Spring is here at last! After a really late and strong winter - spring has arrived in Austria. I drove to the Neusiedlersee NP for birding a couple of times and took a lot of bird shots. I also did a funny close up of a green frog on a yellow-orange reed stem by using my AF-S 2.8/300 ED + my TC-17E II ( that´s a very special close up lens 4.8/750mm ). And I did some portraits of the two year old twins of very close friends. But no frog and or birds or kids but just some bloody trees against a blue sky? Yes - but they are no ordinary trees. These are the two sour cherry trees in my garden in full bloom. Inbetween the two there is our apple tree and in the low right corner of the frame is a part of the roof of our hovel and behind it is our large, almost 200 year old pear tree. I was lying in a deckchair and enjoyed the sound of the bees in the cherry trees. Life is just great sometimes.

I hesitated a lot to take this shot because it really looks very different when displayed at full screen instead of this "websized version". But anyway I really wanted to put a wide-angle shot for the picture of the month. This is the first time since July 2001! that I used a real wide angle shot in my POM section. In 2001 it was a 2.8/20-35 on my F100 and the image was taken on a Kodak Ektachrome 100 VS. Now it´s the 12-24DX ( 18-35 equ. ) and the camera is a D2H loaded with a Sandisk Ultra II. The tools may change the facination remains. I still love to take images - I think even more than I did a couple of years ago.

Ok. For those of you who are curious about the frog-image. Here it is.

settings: A-Mode, 1/640@f8, 200 ASA, WB: cloudy 0, but corrected via click white in RSE 2005