středa 14. května 2014

Bee-eaters on the Pozdřany steppe.

Each spring the steppe comes alive with bee-eaters (Merops apiaster). They are migratory species and remain there since the end of April until the end of the first decade of September.

Bee-eaters are not easy to photograph and long lenses are a must and a photographer should have to stay hidden from their field of view.

On last Saturday, when I returned from Romania, I could not resist the urge to see them again. So I take my camera and a tripod and headed south. From my home is just one-hour journey. My lens was too short for a serious photography, so I ended with several pictures with birds small in the frame. I tried to make some videos, because with flashy birds moving around in the frame the information of the place comes across on a viewer more easily.

Here are my results. They are far away from anything professional. They present a point of view of an dedicated amateur with poor photo equipment.


Some images are acceptable only because I cropped them heavily. Though I still think that they transfer to magic of being there on warm sunny afternoon among exotic-looking birds.

                                                  Bee-eaters on the Pouzdřany steppe.

Bee-eater (Merops apiaster). In my dreams I see them flying together with Rollers (Corracias garrulus) which disapeared from Central Europe during 1970-80's.

                           They build nest-holes in a wall of exposed loess, an eolian sediment.
                                                        They are definitely beautiful.
And at evening I set up my camera to made a serial of 40 images. I combined them together in Startrails.de program. This resul I call "cloudtrails". ;-)


and the second version of the set of 40 images appears as a timelapse:


In last years I always try to make at least one set of around 50-to-99 pics to make startrails, cloudtrails od timelapses. Its worth of the effort. It takes time and sometimes it means to wake up in the middle of the night. Though I can't resist doing such things. I have done them in the past and want to to them in the future. This is called: passion.

úterý 13. května 2014

Mud volcanoes in the Buzau area, in Romania.


This is a video made in the famous location in Romania, called Pâclele Mari de la Berca. In this strange world you can hear only silence, interrupted only by sounds of gas bubbles emanating through fissures in earth from down below. If you make a single photograph, you can catch a bubble or two, which appear on the surface of the mud volcano, though a serial of about 30 photographs helps to imagine this natural phenomena much better. "PLOP".

Attention: the video has no sound added!

In plus I add same still pictures in order to create the meaningful image of the area.

                                       A cone of a mud volcano at dawn.

                                             Mud volcanoes at dawn.

   An extinct mud volcano. It'd dyes has paled through being exposed to atmosphere.

 A live volcano cone emanating both gas and mud. In fact the gas carries water-loaded sediments from dawn below to the Earth surface. Mud volcanoes accompany oil and gas deposits.

This happens when gas reaches the surface. The gas is visible just above the bubble. It burns when a set a fire with a lighter. ;-)

A cloud of gas clearly visible above the bubble.

In the area are situated: a place for parking a car or a bus and and a place to erect a tent. Water closet, shower and a bar are included.