I don’t know what the architect had in mind when he designed the Alster swimming pool. Formally, it says that the roof is made of two hyperbolic paraboloid shells.
But from this perspective, I see a butterfly swimmer (some people know it as dolphin style) coming towards me, both arms already raised out of the water on the way forward.
The Alster Swimming Pool in Hamburg was built in 1968 and has a striking supporting structure consisting of two hyperbolic paraboloid shells. It was renovated between 2020 and 2023, with the striking roof being retained.
Since the Alster swimming pool in Hamburg reopened at the end of November 2023, I have often driven past it on my way to work. Especially in the winter months, it was first at night and later during the blue hour. I always noticed how beautifully the ceiling of the hall shone in blue, in a great color contrast to the orange of the walls to the shower and changing rooms.
I initially thought that the ceiling would be illuminated with blue spotlights. But when I was there, I discovered that it was »only« the blue of the 50-metre pool in the center of the hall. The pool is illuminated by powerful spotlights and its blue tiled floor and side walls reflect it up to the ceiling. In my photos you can see that a large part of the ceiling shines white and only a blue blob can be seen in the middle of the ceiling.
I like it that way. Especially because the large 10 meter diving platform is also orange. A great color scheme in the hall!
My photo report from an adventure trip to the Icelandic highlands began with a picture of Brúarfoss and I am now ending the Iceland 2023 series with a picture of this very waterfall. There are now 7 pages of blog posts from Iceland, the first 4 of which are from 2023.
The picture from the first post was taken the evening before, when we were able to enjoy a fantastic aurora over the waterfall shortly before our departure. The day after, we drove to the waterfall again to say goodbye and looked at it under a cloudy sky. What luck we had on the night of the aurora with the clear sky!
During the day, however, the typical turquoise-blue color of the waterfall comes into its own. Due to the many small waterfalls in the channel above, a lot of air is forced into the water. This explains the great color. This is particularly noticeable in the close-up of the waterfall: read more or write a comment …
On the way east through the black desert, the Vatnajökull glacier lay in the distance. Between us and the glacier was a vast desert valley with only a few old craters rising from the plain.
These pictures show once again how exciting it is to use a powerful telephoto lens in landscape photography. I took a panorama of 10 individual images at a focal length of 427mm. The two images in the header are the right and left sections of the panorama. To give you an idea of what a great view we had that day, the edge of the glacier was about 45 kilometers away from me in the first image, and the basalt structures are about 28 kilometers away in the second. A telephoto lens also compresses the image a lot.
The entire panorama is a 145 megapixel image with a width of over 27,000 pixels!
A pure play of colors. Abstract. Rather atypical for me!
But since I love bold colors, as well as color and tonal contrasts, I was happy to see this motif on the display of my drone controller.
I ended up capturing it over a series of images, moving the drones forward a little after each photo. In the end, three images were stitched together to create this square format.
I had this lake on my wish list ever since I found it on google maps. Because of the color, I have to admit I really wanted to use the drone to capture it from an aerial perspective. The riverbed of the highland river in the foreground gives the picture even more depth. All the more reason to photograph from this direction.
The colors are typical for Iceland. Although not so often, because black and green usually predominate. But it was typically Icelandic — treeless! Brown soil, with erosion gullies cutting through different layers of earth give the motif something special. And then, in total color contrast to the brown, the turquoise of the lake surface.
This picture is one of my favorites of the Icelandic highlands, along with pictures of Mælifell, the mossy course of the river in black desert and pictures of Kerlingarfjöll.
The last day in the highlands was to take us into the black desert on another sunny day. It was great to finally be able to drive through the desert with good visibility and see the remains of volcanoes all around us. I found the different color so special here, which also stood out from the otherwise black surroundings.
In addition, the weathered basalt structures stand out against the smooth black surface of the surroundings. And to top it all off, I had the light in the right place!