12-12-12-12:12

I thought long and hard about a photograph to capture this once in a lifetime moment. The angle of the sun, the background, the architecture; searched the internet thinking about potential photo-opps. As the moment approached my stomach protested and insisted it was time for lunch. Yeah, that works too...
 

Michael Gehrisch

 
 

A Fall From 400 Meters...

For years I have wanted to do aerial photography from a small plane or paraglider, and when a facebook and cycling friend mentioned that his brother was available for hire with a paramotor I jumped at the chance. Michael Gawlik runs Snow n' Dust and we met at Ribersborgstrand in Malmö and discussed a flight over hills of Skäralid to see the fall colors. The weather outlook for the coming days was not good, but the weekend looked promising. So on Friday night with a last look at the weather report we agreed to meet at Skäralid the next morning and take a flight. A good-natured farmer let us use his field for a runway and the result was both a short You-Tube clip and some great images It's an interesting sensation having your feed dangling at 400 meters...

and

http://www.pbase.com/kingfisher

Peregrine Hand-off

I don't know what it is about the peregrine falcon that has made it one of my favorite birds to photograph. Maybe it's the fact that they were nearly wiped out in the US back in the '60s before anyone understood what DDT did to their eggshells. Or maybe it's the fact that they are the fastest animal on the planet, able to reach speeds of over 200 mph (320kph). That speed alone makes it a less than optimal bird to try to photograph. It's just too fast, and during the 10 years I have been photographing them I have only a handful of decent pictures to show for it and most of those taken when the bird is sitting on a branch doing nothing interesting. So the series below which represents about 40 hours of watching, waiting and hundreds of missed shots, is somewhat of a dream come true, an adult peregrine handing off a meal to a juvenile bird. Truth be told the pictures are nowhere near as sharp as I would have liked them to be, but after ten years, you take what you can get. If only there was some way to get a GoPro camera mounted on a peregrine...

More (less interesting) peregrine images can be seen at
http://www.pbase.com/kingfisher/peregrine

Sunset Shootout; Empire State vs. Top of the Rock

No longer satisfied with the Southern California sun during the long Swedish winters, My daughter Kristina insisted we visit New York City as well, and definitely not during the winter. So after enduring the Swedish winter with many days at -20C we also got to experience NYC at 100F. Thankfully all the tourist attractions and Starbucks have both A/C and WiFi. Even when it's hot the breeze and the view is great from both the Empire State Building and the Top of the Rock.The views are different enough to warrant visiting both buildings for the sunset and the lights coming on.

Sunset from the Empire State Building

and as night falls the view gets even better

Sunset in HDR

Sunset from the Empire State

Nightfall from the Top of the Rock

According to recent surveys in the Gehrisch family this won't be the last time we visit NYC...

Happy New Year

For the 25 years I have lived in Lund I have never been able to get a really interesting picture of the Cathedral (Domkyrkan). The Cathedral is in the center of town surrounded by a park with lots of high trees on one side and a busy street with tall buildings across from the front. It's always funny to see people trying to photograph the church, they squeeze into the doorways of the buildings to get one foot further back since few lenses are wide enough to fit the entire church into one shot. A few years ago I bought a 17-40mm lens, which was a step in the right direction,

but first when I bought the 14mm Samyang manual lens was I able to photograph the Cathedral in some sort of context. But it still needs something special. So when fireworks in the park were announced for the New Years celebration I finally got my wish. Excusing myself from a New Years party to go photograph the Cathedral got more than a few comments...

And as luck would have it after the fireworks ended some friends invited me back to another party, which turned out to be quite a lot of fun as well...

Of course you have to plan for a shot like this so I made several visits to check the angles in the days before New Years, including this shot before sunrise...

http://www.pbase.com/kingfisher