The Windmills and the Stars

- my version.

A few months ago, Ali Ferguson asked his "photographer friends on facebook" to contribute pictures to his first solo album, The Windmills And The Stars. I did, too, and although mine weren't chosen, I would like to present them to you here.

Hidden Instruments


A Child's Song


Flickering Golden


Awakening (The Stars)


In Morning Sky (this song is my favourite of the album)


Bending Bullets, Breaking Falls


The Windmills


One song is missing but I just wasn't able to picture Coincidence Is No Accident.

Back with a(nother) new concept

I just noticed that my last post dated from January! Shame on me and dirt and small stones ;-)

So now I have a new plan that will probably be strict enough to make me stick to it but not so strict that I will crumble under the pressure of picking out suitable pictures each time:

I will post something new every week. Not every day as it used to be but not once per quarter either. The perfect day for it is Tuesday I think because then I have the morning off now and not a horrible lot to do in the afternoon either. And here is where you come in: by Sunday evening (my time) you can choose a theme for the week. Sometimes I might offer choices, mostly however, I will just leave it to your imagination.

So there you go, let your creative juices flow and I will come up with the matching photos

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.

Minsk

Bring me something back please, something small ... and blue.

Y. did and what it was is this crest of Minsk, the Belorussian capital, here pinned to my blouse:

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:

Point Alpha

This is the miniature version of Point Alpha, the war memorial that was "NATO`s most important sentinel during the Cold War":

The last four Musketeers

On Saturday, I was at my first Polyglot meeting ever, in Brussels. I met a bunch of people, chatted in several languages, even Dutch after a long time (thanks Corina and Yuri!) and had a ton of fun. The meeting started at 7 p.m. and after 1 a.m., these four and I were the last remaining musketeers:

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:

Kieran Goss

Kieran Goss, a Northern Irish singer and songwriter, was the supporting act of the concert I went to last Friday. He was extremely entertaining, spoke very good German (he had been living in Cologne 20 years ago) and his voice is very strong and full. He may not be a beauty but what a personality:




PS: I didn't know his music before but now one of my favourites is Reasons To Leave.

Auto pilot

Now in summer when the windows are open, the occasional bee or wasp comes in. And time and again I'm surprised about their stupidity: they struggle to get out again even if they are just a few centimetres away from freedom. So when I'm around, I mostly "save" them by gently guiding them outside. That's what I did with this specimen as well - after quickly taking some photos of her.

Note to self: Insects inside have to (!!!) be shot using a tripod!

Premiere

The World Cup 2010 is the first one ever to take place in Africa! And the host South Africa had the special honour to make the very first goal in an African World Cup! Even though the final score was 1:1 which is not bad at all, playing Mexico.

So today's photo is dedicated to all South African players, fans and friends of mine :-)

Sea of poppies

When I was a village child, we had poppies in our garden, small ones and not the kind that you'd make opium from of course. And now in the big city, I came across these huge poppies!

PS: Sea of poppies is a book I'm reading, by Amitav Ghosh.

4711

This is the famous 4711 Eau de Cologne, the mother of all colognes and in their shop window a probably very good smelling lady ;-)

Ward off evil

One of my students got this little Nazar for me in Turkey, to ward off the evil eye. As if she had known that I have always wanted a talisman! Now it is hanging in my car :-)

Knotted

The other day, I bought one book on Celtic knots and one on Chinese knots for jewellery and now I'm starting to try them out. What you can see here are the second and third necklace I made. I quite like them and they actually look even better on a person's (my) neck.
Oh, and check out the bokeh :-)


PS: I'm sorry for still using only this one blog for photos but maybe it'll help loading faster if I only have the last 10 (instead of 30) pictures displayed on the first page.

Bauhaus for everyone

2009 was the big year of the Bauhaus school all over Germany and so today (one year late), I'm finally presenting you an oeuvre that is based on the painting of the church of Mellingen by one its representatives, Lyonel Feininger's. This tower shows his painting in a three-dimensional way and was erected in the 1990s in Mellingen, a small town near Weimar in Thuringia.

Happy New Year and break

Dear visitors of saltyysdailyphoto,

The reason that this blog is not updated at the moment is that I am currently in the UK, learning from the best :D
But I will be back on the 8th January with millions of great pictures. Just to give you a few clues: London, fireworks, Windsor, Oxford and many many interesting people.

See you soon and have a good start into 2010!