World Tour Part I - Darmstadt

Ta da! I am presenting you with the first part of a new photo series in which I am going to show places of the world, big or small, remarkable or not so much. We are beginning with a "not so much" candidate, Darmstadt.

In Darmstadt, you can always go for a walk:


whether you have four paws or two:


You can confess your sins:


or just admire the pretty colours and the beautiful architecture of the Russian Orthodox church:


Afterwards, you can have a quiet little chat in a secluded place:


And if you contemplate moving there, you should know that some of their houses, namely the Hundertwasser complex "Waldspirale", are not exactly straight:


but very colourful and royal looking:

Almost Apocalypse

The other day, I caught this amazing sunset in the clouds:

Your private own KASTEEL

or: Three Belgian castles and one town

Last Sunday was a beautiful sunny day, one of those days where you (ok, I) would just lay on the grass, look at the sky and watch the clouds float by - something we ended up not doing.
We went on a day trip, not far from Brussels (oh yes, did I mention that I spent the weekend in Brussels?) to visit three castles, very different ones.

The first one, Kasteel van Gaasbeek, is very well taken care of, very touristy, with a guided tour through the chambers, paintings, a beautiful Versailles-inspired garden:




The second one we could enter was Kasteel van Beersel, the ruins of a castle with three towers. We climbed into all three of them to enjoy the view and our respective thoughts and let our imagination run wild about life and use in those rooms.





The Belgian town we went to was Leuven, a small but very lively university town with a rich architectural and cultural (obviously!) heritage:




Finally, and for some reason that wasn't easy to find, during the blue hour, we took a walk in the park of Kasteel Arenberg. Again, this castle was completely different. Surrounded by a public park, the castle itself resembled a huge mansion with little towers more than anything else:



Which one was my favourite? I really can't say...

Happy Anniversary, Kaleidoscope Eyes!

It's been exactly one year today that I started my daily photoblog. 365 days, 365 photo posts and about as many comments, give or take.

I felt some pressure to choose a picture every day which is good as well as bad. Good, because I was actually forced to publish something for every day. And bad because I sometimes had the impression that the quality suffered from the quantity.

One year worth of pictures! Visitors from all over the world (ok, not quite but from five out of seven continents - thank you, guys!), yes, I've been watching you - scroll down to the bottom of the site if you want to know more. There are some countries on the list where I don't even know people. That brings me to a question: those who don't know me personally (or something to that effect) - how did you come across my blog? And I would like to ask you all to do me a favour: Please pick your favourite picture of the whole year and tell me which one it is! I would really appreciate it :-)

So on this memorable day, I am going to change the concept of my blog. From a daily photoblog, Kaleidoscope Eyes is going to turn into a weekly blog. Instead of one picture a day, I will publish a series of photos about once per week, always in a specific theme. This is starting tomorrow with some of the photos I took at the "Proyecto Destinotango" show on Sunday.

And the last "daily photo" is one of my favourite themes: sunsets.

The sky is the limit

This is the Ark Nebra building, near the place where the so called Sky Disc, "the oldest visual representation of the cosmos ever discovered to date", was found. The outer shape of the bulding symbolises the form of an ark made from gold:

Geometrical Landscape

It's for a reason that they call my region The green heart of Germany:

Thursday's Sun

Love the lovely sunset:

Life In A Day

I was thinking whether or not I should somehow contribute to the movie, picturing life on the 24 July but then I don't have a video camera and I think time lapse films are not permitted. So my contribution is a photo:

The upside of summer rain

Yesterday, it rained for most of the day, to a point that it started to depress me. But when it was over, I could take this picture:

Italy?

Little towers on Würzburg Castle that have kind of an Italian feel to them - at least to me:

Industry meets Nature

... in Würzburg:

Batman's own church in Würzburg

.. created in his image ;-)

Sunset in the East

What, the sun is setting in the west? Sunrise is in the east? So what, this is still an eastern cloud, lit up by the setting sun:

The next generation

The next generation is rising high!


PS: No post processing but I used a polarisation filter to get the sky so incredibly blue - not that it wasn't blue before..

The joys of getting up early

I dragged myself out of bed at 5.45 am (which surprisingly is much easier in summer when the sun gets up before you ;-) ) and looked at the sky just to check how it was doing. It was doing good:

PS: The post processing I did was contrast, lowering the colour temperature a bit (to make the sky just that tad more sky-blue) and sharpening for the net.

Zebra Sky

When I was getting something from the kitchen, I glanced outside and saw this evening sky. So I rushed back for my camera, knocked a bottle off my desk, pushed my chair aside and almost tripped just to catch the sunset. That's just me - can't do things slowly...

Another sunset

One of these days, I'm going to make a collage of all the sunsets I have shot. Meanwhile this one:

Haunted House

This is a run-down house behind Apolda's train station, looks a bit like a haunted mansion in this photo I think.

Heaven and Earth

I have some problems with landscape photography. Either the landscape is often boring here or it is just my inability to capture it well or you have the nicest view where you can impossibly stop to take a picture. This picture belongs into the third category - cheers to (occasional) speed limits ;-)

This is real!

How do sunsets do that, create colour gradients like this? The sky being dipped in bright blue and flaming orange - I think it's the surest sign that spring is here :-)