Long Overdue Post... Adventures in Sweden continued...

It seems I'm WAY overdue for completing the saga of my trip this past summer with brother Lukas, his partner Tom and my sister Valerie... so before Picnik dies completely, I'm going to try to finish up the last of that trip as well as the three days spent in Iceland with Lukas and Tom on the way home from Sweden. Today's post is the journey from Tärnaby to Östersund. For those of you who might be interested to see earlier posts about this trip, start here.

Stensele kyrka (kyrka = church) is the largest wooden church in Sweden. We made a slight detour en route from Tärnaby to Östersund so that we could take a few pictures and see the inside of the church. The scenic view in this collage was somewhere along the Ume river before we got to Stensele kyrka. The interior shot shows the main alter, the close view of the door to the church tells us that the church was built in 1885.

Another view of the exterior of Stensele kyrka and a few more interior shots. One could get a talk about the church by choosing the language and lifting the phone. The distant view of the alter shows the gorgeous windows behind the main alter and the close-up of a small portion of some of the painted wood shows a feature common to many of the wooden churches of Sweden... painting the wood to make it appear to be marble.

More interior views of Stensele kyrka, from left to right, a close-up of one of the lovely chandeliers, a long view of the main alter, the high pulpit, and the original organ from when the church was first used. This organ has since been replaced with a newer, more modern organ.

Another church, this one in Vilhelmina. Perhaps you can see similarities in style. From left to right, an exterior view, the main alter at the front of the church, the high pulpit (a feature seen in almost every church we visited) and a close-up of a chandelier. This chandelier has both candles (which is what would have been used in the "old days") and modern lightbulbs.

Scenes from downtown Östersund after our arrival. In the square near our hotel, one can go from the sublime in dining, Winston Restaurant, to the ridiculous, McDonald's! We had a fabulous meal at Winston Restaurant, recommended by our hotel desk clerk who made us a reservation for dinner. The color coded street signs caught my eye as did the three tourists (sister, brother and brother-in-law who may not thank me for posting this).

After our marvelous meal, we decided to go for a walk around Östersund before heading to our rooms and bed. It was almost 10 PM when we were wandering and the light was wonderful. We finished off our day at a sidewalk refreshment stand where one could purchase beer and wine as well as non-alcoholic drinks. My beer was delicious but I don't think you can buy it in the US.

Images from Cape May, NJ - Photography Workshop

I am SO FAR behind with this blog... I will possibly never catch up. I've recently been on another marvelous photography workshop... this one led by John Barclay and George Brown to Cape May, NJ. Cape May is at the southernmost part of New Jersey and has the Delaware Bay to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east... making for beautiful sunrises and sunsets this time of year. Although I'm not really a morning person, I think you will agree that some of the images that can be had when one rises EARLY in the morning are truly spectacular! Without spending TOO much time on captions... I'm just going to post a few and give you a link at the end to a slide show in case you want to see more. Enjoy... Larger images are available by clicking on the smaller ones... look for the X in the upper right corner of your browser to close the large image and get back to the blog (took me awhile to find it on my 24" iMac screen).

Golden glow of early morning light on waves...

Early morning light on the horizon as waves break over pilings and the shore...

Fall colors of Crepe Myrtle... bokeh from color reflected in metal siding on the wall behind the tree.

A six shot HDR image of the old fire engine in the Cape May Firehouse Museum.

Sunset at Cape May with a distant view of the lighthouse across the way.

Sunrise at the 59th Street Pier in Ocean City... cannot believe I had to get up at 4:10 AM to participate in this photo shoot! This is just one of many images from that morning and is a 30 second exposure while using a VND (Variable Neutral Density) filter.

Another view of the sunrise with the color tweaked to give it a different feel.

Another picture of early morning sunlight on the water... lost count of how many similar images I took!

If you want to view more from the workshop, there is a slide show available that also includes some additional images that I will be posting later on this week if I find the time. Images in the sideshow that were taken with my iPhone start with the image titled "Moon in the sky during sunrise..." and end with the series of images demonstrating a post processing technique I'll talk more about when I post the rest of the images here (or in my other blog).

I do so admire those of you who manage to post regularly. I honestly have no clue how you manage it... probably by being more focused and disciplined about it than I am! One of the reasons I've been missing for the past month or so has to do with having had quite a bit of upheaval in my personal life. Without going into great gory detail, I will just tell you that I'm finally free of a burdensome relationship and am feeling MUCH lighter as a result. Sometimes things just do not work out and that was the case with myself and the guy who has been living with me for the past (almost) 14 years. He has moved out and I am moving on and enjoying myself quite a bit these days.

Linking to The Creative Exchange which I recently discovered by browsing someone's blog.

Something new and different... iPhone images from Colorado!

Regular followers may have been waiting for me to continue posting about my Sweden and Iceland trip of June/July. However, I ran out of time to finish those posts before taking another trip... this one to Montana (more about that eventually) and Colorado. The main reason I went to Colorado was to take a Photo Tour of Colorado with John Barclay and Dan Sniffin, two marvelous photographers who have been leading such tours for many years.

The tour was not only terrific fun... I learned an incredible amount of tricks, tips and techniques for post processing. Improved post processing of my images has already resulted in increased attention to my posts on both Flickr and Facebook.

Some of the MOST fun was discovering iPhoneography... thanks to John and Dan, I've spent a few dollars on more applications (hereafter referred to as apps) for my iPhone, learned a few tricks to improve my ability to take pictures with it and had LOADS of fun with both taking pictures and processing the images after capturing them.

This collage has images from several different locations all over the area between Ouray, Silverton, Durango, South Fork, Creede and Fairplay, Colorado. All were taken with the Hipstamatic app set for Kodot film using the John S lens.

The center image is of a barn seen near Bayfield, CO (more on that later in this post); the phone booth was on the side of the Silver Thread highway not too far outside South Fork (you all do know what a phone booth is, right?). ;-) The cute house in the lower left was just as cute inside (the tenant moving in that day invited me in to see it when she saw me taking a picture of the outside), the Coca Cola cooler and assorted relics of bygone days were on the porch of the general store (closed on Sunday) in Creede, the Aspens were everywhere so I'm not at all sure where I took those two photos and the Shaft Restaurant is one of the two places in South Fork where I had dinner while staying at the Arbor House B&B there for two nights... I HIGHLY recommend staying at the Arbor House if you ever find yourself in South Fork. The rest of the images were all taken at the South Park Museum in Fairplay, Colorado, an open air museum set up to show how people lived in that area in the late 1800s. It was a fascinating place and I could have spent more time there if only I didn't have to drive to Denver to catch a plane home that day!

The next two collages show the steps in taking the red barn image from the original (taken with the Apple supplied iPhone Camera app set to take an HDR image) to a finished product through several steps.

The left image is the original, the right is after retouching (Retouch app) to remove the overhead wires and pole. (note that the entire image isn't visible in this collage but you will see it at the end)

The image on the left is the original image after processing with the AutoPainter app using the Benson effect (I may never pick up a paintbrush again); the center image is the result of blending the original (after retouching) with the AutoPainter image (50% opacity) using Iris; the image on the right is after cropping slightly, still in Iris.

The finished image after further cropping and a bit more tweaking in Iris.

PS - If you want to see another scenic image (taken with my Nikon D90) from Colorado and some more iPhone photos, visit the two most recent posts on my photography blog.

A Day of Fun with Sture and Inger... Tärnaby and nearby, Sweden

Our day started with a lovely breakfast followed by a quick stop in Tärnaby for a couple of items to supplement our picnic lunch. Afterward, we drove to Laisaliden where we parked the car and headed out to walk a bit on the Drottningleden hiking trail. After a short climb at the beginning of the trail, we were treated to lovely views on all sides as we hiked along a high plateau. The image below is a panorama of five images of just some of our lovely views on this hike... stitched together in Photoshop.

The two images flanking the wildflowers in the top half of the collage below are of the rushing mountain stream running alongside the start of the trail. The yellow wildflower is Small Cow wheat (Melampyrum silvaticum, the dark purple flower is Bartsia alpina L.; its common name in Sweden is Svarthö which translates to Bartsia! The image on the lower left is the first of five images that were used to make the panoramic image at the top of this post... even the ground was beautiful on our hike as seen in the gorgeous stones and greenery in the image in the lower right. In the middle is cousin Sture, carrying most of the provisions for our lunch and coffee making and brother-in-law Tom on top of the world in spite of the gloomy weather!

Below you have the gateway to the hiking trail and Sture preparing to make the all-important coffee to go with our picnic lunch after we had hiked up to the plateau. The hardest part of finding a lunch spot was finding a place that was sheltered enough from the wind to allow Sture to light the flame for making the coffee. We certainly didn't lack for beautiful scenery!

Images below include several from our hike along the plateau, brother Lukas and brother-in-law Tom (back to camera) hunkered down and enjoying lunch and Sture finally joining us in the meal after making sure we all had coffee. The image in the lower right is an HDR from 3 images taken of the stream that runs alongside the start of the trail. As we returned to the parking lot at the end of our hike, the sky had become quite dark except for the light patch in the distance and light rain was falling.

I debated about including the collage below... the church looks crooked to me in BOTH of the images. SIGH... must do a better job of post processing when making collages which tend to exaggerate any "off kilter" bits! This is the church in Tärnaby (Tarna kyrka) and is the church where Inger's parents were married.

Interior views of the church in Tärnaby include the high pulpit, a view of the painting over the altar and one of the stairwells leading up to the choir balcony where the organ, last image, is located. This church was beautiful in its simplicity and not nearly as elaborately decorated in the interior as many we saw.

After our stop in Tärnaby on the way home from our hike, we made a couple more stops along the way to have a look at some family homes formerly belonging to Inger's family. The house on the top left below was the home of Inger's grandparents until they became quite elderly at which point it was given to one of the sons as is the custom in Sweden in the old days (and still seems to be fairly common to this day). The home in the lower right is where Inger's grandparents lived in their "old age" and is on the same property as their other house. The thermometer measuring the temperature at nearly 9 PM was on the outside of Sture and Inger's home and the interior door is in their house. That door came from the old house that they bought to provide building materials for portions of their home. Sture was in the process of stripping all the old paint when Inger suggested that he should leave it as you see it now because it was beautiful that way. I quite agree!

The last collage has an image of the home in which Inger lived until age 4 when her family moved from Tärnaby to Lycksele, a lovely little wildflower, Moneses uniflora (known as Ögonljus in Sweden), and a pleasant scene near the family property.

Playing tourist in Göteborg, Sweden on a rainy day in June, 2011...

After breakfast on our second day, we met up with Örjan and Lisa who showed us a bit of Göteborg. We started with a visit to Örjan's office building which is situated on a high hill that offers great views of Göteborg. The older part of the building was the home of the "Göteborg Navigations Skola" where sailing was taught in the "old days" (an expression we heard used a lot on this trip).

Since it was a cold, rainy day, we opted for spending time indoors since we couldn't possibly see all of Göteborg in one day! Örjan's office building partially surrounds a historical hill where there was a very old town cemetery and where they used to execute people in the 1600s.  We passed by the old city hall, a chocolate/candy store and proceeded on foot to a museum with lots of viking and emigration history as well as a design exhibition that included a jewelry display by their daughter Matilda.  The museum cost 40 SEK, but covered 5 museums in Göteborg for a full year.

View from outside terrace at Örjan's office building showing the interesting architecture and a few church towers above the rooftops of the town.

View of entry to the old part of Örjan's office building showing the name of the sailing school that was originally housed in the building.

Some more of the interesting features of the old part of Örjan's office building.

Rainy weather does provide some lovely opportunities for colorful images of exterior features of lovely old buildings.

Tourist train that would have saved us a bit of walking had we opted for using it... Lisa and Örjan provided us with great guidance on our tour of the city and allowed us to stop whenever, wherever we wanted to take photos which wouldn't have been possible riding this cute train.

If you've read this far, thanks so much. It has taken me 3 to 4 times as long as usual to put this post together. Perhaps if I get ore familiar with the iPad, I'll be able to put things together more quickly. One source of frustration is that I cannot use "Picnik" to put together collages which would allow me to pack more into less space. I'm only half finished with our tourist day in Göteborg so probably will leave the bulk of posting about our travels until my return home where I have access to more familiar methods of posting and editing images!

Nothing to do with our travels... Just a test...

Sitting in Rock Bottom in Bethesda the night before leaving on our trip... Thought I'd give posting a try just to make sure I have everything I need on my iPad. (for our itinerary and notes on the trip, please see the previous post)

The image below is another experiment in HDR processing and is from a bracket set of images taken at Wollam Gardens in Jeffersonton, Virginia. After merging the images with Nik software, the vintage effect was applied. I rather like how the foliage frames the 1935 vintage tractor which is still in use on the 11 acre property.

My next post here will either be en route to Sweden or after our arrival on Saturday, June 18th. (the house is not empty while I'm away in case anyone is concerned about that)

The last part of the photography adventure...

Alright, I'm trying again to finish up the adventure I had the other day with my cousin Jane and our friend Susie. It seems that Google's blog service is having a bit of difficulty today because it keeps posting "Could not contact Blogger.com. Saving and publishing may fail. Retrying..." and then occasionally posts "Draft autosaved at..." So this last collage of images from our adventure may or may not show up today if I fail at publishing!

The two scenic images were both taken from the same spot... the James Rumsey Monument in Shepherdstown, WV. The "Opera House" is in downtown and is not an opera house at all but was built as a movie theater in the early 1900's and was in continuous operation as one until 1956. The Yellow Brick Bank building was, at one time, a bank but now houses a lovely restaurant.

More of the photography adventure...

I was going to add this to the previous post until I realized how much I'd already written about Del, his pottery and our visit there. So this post will be about the rest (or more) of the adventure... depending! ;-)

Our first stop of the day (upper left in the collage above) was at the "Scenic Overlook" on I-270 not far from Washington, DC where I took LOTS of photos and found that most of them did not please me (this one did). The lovely old church on the right had a corner-stone dated 1856; some of the graves in the cemetery were those of soldiers who died in our Civil War. The lower left is obviously a close-up of the gorgeous stained glass window and on the right, skipping to the end of the day, is a sunset taken in Boonsboro, MD.

We stopped for lunch in Shepherdstown, WV and wandered the town a bit both before and after lunch. The collage above includes an image (upper left) of the tower of McMurran Hall, part of Shepherdstown University... the clock in the tower is mainained, wound twice weekly and strikes the hour as it has since 1841 although in 1841 it was not in its present location. It was originally intended for the tower at Trinity Church but was moved to McMurran Hall in 1860. (information from the Historic Shepherdstown Walking Tour guide) Additional images are of a lovely old home and the main street, an old, stone Lutheran Church tower and a quirky coffee shop "bumper sticker" hanging on the wall of the Lost Dog coffee shop in Shepherdstown. This bumper sticker caught my eye for two reasons... it made me laugh and then I noticed that it was from a coffee shop in Sheridan, WY where we lived until 1955 when we moved to Billings, MT.

Big Sky Panorama... Montana, 2010

Is it any wonder we love visiting Montana... we were there in June, 2010 and I'm clearly way late in posting anything about our adventures from this trip. This image is a panorama, stitched together from several images taken off Route 78 and Fox Road outside of Red Lodge, Montana. (We have a vacation home there, available for rent when we are not using it.)

This is a teaser... I hope to post more from our trip soon and hope you'll enjoy this image in the meantime!

St. Croix - April 21-22, 2010

Arriving in St. Croix, we were met by the "Villa greeter" (holding a sign with our name) and my brother and his partner who had arrived "on-island" a few minutes before we did. Once we collected our luggage and rental car, we followed the greeter (caravan of two white Toyota Camrys) to our villa. We're in a HUGE sprawling villa with 4 bedrooms and who knows how many bathrooms (haven't counted those yet), a swimming pool, loads of lounge chairs for relaxing outdoors, beautiful gardens... luxury!

Staying at our villa are my sister and her youngest son (oldest is the reason we're all here as he is getting married Saturday), my youngest brother and his partner, myself and my other half and another one of my nephews. Maybe I'll try to get a group photo later!

Meantime, I'm posting a couple images from yesterday... a sunset from our villa and a portion of a most interesting building at Fort Christiansvaern, an old fort built by the Danish in 1749 to protect the harbor at Christiansted, St. Croix... The fort was was partially rebuilt in 1771 after being severely damaged by a succession of hurricanes. It is now a national historic site and is the best preserved of the few remaining Danish-built forts in the Virgin Islands.

September 15, 2009: Hanging out in and near Red Lodge, MT...

Mike's cousin Tom and his wife Helen came from Utah to visit us while we were in Red Lodge this year. They arrived the evening of September 14th in time for dinner... after a LONG day of driving. Our day together on the 15th was a bit low key with a somewhat late breakfast together before wandering around town.

Our house (which is available as a vacation rental when we are not using it) is in the "Hi Bug" area of Red Lodge which is where the larger homes were built by the "upper crust" of Red Lodge in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Several of the homes on our street were designed by the same architect, Seth Hunneywell, as our house was. Our walking tour of Red Lodge with our guests included wandering up our street all the way to route 78 and then back again, reading both from a book on the historic homes and a book on the history of Red Lodge as we wandered around.

Photos I've chosen to include today include some from our walk as well as a couple from later in the day when we drove up to Red Lodge Mountain and stopped at Silver Run before returning to town.

Chapman House was completed in 1902, having been built by W.S. Smith at a cost of $6,500 from plans drawn up by Seth Hunneywell. It was described as one of the finest residences in the state of Montana at the time.

Heading back toward town, a structure of a different sort... this grain elevator is no longer used for grain and currently stands idle. I'm not sure whether it will be eventually torn down or repurposed... the angles and shapes against the cloudy sky struck me as worthy of recording. The fencing in the foreground is part of a relatively recent addition to the town of Red Lodge, a childrens playground.

Trains no longer run to and from Red Lodge but this rail car is preserved outside the Art Gallery.

Family photo... Mike (on the right) with cousin Tom and Tom's wife Helen.

The parking lot at Silver Run outside of Red Lodge, MT is accessed by crossing the West Fork of Rock Creek. Silver Run is a multi-use trail with several loops that allow the hiker, biker or cross country skier (in winter, of course) to choose how long they want to make the trail. This photo of the West Fork was taken from the bridge one must cross to reach the parking lot.

September 10-11, 2009: Red Lodge, MT with friends

This post may only be of interest to family and friends... or those who would like to know more about what is available in the way of food, friends and fun in the Red Lodge area. At this point in our vacation, I'm having trouble remembering exactly what we did each day but have a few memorable moments to share in pictures! (when you get to the photos mentioning Wolfie's spot on Red Lodge Mountain... Wolfie was our friend Tim's dog who is no longer with us... we leave you to conclude what is meant by "Wolfie's spot" on Red Lodge Mountain)

No trip to Red Lodge is complete without a trip to Roscoe, MT for a marvelous steak dinner at the Grizzly Bar. Below are snapshots of friends Mary and Evan and of Mike and myself in the parking lot prior to our annual fine dining experience at the Grizzly.

On the next day, we started out in the morning with a 'townie' bike ride (or girlfriend ride as Mike likes to call it when he goes slow) and here's a photo of Mary, Evan and Mike on one of the bridges across Rock Creek.

After our townie ride, Mike and Evan went mountain biking while Mary and I were treated to a ride up Red Lodge Mountain, courtesy of our friend Tim, where we had a picnic lunch at Wolfie's spot with spectacular views of the ski runs (below) and the valley and palisades (subsequent photos)

Tim setting up for our picnic lunch... spectacular view in the background...

View of the palisades and valley from Wolfie's spot on Red Lodge Mountain..

Koda, Tim's current dog, is one happy camper riding in the back of Tim's truck.

The last two photos show the end of our adventure up the mountain with Tim (we stopped to look back at the entrance to Red Lodge Mountain) and the last evening of our visit with friends Mary and Evan (the best of our squinty eyed photos taken at Sam's Tap Room looking into the sun) before their return to real life back home in Maryland.