Failed Venus transit

Ok, so I got up early to try and see the Venus transit from sunrise. As you can see in the photo it was a bit cloudy at the horizon and clear sky above. Actually if the photo had shown more above me it would've shown a completely clear sky above my head. Unfortunately the Sun is not above my head at sunrise. The clouds moved from North to South which meant the Sun was behind the clouds pretty much the whole time. It was also too windy to project the Sun onto a piece of white paper. Excuses, excuses, excuses. Truth is I should've been more prepared and gotten a piece of welder glass or some "eclipse glasses" so I at least could've seen the transit in the gaps between the clouds, but hey, only 105 years until next time. I'm sure I will have been able to prepare for it by then...

Yes I know there are a lot of trees in the way in the photo, but I was on my way back from a big open field (a.k.a. a golf course) when I took it.

The little house on the mountain... revisited

The view of most of my hometown from the top of the mountain.
That's the ocean in the background.

In a post a few weeks ago I said that I would come back and take new photos when there's leaves on the trees. So here are some photos I took today.

The sky got a bit overexposed because the sun was too close.
At least there's leaves on the trees now.

Looking down the steps from the top. It was scary walking down.

The view of some of the rest of the town.

Friday...

So it's Friday again. Nothing to do but sit at home. Actually even if I had something to do I probably wouldn't. So damn tired today. Haven't slept well in a few days. I'm feeling kind of like this photo that I took a few years ago. Empty and a bit foggy with some light shining through. Maybe tomorrow I can do something fun.

Läckö Castle

The photo was taken in the summer of 2011
click to enlarge

A few hours drive North from here is Sweden's largest lake Vänern. On a peninsula there you can find this castle. There has been a castle in some form on this location since the late 13th century. I'm not sure when the current castle was built, but I assume it was somewhere around the 16th or 17th century.
If you're ever near the Southern shores of Lake Vänern or the town of Lidköping it's worth paying a visit to this castle.

Train tracks in the mist

Last year I took a photography class. One of the assignments we had was to take photos around sunrise. So one August morning I got up at 4am and took a walk. Unfortunately it was foggy that morning so I couldn't see the sunrise at all. I did however get this photo of the train tracks disappearing into the mist.

Photos from London (part 3)

Click here for Part 1, Part 2

The third and last time I've been in London was the same trip as when I was in Edinburgh in 2010. So it was with my friend Olívia and her mother. We arrived in London the day before the volcano on Iceland erupted so that was a bit of luck. We took almost 300 photos during the 10 days we were there so I had to pick just a few to show here.

The glass ceiling of the great court at The British Museum

Parthenon at The British Museum

The London Eye (with a missing pod)

A blue door, but not THE blue door in Notting Hill

A Squirrel in Kensington Gardens

A bird bathing in the round pond in Kensington Gardens

Olívia and a raven inside the Tower of London

A space suit at the Science Museum

An aeroplane at the Science Museum

The stage of The Phantom of the Opera. Just after I took
This photo they told us we weren't allowed to take photos.

Photos from London (part 2)

Click here for part 1, part 3

My second time in London was just a weekend. Didn't have much time to take photos but here are some of the ones I did take.

The London Eye

St. Stephen's Tower

Westminster Abbey

Rogerio and Marcos trying to read a map

The Brazilian bank in London

Photos from London (part 1)

Click here for part 2, part 3
My first time in London was back in December 2004-January 2005. I visited some of my Brazilian friends who used to live there back then. These are some of the photos I took (or that was taken with my camera) during those days.

Piccadilly Circus. The first thing I saw
in London when I arrived.

St. Stephen's Tower

Me (in sunglasses), Katia and
Rogerio in a phone box.
Photo by: Marcos Cerutti

Rogerio a guard and Marcos
at that horse guard place on
Whitehall.

Marcos, the late Jon Nödtveidt, Katia,
Jon's girlfriend and Rogerio.
We were on our way to an In Flames concert
in Hammersmith when Marcos saw Jon
(from the band Dissection) at the bus stop.

Marcos shows what he thinks of
Sainsbury's.

Me standing on London Bridge with
Tower Bridge in the background.
Photo by: Marcos Cerutti

Tower Bridge

Houses of Parliament on New Year's Eve.

Polish girl (Ana I think her name was),
Rogerio, Me and Marcos at the
Marlborough Head on New Year's Eve.
Photo by: Katia Schmidt

Tjolöholm Castle

Tjolöholm Castle is a castle/manor located by the ocean approximately 10km South of where I live. It's a beautiful building both inside and outside and there's a church built in the same style there as well. Not to mention the beautiful gatehouse. If you ever come to my neighbourhood, please go visit this place!

Side facing the ocean - click to see larger

Side facing away from ocean - click to see larger

View towards the ocean - click to see larger

Tjolöholm's church - click to see larger

The gatehouse - click to see larger

Statue that used to be inside
a mausoleum but now is inside
a glass box.
"Stay calm and don't blink!"

The little house on the mountain

I took this photo when I was walking to the unemployment office today. It's the old water tower in my hometown. 179 steps (according to the information sign below the steps but I haven't counted them myself) to the top. It was built in 1897 and the building itself isn't very big. Only like 2-3 square metres or so. The water was/is(?) inside the mountain from what I remember from school.
If you go all the way up there you get a great view of the town and can see all the way to the ocean. The problem is that, as you can see, there's nothing to hold onto while going up/down the steps. The old handrail was broken in several places so they removed the whole thing a few years ago and haven't put a new one up... yet. Maybe they never will.
Maybe I'll make a follow-up post on this one in the summer when there's actually leaves on the trees.

Edit: Took some photos of it again today.

Weird thing in a night photo

The other week I was testing what it would look like if I took a night photo towards North and had a tree or two that's lit up in the foreground. This 30 second exposure didn't turn out too bad (besides the fact that I missed North and Polaris isn't in the shot), but what's that up in the sky?

Here's a 100% crop of it. Part of it looks like clouds, but the pink/purple/yellow part does not. I took more than one shot that night and this photo is the only one that has this anomaly in it.

If anyone knows what caused it (I'm sure it's some kind of optical phenomenon), let me know.

Hot Pixels

I've noticed more and more that I have some so called hot pixels on my camera's sensor. I decided to test it out a bit so I took a series of photos (1 second, 2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 25 seconds and 45 seconds exposures) in complete darkness with the lens cap on. Then I looked at the photos in 100% on my computer and in the 1 second exposure I couldn't find a single pixel that wasn't black. That's good. In the 2 seconds exposure I was able to find one dark gray pixel. That exact pixel just got brighter and brighter the longer the exposure got. It even got some friends to join in around it.

Here's that pixel in 400% zoom in the different exposures.
From left to right it's 2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 25 seconds and 45 seconds.

Then I decided to check for all the hot pixels I could see in 100% zoom of the 45 seconds exposure. I've resized them (400% zoom), cut them out and pasted them in the area they appear in the photos. So they aren't that big in reality, it was more to show where they are and what they look like.

The last photo is to show how well they show up in real photos and not just complete darkness ones. This is the top left hot pixels and the lower right ones in 100% zoom from a not so good 60 seconds exposure of stars. An attempt at making a star trail photo around Polaris.

I'm not sure if it's possible to fix the hot pixel problem, but as long as I don't get longer exposures than 1 second I will be fine. Too bad half my photos are made at night.

Ölmevallasjön (it's the name of a lake close to where I live)

Looked through old photos again and found two that were taken at the same location a few years ago. They are both taken with the same camera. A Canon PowerShot A70.
The first one was taken on October 12 2003 and the second on July 29 2004. I think both photos are nice in their own way. The first one because you can see the sand at the bottom of the lake and the second because the water is so calm that it perfectly reflects the trees and sky.

October 12 2003

July 29 2004

Insomnia

Ok it's not really insomnia. I just didn't sleep last night. For a few reasons I decide not to reveal here.
While I don't really have a blog post for today, because I'm too tired to think, I did daydream away to years that were and thought how amazing it would've been to get back to Brazil again.
Here's a photo of the Iguassu Falls that I took with my old Canon PowerShot A70 when I was there in 2006.

Devil's Throat/Garganta do Diabo/Garganta del Diablo

Jupiter and Venus

Last night Jupiter and Venus were pretty close together. I had originally planned to go out and take a photo when they were closer to the horizon, but since the thick dark clouds came in fast I had to put on my 14mm Samyang lens and take a quick photo before they disappeared completely.

Edit: Today we had a clear sky so I went out and got this photo using my 30mm Sigma lens.