Digital Photography

Greenish lighting, the name Erin - you might not immediately think of Ireland, but you would be right. At the end of the 19th century Irish mining entrepreneur Mulvany merged several claims in the Castrop area and named the new large claim after the goddess Erin, whose name is a form of the Gaelic Eire: Ireland.

The mines have a long history. Initially used to mine hard coal, the owners changed several times over the course of the following year until it was shut down in 1982 after almost 120 years of mining activity.

The disused coal mine Zeche Zollern in Dortmund is one of the most architecturally remarkable pits in the Ruhr area. The park-like facility with its impressive Art Nouveau buildings still shows today that it was built as a model colliery around 1900 and was intended to show both economic strength and progress.

We visited the facility with our friends from Herne, the photographers Renate and Jürgen Saibic, whom we met many years ago on Easter Island in Chile.

To photograph around the Northern Cape, the season of mid-May 2022 was ideal. Although weather reports had just recently been reported of meter-high snowfall, but on our approach the last kilometers were cleared and we could easily reach the top of the North Cape without snow chains. There were still no car traffic jam of mobile homes, which occasionally flooded the driveway and parking lots during the season, and we could almost photograph and enjoy the monuments and magnificent views.

The maritime atmosphere and the Skagerrak were taken as a model for the undulating roof of Kristiansand's Kilden Theater, which also serves as a concert hall. The building integrates perfectly into its surroundings and at the same time becomes a statement of modern architecture.

Strolling through the city you will discover many interesting buildings, even the McDonald's fast food restaurant is housed in an extraordinary, almost monumental palace. Four pillars with an antique look at the entrance separate you from the profane burger - if you like it.

When it gets dark at the harbor in Kristiansand, you probably shouldn't go through this narrow passage. Who knows what the harbor ghost will do to the inattentive pedestrians there?

Mintstreetart has created a successful work of art that interacts with the environment in a fun way.

There is even more successful street art to discover at the harbor and the fast moose at least doesn't scare you :-)

In Rjukan, everything revolves around electricity, just as we like it :-) The Vemork hydroelectric power station, built in 1911, was the largest in the world at the time and right in town you can see the Såheim hydroelectric power station today.

The Gaustabanen take you up the 1,900 meter high Gaustatoppen. We are lucky, the railways and access have just started seasonal operation and our summit ascent leads first over serpentines to 1170 m, then with railway 1 horizontally 850 meters into the mountain and from there with a funicular at 39° 1050 m wide and 850 meters high.

Small roads lead from the Lyngenfjord to Narvik, the Norwegian port city between mountains and fjords. The Lyngenfjord bids us farewell with grandiose cloud formations and the mood lighting conjures up an unusually menacing atmosphere over the Lyngen Alps.

In Narvik we moved into the Scandic Hotel - a good choice, because we got a room on an upper floor as requested and looked forward to the panoramic view of the harbor facilities we had been hoping for.

On the western side of the Lyngen Alps there is a bay called Sør-Lenangen in front of the village of the same name. On the headland opposite is the village of Lenangsøyra, which is also part of Lyngen Municipality in Troms. If you walk north along the headland along the coast, you will reach a spectacular coastal landscape with craggy rocks and individual rock figures that appear so artistically carved by wind and weather that the locals have even given them names at their tip (Nesodden).

When we arrived from Alta, the Lyngen Alps offered us a wonderful panorama with the best light conditions. We had again rented his accommodation "Aurora Dreams" from Frank, where we had already spent Christmas and New Year 2021/2022. At the turn of the year we found ideal conditions to photograph the polar and northern lights. Now we were hoping to photograph the midnight sun over the Ullsfjord.

In the Hjemmeluft area on the southern shore of the Altafjord in northern Norway, just west of the town of Alta, Neolithic and Bronze Age petroglyphs were found in the autumn of 1972, ranging in age from 2000 to 6500 years.
Petroglyphs (from Greek πέτρος petros "stone" and γλύφειν glýphein "to carve") are representations worked into stone, which often show hunting and religious scenes from prehistoric times. Unlike rock art, a petroglyph is engraved, scraped, or pecked, and sunk into the ground.