Photos from Annika and Olle

They're out on Aspö for New Years' and have sent me a bunch of great photos from yesterday and today. I've added them to my page of their Flickr photos.

Sorry for lack of posts

...lots & lots going on, all of it good.

We'll be back in Texas tomorrow night and I'll have a chance to regroup for the blog. I did manage to get a photo page up, at least.

Stay tuned!

Astrophotography

I've experimented with taking some photos of the Aspö night sky over the years. It is fun, and I look forward to developing my photographic skills.

However, one of the recent tweeters on the Swedish official website, Göran Strand, is a master of the art. He has a number of breathtaking photos on his website. I urge everyone to take a look!

Photos from Annika and Olle

Annika and Olle are out on Aspö today and they both sent me a bunch of lovely photos. I've updated her set on Flickr.

A Starry Evening

Just a quick post with last night's photographic product. Lots going on but too busy to add more to the blog right now.

Stay tuned for more news and photos from beautiful Aspö!

Our house is on Bing Maps now

I stumbled across some new aerial photography of our little hus on Bing maps of all places. And, sure enough, our house, plus the guest house, and the walkway between them, all show up as clear as day! I think that's very cool. This is a newer photo than the Apple maps from last year, as the walkway is now visible.

Aspö itself is also looking fetching in the sunshine.

The direct link will take you right to our island, and from there, a virtual tour of the archipelago.

We've lucked out on the weather!

Wednesday and Thursday have been crystal clear beautiful spring days. The sun has been warm but the wind is crisp. Just perfect. We've been doing small projects (staining the deck was the biggest chore today) but we've been hanging out a lot. This is clearly the "laziest" week I've spend out here, and I am loving it.

The clear weather is lending itself to my star photo experiments, although it's really dark only between 11PM and about 3AM. The fall is better for longer, darker nights. I've put a few of my photos and movies on my flicker page.

I will try again the next couple of nights.

Tomorrow is our last day here- I hate to think about that.

Apple Maps

There are some reports complaining about the accuracy of the map application on the new iPhone. I haven't seen any problems myself, in fact, I am a happy user, because it appears that Apple is using much newer information in Scandinavia.

 

How do I know that? Well, I took a look at Aspö on my iPad and was pleasantly surprised to see our house!

I've made a collection of four screenshots zooming into the black roofs of our little cabin and the even teenier guest house beside it. 

How cool.

Sooz's Photos

...she has been enjoying the cool weather, watching Swedish costume dramas on TV, and generally hanging out.  I received a few photos, with which I have started a Summer 2012 photoset.

I'll be leaving to join her in 48 hours and I can't wait!!!

Flickr Photos

I've been publishing all of my house building and living photos on Apple's Mobile Me. However, that service is shutting off today, so I've moved everything to Flickr.

The links on the blog are still fine; I've essentially just duplicated the webgalleries. In the future, I might be able to collect topics more intelligently for new visitors. For example, I combined the daily galleries of our two weeks of house-building into one collection.

Flicker is built into iPhoto now so it should be just as easy for me to keep updating from my Mac and iPad. We'll give that a test during our next visit.

Star trails from space

I published my own star trail photo last September, and I'm itching to have another go later this year.

In the meantime, a far, far, cooler set of such photos is on Flickr here. I highly recommend taking a look.

Another iPhone app

I mentioned an iPhone GPS app in my previous post. In that vein, I have another app to share: Star Walk.

This app is like something from a science fiction movie. Just hold it up to the sky, and the iPhone knows exactly where it is and gives an annotated view of the stars above. That's how I was able to see that my star trail photo was focused on Arcturus.

If you have an iPhone (or iPad), I highly recommend downloading this program.

Star Trails 2

I've been playing around in Photoshop with all the star photos I took.

Here's the best so far, it's a composite of 304 photos taken at 30-second intervals, starting at 10PM on September 9.

My favorite part is the little shooting star I captured, just left of center.

I'm pretty sure the brightest star in this image is Arcturus.

Unfortunately, it may be a year until I can do another such set on Aspö, as it won't be dark enough in the summer to take photos like these.

Star Trails

I'd like to try some star trail photography when we're on Aspö next week, as seen in this example. I feel I should take advantage of the wonderful dark nights out there.

One of my colleagues is an accomplished photographer, and she lent me a number of articles about the technique. I now have a bit of software on my mac, along with a star tracker app for my iPhone!

We'll see how successful I am (weather permitting) in just a few days, and of course I'll share any decent photos that I may come up with.