In Oslo, Norway at 60° North and 6 hours of daylight at the winter solstice in December, you sometimes look for signs to brighten up your day. You could look up in the sky for a astronomic phenomena, like “White Dwarfs”: After the outer layers of a star are ejected, the mass of the remaining material is usually too small to provide enough pressure to maintain nuclear temperatures in the hydrogen burning shell, and the remnant star rapidly contracts to form a white dwarf — a star with a mass similar to the Sun, but a diameter similar to that of the Earth.
However, brighter signs are all around you – if you act like The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince); It’s quite simple, he explains: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes….. You have to see with your heart, and take a moment to appreciate the lovely planet you have. Luckily I see with my heart and have my Nokia N8 on hand so I can share one mornings treasures with you:
This is a Panorama photo made up of 4, automatically done by my Nokia mobile phone. Here you see them separately: I would say a day brighter than white!
Sparkling Winter photo hunt:
This wonderful view from our living room – or my home office if you like (as long as I have my puter & mobile phone) – was what brightened up my morning last week and I could not resist grabbing my Nokia and went crazy shooting picks..much to my neighbours amusement. It’s always easier to make good pics with great lightening like this: Sparkling Winter photo shoot!
A Golden Bright Sunset:
This was a wonderful day with clear, blue sky and fresh, crisp air – ended its perfection with a golden beauty of a sunset:
Again a panoramic photo taken around 3:15PM as the sun was about to set. During the next hour, I captured some more magic views:
The Movie: Brighter than White:
After looking through the pics (35 saved out of 150) – just out of the blue – the melody; A Whiter Shade of Pale was playing in my mind. So one thing led to another as I love to experiment in multimedia and a movee was born. I know I have a way to go to call it brilliant, and it was great fun making this presentation:
One of the wonderful things about blogging is while I may never become a famous movie director or a photograph for National Geographic – I still have the opportunity to share my experiments with an audience. This encourages me to take these impromptu photo sessions, and put together movies, and learn and experience new things. None of this would be any fun without anyone to share it with. So thanks for clicking in and giving me a reason to keep on being my crazy photographing, video making, social media self!
What does blogging encourage you to do? Share your thoughts and your winter experiences in the comments!
Like rings in the water, The Oslo Blog Gathering has connected people and left its traces in the form of friendship. OsloBG took place in August 2010 where friends in the Blogsphere from all over the world could meet each other in person and experience some of the local attractions, explore the city and learn about Norway’s history, culture and traditions. From the official guest list you may click to read some the posts from their adventure and experience!
The OsloBG girls night out: Some of the participants from August 2010 were expats – moving from their homelands to live with their loved ones in Norway – and people with similar experiences often stick together. Like last Saturday, Karen arranged a girly girls party at The Dubliner Irish Folk Pub in Oslo to catch up as well as share good memories from last summer. My wife DianeCA was one of them and I gave her a ride to the pub at 2PM. As you can see from the pic, I dropped in just to say hello and get my hugs and a photo, but then I returned home to play with my gadgets toys while the girls had girl talk in the bar: -)
The Girls let the Boys in:
At 7PM I got a text message from my wife: “They are letting the guys in!” I would say that was on offer no one could refuse, so I took a quick shower, grabbed a taxi and was there in 30 minutes. I guess no one would blame me – maybe rather envy me (pics are worth more a thousand word – click to bigify & enjoy): Left: Tressa, Karen & Sara – Right: Diane, Corrine, me & Karla
These are pics borrowed from Tressa, you should hop over to her blog and read about these adventures from her perspective!
Lots of talking, fun, meeting new people and doing some crazy things – describes the evening with the girls in a nut shell. Since I often shot pics of them, they also took some revenge: After a Guinness that size, I needed a cigar (no smoking inside, so I went in the snowy back yard ; -)
The JIGs Concert:
Every weekend the Dubliner offers a live concert this time it was Mick, Kevin and David in the group called JIG:
We loved their performance and like Tressa said (read her post!): I am pretty sure the Dubliner would have to be my favourite bar in Norway. It was SO nice to have people speaking English all night, & the Norwegians who were there… were all interested in where we were from & even better.. speaking ENGLISH.. yahoo…
I hope she still feels that way after watching the vid I mixed up after shooting some more pics and a couple film sequences with my Nokia N8 Mobile phone:
I am so happy to see that many of our guests have become friends with each other and keep in touch after OsloBG is long over. It shows how much we have in common and that blogging really is connecting people – every day!
Wonders of nature like a golden red sky combined with the significant four seasons in Norway never stops fascinating me. Sometimes showing off, natural phenomena looks more spectacular than it explains, but let’s take the scientific approach first – why is the sky sometimes red in the morning or evening? Well, it’s as simple as higher frequency light gets scattered more easily and what that means is the gas in the atmosphere is better at changing the direction of blue light (higher frequency) than red light (lower frequency). So imagine you are looking straight at the sun it emits both blue and red light. However, if you think of the angle between you and the sun during sunrise or set, the light rays have to travel through a lot more atmosphere to get to you, so there is more chance for the atmosphere to strip out the blue light and send it some other direction. Therefore, the sun looks much redder.
At a meeting just outside of Oslo city, from their office window, I bore witness to one of the Great Wonders of Nature – such beautiful a sunrise that it brought goose bumps to my skin. Most of my colleagues and associates know about my blog and how I shamelessly brag about our nature, so there was actually one of them who made me aware of this scenery and suggested that I shoot it with my Nokia mobile phone. This inspired to write this post and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have, combining some photos and reflections of the significant four seasons in Norway (click pics to bigify & enjoy).
From snowy winter wonderland to hot beaches: Below the horizon in the pic to the left, is the same beach and hillsides in the background as in the pic to the right. Looking at it this way, I would say the nature changes significantly : -)
From joy on ice to summer fountain:
My regular readers have seen this recreational area in front of Oslo Parliament and how it changes from being a spring fountain in the summertime to a skate rink in the winter time: I take it you recognize the seasonal differences : -)
Winter Morning Rush:
Of course the winter season brings some challenges: On our way to work the other day, my wife and I took the car for a change. We had some extra snow at night and it continued in the early morning. So now it was DianeCA my wife, who said: we have to try to capture this and share it with our friends in blogsphere! So here you go: Morning rush in Winter Wonderland:
Here in Norway we love our sunny summer days as much as the snowy winters and this one has been a white beauty. We have had a good old fashioned winter with plenty of fluffy white snow. The earth has now turned on its axis and we are moving towards brighter days and warmer months. We are looking forward to that as much as we do the wintertime. You can’t really appreciate one season without the other. I know many others around the world have had a snowy winter this year. Feel free to leave us some of your experiences in the comments.
Its Happy New Year greetings time again, to open a new book with blank pages and put my own words on them. The book – or in my case blog – is called “Opportunity” and its first chapter is New Year’s Day. I could write about New Year’s Resolutions, New Year Greeting Cards, New Year’s Day Messages etc., but have decided to concentrate on a look at New Year’s Eve and traditions – ours then; To make it short, in photos: Beautiful sunrise or sunset & driving through Winter Wonderland Seafood dinner with champagne & setting off fireworks
The Holiday season is the time for traditions; same procedure as years before make it kind of special and helps to bring back memories. For the last decade, ours have been to visit family the 1st day of Christmas (for the Yule Smorgasbord, click to read my post about the feast of traditional food: Norwegian Christmas Day Smorgasbord). Next stop is our vacation home in Sweden to celebrate New Year’s Eve. There are three important ingredients in the celebration; a week off, lobster dinner with champagne and of course setting off our own fireworks. How we buy it and do it is to be read in my post: Buy and shoot up your own New Years Fireworks.
New Years Greetings in a nutshell: With my Nokia N8 mobile phone at hand, a lot of help and inspiration from my wife Diane – and her Nokia X6 – plus a movie maker program, we have taken photos and videos and mixed it all into a New Year cocktail: Shaken but not stirred – From my wife and me : -)
It’s on YouTube of course, so turn up you’re speakers, relax & sit back to enjoy:
Thank you all for the many good times in 2010 and from all of me, to all of you: Happy New Year – hope to see you around soon ; -)
