South of Gran Canaria, Andén del Zurrado in Barranco de Arguineguin ravine, circular route

If this pic gives you vertigo, don’t go

Well, I would like to start by expanding on the caption above. The main point of this hike, at least for me, was to see and walk a spectacular “Andén del Zurrado”, andén* being a pass or a path in a precipitous place, in this case with a strong emphasis on precipitous. There is no real danger, of which later, but if you have a fear of heights, it can get really tricky for you.

OK, warning done, back to the walk. A pic of Andén del Zurrado came up in Facebook and we started planning the walk immediately. The main problem of this walk is logistics, not the difficulty, once you are sure that everybody in your group can handle heights.

So, first problem, the transport. There is no public transport that come close to the start of the walk, at least I can’t find any. The nearest stop of Global is about 7 km out, so not a viable option.

Barranco de los Cernícalos — water!

A small waterfall a bit off the path

Finally, I’ve seen all three places where water always runs on Gran Canaria. Well, actually, there are just two left, poor Barranco de La Mina having been killed off by the owner of the water*. So, now on Gran Canaria you have just two places where freshwater runs all year round — Barranco de Azuaje and Barranco de los Cernícalos, Kestrels’ ravine.

Barranco de la Mina, Gran Canaria

For Tamara’s birthday, we went for a short walk from (more or less) Las Lagunetas to Cruz de Tejeda. We often heard that Barranco de la Mina is one of very few — maybe just three? — barrancos where there always is running water. The previous attempt to reach it had to be cancelled thanks to roadworks. The advantage of this route is that it’s almost pure ascent. So my knees did not complain this time.

Elephant tree

Gran Canaria, Barranco de Azuaje

A couple of weeks ago we went for a weekend break in Firgas, a small village inland from the north shore of Gran Canaria.

We were staying in a flat very close the center of the village (which is not hard considering the size of it).

It is a nice place, but be warned — precisely because it is close to the village center, Friday and Saturday nights are likely to be noisy, as people trample along the street outside your front windows to get to the bars and restaurants and then back again, talking as they tend to do (well they are Spanish, so they gotta). If it is just one or two of you, or even a family with one small kid you won’t have a problem though — the bedroom is towards the back of the flat. I had to use the sofa bed in the front room of the house, that’s why I could hear the street.

Nighttime London

We lived in the UK for a very long time, but somehow up till this year I never did any night time photography in London. So I don't know if summer London is always such a delight to photograph, or was it because of the Olympics. Doesn't really matter. Buildings and structures that might look dull and grey during the day, at night transform completely.

Not that the Tower Bridge  looks dull during the day, but some of the office buildings an the pics below do.

Achipencos 2012

Carnival started in Puerto del Rosario, capital of Fuerteventura, a few days ago. Big carnival parade will be next week and I am quite looking forward to it; today though there was something rather special. It's called Regata de Achipencos, Regata Achipencos, or just Achipencos. I won't pretend I understand what the word means,  probably nothing. The idea is that a few quite obviously sea-unnworthy vessels take to water in the Puerto del Rosario, crewed by strangely and/or cross-dressed people.

The  theme of the carnival in Puerto del Rosario was "fantasies"; that should have given the participants a lot of choice of how to dress. Given that, the number of Smurfs-crewed floats was rather surprising.

Suzi Q by a sandpiper and other sandy things

Small local sandpipers (or are they turnstones, maybe?)  look quite amusing when caught in mid-step. This one looks like he's doing a Suzi Q. He's running around a beached jellyfish - we a have a small-scale plague of them at the moment.

неспокойно синее море

Went to make a few long-exposure shots in the evening. Waves were a bit smaller today.

Hattifatteners and shrimps

 

If you aren't a fan of Moomin Books, here's what wikipedia has to say about Hattifatteners
The Hattifatteners are tall, thin, ghost-like creatures.... They are constantly, silently and purposefully on the move. I am pretty sure there was a picture in one of the Moomin Books where Hattifatteners were casting long shadows, heading into the sunset. Seeing those thin euphorbia shoots in the dunes made me think of them.

watery day

what a lovely splash

splashes

there are a lot of splashing fruit&veg pictures around, but they are always fun to make, because the results are somewhat unpredictable. I like taking pictures of smoke for exactly the same reason.

Non flowering lake and more flowers

My visit to Norway was short (less than one full day), but there was no plan, only a vague idea that I want to see more white flowers (wood anemones that is). So when we went to a lake and didn't find any around, it was decided that we will go back to Tønsberg were they we in plenty. There were also lily-of-the-valley, just starting to bloom. We met a guy in his fifties who was collecting them. He probably was not supposed to do that (I know you were not supposed to pick them round Moscow when I was growing up), which probably explains why he produced some sort of vague mumble instead of articulated words. But I understood him - he just wanted a few for their beautiful smell :)

Puck's Valley and smoked salmon

River Barle

this is an almost mandatory long-exposure shot of moving water - Barle river upstream from Dulverton. We went for a walk, aiming to get to the next village along the riverside path, and trying to figure out if we can get to Tarr Steps, but turned back when a small stream crossed the path. I readily admit to lack of perseverance on my part - we could have crossed that little stream, but I was worried there are more along the way.

Anyway. Camera on timer sitting on my backpack (no tripod being at hand). Backpack lying on the ground so sort of difficult to aim and this is more or less the best shot out of fifteen or so I made. I would have stayed for another while, but kids were getting impatient.

drip drop splash

spent some happy time photographing water drops today. while stock photographer in me keeps saying "you never get those past inspectors", art photographer in me says - "but how beautiful".

I followed the tutorial from here (first video), with some differences. First one - I used a studio flash to light (doesn't really matter though). Second - couldn't find a suitable frame to hold bag of water in the air, so used upright floor lamp that has a squiggly flexible bit.

The resulting pics don't really stand scrutiny at 100%. Don't know it that's because it's a first try or what. One theory I have is that the lamp I used to hold the water bag is too tall, and drops were hitting the water at too high speed as a result, making 1/200 exposure (flash duration) too slow. Lens could be better too, but I am pretty sure it's capable of better performance if I can get the physical setup right. I'll have another go for sure. Watch this space

lonely

this time paint-through-water session produced not many useful images, but some that look sort of interesting. very organic.



ink and water images at shutterstock

Aira Force

funny name, almost air force but not quite.

The format of the main waterfall is not suitable for the orientation of most computer screens - it's very vertical. So what you see above is the Aira Beck just above the falls.

Main cascade would looks great on a hanging scroll, though



all images from Cumbria on shutterstock

Watendlath Beck

We went for a circular walk that goes along Derwent water, into the woods to Lodore falls, up more or less along the Watendlath Beck (small river that is falling at the falls, so to speak) and then looped back down to the lake. I am reasonably sure we went slightly wrong at some point, but we got there in the end. The diversion didn't really matter, and one fellow walker poiter to us - "you can't go wrong, it's Lake District, it's pretty everywhere".

I agree with her, it's beautiful, and especially in autumn.





Cumbria pics on shutterstock

spring lake

Somehow this summer passed without us renting a summer house in Scandinavia. I loved it last year in Denmark, but this year it didn't happen. And we missed mushroom-picking this year, too. Blogs of my Russian friends are full of mushroom-hunting reports and pictures now, after the heat and smog of summer went away and beautiful autumn arrived.

Never mind, there is always next year.

This is not summer or autumn in Denmark, this is spring in Norway, but still.

wobbly spring Norway

wobble wabble.

there were ripples on this lake and there was no decent reflections to speak of when we got to the far end. there were some in the middle though