Alla inlägg av Ichimusai

Swedish

Riksantikvarieämbetets sökfunktion FMIS

(Swedish only)

Riksantikvarieämbetet har en fantastisk sökfunktion [raa.se] för de flesta kända fornlämningar från äldsta stenålder fram till modernt 1900-tal.

Här kan man hitta mycket intressant att fotografera i vårat avlånga land.

Från deras förstasida:

Fornlämningar på land och i vatten

I Riksantikvarieämbetets Fornsök kan du söka information om äldre tiders gravplatser, boplatser och arbetsplatser. Här finns uppgifter om lämningar såväl på land som under vatten. Du hittar information om runstenar, hällristningar, gruvor, torp, avrättningsplatser, skeppsvrak och mycket annat. Tidsspannet är stort – från äldsta stenålder till 1900-tal.

Över 1,7 miljoner lämningar

I Fornsök finns information om över 1,7 miljoner lämningar på närmare 600 000 platser. Informationen kommer främst från fältinventeringar som utförts runtom i landet samt från arkeologiska utredningar och undersökningar – både på land och på havsbotten.

Fornsök visar ingen fullständig bild av alla fornminnen som finns i Sverige. Det tillkommer ständigt mer information – nya lämningar hittas vid inventeringar och arkeologiska undersökningar. Fornsök uppdateras därför dagligen med ny information.

English

Go Places – Inspiration – Geocaching

Yeast in Reality
Example of a Geocache

Do you have a difficult time to get inspiration for going on a phot walk or hike away in nature to take some pictures? Are you low on ideas of what to photograph? Do you have a GPS receiver suiteable for trekking/hiking (most car navigation systems are not, you want a smaller handheld device)?

Then this is an interesting hobby that you might want to check out! It’s called Geocaching and I will explain a little about what it is.

Basically geocaching is a treasure hunt. What happens here is that someone hides a ”treasure” for you to find. There is usually not anything valuable in it, it is just the location actually that’s the whole point of it. These treasures are referred to as geocaches and when they are hidden they are also published with GPS coordinates on this homepage.

Hunters go to the home page and find some caches nearby where they live – or where they wish to go hunting, then they download the coordinates, descriptions and perhaps also the hints – called ”spoilers” (they may spoil the fun of searching). Equipped with a GPS receiver, the coordinates, a pen they set out to try to locate the cache.

Fortsätt läsa Go Places – Inspiration – Geocaching →

English

Review: Nikkor DX AF-S 55-200 f/4-5.6G ED

55-200mm
This is what the lens looks like half-extended.

This lens is usually bought as a step-up lens from the kit lens with the entry-level digital SLR cameras from Nikon. I got one as well before my first trip to Öland because I was still waiting for my 18-200/3.5-5.6 lens to arrive in the mail. As it turned out I would have to wait for more than six months for that beauty so I had some time to use the 55-200 and get aquainted with it.

Fortsätt läsa Review: Nikkor DX AF-S 55-200 f/4-5.6G ED →

English

In Khmer Country

A few years ago in 2004 I had the opportunity to go to Cambodia. It is a fascinating country in many ways and it serves us well to remember that it was not long ago Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge spread fear and terror in trying to implement his distorted idea of communism in the countryside. Pol Pot executed so many educated people that the country was left depleted of knowledge. With help of their neighbour countries such as Thailand and other world-wide associations Cambodia is coming back now as a proper functioning country.

The Lion Temple

Fortsätt läsa In Khmer Country →

English

Make a matchbox pinhole camera

This site has an incredibly cool step-by-step on how to build your own pinhole camera.

The camera can be built using normal appliances and stuff that you have in your house normally. Some of the pictures shown taken by this camera is quite incredible.

The aperture of the camera is about f/90 and I am not sure what the focal length is but I believe it is not too far from a 50 mm lens actually. This means that exposure times in broad daylight is 2-3 seconds, in cloudy conditions 5-8 seconds indoor is 5-10 minutes or so but it is cool to have built your own camera.

Here are some pictures taken with a pinhole camera by the original maker of it. Alspix profile on Flickr here.

English

A Peninsula Called Shoe

There are many historical grounds not ver far from where I live. One such place is a Peninsula called ”Sko” in Swedish which means ”shoe” in English. The name probably comes from that the peninsula resembles a shoe from the air, or when viewed on a map. Check out the google map of the area and you will see what I mean.

The weather was not very nice for photography, a thick cloud layer making all the photos very dull and bland, to the point of being completely ”flat”. Sometimes I use a flash as a tool to fix this, if you have a dull landscape in the background, place a person in the foreground and use a flash properly you can get a very nice effect. Especially with some gels that gives yellow color. When you compensate the white balance for that yellow colour you get a very nice blue cast on the sky even if it was completely dull when you shot the picture.

But today was different, I decided to work with contrasts and black & white photos instead to the point of almost making them cartoonish. Here is the result of today’s little excursion…

Douglas DC-3 in Skokloster
Swedish Air Force DC-3 on display. Originating from flotilla F13M "Malmslätt" in Linköping. Last time it was flown was in 1983 when it was flown from Bromma to Skå-Eneby airfield. The day after there was an unnamed civil pilot flying it without any military or civilian designations to the current location, landing in a nearby field. The authorities are about to move it to a different place.
Idealbyn
"Idealbyn", the "ideal village" was created in the early nineties as a kind of haven for people adhering to the teachings of Transcendental Meditation (TM). The photograph shows the school in the village.
DC-3 insignia
Part of the insignia on the DC-3 at Skokloster. This is a close-up of the first picture from a slightly different angle. It says "Swedish Air Force" and "Air Support Command F13M" which relates to the F13 flotilla in Malmslätt, Linköping. The motto was "Volare necesse est". I leave you to look that one up yourself!
Upplands runinskrifter 676
Typical "uppland" (the county) where this peninsula resides. To the left in the picture is a rune stone from around year 1000. The flat agricultural landscape are broken by roads that are usually built on very very old roads travelled by foot and then by horsemen probably from the stone age and forth. Runestones where almost always placed at the side of the roads where people traveled at the time they were erected and in these parts there are usually newer roads built on top of these ancient paths. Like in this case.
English

A man and his Dog

Man with Dog on Beach

It was just before sun-set one beautiful evening in April when we had been driving down the pacific coastline from San Franscisco and we stopped at the beach in Carmel to sit together and view the sunset before we went to a local pub and had a beatiful steak dinner.

As we were sitting there, watching the sun slowly set into a rather calm pacific, this man an his dog came for  a walk on the beach. The stopped and played for a while, the man throwing sticks and the dog fetching and it was clear that they had known eachother for a very long time.

I managed to take this photograph which I really like, the captures the mood at this time on the beach very well in my opinion.

Dog on the Beach