Merry Christmas!

Now, I promised you one of my more 'special' Christmas shots, and I do believe that this one qualifies! As I mentioned in my previous post, Christmas is, besides a time of joy, also the time of year, when we forget everything about style, design and colour coordination and instead fill our homes with all sorts of weird and, yes, special stuff. This tendency is also part of what I find to be the essense of Christmas, and therefore I will, on this 24th of December, try to give reason for a smile or two by sharing Rudolf with you.

The shot is from Tivoli, a Danish amusement park in Copenhagen, which every December is filled with lights, decorations and all kinds of Christmassy things like, for instance, the display above with Rudolf dragging Santa's sleigh.

And on that cheerful note, I wish you all a very merry Christmas, and may all your wishes come true

Christmas time

Earlier this month - on the first day of Christmas - I promised you a more 'Christmassy' shot. Since then, I have been carrying my camera with me, annoying people around me by suddenly stopping in the middle of my path to immortalise some odd motive. This has resulted in a number of pictures, some beautiful - and some simply quite special.

The one I want to share with you today is, in my opinion, of the former kind. To me it captures some of the spirit of Christmas, as this is, as we say in Danish 'hjerternes fest' (roughly translates into 'celebration of hearts').

Christmas is about family, joy, love and peace - and about cosyness, decorations and lights to light up the darkness during this first of the winter months. Therefore, the macro shot of this tiny Christmas heart, captured at a moment when the sun shone in the window, is among my favourite frames taken during the last couple of weeks.

However, Christmas is also about weird stuff . About filling your house with all sorts of crazy elfs, reindeer and santa figures, which you would, at any other time of the year, look at with dismay and ban from your home immediately. But during December, these lovely, though strange, creatures find their way into our homes and our hearts. But that is a whole other story, for which I have one of the more 'special' shots in store for you some time during the next couple of days.

Frostbite

After the very picturesque sunset, I thought it was time for something more fun. Riding my bike home from work today, I got to thinking about this picture, which I took a little less than two years ago. The reason I thought of it was that it is getting cold in Denmark! And riding home the air had a frosty bite to it, like the sensation you get just before it starts to snow. This could, though, be caused by the weather reports promising (or threatening, depending how you look at it) snow tomorrow and during the weekend. Well, no matter why I thought of snow, the combination of that sensation and the Christmas decorations in the shops and streets (though it is still November), reminded me of this picture.

Like with the sunset, it is taken in Aarhus, close to where I lived then. A local kindergarten had a couple of goats hiding in a shed from the cold - clever animals indeed! I, however, had come to a different conclusion and ran around with my camera - the bright sun on the pure, white snow was simply too beautiful not to go look at - and photograph.

So when I came up to the fence, the goats, clever yet very curious as they are, came running towards me. And this little fellow found himself nippling at a seasoned Christmas tree (get the pun? - I'm simply filled with humour of a questionable kind today). So there the motive was - and there I was - fortunately with my camera.

On a different note, though the Christmas decorations reminded me of this picture, it is actually taken in January, which probably explains why the tree is there in the first place.

Finally, I know that I don't have that many readers yet - actually only one, if I'm correct, but anyone who might stumple across my site here is welcome to comment, if they like.

Now that's it for today - enjoy the upcoming weekend - with or without snow.