Norway in Red, White and Blue
As you probably know, the Norwegian Flag‘s colours are Red, White and Blue. My friend Jack caught just those colors in a brilliant shot a few days ago:
Norway in Red, White and Blue (photo: Jack Lihaug)
Lions Club Narvik/Ankenes – A Bitterly Cold Work for a Sweet Warm Help
In accordance with tradition I purchased the annual Christmas Tree yesterday from the local Lions Club outside the local supermarket REMA 1000 on Ankenes. Lions Club Narvik/Ankenes is a fantastic club! Every year the comb the area for land owners with Christmas Tree sized spuces (Norway Spruce) to sell for Christmas. Once they have found areas suitable for Christmas Trees, they go up (it is usually up a hill side or mountain) into the woods and cut spruces, drag them down to the nearest road and transport them into town.
The spruce I bought yesterday, was a fantastic tree. It smelled just like a spruce is supposed to smell like! And the branches was so thightly packed, it was just amazing! And all the trees for sale looked amazing!
So – what’s the money used for?
Like any other respectable Lions Club, Lions Club Narvik/Ankenes work for free to earn money for humanitarian projects in the local area, nation-wide and internationally.
Today I stopped by with my camera. I would say -9 degrees is pretty cold for a lion, but not these Lions! Their hearts are plenty warm by the important job they are doing to help their fellow human beings (and environment!) to endure the cold winter weather! I took a few shots of the Lions on Ankenes in action.
Do you want to buy the very best looking and smelling Christmas Trees in Narvik? And do you want to help people in need? Here’s the Lions Club sales stand by Rema 1000:
Lions Club Narvik/Ankenes selling Christmas Trees to aid people in need! It's a cold job!
Find your way to the Lions Christmas Tree stand!
Narvik under the Winter Moonlight
Beautiful Winter Scene this Evening - Narvik getting ready for Christmas
Real Heavy Winter Storm
I flew from Denmark to Northern-Norway on Thursday. That was just as a heavy low pressure weather system moved in from the West. And it hit the coastline of the two nations with extreme force. All the way up in the jet-stream where we flew at 32,000 feet, the turbulence could be felt all the way to the North. My friend Ole spent some time by the West Coast of Denmark in his cottage. He reported a real heavy shaking in the cottage as the storm gusts hit. But no harm was done. Ole graciously lent me this picture from the storm of 9th of December.
The violent storm reached the beaches of Western-Denmark on Friday the 9th of December. Photo: Ole Hejgaard
The Polar Night
Yesterday I took this panorama. This is approximately as light as it gets in Narvik this time of year.
Panorama of Narvik - as light as it gets - no direct sunlight in the winter as the sun never rises above the horizon (click on the image for "The Big Picture")
The Ghost Bird
I love making HDR-photos, and play around with it a lot. Yesterday I took some photos in Aarhus. One of the scenes I captured was a flock of geese crossing the autumn sky. Naturally I made three rapid exposures and hoped to turn it into an HDR-photo. So I processed the images. This resulting HDR-photo consists of three images. Each image is taken 12-13 milliseconds apart. That – of course – is a problem when merging a motive that is moving rapidly across the frame. So the HDR-software has a built in function to remove “ghosting”. But that method isn’t fool proof, and so this shot resulted in a funny ghost, one single white bird following the rest.
Last shimmer of daylight in the North
In 20 days there is no sunshine and most of the day is pitch black until 13th of January. Around Christmas there is just an hour or two of twilight. The rest of the day it is totally black. In that perspective I must say the electricity producers should be ashamed of themselves. They practically give away industrial electricity to neighbor countries like Sweden and Denmark for free, while old, poor people in Norway freeze to death during the winter because they cannot pay the electricity bill. Shame on you!
Sometimes I get a feeling that the owners of the energy companies and politicians almost hate the people they are here to serve. There is a widespread nepotism in this society that will devour it unless it is stopped. To build a good society, both heart and mind must communicate with each other in the decision makers. Today it more or less seems that the only thing they are interested in is their own reelection, their own benefits and their own pension. That is no way to govern a society.
Well, we still have got the beautiful nature – for now…
Last Shimmer of Daylight in the North
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