No More Summer?

So it is autumn already it seems. Where did the summer go? Oh, right, it is September already after all. As a true friend of summer and warmth I am always a bit disappointed each fall when the temperatures start to fall. Autumn in itself is still ok. The colors are beautiful, the crisp air enjoyable and such.

But the arriving of autumn always means that the winter is around the corner. And I am not a big fan of below +15 °C temperatures. And I just about hate the temperatures below +0 °C. Oh well, I got to live with it, after all I do live in Finland.

Prior to Storm

On St. Stephen’s Day in Hungary there were all sorts of entertainment for the masses. It was the national day of Hungary, the founding day of the kingdom and a public holiday. A Red Bull Air Race was held over the Danube and after that there was a grand fireworks display.

Not only that, the nature herself put up quite a show. A heavy thunderstorm was rising and I managed to snap a picture of one of the lightning strikes.

Unfortunately the storm did induce a panic in the crowd. The heavy rain and strong winds snapped branches off the trees and tiles from the roofs of the buildings. The result being a couple of deaths and a whole bunch load of injured people. Very unfortunate.

The Many Faces of Budapest (part VII)

I don’t have the faintest idea what this building is. It could be a hotel, conference center or something like that. It has “Johann Strauss Cafe & Caviar House” on the second floor, some shops on the first floor (or so it seemed when I peeked through the front door). What ever is the purpose of this building, I can tell you it looks amazing! Well, I guess you can see it yourself too.

If anyone with the knowledge of this building happens to read this, would you be kind enough to leave a comment and enlighten me a bit?

The Many Faces of Budapest (part VI)

On my recent posts about the looks and the state of the buildings in Budapest I have focused on the side that is not too obviously visible. That is the sad truth about the city, but luckily there are plenty of beautiful and renovated buildings too. Some of the buildings are covered in advertisements but as long as the ads are of this quality I don’t mind.

For your information, there is no corner in the middle of the building, the wall is flat.

Take a Swim on the Danube

The Danube might not be the cleanest river in the world, nor the dirtiest for that matter, but I would not recommend you to take dip there. And when the river is flooding its current is pretty strong it isn’t the safest swimming place on that perspective either.

But these ingenious Austrian people have managed to get a workaround for that matter too. In Vienna I saw this barge that was transformed to be an outdoors swimming pool. Now the people can go and take a swim on the Danube, which is without a doubt wiser than taking a swim in the Danube…

Blogger’s Block

Every picture needs a story. Otherwise they are just some random pictures from random places at random times. Totally uninteresting.

Every picture has a story. But is it a story worth telling? Does it tell anything to anyone else but me? There’s the problem I am having right now. I have plenty of pictures I would like to post but I have nothing worthwhile to write about them. For example the earlier post about Leroy… I barely got myself to publish it. Too little of a story there.

How about this one then? The poor picture was just about randomly selected to accompany my rant about writer’s block. It is a fine picture and would deserve more but what can I do? If I don’t have anything decent to write then I don’t.

This is getting pretty frustrating. Both to write this particular post by force and to have nothing to write about anything.

Experiments with Exposure

I have tried several times tried to take a picture of the moon at night. All of these have ended up as overexposed pictures where the moon in nothing more but a bright sphere on the sky. Yet again I decided to experiment a little and dug out my tripod.

After a couple of shots with more or less automatic settings I decided to switch to full manual. All of the pictures below have been taken with ISO100 and aperture size 5.6.











The exposure times are from top left to bottom right as follows:
1 s, 1/4 s, 1/20 s, 1/60 s,
1/125 s, 1/250 s, 1/400 s, 1/800 s,
1/1250 s, 1/2000 s, 1/3200 s and 1/4000 s.

Personaly I think the moons 6-8 are the best ones.

Lerooooooy Jeeenkisahhh!

No real purpose with this picture, the banner just made me laugh. Either you get it or you don't. If you do, you do. If you don't then maybe you should play more WoW (or check this site out).

The Fishermen's Bastion at Dusk

During the three months I spent in Budapest I came to the conclusion that the city is actually very photogenic. At night. Or at least late in the evening when there isn’t that much light to see and spot the numerous imperfections the city has. I mean, the buildings in Budapest are, were, beautiful but are in miserable shape. The facing tiles are falling off of many buildings; the stone arcs of some buildings have totally crumbled leaving only the supporting frames visible and so on. Sad thing to look at really.

But when the night comes away goes the miserable details and in comes the beautiful silhouettes. And the spotlights. And the decorative lights. And everything else that captures the attention. Like this setting sun behind the Fishermen’s Bastion, pretty much everything in Budapest looks better in night time than during the day. Well okay, this is bad example in such a way that the Bastion is actually kept in good condition. As is the Buda Castle which, alas, was pretty much covered in campaign ads and such during the time I stayed in Budapest. But nevertheless they became invisible during the night time, unless it happened to be at beam of a spotlight.

For all it seems I can quote a Hungarian traveling companion of ours considering the sad state of the buildings: “The Hungarian people just don’t seem to care.” Too bad.