Gotcha!

The other day, when I looked out of the window, there were three cats and a fox sitting in a line across the meadow, all staring intently at mouse holes.
Of course, when I opened the window to photograph the scene, the fox got nervous and wandered off.

I managed to take these pics of him (making presumptions again).



Today I spied him at another mouse hole.
I am incapable of opening windows silently, it would seem, so when I opened the window to photograph, he (or she, as the case may be) trotted off a few paces, turned to see what the noise had been, then sat down and watched me for a while before leaving the scene:




Now it is chasing crows!
Rabies?

I recently promised Ms.Mac to publish some new 3D images.
Well, Ms.Mac, here you are:





I certainly hope you like them.

A little more 'old-fashioned' is this one, which is 'just a normal panorama image' showing Lake Constance from close to where I live.



It was photographed on Saturday but, looking out of the window, you wouldn't believe it now. At the moment, I'm glad that the weather (cold and wet) is outside and I'm inside...

The Böög predicted a cool and wet summer on Monday!
You've not heard of the Böög?!

Well, at the end of each Winter the people build a large bonfire and burn the effigy of a snowman (who is named the Böög) whose head is filled with explosives.
Depending on how long it takes for the head to explode, the weather for the coming summer can be predicted.
Or so the story goes.

This year it took just over 26 minutes, meaning poor weather this summer. Anything below 12 minutes means good weather.

I know that the Swiss are reputed to be slow, but I wonder if they have ever considered the fact that the speed a bonfire will burn depends on how it is built, what condition the wood is in and - the weather.
On Monday we had rain and snow, so I can imagine the building of the bonfire to have been rather hasty.
The wood was most likely somewhat wet too. As you can see by the picture, there was a great deal of yellow smoke - I seem to remember from my Boy-Scout-days that that means damp.

The Swiss meteorological office reported that the accuracy of the Böög's weather predictions over the last 50 years has been negligable. He did, however, predict the warm Summer of 2003!

The festival is called Sechseläuten - the ringing of the six o'clock bells.
At the end of Winter the church bells would ring at six pm instead of five pm to inform craftsmen that daylight was coming to an end.
The fact that they could work an hour longer was always celebrated with an enormous festival.

Well, if having to work an hour longer each day isn't reason enough for a celebration, I can't imagine what would be...

I'm sorry Mr. Bear, but I did say so!

The brown bear known as JJ3 (what a sweet name for a bear) became a problem-bear and was shot on Monday in the canton of Grisons (Graubünden).
While foraging for food, he got too close to humans. Not that he was ever aggressive, mind you, just not afraid enough of mankind.

They did try to scare the bear off by firing rubber bullets at him but apparently he just moved on to the next village. So, instead of trying to find a more appropriate solution, the local government had the animal shot.

The problem now, though, is that the bear had an Italian passport. The Italians are up in arms, threatening to put a boycot on Swiss goods and on travel to Switzerland.

Anyway, the authorities in Grisons are just in the process of distributing bear-proof bins?!
So if any other bears wish to try their luck, they are welcome.
They just need to mind their manners.

Just because we shoot bad-mannered bears, doesn't mean that Switzerland can't provide a habitat for them...

I am re-publishing an image today.
Not to bore you, but because, at long last, I have achieved something I have been trying to do for twelve months now.

You might have noticed that one of my pastimes is panorama photography.
I started down this road by chance about two years ago.
I was in Wales and stopped at a lay-by near Barmouth. I looked at the scene I'd seen a hundred times before and decided it would be a nice scene to photograph.
I got out my camera and took a series of shots - freehand - wondering if I would be able to stitch them together in Photoshop.
At home I stitched the images together in photoshop and decided:
"Next time, you'll have to use a tripod!"
It took ages to stitch and retouch the finished panorama.

'Next Time' I thought I'd be clever, so I used a monopod instead.
Again, it took me days until I was even almost satisfied with the results.
By chance there was a lot of water in this picture too, which proved to be one of the biggest challenges.
What I couldn't understand, however, was the problem I was having with the perspective.
It was this picture that made me go looking for information on the web.
It took 24 separate cropped images, distorted out of all proportion, just to put the railings together - the whole panorama otherwise only consists of 36 images!

When I finally solved the parallax-distortion-problem with a so-called spherical-panorama-head for my tripod, I thought the logical Next Step would be 'Virtual Reality'.
It has taken me twelve months to get there, but I finally solved all the problems I discovered in that corner too!

Here is my first spherical panorama.
I am very proud of it, so I hope you are duly impressed!



You will need QuickTime to view this one - it is installed on most computers, but you may have to download it.
You can move around the picture by clicking and dragging with the mouse. You can zoom in with Shift and zoom out with Ctrl.

On the advent of the European Football Championships the SVP (Swiss Peoples Party) seem determined to present Switzerland to our 600,00 foreign guests in poor light.
If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you'll remember the black sheep of last August...
Well now the SVP has revived a four-year-old campaign to show our guests just how discriminating the Swiss are - racially discriminating, that is.
'Go home, foreigners!'

The campaign is aimed at the prevention of mass-nationalisation.
Now mass-nationalisation really does sound bad - I agree with you!
Just envisage those millions and millions of criminal Africans and Asians* lining up to pick up a free, red passport.
That, however, is not what it's all about! It is about people who were born here in Switzerland.

There are a few foreign families here that stuck it out long enough to have produced a third generation.
What does that mean?
... well, it means that Grandma and Grandad originally came from Italy or Germany, their kids were born here and, in the meantime, produced kids of their own.
What nationality are those new arrivals (some of them now in their 20s and 30s)?
Italian or German, of course!

'Hang on', a couple of liberal thinkers have said, 'that can't be right, the parents were born and raised in Switzerland as were their children - they are Swiss, right?'
Nope!

The third generation children are as alien as their grandparents.
No matter that they were born in Switzerland, have never visited the country their grandparents came from, let alone speak their language - they are aliens and, as such, are unwanted!
Oh, no - they aren't discriminated in any other way, they are allowed to pay their taxes just the same as anyone else. They can't vote, of course - we can't have foreigners voting, now can we. That would just go to prove that they are even taking an interest in the country they were born in and are an integral part of society.
Tut, tut, tut...

Now of course - if they care to pay for the privilege of being accepted as Swiss citizens - that is a different matter entirely. We'll take their money gladly. I mean, let's face it, they're probably more Swiss than their Swiss neighbours!

The placards, which are being hung up everywhere just in time for the arrival of our guests, depict brown and yellow hands grasping for Swiss passports out of a box. Clearly immoral! Criminal, you could even say.

Just that the SVP has their own version of the facts again...

* Sorry if you happen to be African or Asian - this is just meant to serve as an example.

Here you have the result of a mornings photography and two nights of stitching.
A total of 152 images taken within two hours (and four kilometers) of each other, stitched to give you five panorama pictures.
I hope you like them.

On the first picture's horizon, by the way, is the Lake of Constance.