Machine!
Snow machine in Orange, Haute-Savoie. One m³ of water results in approx. 2 m³ of snow. The snow needs to be compressed to be used, though – meaning that artificial snow is bad for the water balance in the alps. One solution to this is the use of GPS and ultrasonic devices to measure snow depth. The natural snow can be scraped off where there’s too much and put down where it is needed. Some ski resorts in the french alps have adopted this technology to reduce their water consumption. A side effect is better snow – and a better skiing experience 
Barrage de Roselend
The Barrage de Roselend turned 50 this year and this week-end they had the doors open and organized a party. The public transport sucked, all prejudices about the capability to organize things came true..well, might be they were overwhelmed by the number of people which passed by. But! The site is beautiful, the party great and we had a good day 
The barrage is used to power electricity generators in the valley (1200m below), but there’s a small generator on the barrage itself.
The inside looks as if it inspired some computer game makers:
Markets: Ajaccio
Admittedly, we want partially to this market because I wanted to take pictures
I think that the pictures of this market are among the best ones and will likely make it into the competition.
Olives are typical for the french south and I guess I need to have some “yeah, I like that lifestyle”:
That’s actually a first for me, never seen that before:
Cut on the market..in Germany that’s over for hygiene reasons:
Fish is sold in a separate Hall with climatization:
(I know, that’s not “fish”, but it’s in the fish hall..)
Markets: The medieval festival in Andilly
I was selling crêpes during daylight (if you want a treat, ask me to make crêpes for you ) and had only at night time to take some pictures. The good thing about it was that I had time and the people, too. I had a few good discussions and took this awesome picture of the flame (which is now my screen and phone background).
When I asked if I could take pictures of the chessboards I was made fun of..but not too badly, it ended up friendly
I have the baker on the first post to the series, and here is his bread
And here the baker. I just like this photo too much to not show it again:
It’s photo contest time!
..and I need your valued opinion!The topic is “(farmers) Markets here and there”. I have put my selection of applicable images in a gallery – tell me which one you’d like to see in the competition!
..et j’ai besoin de ton avis! Descriptif du concours ici.
..und ich brauche Deine Meinung! Das Thema des Wettbewerbes sind “Wochenmärkte hier und da”. Alle passenden Bilder habe ich in einer Gallerie gesammelt – welche davon möchtest Du im Wettbewerb sehen?
I’ll try to present all pictures in a few blog posts
The real baker
This is Pierre VEIS – he is producing real bread, based on old recipes. You can find him on markets in the south of france and on the festival in Andilly, every year.
Pierre Veis
Agriculteur Récoltant
La Liberne
04140 Selonnet
Grandes Médiévales d’Andilly
I’ll post the pictures I took yesterday in a series, starting with the daylight ones, then the ones I took at night.
Weather
It took me to live in the alps to understand the link between warm weather, water, wind and thunderstorms..probably because we can’t see the weather being made where I grew up (our weather in northern germany is made in iceland, I think). However here, in the Alps, we make our weather ourselves! The sun shines, the rivers and lakes start to make clouds and then, in the late afternoon, the thunderstorm is there. Handmade, while we’re watching and sipping coffee
It’s not always that spectacular, but I’m impressed anyways.
You can see the rain rushing in (and the neighbor rushing out to fetch the kids)
And then the rain was there..
From Spring to Summer
Spring was amazingly warm in our area, so warm that it felt like summer. We’ve been to the lake of Annecy already and had the first thunderstorms, the grass has been cut by the farmers already once..
Izieu
The “children of Izieu” have been deported (and subsequently murdered) just before the end of WW II – one of a series of last acts of barbary of nazi germany towards their “enemies”. It’s difficult to be in a place which is so beautiful and link that to this unbelievable level of cruelty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izieu
Yesterday I’ve been driving up to Fulda to attend the OpenNMS User Conference Europe. People have been asking me about this trip a lot, so here are some pictures of the bike, first:
Here I did not have the hard luggage on the bike (for improved performance ). The GPZ is a 1995 model, built in 1996. She has now +100’000 km
On another trip to Germany..
And here in it’s its (as in “the possessive adjective and possessive pronoun form of the personal pronoun it”) natural habitat, the Alps
Strange Visitor
This thing was flying in front of our door today and feasting on the flowers:
Thanks to the intratubes I was able to identify it as “Macroglossum stellatarum“. It does not bite. This Internet is really useful
Here’s the link to the german wikipedia.
Dog on the bridge
I asked him to sit (sit means sit!) but that did not work out too well. He seems to know when sit is sit and make the difference to “sit so I can take some pictures”. I was pretty surprised the other day when I wanted to go to ride with the motorbike. When I go down to dress up, he gets all excited and wants to come along. In the very moment I took my motorcycle pants off the hook, he went into his corner and laid down..the old boy has understood that I won’t take him with me on the bike
Long Exposure
If you want to learn how to take pictures, go to the extremes. Play, try to set exposure to the minimum and to the maximum, adjust the aperture, and so on.
I did not play with long exposure for some time and wanted to get some water in motion. Today we went down to the Usses and I took the grey filter (-4), the polarizer (-1) and the uv0 filter with me; overall, enough to allow me to take long exposures even in bright daylight:
That’s the same place with “how the automatic would take the picture”:
