Author: John

Just a small fraction of the thousands of red hearts decorating the aviary in Aalborg zoo. Visitors can write their own christmas greeting on a heart and hang it up with all the others.

Covid-19 has really changed a lot of things, all over the world. Here in Denmark we are still living with with a lot of restrictions, making it a bit harder to get into the Christmas spirit. We still try to do what we can to get through the long dark winter while still respecting the restrictions and avoiding getting infected with the virus.
Here, in Aalborg Zoo, they have kept the annual Light festival, but Santa has been placed inside a giant Snow Globe. We wouldn’t want to see him fall ill during Christmas.

One of the approximately only 25 moose that lives in Lille Vildmose. They can be a bit hard to find, as they are wild animals roaming free within the area and not zoo animals. But with a bit of luck and knowledge of their preferred areas and time of activity, it is possible to spot them. Here it is a big bull foraging in the morning mist, as the sun is rising behind. What a fantastic morning that was.

(Trifolium arvense) I remember taking this picture in my garden on a sunny, lazy sunday this summer. I were exploring the garden with my camera and the Lensbaby Sweet 35 with macro kit attached.
I love the way the combination of stray light, swet spot focus and narrow depth of field plays so well together in this picture.

..on a break. From back in the summer, when the barn swallows (Hirundo Rustica) were busy constantly looking for food for their newly hatched offspring.

In the early morning light something as ordinary as a bunch of cows on a meadow became almost magical as the sun were rising behind them and the early morning mist were still hanging in the air.

I took another trip to Lille Vildmose this week. There isn’t as much wildlife as in the summer, but if you are patient and know where to look, it is still there.
..and then, sometimes, you just end up with a random close encounter with a Red Fox that were anything but shy.
Truly an amazing experience.

The artist Thomas Dambo recently made another of this amazing trolls, made of recycled wood. This this he made the troll Pil Tusindtunge (Pil with the Thousand Tongues), who can talk to both nature and humans. You can write your wish on a stone an put in in Pils basket. Pil will then discuss the wish with nature and if they think it is a good wish they will make it come true.
This portrait of Pil is taken with the Lensbaby Edge 35.

A young Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) eating dinner in the rain. It wasn’t too pleased having a human with a camera nearby, so it kinda gave me the look…

I visited the old lighthouse at Rubjerg Knude this summer. My first visit ,since it was moved 70 meters away from the coast line, as the sea is eating away the cliff which would eventually result in the lighthouse falling into the ocean.
Taken with my Lensbaby Edge 35.

A couple of crows watching the beautiful sunset in Lille vildmose.
Funny thing is that a week later I came by the same tree at approximately the same time of day, and there were still two crows in that tree.

A Cinnabar moth caterpillar, climbing a Ragwort plant. Curiously enough, the Ragwort plant is more or less the only plant this caterpillar eats, but the plant is toxic to humans and livestock. By eating of the Ragwort plant, the caterpillar also becomes toxic.

My dog Eddie is always keeping an eye on me and my tinkering about with the camera. Often he ends up being the test subject for my (unharmful) experiments as well.
Taken with the Lensbaby Sweet 50.

My father-in-law occasionally sit quietly for hours, carefully carving and polishing a piece of Briar wood, to create amazing pipes. This one had just been finished as I visited his little workplace.

Self-isolation and the urge to take pictures sometimes crash…
…and unexpected things might happen while playing around.
Maybe the constraints of being forced to stay at home lets us find new ways to be creative?

Denmark is still on lockdown. We try to keep ourselves busy and keep up the spirit. And we enjoy having a bit more time for some of the things we don’t usually feel we have the time for. So, my wife and I teamed up. She baked some buns, and I took their picture…
…and then we ate ’em, 🙂

I’m still isolated at home.
I have been looking through my big Lightroom catalog, looking at some of the pictures that ended in my “maybe” collection, containing pictures I might want to revisit at some point.
A lot of them just get binned, but some, like the Vespa here, finally get the treatment it deserved.
Even though most pictures in the “maybe” collection just gets binned, it is still fun to see images like this one, taken with my good old EOS 60d and the 24mm pancake.. I loved that combination.

Aalborg Zoo brilliantly used the many dark hours we have in Denmark in the winter to decorate the entire zoo with all kind of light installations, like this Zebra that were placed in the savannah where the Zebras and Giraffes usually graze.