You find these all over France and Switzerland – maybe Germany too, but I’ve never seen one in Germany. It’s a hotel for solitary bees! Of course, it begs an interesting question: why are there solitary bees? Were bees originally soloists that then developed an advantage with hives? Or were wayward bees kicked out of their hives?
France
Plastic cow
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: take a picture, ensure a cow is in the picture, and it will be a good picture.
I think the same holds true for this, une Vache française en plastique.
Alsatian stork
Glace dans les Vosges
Ice on the branches
Ice in front of the branches
Machine étrange dans le rond-point
Bridge over the River Doubs
Cernay ice
Continuing the series, ice crystals, on a bush, in front of a tree, in Cernay
Côte-du-Doubs at La Chaux-de-Fonds
Cernay shrubs
Continuing the series, if you ask me, no easy job to keep these shrubs pruned so identically
Cernay chinmey
Continuing the series, I’m definitely coming back here because this snap was taken just outside of a HUGE industrial park that was deserted – sort of a ghost factory. It was all open to the public, so it’s on my bucket list to head back and just poke around. According to a small plaque here, this chimney was part of a textile factory – and I assume that the streams running down from the Vosges Mountains in the background were the reason for its location (water power):
Cernay icy bushes
Continuing the series, I could not resist capturing this snap of some tall grass (or a bush?) with the leaves all covered in ice,
Cernay hungry man
Continuing the series, this street art seems to be an homage to hungry people, but to be honest I never stopped to see if there was a sign that described it.
Cernay Church
Cernay in the eastern French part of Alsace known as Haut-Rhine is an interesting village for two reasons. First, apparently the German SS used this village as an “indoctrination” center during the second world war; and second, because the Thur river flows through it, and there was a river of the exact same name flowing through Winterthur when I lived there. (Note: it flowed through Winterthur before I moved there, and it probably still flows there today.)
Anyway, here’s the church:
Pontarlier portal
Pontarlier through the portal
Pontarlier castle
Just like just about everything else in Europe, the Chateaux de Joux dates back to the 1200’s.
Pontarlier tree
Pontarlier rock
Alsatian Transmitter Tower
Garden wall in Crans-Montana
Moon over Metz
FAKE – Metz church in the sun
Take a look at this incredible snap:
Well, the original snap looked like this:
Just for the record: the photos I post are never in any way retouched or enhanced or changed – except for cropping. OK, and maybe a very simple color correction a la Google.
But in this series of blog posts entitled FAKE I publish some rather interesting images I have enhanced in some way.
I’ve recently bought a Mac – and for my photo hobby I am trying an application called Lumina AI – it offers not just the usual photo editing and correction features, but powerful “faking” features like adding skies and suns that are not really there.