trees are bare now, but a few leaves are still hanging. Just today I have been searching for new fall color compositions among those trees and leaves, but the lonely leaf above was already captured a few weeks ago.

I wish you a good Sunday and a nice week!

Springtime forest with bear leek, Zurich, Switzerland

This is not a regular "Flora post" because I spare you most of the botanical details about Allium ursinum (which has many common names such as wild garlic or broad-leaved garlic, wood garlic, or bear leek). The reason for showing all these photographs is rather to illustrate how I see and approach a subject. The first photograph depicts what is obviously visible at first sight (and can also be smelled) when I walk or ride my bike through many springtime forests around where I live. The overall scene is nice and all, but if I am interested in a scene, I want to look closer and find new, hidden, unexpected compositions. The sequence of photographs that follows below tries to illustrate this approach; the getting closer and more intimate with a subject. In this process, I have even discovered tiny, secret inhabits of these stinky plants - colorful collembola (springtail; visible on at least two photographs, if you look closely). The photographs have been created on several photography trips and over at least two years. I hope you enjoy!

Although today's photographs have been created during our New Zealand holiday, these nature details are really location independent. Such photographs are sometimes labelled "intimate landscapes" or with the adjective "abstract". I really enjoy this type of photography, because it is rather about seeing and discovering than about being at the right location at the right time. We are surrounded by undiscovered and unnoticed details of beauty everywhere. The discovery of a reflection, shadow or any kind of easily overlooked detail makes one such anonymous detail significant to me. Maybe one or the other of these compositions also makes you happy for the few seconds while watching.

In addition to the ten rather diverse New Zealand details shown here, more are found in the New Zealand gallery. I wish you many discoveries of overlooked beauty and a nice weekend!

Loophole

Porarari river waves, Punakaiki, New Zealand

Fern view (in German "Farnblick")

Lake Pukaki rocks, Lake Pukaki, New Zealand

Spiky golden Speargrass

Punakaiki river streaming, New Zealand

Nikau palm tree detail

Bubbling Lake Rotorua, New Zealand

New Zealand flax detail

Sand color patterns at Muriwai beach, New Zealand

Moon-lit Moeraki boulder shell on the beach, Hampden, New Zealand

A few days ago, we have returned from wonderful New Zealand and I am now sorting, discarding, selecting and developing the thousands of photographs that the children and myself took. It is a slow, time-consuming process, but it offers many opportunities to look back at our adventures, to reminisce, and to be grateful for all that we could experience as a family. Although photography was of course not the main purpose of our vacation, there is a number of compositions that I am satisfied with. The first New Zealand photograph that I would like to share is, at least currently, my preferred composition of our entire trip. For me, this photograph is rendered special not only because of what you see, but also because it involved planning, some hardship, and a bit of luck. 

I was really looking forward to photograph at the Moeraki boulders, but had hoped to discover compositions that are different from the famous sunrise/sunset shots that I had often seen. When we arrived on the beach where these gigantic boulders lie around, it was clear that I could only photograph the rocky spheres early in the morning or late at night - unless if I had cared for photographs of tourists posing on the rocks. Luckily, the tidal patterns were compatible and I had realized that it was full moon. I previsualized Moeraki boulders in moon light and set out for a nightly walk from our campground. 

The scene was as I hoped: the beach, rocks and sea lightened by the moon and no tourist far and wide. But then, while kneeling next to my tripod in the wet sand, while taking photographs, my knee cracked. It first seemed like a negligible inconvenience, but soon became a painful disability. The prospect of the hike back to the campground became more and more discomforting. However, just when I had packed up my equipment and started limping back, I came across this boulder: a cracked Moeraki boulder with a puddle in the middle, and if looked at from the right angle moon light in the puddle and on the sea. Almost too good to be true! Despite the pain and advanced hour, I unpacked and quickly took two exposures (only one of which turned out reasonably sharp). It is one of the rare cases where I think virtually everything is right - the frame has not even been cropped the tiniest bit.

Crab shell lips, Olympic National Park.

I have mentioned the photographer Scott Cahill Rude, whom we have discovered on our recent vacation. Of course, we have also seen plenty of natural and man-made beauty that I sometimes tried to capture in photographs. I would like to show you some of these compositions in this and in upcoming blog posts.

Pursuing photography while traveling with your family is on one hand very easy, but on the other hand also much more challenging than you may first realize. The large majority of the photographs are of course rather documentary and private. We look at these pictures together, include them in our family year or holiday books and use them as time machines to bring us back to our five weeks of camping, hiking and enjoying the outdoors (unfortunately the photographs have so far only brought back memories - I am still waiting to be physically beamed back in time). In summary: these captures are not meant to be shared with “everybody” and I rather refer to them as pictures than as photographs (even though some of the portraits are very nice). Photographs, on the other hand, are deliberate and conscious compositions that I create according to my vision and which I consider worth sharing here.

Crab shells and sand pattern.

One of the difficulties with family holiday photography is of course that you spend only a limited amount of time at a particular location. Often you will not be at the right place at the right time (which is the reason why nearby photography is fulfilling and very satisfactory). A possible solution is not to photograph famous landmarks, sunsets, or sunrises, but rather to pursue themes that depend less on the time of day, or a particular weather condition, but may be discovered everywhere. For example, during our holiday I did not even think about a “real” photograph of any of the huge Sequoias, the Yosemite valley or the Golden Gate bridge (to name just three) - a picture is clearly enough at these places. Instead, I had planned to delve into flower photography (but hardly ever felt inspired to do so during our trip), looked out for new carcolor compositions, discovered exciting facades and buildings, took many new photographs of water (an ongoing project that I will show sometimes later), and created a collection of beach photographs - a type of photography subject completely lacking in Switzerland (unfortunately). The beach photographs shown here show the remains  (exuviae) of crabs, which we found in huge masses on Kalaloch beach in Olympic National Park. Piles of crab remains are nothing to be worried about: Similar to animals such as snakes or lizards, crabs have to molt as they grow. Since this can happen quite synchronously, some beaches may become littered with crab shells and parts at certain times of the year. It seems that we have been lucky (as the last photograph indicates - it is only added for illustrative purposes and not part of the natural beauty collection). The species of crab is most likely a Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister), but I am not a specialist and therefore not entirely sure.

1 Right-side up, 4 upside down.

I have been enticed to take these crab carapace compositions because of an abstract theme that I have been working on for a long time already (I refer to it as "outlier" - the photograph above is an example). While looking for ever new crab carapace arrangements, I have found new angles and compositions that did not fit the original idea any more and I ended up with a small collection of, as I think (but less so my wife), beautiful crab shell photographs. I particularly like the first example because it is a rather unexpected view of a crab carapace, because the light shines so beautifully through the shell, because of the interplay between focus and out of focus, and because the shape of the shell looks like a mouth with lips (to me). I would also like to emphasize that the carapaces were not touched let alone arranged in any way. The photographs show the crab remains as I found them washed upon the beach and after the next wave or high tide everything was different again. The photographs are stored under in my natural beauty section within the nature detail gallery.

Crab remains on Kalaloch beach, Olympic National Park.

Tree silhouette 4: The seed balls of the London plane (Platanus x acerifolia) decorate the bare branches like christmas tree balls on the conifers that some of you may have at home right now (only less colorful). Merry christmas to everybody who is celebrating this holiday!

As the seasons pass, light, shadows, colors, the weather and the vegetation continuously change and create new opportunities and discoveries for the observant photographer (and of course also for the attentive observer without a camera). The different seasons therefore lend themselves to different photography themes. The recently presented carcolor theme is perfectly suited for the summer because brightly lit facades and objects create impressive reflections on car bodies. Light & shadow photographs obviously also necessitate sunlight to throw interesting shadows on facades or the ground.  Here in Zurich, the winter months are often grey and cold and there may be no shadow far and wide for weeks.  Since a couple of winters I take advantage of these rather depressing conditions to photograph tree silhouettes. Although these photographs are somewhat unusual for me - I really am a "color guy" - tree silhouettes are a perfect pursuit for grey winter days.

Tree silhouette 1: Poplar silhouettes

According to wikipedia, a silhouette is the shape of an object or person (or any living thing) of a single, plain color.  Silhouettes are a very old form of expression and can be created by different means. Traditionally, they were cut out from black paper and mounted on a lightly colored background, but all sorts of combinations, variations and collages exist.  I may have been preconditioned to this traditional art form because my parents have paper-cut illustrations and a book of a friend of theirs, Helmut Bögel, who is known for his humorous paper-cut illustrations of people. Silhouettes can also be drawn and of course photographed.

Tree silhouette 2: Weeping beech (Fagus sylvatica "pendula") on Lake Zug, Switzerland

I appreciate silhouettes because they are an attempt to extract the essence of something much more complex, a kind of minimalisation that I am fond of. The reduction of a convoluted whole not only represents a loss, but may even reveal a pattern or structure that is only visible when the shades of grey are suppressed.  I think that the shapes and patterns formed by bare trees are much under-appreciated.  Each kind of tree exhibits a slightly different branching pattern and most fascinating are the individual nuances observed in the silhouettes within the same species. For example, the branches and twigs of a tree growing on the edge of a forest may all point in the same general direction and thus create a regular pattern. On the other hand, a lonely tree often adopts a harmonious, roundish shape that leads to a different kind of silhouette symmetry.

I hope that you enjoy some of these photographs and that they may encourage one or the other to have a conscious look at nude trees!

Tree silhouette 3: Apple tree (Malus domestica) silhouette

Dark forest, snowy white branches, golden leaves

It has been snowing quite a lot here in Zurich yesterday (already the second time this winter) and therefore I would like to share a fitting photograph. Although the composition above fits the season and the general scene when I look out of my window, the photograph has been taken a few years back (in 2010) and not even in Zurich (near Siegsdorf, in Germany (the link is for the german wikipedia entry because the english text is very minimalistic)). However, I really like this capture (which is part of the trees gallery) and how the snow marks and highlights the branches of the trees on the edge of the forest. It is wonderful how snow can transform and reveal things that are inconspicuous otherwise!

November and December is family photo book season for me. It is time to go through our family snaps and to document our journeys and excursions of the ending year. Although I am continually pre-processing our photographs throughout the year, this is still a monumental task. Most of my evenings are spent selecting, developing and arranging photographs and only little thought and effort on other things. Therefore, this blog is updated less frequently and with less text and more photographs - I hope you do not mind.

Although preparing these books requires a huge effort, it is well worth it! Intensely looking at most of the photographs of an entire year lets me re-experience some of the nicest moments of the last twelve months and sometimes brings together the whole family in front of the screen (although most of the editing is done when everybody except me is asleep). The books are also appreciated gifts for our children, grandparents and close relatives (I hope). This year I am already preparing the sixth "edition", but the resolution to put together family books retroactively, for those years when I was not completely "digital" yet, was in vain so far (probably due to the post photo book compensaiton phase that will follow in January).

Autumn color reflection in the river Limmat, Zurich, Switzerland

The autumn color photograph above is a composition from last year (that is not part of our family photo book). It shows an unusually (for Switzerland) brightly red colored autumn tree that is reflected in the river Limmat, in Zurich (Switzerland). I have discovered this beautiful tree on one of my photo bike trips within the city borders of Zurich!

I hope you enjoy and wish you a nice week!

Florian.

Martagon lily (Lilium martagon) flower

The Martagon lily (Türkenbund in German, Lis martagon in French, Lilium martagonin Latin) is a beautiful and conspicuous (when flowering) perennial plant that grows in valleys and mountains all the way from Europe to Asia. The flowers are pinkish to white with dark dots and effuse a sweet odor in the evening and at night in order to attract nocturnal pollinators such as the Hummingbird Hawk-moth.

The Martagon lily is a protected plant and therefore you should most definitely not dig it up (only take photographs and leave nothing but footprints). However, if you bought bulbs of one of the martagon lily cultivars, you could admire their golden-yellowish color. In medieval times, miraculous curativeness was ascribed to these bulbs and alchemists used them to transform base metals into gold. Luckily this attempt was in vain and therefore we can still enjoy the sight of Martagon lilies in the wild.

The origin of the name "martagon" seems dubious. It either refers to the Roman god of war Mars, who alchemists believed to have a hand in the transformation of metals, or originates from the Turkish word turban. Some types of this headdress come in shapes remotely similar to one of the Martagon lilie's flowers. In contrast, many (German) colloquial names of the Martagon lily (e.g. Goldapfel, Goldbölla, Goldknopf, Goldlilgen, Goldpfandl, Goldruabn, Goldwurzl, Goldzwifl, Poms d'or) refer to the golden bulbs and their origin is thus much less dubious. 

In order to do justice to my name and to share my interest in nature and botany, I have started a Wildflower gallery. Here on my blog, I will show wildflower photographs and share links and interesting facts about different plants under the label Flora. The goal of these photographs is to package little bits of information into the accompanying notes of wildflower photographs. The photographs are therefore mostly documentary, but this does hopefully not prevent you from enjoying them.

Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) flowers - harbingers of spring

The first flower that I am featuring is a harbinger of spring - the Coltsfoot (Huflattich in German, le Tussilage in French, Tussilago farfara in Latin). It is hard to admit, but the French name is clearly the most fitting because it indicates that this plant has something to do with cough (the latin word tussis translates as cough). The leaves of Coltsfoot are one of the oldest medicinal plants and have been used for their antitussive and mucolytic powers (a very good German text is found here, an English text is there). Unfortunately, Coltsfoot also synthesizes chemical compounds (so called pyrrolizidine alkaloids) to defends itself against herbivores. These defense molecules are also toxic and carcinogenic for us if consumed in large doses (instructive texts are found HERE and HERE, links to more articles are listed on THIS page). Due to these health concerns, the commercial use of pyrrolizidine containing plants has been restricted or even banished in some countries. This, in turn, has stimulated research and lead to the discovery and in vitro propagation of pyrrolizidine-free Coltsfoot (a summary article in German is found HERE). A less toxic but in certain situations more useful application of the wooly, hairy coltsfoot leaves is indicated by its colloquial name "hikers toilet paper."

As long as its flowering, Coltsfoot is very easily recognizable. The Coltsfoot flowers are some of the first to appear in spring and they usually grow in disturbed, bare locations. However, since the medically relevant leaves appear only after flowering, fatal mix-ups can happen. Plants with similar leaves include the Butterbur (Petasites) or species of the genus Adenostyles, both of which contain more pyrrolizidines than Coltsfoot! To those of you living in Europe, Coltsfoot should be a common plant: it is widely distributed in Europe and Asia. However, it has also been introduced in North America. In the photograph above I particularly like how the two flowers intertwine and shine like two little suns; they almost look at you.

A photograph that I would entitle "The wave". It was taken on Spruce Knob in West Virginia in 2001 (on a slide film). We have been driving on an endless winding gravel road and it was already getting dark, but I was so attracted by the yellow foliage wave that we had to stop.

There was just a Twitter post or rather Twitter question by National Geographic about the first camera that one used and what one photographed. This reminded me of the photograph below, which is one of my first "serious" photographs that I remember. It was taken in 1987 (I was a teenager at that time) with my first SLR, which I had bought with my savings (it was a Konica Autoreflex TC). 

The leaves are those of the King Solomon's Seal (belongs to the genus is Polygonatum) and the raindrops are real (even though I took the photograph 24 years ago, I still remember that it was raining). If somebody had told me on that day that I would post this photograph in a digital form in the internet in 24 years, I would of course neither have known what a digital photograph nor what the internet is. Amazing how things change!

Fall is not only the season of spectacular fall colors, but also the blooming season of Dahlias. The wild form of Dahlias is a native to Central America, Colombia and Mexico, but these plants are most famous for the thousands of cultivars that have been bread since 1813. For the scientifically inclined among you, I may mention that Dahlias have eight sets of chromosomes (they are so called "octoploid", humans for example have only two sets of chromosomes and are therefore diploid), which is the main reason for their enormous variability. At this time of the year, over 270 varieties of Dahlias can be admired blooming on the island Mainau, in the Lake of Constance. If you are in that region in the next couple of weeks, I highly recommend a visit!