Solstice sunset, ul. Gogolińska, Jeziorki

The shortest day of the year is behind us. From now on, the days will be getting longer, the sun will set slightly later - although it is not until 5 January that the sun will rise earlier. Today, the time from sunrise to sunset in Warsaw was seven hours and 43 minutes. And 12 seconds. Four seconds more than yesterday

Out to catch that setting sun. Below: from the platform of W-wa Jeziorki station. In the foreground, the muddy pool churned up by the contractor's vehicles is freezing over; today's daytime high was +2C, and as the sun sets, the temperature at ground level falls below zero.

Across ul. Karczunkowska, down ul. Gogolinska to take the photo (below) from the top of one of the ballast mountains by the tracks. The sun sets through the trees... Let me change perspective and zoom in a bit...

The trees - silver birches without leaves and various conifers - lining ul. Gogolińska are now brought in closer...

And I zoom in again (to 600mm equivalent) to catch the sun through the branches of the fir trees.

Turning south, a Lufthansa Airbus A380 cross the heavens, the condensation trails from its four giant turbofan engines still lit by the sun that's already dipped below the horizon for those of us down at ground level.

Below: my brother has rendered my photo (seen originally here) in the style of German artist Anselm Kiefer, catching the atmosphere of the late afternoon in winter with a light frost and a dusting of snow.

Three more months of gloom before the clocks go forward at the end of March. But even the gloomiest days of the year can yield artistic inspiration.

Tomorrow sees the beginning of the annual Yuletide pilgrimage (Luton-Ealing-Duffield-Stockport-Duffield-Ealing-Luton).

This time last year:
Conspiracy to celebrate

This time two years ago:
The Mythos and the Logos in Russia

This time three years ago:
Going mobile - I get a smartofon

This time four years ago:
The end was meant to end today (remember?)

This time five years ago:
First snow - but proper snow?

The time six years ago:
Dense, wet, rush hour snow

This time seven years ago:
Evening photography, Powiśle

This time eight years ago:
The shortest day of the year

This time nine years ago:
Bye bye borders - Poland joins Schengen

Compositions in blue and white

Weather-wise, the appearance of cloudless skies and bright sunshine after a fortnight of February gloom has brought good cheer, and a some rays of optimism. The temperature today rose from -1C at dawn to +9C in the afternoon

Photo recipe: Take a brilliant blue sky, place a circular polarising filter on to your lens (the wider the lens the better), find a white subject, position yourself between the sun and the subject, turn the filter until maximum contrast is obtained, and snap.

Stare at leafless trunks of the slender silver birch trees of Jeziorki. Enlarge the photos, stare at them, and use your will to bring on the spring...

Some suburban blue and white... Across the tracks from Mysiadło, the Little Boxes estate.

And finally - blue and silver. Still my favourite skyscraper in town (although the Cosmopolitan building is very attractive too), Rondo ONZ One. Photo taken yesterday afternoon.

Five weeks until the start of astronomical spring, six weeks until the clocks go forward. Lent starts on Wednesday.

This time three years ago:
Waiting for the change to come

This time four years ago
A wetter Poland?

This time six years ago:
Heavy overnight snow

This time seven years ago:
Changing Jeziorki skyline

Silver birches and blue skies

After a rather overcast Saturday and a Sunday in which hail showers competed with sunshine, a return to blue skies. Walking to Platan Park this morning, I snapped this stand of young silver birches near the north end of ul. Poloneza.

And later, heading for W-wa Powiśle station, the leafless crowns of some mature silver birches in the Rydz-Śmigły park along ul. Kruczkowskiego. In both cases, the contrast between the whiteness of the tree trunks set against the blueness of the sky (enhanced by a polarising filter) grabs the eye.

Weather continuing to look good for tomorrow and Wednesday. I'm glad that the late winter is dry - the water table needs to get back to normal levels if we're to avoid a repeat of last spring's flooding.

This time two years ago:
Wetlands, late winter (2009)

This time three years ago:
Wetlands, late winter (2008)

Another winter walk to work

I have proved that it is quicker in winter to walk the five and half km to Platan Park to work in the morning than it is to walk to the bus stop, stand in wretched traffic jams, and walk from Puławska to Platan Park. The walk is more aesthetically pleasing anyway. So off we go. Below: frozen wetlands, ul. Trombity. Silver birches blend in with the snowy landscape.

Below: frozen flooded fields and orchards, ul. Kórnicka. Temperature: just below zero.

Below: Narrowest point of ul. Poloneza; a car cannot pass a pedestrian here.

Below: out on the perimeter - taxi zone 2 starts here. Though 'going south of the river after dark' would be preferable to a London cabbie to driving down ul Poloneza.

Below: would you believe the muddy, narrow, rutted track in the two photos above gets carried over the nascent S2 South Warsaw Ring Road here. Same road. The cost of building the viaduct here is 100 times greater than asphalting the rest of this appalling thoroughfare.

Click here to see the same place on my 50th birthday. What a difference.

Autumn colours locally

Another day of outstanding natural beauty to revel in! Hardly a wisp of cloud from dawn to dusk, a daytime high of +12C, southeasterly wind.

Left: A full moon setting over ul. Trombity met my gaze as I opened the bedroom curtains this morning. It's just gone seven.

Once the household chores are completed, I take two short walks around the immediate vicinity of the house, to catch the autumnal atmospheres of Jeziorki.

Above: ul. Nawłocka, looking across to houses backing off ul. Trombity. The potato fields have been ploughed, a fallow field of mugwort immediately behind.

Above: Looking towards the northernmost end of ul. Trombity from the footpath to the tracks. Bushes with rosehips on either side of the path, which local people gather at this time of year.

Above and below: Despite three weeks with hardly any rain and much sunshine, water levels in the wetlands between ul. Trombity, Kórnicka and Dumki is still high, and still impossible to traverse Dumki without wellingtons (which I notice have become all the rage in town). Notice the solitude and tranquility that Jeziorki affords. Just nine miles from the centre of Warsaw.


A smell that's an integral part of this season - smoke from bonfires wafts across ul. Kórnicka. Owners of summerhouses (działki) are spending the last weekends before the frosts set in sweeping leaves and burning them.

Walking along, I become aware that each autumn does have its own character, formed by the particular weather patterns of the year. When the leaves turn gold, and how intensively they do so, and when they start falling, is determined by rainfall, watertable, sunlight and winds. Last October was characterised by an early snowfall on the 14th.

And 2008 was characterised by warmth as well as sunlight, temperatures on the last Saturday of October hit +19.8C. If I can use the word in the context of a mere four years' observation, October 2007 was more like the average October I have come to expect in Warsaw.

Strolling homeward past another stand of birches looking splendid against a deep blue sky in the strong sunlight. I feel profound gratitude for being able to sense the wonder of the turning seasons. Consciousness is our greatest gift.

A touch of frost in the garden

Ah! What a beautiful start to the day. The temperature dipped below zero in the early hours, enough to cover the lawn and shrubberies with a light ground frost (szron as opposed to szadź, the latter being fog freezing onto trees.)

Bad bad news too. Number one - I opened my curtains to see a molehill on the lawn - the first since last winter. I have a patented method now for dealing with the critters - send an e-mail to me for more details! Number two - light though the frost was, it burst a pipe (or rather a joint between pipe and tap) in the outdoor watering system. Someone had forgotten to turn off the water going into the garden.

Above: the silver birches at the end of the garden this the morning, looking resplendent with their gold leaves against a clear blue sky (enhanced by polarising filter).

Homage to Ansel Adams

As I pointed out a few posts back, April marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Ansel Adams, my favourite photographer. Today's walk was in his honour. Below: the Jeziorki wetlands, taken from the ul. Dumki side.

Whenever asked which camera he used, Adams would always reply, "the biggest I can carry." He tended to use the 10"x8" view camera, always on a tripod. The negative, some 60 times larger in surface area than a 35mm negative, yielded results of the highest possible quality.

Above: Silver birches on ul. Trombity. To ensure the pictures were in as sharp focus as possible, Adams would opt for fine-grain, low-sensitivity film, long exposures and small apertures. Which is what I aimed to do today. All these pictures were taken with the camera on my sturdy wooden tripod, exposures from 1/5th to 1/20th second at f22 to f25. ISO on the Nikon D80 only goes down to 100.

Above: Narrow potato field alongside ul. Nawłocka. I wonder what Ansel Adams would have made of digital photography; whether he would have adapted to it or stayed true to large format film. And if he'd made the jump - when. Would he have been satisfied with 10 megapixels?

Above: view from ul. Nawłocka looking towards ul. Trombity. Adams was a perfectionist. It's much easier perfecting images digitally than chemically!

The Nikon D80 offers the option of shooting in B&W. Why would anyone wish to do that? Well, one thing it can do is in-camera filtering. I had this set to 'red', which darkens blue skies and makes red objects (such as the poppies in the foreground) lighter.

Sublime sunset, Jeziorki

Once again I find my mood lifted to a state of elation by the beauty of a Jeziorki sunset in winter. Walking back from the airport (see post below), I take the back road home along ul. Dumki. The last rays of the sun catch the tall birch trees against a pure cloudless sky.

What remains of last week's snow sets icy as the temperature falls back below zero. The warmth of the day radiates up into the clear sky. Apart from a few individuals walking their dogs, there's no one around, Jeziorki offers tranquility and solitude. This for me is the epitome of the sublime aesthetic.

Silver birches look particularly beautiful at dusk, when the glow of the setting sun is reflected in their bark, in contrast to the deepening blue of sky. I feel the cold; leaving home in the early afternoon, I left the quilted liner of the my field jacket behind as it would have been too warm. Now I could do with that and with some thick gloves. Below: Low sun glaring off a tin fence recently erected around a building plot.

Below: The sun going down over the reed beds towards the far end of ul. Dumki backlights rushes in the wetlands. In the background, houses on ul. Trombity.

This time last year:
Sun rises before alarm clock goes off

In search of quintessential autumnal Jeziorki

Arriving at W-wa Jeziorki by double decker train, I walked back home the long way, seeking the very essence of what makes Jeziorki such a wonderful place to live. This is the fourth Sunday in a row with dawn-to-dusk cloudless skies, though sunset today, after the clocks went back, was shortly after four pm.

Jeziorki's spirit of place is here, by the tracks, planes taking off into the warm southerly wind, the trumpeting of the pheasants, the silver birches, golden leaves rustling, new houses, old houses; a lovely day.

Good to be here, Jeziorki JZ. Time to give thanks for all one has. For tomorrow, the unmitigated awfulness of commuting begins for another week. Warsaw needs more public transport.

Wetlands in late winter

I strolled down to the end of ul. Trombity in my wellies to check out the wetlands at their wettest. Water levels are high, too high to wade. So I skirt round the shoreline towards ul. Dumki. No sign of frogs or gulls. I did see a hare - so big, at first sight I thought it was a deer. It was too quick for me to shoot. I saw it in the same place that I caught it last spring. Below: Looking across the reedbeds; houses on ul. Dumki in the distance.

The Frost Gods return

A very mild overnight snowfall. I set off for a walk after breakfast (soyaburgers - I'm beginning to dislike them). Outside, the snow was neither deep nor crisp nor even, warmed by the sun and blown across fields by a strong northerly wind. At the end of ul. Trombity, I gingerly crept down to the edge of the frozen reed beds - I could hear the ice creaking - and in went my right foot (that black patch on the right). Fortunately only up to my ankle, so I came away with dry feet. I wonder how many days of frost are needed to solidify standing water so as one can walk on it - I read once that the Vistula needs nine days at -9C for it to be safe to walk across.

The sun shone beautifully, the daytime high today was -3C. Nice winter's day - shame there wasn't more snow. Above: the north end of ul. Trombity - this could be Minnesota.

I turned left onto the unmade footpath that's ul. Kórnicka, leading to the tracks. This is my usual circuit for a weekend stroll, length around four kilometres. On the other side of the railway line is a small copse of self-sown silver birches, which looked utterly resplendent, the vertical white against the deep blue of the sky (enhanced, I must say, by a circular polarising filter).

Mild spell continues, ground frost persists

Although not quite as warm as yesterday, with the daytime high hitting +5.5C, the strong sunlight made it spring-like for the third day in a row. So a good day for two walks around Jeziorki. Above: Some of the more traditional architecture on ul. Karczunkowska.

I walked across the fields to the rampa na kruszywo, crossing a frozen drainage ditch.

Now, although last night's minimum air temperature did not fall below zero (indeed at 22:30 in the centre of Warsaw it was +6C!), there was ground frost out in the suburbs.

The ditch stays in the shadow all day long, so the ice here was still thick enough to walk on (below).

However, around the corner, a few days' worth of late-afternoon sunshine managed to peek into the ditch, melting the ice and leaving three distinct layers between where the water once was (below).

Searching for autumnal perfection

Autumn in Jeziorki is truly hitting its aesthetic peak - the leaves are gold, but largely still on the trees. November in Polish is listopad - literally, 'leaf-fall'. By the end of this month, the trees will be bare. But while they're in leaf, and gold, and sun shines, I am driven to record autumnal perfection. Above: The far end of ul. Trombity, a WizzAir Airbus A319 inbound to land. Below: Silver birches and greenhouses, ul. Dumki.

 

As I stroll along ul. Dumki I contemplate upon the nature of Man's aesthetic faculty. It's better developed in some than in most. What's the evolutionary benefit? How does being able to find beauty in art, music, poetry, landscape, architecture - how does this improve your genes' chances of biological success? Surely physical attractiveness, intelligence and drive are all - or is there room in our make-up for a soul? Do people lacking aesthetic faculties lack soul? A significant question, for today is All Souls' Day, in Polish Zaduszki, a feast that has its roots in the pagan Slavonic celebration of Dziady - Forefathers.