A walk through Ijams

I had nice walk last weekend through the Ijams Nature Center with my friend Josh over at Joshs Jaunts, who already put on some pictures. He just recently won awards for his nature photographs. Take a look at his pictures, it's worth it and you might notice a slight difference in quality ;)

I used the day to play around with my two manual lenses: first a Carl Zeiss Jena Pancolar 1,8/50 I got as a loan from my friend Andreas back in Germany. It is a great lens and I love the f/1,8 aperture. I'm not sure how old exactly it is but it might very well be older then me. The other lens is my new fish eye I have already used on the Safari two weeks ago. Since both are manual lenses, some of the shots might be out of focus a little. Let's start with the 50mm...

The first flowers break through :) It is a little blurry but still ok.

So much for the 50mm, now for the 8mm. The wide angle (180° view) is astonishing as is the fact that you have to try hard to have something out of focus. This was taken down from a little knob we climbed. It was quite steep, which the lens seems to hide a bit.

For some reason we found quite a bit of junk in the woods. The trails we took seems to be under construction so there is hope for some cleanup (the area formerly was owned by a mining company).

This pond was incredible. No, not incredibly beautiful. It was incredibly loud. It looks like it has been created just recently and it was populated with frogs that squawked so loud it made my ears hurt and you had a hard time talking. Unfortunately, we haven't seen any of these little troublemakers.

Finally, the former quarry that is now part of the Nature Center.

After using the manual lenses I must say my respect for analogue photography has increased dramatically and I appreciate the fast and easy auto-focus even more. Still, it is fun (and challenging) to play around with these lenses.

Safari @ Circle G Ranch

After a busy week and an even busier weekend I can finally roll out the pictures of last weeks Safari at Circle G Ranch. It's been a lot of fun driving through the ranch with all sorts of animals approaching our car, knowing that we have food for them. Some were really kind and patient, some were more on the pushy side. It almost felt like a zoo, just the other way around: the animals walking around freely while we were caged in the car. Great experience!

DISCLAIMER: No humans, animals, or cars were injured during this trip! A good part of the photos was actually taken by my friend Jelena using my camera because I was busy driving.

This guy was certainly the worst: he followed for quite a while, trying to get as much food as possible. I guess we were lucky his horns prevented him from stepping into our car...

It was amazing how soft their fur is. Well, apparently it is used for jackets and other comfy clothes...

The donkey whisperer discovered her telepathic skills.

Finally: A picture with my new lens, an 8mm fisheye by Rokinon. It's fun playing around with but needs some practice since it's all manual. I'm going to keep on trying...

Chattanooga (I)

Last weekend, I had to get out of Knoxville for a day. It's been more than a month that I've been in a different place. Chattanooga is a 90 miles ride away from Knoxville right at the border between Tennessee and Georgia.

We found a park deck to leave our car and get a first impression of what the city looks like.

(As the cityscape itself is not too exciting, I thought I might start experimenting with b&w a bit^^)

On the first view, some places look a bit shady, like this old house that (in it's better times) reminded guests of the Ruby Falls, which are below the Lookout Mountain in the back of the picture.

Also interesting to see was this former train station. The station was operated by Southern Railways and served the first train connecting Cincinnati in the north with Chattanooga in the south. It has been turned into a convention center, including restaurants and shops. One of the attractions is to spend the night...

... in an old train that was turned into a hotel.

We walked downtown, reaching for the art museum. On the way we saw this fellow playing Bob Marley songs in the warm sun.

Before reaching the museum, we passed by the aquarium and came to the Tennessee river. It seems that not only Dresden has it's blue wonder ^^ The plain-like statue in the front is part of a city-wide art exhibition and can be bought afterwards (no price tag found, though).

High five ^^

Finally, the art museum (as seen from the riverside, quite impressive)...

... and from the front, with a translucent leading the guest over a street (some found this to be quite scary).

The first impressive sculpture right in front of the museum. It is left as an exercise to the reader to determine the subject of this social-critical masterpiece.

Also interesting was this horse. What looks like wood is actually bronze, I couldn't have told the difference.

This one was kind of scary, situated in the middle of a huge empty space with worn-down houses surrounding it. The art museum itself was impressive, with astonishing paperweights of Paul Stankard and landscape art from the last two centuries. One interesting artist was Diane Rosenblum, who posted pictures of clouds on Facebook and collected the comments. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures (and the ones taken in the rest of the museum turned out to be not too exciting).

We ended our time in Chattanooga with a visit to lookout mountain (see above), enjoying this great view...

... and finally seeing the incline train coming up.

The day ended in a small private college, more on that later...

Savannah

After my last post about Charleston, SC, here now some pictures from Savannah. We left Charleston in the afternoon to hit the beach. I already posted pictures from the beach but I want to add another one which I find quite striking:

This is Jovana, one of the Serbians I met here, with her beautiful umbrella!

After we a two hour drive to Savannah we arrived in evening. After a good dinner at a pub I decided to grab my camera and stroll around a bit...

One of the many churches in Savannah...

... and a view down Bull Street with the town hall in the background.

The next day we went off to discover the city. A look on the map reveals that Savannah is very well planned, with small parks on every other street and the bigger Forsyth Park.


...with quite a few interesting people to meet. This guy for example asked whether I want to go and get a cofffee with him. Since I wasn't very interested I just gave him a few dollars for a cup. Later I saw a sign that prohibits panhandling. Well, I guess this is their way of circumventing this prohibition...

Besides the southern style homes already seen in Savannah, there are also a couple of very colorful houses like these.

Savannah seems to have an endless number of churches but this is one of the more important: The composer of Jingle Bells (James L. Pierpont) served here as a music directory. If this is not remarkable, what is then?

Besides all the small churches there is also a cathedral, which looks quite impressive, even more so with the palm trees around it.

Not far away from the cathedral is the Colonial Park Cemetery on which quite a number of important historical persons (mostly during the time of the civil war) have found their peace.

We also came across this interesting monument for the cold war and how it split the world apart. Unfortunately, I forgot the details and cannot reconstruct them from my pictures...

And again a bridge, this time the Talmadge Memorial Bridge over the Savannah River.

On our way back we went through Atlanta where we tried to find a coffee and ended up with some brown fluid from one the infinite fast food restaurant. Probably the low point of this trip. Nevertheless, it's been a fun time and both Charleston and Savannah are certainly worth a visit!