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.

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.

After a fun week in Paris visiting the museums and monuments I’m catching up on my images and posting a few items here and on Flickr. Paris has so much energy and life, a different beast from the cities of California. I took this image of a cafe with the iconic Eiffel Tower in the background on our last night.