Duplo's blog

Hi All,

And welcome to a hopefully long awaited Duploworld update.

I have been away for quite some time again, not necessarily because I wanted to, but the real world has been keeping me so busy that updating this blog has been difficult.

Fair to say though that since my last post, my life has been turned upside down, pulled inside out and I am currently feeling better than I have done in years

A large part of that reason actually grew from my visit to the peak of Sermitsiak, but I will save that particular story for another day

I have been hiking extensively, travelling both in Greenland and an extremely beautiful part of the US, not to mentioned passed over Denmark a few times, so I have been a busy and happy boy for a couple of months now

The US story and the trips to Deer Prong Mountain and Qingaaq, I will save for another post later this week, The focus of this post will be to share a round of summer photos and stories from the very beautiful Ilulissat.

The most beautiful place in the world?

Ilulissat, may or may not be the most beuatiful places in the world, but The Icefiord, where above image was captured, sure must be among them.
It has recently been included on UNESCO's world heritage list and that fact alone tells a lot about the unique nature of this place and the stunning beauty which can be experienced here.
Golden Ice

A visit to this area during daylight, impressive as it is, is nothing compared to what happens here when the last days of the midnight sun, starts its game during night.
It gave me a whole new meaning to the term "Golden hour", here it is a powerful and 2-3 hour long experience where colours are changing rapidly in an aboslutely amazing display.
Iceberg

I have never made a secret out of my fascination with this area of Greenland and each new visit seems to bring with it a better understanding of its truly unique nature and stunning light.
Summer is a fantastic season to experience this area, as is winter, autumn or spring.
Amazingly enough there is so much more to this area than shown above....
Fin Whale

Another popular sport is whale whatching, there are an abundance of different whales up along the Greenlandic Coast. the Fin Whale shown above (estimated to a little over 20 meters by the captain) is somewhat rare to see and extremely fast. from a visual point of view it is impressive, but not as fun as the humpbacks, as it rarely shows its tail. But an amazing experience none the less.
Oqaatsut (rodebay)

Oqaatsut is a small settlement a couple of hours (by boat) North of Ilulissat and having the chance to stop by there was an interesting experience, save for it being an odd location for a gourmet lounch restaurant during summer, it is a native fishing and hunting comunity and probably one of the most relaxed places I have ever been.
By the soccer field

The people living here, lives by the hand of nature, hunting and fishing from either boat or dog sled.
It is a settlement so small that no roads exist, there are small trials from the harbour to the houses and dog yards, but aside from that it is basically a small number of woodenhouses situated in the middle of nothing but amazing Greenlandic nature and the Disco Bay.
Nattoralik, by Sermeq Kujalleq

Sermeq Kujalleq or the Icefiord Glacier, is a stunning and dangerous place.
Only way to get there is by helicopter and the ride in there is an experience that I am not likely to forget ever, a truly stunning display.
It is however a glacier that one does not want to walk. more than 7 kilometers wide and moving at a speed of 20 meters per day, means that Sermeq Kujalleq calves off approx. 20 million tons of ice daily and makes it responsible not only for all the icebergs in the icefiord, but also 10 percent of all the icebergs in Greenland.
Sermeq Kujalleq

To understand the kind of force it takes to move all that ice is almost impossible to comprehend, and the endless view amazing. the photo above really does give no clue to the size, but i was simply unable to find a way to display its massive size and beauty.
What an experience it was though:)

Well that comcludes some of the impressions from the trip to Ilulissat.
I am in the process of updating the "Greenlandic Summer Photos 2009" album with a bunch of images as this post hits the blog, so go there if you have not had enough already.

an unusual iceberg

Above is th final image in this post and with that I will head for some sleep.
More posts to come over the next days, both from "Deer Prong Mountain", "Qingaaq" (another mountain) and my trip to the US. So do stay tuned for more in the days to come.

Thank you for reading and do take care:)

Thomas

A tiny, tiny rant over a little thing that actually disappointed me quite a lot.

Hi All,

And welcome to a Duploworld update. well only two things to tell really.
First one is just a short message that in not too many hours I will be heading towards Copenhagen again for a few days. Not too eager, but any chance to visit my family should be treasured and it is
I still have not gotten all the way around my watchlist and my apologies to those I have not visited for a while. I will however strive to get by shortly to see what you have all been up to.
Mugshot - take #1

Now todays topic is actually examplified perfectly in the photo above.
While a standard mugshot and nothing special per se, it is the outcome of a most disappointing experience.
Miss Duplo is about to complete her drivers license (Yeha I know, a little late in life, but better late than never ). A drivers license like any valid ID requires a photo that has to be of a certain standard, whith expalins why it is face forward and all.
She went to the local camera store/photo studio to have her photo taken. Now instead of going through trouble of spending the 5 minutes it would have taken to light up two strobes and spend less than 2 minutes working over the RAW file as I did above. they used a large instant film camera with and a front mounted on camera flash, safe to say that it resulted in a photo that was poor, full of harsh shadows and totally unflattering (I dare say almost anyone would have done better with a disposable camera
Miss Duplo was a little sad and felt that the 12 EUR spend on the 30 seconds of poor work was over the top, especially the result considered.
I spend the 5 (ok 10 maybe, i need to unfold the lighstands, mount umbrellas etc.) minutes and she now has a photo for her drivers license that is well above average I would say.
My point with this story is, that if you do own a studio, a camera store even. Why would you not want to deliver an end result satisfactory to both your customer and your self.
That particular store, which will remain unnamed, has lost any future printing or other business from me.
I just find it sad when what should be a professional turns out not to be so.
You may think that I am overreacting on a tiny unimportant matter and In a way I am, but hey 5 minutes would have brought them a happy customer. I guess I just miss the days where those 5 minutes mattered.

Ok enough ranting for one post I think, in stead here is a flower photo to round off the post (I even know the name ).
Dandelion - after the rain

Thanks for reading and putting up with my rant

Ohh and do take care you all

Thomas

Hi All,

Finally what i have planned as a more decent Duploworld update.

As I briefly mentioned in my last update, we had a family visit last week.
My Uncle, Aunt and two Cousins. they were with us from tuesay to friday night.

This post will contain quite a few pictures why I will keep them thumbnailed but please click them and view in full, at least a few of them are worth a look I think, But what some of them might lack in technical excellence is made up entirely by the cute subject matter:D

I met up with them on tuesday evening and took them for just a short walk to see nuuk.
Nothing to streesful, here is my uncle, Miss Duplo and my Aunt:

Well wednesday evening Miss Duplo and I took them for a somewhat different walk to the peak of "Lille Malene".
We approached the peak from the rear side near a lake called lake Circus and walked up the back of it.

a fairly fun walk, that only had two things not going for it, MOSQUITOES and low cloud cover.

Well mosquitoes were all over and I think I counted 29 mosquito bites in my face when looking in the mirrow and I must have had at least in my neck. wore a cap so I looked pretty odd for a few days:D

The low cloud cover was not really an Issue while walking, but when we were to capture that family moment on the peak, well it gave an example of how Low cloud cover can easily ruin a shot:

Now this capture of my youngest cousin easily makes up for it for though:

Thursday was all work for me and they had a quiet day and night on their own.

Friday though, we all went to dinner on a gourmet restaurant called "Værftet", which means shipbuilding yard and it actually served that purpose sometime in the past. It is located at the old harbour and has a beautiful view not to mention excellent food and is one of the top two restaurant in Nuuk.

Well specially for Mr. Hungry, here is two food and drinking related photos.
The Aperetif:

and the wine:


Well miss Duplo looked her best on this fine evening, just look at these two:



The evening was concluded with a small danceshow in the restaurent by some lacals which actually was pretty nicey performed.

It was amazing to have them visiting and we enjoyed the visit a lot.


well that is all for now. I will head back to answer a round of emails now... still got a huge amount of catching up to do... I know and I try, but be patient, hopefully tomorrow will bring time for that.

Thanks for looking and do take care:)

Thomas

Hi All,

Well here goes another Duploworld update and on a rather different topic than the usual Greenlandic inspired ones. It is Greenlandic flora.

and let me start off by apologizing to you all I have been lying to you, not intentionally though.
I have previously stated that we have no flora worth speaking of up here, that is a lie.

We have at least 3 different flowers and a number of other interesting stuff too, this post is about some of these findings.

Now why is it that I have not shown you this before? and even claimed that it was not here?

Well truth is that during my many hikes and walks I have been so busy looking at and capturing the amazing scenics, that I have completely overlooked a range of amazing flowers. well to my excuse I must say that they are really tiny and what you are about to see is all in the 1:1 macro range.

First off is our most common flower:
Pink Beauty

the captured scene have a real life size of 16 by 24 mm.
A photo to give you a feel of the size:


Next off is as more rare flower:
White Beauty

White and Pink Beauty

Now again a photo with the end of a cigarette in it for a size comparizon:


I also found this odd little fellah, not sure what it is though, but some flower thingy I guess...
Odd flower thingy

I have promised my self, that my macro will be a sitting in my standard kit bag from now on and I will soon do an outing again just to capture more of the flora that surrounds me up here. Just do not expect miracles, it is soo tiny.

You may remember from my "Vacation Update" that miss Duplo got quite interest in my "new back up body" and my most compact primes.
Well during this outing it became even worse, just take a look below

Miss Duplo with my back up body, field tripod and my macro lens:eyes: she even makes the gear look better than I do (which is not really a surprise:D)
Seems that I now got the perfect idea for her birthday (to keep her off my gear:D) and I am honestly looking forward to share a lot of photography moments with her... How lucky can one be

Anyway that is more or less it, I will be off for Denmark end this week, so if I am a little lucky I might even get to sneak of a few photos while I am there:)

Do take care you all:)

Thomas