New Years Celebrations in Narvik as seen from the Fagernes Mt.
Bente Hjellsand graciously lent me these photos of the center of Narvik City taken from the Fagernes Mountain! The photos has also been published on the Norwegian broadcasting company NRK’s homepage. Please, DO CLICK on the images! They’re quite amazing!
Center of the City Narvik - Fireworks New Years Eve 2011/2012 (photo: Bente Hjellsand)
Center of the City Narvik - Fireworks New Years Eve 2011/2012 (photo: Bente Hjellsand)
Center of the City Narvik - Fireworks New Years Eve 2011/2012 (photo: Bente Hjellsand)
Center of the City Narvik - Fireworks New Years Eve 2011/2012 (photo: Bente Hjellsand)
Our Christmas Tree in 3D!
Dear reader,
It has been a great Christmas! Unlike the English-speaking part of the World – in Europe we celebrate Christmas Eve. So yesterday we had a brilliant dinner. I don’t quite get how my mother manages to make the fantastic traditional pork rib year after year – but she does!
While waiting for the opening of all the lovely presents in the evening, I took 238 pictures of the Christmas Tree. I made a 3D model with these photos. You can watch various representations of the model.
When in Photosynth, pay especially attention to these controls:
(Click here to go directly to Photosynth! It may take some time to load. It’s a big model!)
Our Christmas Tree as a 3D-model. Click the picture to see the 3D-model Live!
A point model of our Christmas Tree! Click the picture to see the 3D-model Live!
What a FANTASTIC week!!!
Tarjei Bø - The top Norwegian biathlete is number 1 so far in this season's World Cup total!
Like I’ve mentioned earlier – BITAHLON is the GREATEST sport on the planet – at least to my estimation! And what a fantastic week it has been! The Norwegian biathletes has taken one top place after the other. And fantastic achievements all around. Tomorrow is the last race before Christmas. A mixed team race.
As you can se from the World Cup results this season – being Norwegian has given a lot of joy in this extremely exciting sport!
In the World Cup top ten total for men, Tarjei Bø is ranked number 1 with 308 points, Emil Hegle Svendsen is ranked number 3 with 242 points and – the King of Biathlon – Ole Einar Bjørndalen is ranked number 8 with 188 points!
In the World Cup top ten total for women, Tora Berger is ranked number 6 with 243 points.
Biathlon World Cup - results as of December 17. 2011
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.
HDR – Narvik today
Shot this HDR-photo today. This photo is a composite of 5 photos. The camera was hand held, but inspite of that I ended up with a pretty nifty result..!
5-photo HDR-composite of Narvik today.
1 year minus 2 days
In two days time this blog has been up and running for one year. In this time I’ve had some 8,850 visits to my blog. Not bad for a little “miniblogger”.
While waiting for the 1 Year Anniversary – you’ll might enjoy this photo taken today. It is a High Dynamic Range Photo where I tried emphasizing the very special light on the fjord and in the autumn coloured mountain in the background. Enjoy!
Special light - Autumn fjord
***
PLEASE REMEMBER: Hit the reload button in your browser in order to see the latest predictions!!!
Northern Blog-O-Sphere 