[Capture Challenge] Charge your battery and take some photos

Reminds me of this cutie:

I took the shot on Hasliberg, Switzerland. It was a fun family trip, for the kids there was a ‘marble run’ (there are several tracks where they could let a ball / marble loose, and chase it along the path).

It was a long walk, and we were worried it’d get dark, so I urged everyone to move on – and then stopped to take this photo. My wife got fed up with this, and went ahead; the children walked slowly, I knew I’d catch up with them easily.

So I lay down in the grass – which was wet (more on that later), and tried to frame a shot. The beast noticed me. I do not know if it felt threatened or challenged, but I definitely got scared as it came closer, even though we were separated by an electric fence. Maybe it just wanted to check out the idiot who would lie down in the wet grass, and touch the electric fence… it was an electrifying experience. :smiley:

So, I took a photo (pressing the shutter aided by the electric shock), got up, and caught up with my daughters. I didn’t see my son, but thought he’d gone with his mum. About two hours later, after sunset, we met in the village, and she asked me where our son was, because she hadn’t seen him, and thought he was with me. There we were, with our 10-year-old son lost somewhere in the woods on the mountain. Luckily, he turned up a bit later – what he didn’t see was a signpost, so he did not take a turn where he was supposed to. Luckily, he the other path also led to the valley, and he asked someone for directions.

That is how I survived three potentially lethal situations in one day – I did not get gutted by huge horns, did not die of electrocution, and was not even beheaded by an angry spouse.

This was where we began our day:

Then we took the cable car and started walking:

Had some nice views:

(we met the furry creature 5 minutes later)

An hour later the sun set:

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Sounds like fun (kind of a scary fun in a bit)

And that is not fun at all - just scary

Indeed a happy ending.

And the pictures are beautiful!
I only made it to Zurich but there is so much more to see in Switzerland. Beautiful country!

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Just a cute squirrel actually. Curious most of the time, always hungry. Enjoying the warm (wintry warm) sunshine.

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No, this is a horrible squirrel, around here we have wanted posters up for them. This is because they are a menace to our local red squirrels. They carry squirrel pox, which doesn’t affect them, but does affect the reds.

Ouch - I didn’t know that but this one is very common here. The other ones are black. I don’t think there are many reds. There are some small ones - they call them chipmunks but admittedly - I don’t really know the different varieties.

Should have read the article - red squirrels (these are European) vs gray squirrels (North American). I guess I am in the homeland of the gray squirrels (and black squirrels and some chipmunks).

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Hi folks! First post here. Met this cute thread and decided to share some fresh photos.

Recently I went to an old observatory built in 1899(!) in a nearby city. This is the sundial there.

And there is a newly built radio telescope around that looks super neat!

Also went to local zoo several weeks ago and met a pretty lizard there.

As a happy openSUSE user, I really like this work.

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More Ireland

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I really like those kinds of isolated water reflection shoots… Unfortunately most of our lakes are man-made so there’s dense vegetation right down at the waters edge and it’s impossible to get a clear shot into the water.

Nicely done.

Thanks. I did a double take seeing the reflected squares so it was an obvious shot, though my non-photographer friend was like, what are you doing? Ha

Not as successful:

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Well, I think if you (albeit rather severely) cropped down to nothing but the “things” (??) it could be nicely abstract. The sense of up and down would be a fraction as strong as it is with the tree in the shot, which might be interesting.

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Maybe, but I commend you for your selection of viewpoint obtaining the intersection between the squares on the right imm in an optimal way. Also that the there is a “breach” in that the nearest leftmost structure does not reflect into squares, which both leaves a variation and avoids the squares to be seen as hanging meaningless in thin air, but rather gives a cue to what we really see. A very nice picture with a excellent composition (that I would have been really satisfied to photograph myself…).

(I send you a B/W version with some suggestion.)

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A last walk in the sunshine before it starts raining again

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It’s always nice to pop in here and see so many great images. Thank you, everybody!

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Very interesting comparison to the previously shown reflections!
One and the same scene - so different views.

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Upgrading the birds… My Parisian suburb went from grayscale pigeons to full-RGB parakeets.

Pixel the visiting cat is totally fascinated.

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They’re noisy beggers. Everywhere in London and south of England now and spreading north.

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Really? I didn’t know that.

I may of joined this forum to learn more about photography and FOSS, but I’ve ended up learning just as much about wildlife (especially birdies). Who would have thought? :smile:

Edit:

Well, I’ll be budgied!

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I like this unlikely speculation on their origin:

“A pair of parakeets released by Jimi Hendrix, in Carnaby Street, London, in the 1960s”

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The French Wikipedia appears more down-to-earth. Pistacula Hendrixii would look cool though, after all Mark Knopfler has a dinosaur named after him.

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