I was lucky to be asked up to visit the late summer harvest at a farm near Davis. They were in the midst of collecting melons and tomatoes for delivery around the country and were busy running the operation. The workers and hosts were kind enought to stop in the middle of their busy schedules to give our group an insight into the logistics, visit the different operations, let us wander around the farm equipment and enjoy the process. It was a relatively cool day, nowhere near the normal 100+ degrees you would expect at this time of year, but even so this is hard, hard work and all of us ought to think about this when we dine on the wonderful fruits and vegetables that are produced in California.

Below is an image of the honeydew melon harvest operation, a coordination between planting, order requirements, packaging and ripeness. To get the honeydews into your house at the right time takes a knowledgable and experienced farm owner, that’s why the imports from Hondorous and South America that we are faced with in the Winter are tasteless, they have to travel large distances and consequently are not picked at the peek of ripeness. But last weekend I was able to taste the fruit stright from the field, hand selected – these are the best melons I’ll even be lucky enough to enjoy.

Since it was an old family farm you can bet there were all kinds of old equipment, tools and machinery lying around. Here’s a photo of an old Catapillar tractor that was sitting around. The whole place was loaded with potential and I’ll be posting a few more images from here in the near future.

In the heart of Copenhagen, a few steps from Nyhaven is the wonderful shopping street of Strøget – a pedestrian walk way typical of Europe with lots of side streets to wander down and many places to explore. During the Christmas season the whole area is a blaze of decorations and lights. We passed by the Illums store many times and the display while we were visiting was quite eye catching with changing lights colors and the remarkable amount of decoration involved. The days were short and dark, making the light shows look amazing all day long – it doesn’t even get to “dawn” much before 8:30am in deep winter and it’s dark by about 4pm (and usually cold all day long). I spent a lot of time wandering the streets before most people were even stirring and the shops were shut tight. We were lucky enoguh to be staying Nyhaven right on the central canal there and got to see the best of Copenhagen. Quite a wonderful city and very pedestrian (and bicycle for that matter) friendly, I wish cities in the US could figure it out rather than catering to the gas guzzling automobiles that clutter our streets, it’s so nice to wander on foot without traffic to deal with.

This old boat sits beached at the edge of Point Reyes National Seashore in Tomales Bay, a short drive north of San Francisco. I was driving by one day and noticed that I could walk right out to it. The clouds looked great and there were some nice reflections going on with what water remained from the outgoing tide. The boat is called the Point Reyes and is like a welcoming sign to the National Seashore. Tomales Bay is the ending path of the San Andreas fault, which runs most of the length of California, it’s here where the fault continues out to sea. The bay is also a birthing ground for great white sharks and is famous for its oysters.

We were camping a few hours north of Reykjavik, in Stykkisholmur, the ferry terminal to the Northwestern Fjords. I got up early on a misty, foggy morning to do a little exploration in the local area. The clouds were grey and heavy and there was not much hope for any light. But as I was exploring Helgafell (this hill is mentioned in the Sagas as an entrance to Valhalla) the sun broke through in the far distance and lit up these hills on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula for a few minutes.

© Jon Bertsch

Taken with a Nikon D200, Tamron 70-210mm. Processed with Photomatix Pro and Photoshop CS5.

Notre Dame was built from around 1163 to 1290 and parts of the rose windows date from that time. They are a magnificent site as you visit the ancient cathedral and it is amazing to think these have managed to survive so many years. I found a reasonably quiet area and set up for some long exposures of 2-8 seconds, but it was pretty hard to get an unrestricted view with all the visitors passing by. In the end I used a single exposure as the basis for an image and selected several different RAW exposures to use for a HDR image. Light was hitting the vaulted ceiling of the transept from the rose window and from several windows to the left and right of the image, the longish exposure helped burn some of the light into the sand coloured limestone that is used for buildings all over Paris.

Iceland is home to some of the best volcanic spots in the World. Stay on the boardwalks and don’t go wandering around though – nearly every year someone ignores the signs and gets into trouble. I wanted to show the steam with the volcanic debris and ash surrounding the boardwalk (without any people) to give a sense of the sparseness and color these areas have. The stream running through the area was boiling hot as well.

© Jon Bertsch

Taken with a Nikon D200, 17-55mm @ 17mm. Processed with Photomatix Pro and Photoshop CS5.