fred wobus . com

Bled castle

While this album has already been online a little while I forgot to post a notice here. The photos were taken on a short trip to the small town of Bled in Slovenia. I followed the wedding invitation of a friend and used the spare time between all the festivities to head out into the country which sports an achingly beautiful landscape.

Vintgar gorge

Bled is dominated by the mountain lake, which apparently offers great conditions for rowing and at all times of day I could see various keen sportsmen training in their thin long boats. I got the best views over the lake from the fairytale castle - and the best view of the castle and the lake is from the Straza hills on the opposite lake shore.

Not far from Bled is Vintgar gorge. The icy water, the cool crisp air and the mossy smell create a sensory overload full of great photo opportunities. That’s where the latter part of album was taken. Most were taken on a tripod to get the silky flowing water effect and some images were enhanced using HDR techniques (taking multiple frames at varying exposures to increase dynamic range in the resulting composite image).

See the whole album “Slovenia 2008” below:

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Smeatons Tower

Haytor in evening sun

A new photo album has gone online in the Travelling & Holidays & Short trip section of my photo gallery. I recently went to visit some friends in the South-West of England and here are some landscape and sightseeing photos from that trip:

Trip to Devon 2007

Locations include Okehampton, Plymouth, Fort Bovisand, Haytor (Dartmoor) and others.

See all the photos in the album Trip to Devon 2007 below:

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When I visited North Sulawesi in Indonesia in spring 2007 I met a wonderful local guide named Bagus Lesmana. He was great company on a week long trek across the Minahasa highlands – a traditional region around the provincial capital Manado.

Bagus runs a tour company “Matahatikita” with his mate Eddie and they’ll organize all sorts of tours in the area. Bagus is also a dive guide, who can show guests the underwater delights of Bunaken National, the Togean islands or Lembeh Straits.

With Bagus I went on an overland trek only as I already had other bookings for diving. Some of regions highlights, like the Tinoor waterfall, are only known to a couple of guides and have therefore been visited by only very few western tourists.

So if you’re heading up to Manado or Lembeh and want to more of the magical countryside, give him a shout. All the contact details are on his homepage. Bagus is a good bloke who knows his stuff.

Matahatikita

Tell him, Fred sent you :-)

Church of Our Saviour

The unusual title of this post (lit. stairs to heaven) is the name of a 1997 film by danish director Nils Vest about the architect Lauritz de Thurah who constructed in 1748 the magnificent spire and its spiral staircase for the Vor Frelsers Kirke (Church of Our Saviour) in Copenhagen.

Spiral staircase

I have yet to see the film, but reading about it made me think about the Vor Frelsers spire and other stairs. So I compiled 15 photos of steps and staircases from around the world.

See all photos in the Steps & Staircases album below:

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I recently wrote about Lembeh Straits and its abundance of black sand flats that attract divers from all over the world for their rare and unusual underwater creatures. One might get the ever so slight impression that critter hunting was a pasttime for anoraks – fish spotters and people with species check lists to tick off.

The Red Sea

Soft coral

Coast near Marsa Alam

The Red Sea is much more your ordinary sort of dive spot. The water is warm, blue and clear, the fish are colourful and plenty and the reefs are huge and densely overgrown with corals. Jacques Cousteau would have had a field day there. Well, actually he did…

… and so did I !

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