Memories

Lens-Artists Challenge #53 – Your Choice

/ Leya / 139 kommentarer
New Zealand is not a small country, but a large village – Peter Jackson

There is real purity in New Zealand…It’s actually not an easy thing to find in our world anymore – Elijah Wood

Today is a very special day for us here at Lens-Artists – the one year anniversary of our Challenge. While we were all initially saddened by the discontinuation of the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge, for us it became an opportunity to expand our blogging horizons and to create some amazing new friendships.

I feel that New Zealand is my second home.  – Luke Evans

On our end, we have transitioned from four independent photography bloggers to a tightly-knit team that supports, encourages and helps each other as we develop and create our weekly challenges. We’ve also been fortunate to have expanded our follower base thanks to bloggers like you who support and inspire us.

Toitū te whenua (Leave the land undisturbed).

As a result, our challenge has become near and dear to each of our hearts. We’ve gone well beyond being individual members of a team and have become four good friends.  We are tremendously thankful to you for your appreciation of our efforts; and for making us smile or feel touched by your responses.  As our thank you for your support and encouragement, we’re suggesting that you respond to today’s challenge with any subject that’s near and dear to YOUR hearts, as we’ve done with our images today. If you’d prefer some guidance, choose any of the four subjects we’ve selected this week (Friendship, A country that’s special to you, Imagination and Connected).

We are a proud nation of more than 200 ethnicities, 160 languages, and amongst that diversity we share common values. – Jacinda Ardern

Each of us has included several captures that are special to us in some way.

Mine are from a country and people that occupies a special place in my heart – New Zealand. Aotearoa is the Māori name – and the most popular meaning usually given is the ”land of the long white cloud”. A strikingly diverse Nature,  warm-hearted People with strong Environmental care and – an insane sense of humour! It is also the country in which JRR Tolkien’s characters so naturally belong. New Zealand opened its arms to me – and I immediately felt at home there.  I would never have guessed that our blogging community could feel like ”home” too – but it does. It is a privilege to host this challenge once a month.

I’ve learned that home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling.
― Cecelia Ahern

Thank you again from the bottom of our hearts for making this such a terrific experience. If you have a subject that you feel might inspire us, please feel free to suggest it – we’d love to hear from you.  Should you be new to our challenge and interested in joining us, please click here and be sure to include the Lens-Artists TAG so we can all find you. Happy Blogging to all of our loyal followers and friends, and Happy Anniversary to us!

Whatungarongaro te tangata toitū te whenua

(As man disappears from sight, the land remains) This demonstrates the holistic values of the Maori, and the utmost respect of Papatuanuku, Mother Earth.

 

Have you seen these

Each week on Lens-Artists, we highlight several responses from among our followers. This special week we’d like to thank ALL of our followers for their thoughtful, funny, often-feisty and always wonderful posts. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do, and will continue to join us as we move into year two of the Lens-Artists Challenge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday Thoughts – Revival

/ Leya / 17 kommentarer

The weather is very warm and inviting for bicycle rides these last days of June. So my daughter and I decided to spend some time with the old Flora in hand. When the children were younger, we always did every summer, so today meant sweet memories.

We brought water as well, and biked for some hours, just enjoying each others’ company in the lovely summer fields. And wow, how much one forgets about flower names…

I used to be very good at their names… We also fell in love with this little, quite lovely, mushroom – looking like it was planted right there by someone, on the road.

And, to our greatest joy, we met some Highland Cattle. My absolute favorites.

Somehow they always look so relaxed, and I love their colours. I am not really comfortable having to cross a meadow where they are grazing though – they are said to be rather grumpy.

A lovely day –

 

Thursday Thoughts – A Life’s Work

/ Leya / 42 kommentarer

Söderto is a tiny place in the southern part of Skåne, Sweden, where Karl-Göran Persson built a fortress for himself, his family and friends – in case of an attack from Russia. Karl-Göran died in 1975, and he had spent his whole life building and reinforcing this fortress.

One day we decided to try and find it, all of us intrigued by the story. So this spring we went, the three of us. And it became a strange adventure, a day to remember. You can come along if you want to…

It is not a very big place, Söderto, and the remains of his own home nearby were gone.

Karl-Göran was a simple man, a single farmer, and well known in the neighborhood for his warm heart, for his building and for his transporting all material on his bicycle.

He even mastered setting rails and railroad ties into the fortress – all by himself. The thought was to build a balcony.

He used what he could find to reinforce his fortress, be it iron beds, chamber pots, baskets or bicycle parts. Look closely at the pictures, and maybe you will find them…

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After so many years of withering down, it is not advised to go inside anymore. But…

there is a friendly silence, a loving atmosphere when you walk here… you can feel his spirit still being there – in his life’s work.

A soft whisper in the fields, and the beauty of the landscape touches your soul.

Thinking of him, Karl-Göran, I believe he would have loved it that we came all that way to visit. And how much we enjoyed it too.

Just see how beautifully the villagers keep his memory.

 

 

Friendly Friday Photo Challenge – Revisited

/ Leya / 52 kommentarer

Amanda asks us to revisit this Friendly Friday, and I have chosen Iceland. We have visited several times, and never tire of this magical saga country. This summer we are going back again, to the western part of Iceland, and to revisit Vestmannaeyar.

Seljalandsfoss 2006 – in the header, 2016 and winter.

Gullfoss winter 2016 and summer 2006.

And the mesmerizing lava fields, 2006, just have to have it again!

Thank you, Amanda, for a chance to remember and revisit!

 

 

Thursday Thoughts – Fryksås Winters…

/ Leya / 49 kommentarer

Suddenly I remembered all those years we every winter went to Fryksås in Dalarna,  and stayed at the Fäbodvall in a typical old cottage from the 19th century – or older. When I look up Fäbod in English, it says shieling/sheeling – small huts were farmers used to spend their summers in the mountain pastures, looking after their cattle.

We used to go skiing in the hills and the dogs had great fun. The children were not that old, so they went skiing with us, but also used the hills for other ways of sliding down on the snow…

And I miss those days. No TV or radio, no electric lights – only the sun and candle light. The long evenings after skiing and playing in the snow, we played card games or board games, and read books together. The beds for the children were still like in the old days, called skåpsängar – in English box-beds or closed beds.

We all loved it. We kept going there until 2010. And do you know – the children  never missed their electric gadgets, and neither did my husband or I.

Lens Artists Photo Challenge #27: My Travels

/ Leya / 73 kommentarer

”Some of us choose our travel designations based on the iconic nature of the place. My trip to Peru was no exception.”

Thank you,

Amy, for giving us the opportunity to reflect upon our travels – because everybody travels sometime, somehow and somewhere. It does not have to be to faraway countries – we can also travel inside.

Some of my most intense travels – growing my self – important travels, were those I made as a young woman. Without a camera. I grew up with books, and many of them were about foreign jungles, rain forests, arctic areas and deserts.

My nose was always in a book, and in my mind I longed to see all those fantastic places and animals, meet those other cultures so different from my own.

Never did I guess I would get the opportunity to see so many of those places with my own eyes.

The extensive traveling started when I was 16 and met a young man who had reached the age for a driver’s license (18 in Sweden) – and, had a car of his own. We traveled through the whole of Europe for three summers. Then we decided to take the step over to Asia and a country much dreamed of – Nepal. Annapurna and Mount Everest, bicycle through the Kathmandu valley, Ox cart down in Chitwan. In the mountains we stayed at a bungalow owned by a Gurkha soldier. I had read that an Indian field marshal once stated something like: ”If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha.” Respect. Still no camera – my fellow traveler had one though.

All photos from our travels for the next 20 years are slides, dia positives. We never look at them.

All those years…Nepal, India, Russia, the Trans-Siberian Railway, Egypt, China, Iceland, Greenland, Peru…Yes, Peru too – now Amy got me wanting to open up those old dia frames again…

But, I have stopped wanting to visit places I have been…you don´t have to wait long before they look completely different and have lost that glory you remember from your first visit…I hate it how we destroy the originality of places, islands, countries, people… And we change ourselves as well, as we grow.

My travels. They started in the 70´s and hopefully they are not over yet. 43 years of growing up on the road, meeting remarkable people, living spectacular moments. The world opened my eyes – teaching me tolerance, patience, love…and how very much we resemble each other, we are the same all over the world, in fact one big family…So, let us work together to make this world a better place! Sustainable. Let love and caring for nature and each other rule.

Let us build bridges – not walls. We are all connected.

 

Thursday Thoughts – The Forest is Down

/ Leya / 43 kommentarer

Today was going to be a lovely hiking day – sun promised and no wind. I decided for the Bockeboda forest – looking forward to a bright winter’s day. I told Totti and Milo where we were heading, and they knew what to expect already in the early morning.

10 minutes into our walk, we found these tracks…and soon, the sound of forest machines reached our ears. Then we heard a huge tree falling. Some minutes later, I realized the forest ahead was gone.

We had great difficulties in finding the track – if you ever have walked in familiar forests, you follow the paths and know exactly what trees will be standing where. I guess it is the same in cities – if they tear down your familiar buildings and streets, you are lost.

This photo was taken some weeks ago – who would have guessed it was to be the last one from this beautiful forest?

Milo is standing in exactly the same place as in the previous photo – maybe thinking…Where did my forest go? My playground, my hiking favorite? Well, today every tree was down, piled up, waiting to be transported away from where they were raised for as long as I have lived – around 60-65 years.

The path back home again seemed a bit bleak, or maybe it was because of my tears.

Thursday Thoughts – We Must Make it Work!

/ Leya / 29 kommentarer

My post from November 30, 2017, a year ago – I thought a reminder to us all would not hurt. What do you want to give your children and grand children for the future?

 

Every December I remember our month in New Zealand some years ago. Never have I been to a country where I found so much and so many to admire and love.

This is where our antipodes live, this is where I had one of my first penfriends, this is the country whose nature I believe to be the most diverse and beautiful in the world. And this is where Rainbow Warrior went down, sending many people around the world into an unbelievable state of shock.

We are constantly reminded of how much we contaminate our world, and the focus here in Swedish media, right now,  is the sea, the oceans.

Just like in Wellington, we can still bathe, swim and fish in Stockholm – but for how long?

I am a member of many organizations trying their best to help preserving our planet for generations to come. But right now, we receive news every day about all the plastic and micro plastic in the oceans – a terrible threat to all organisms-

So, I think again, with my heart wide open, about how much I respect and love NZ, its people and its genuine efforts to help the world stay healthy. Down to every detail… for example the artwork made for making us humans see and do the right things.

And these are only two, small,  brilliant examples out of many, many…we saw new examples every day.

Hopefully it is not too late for the world – but You and I, and all of us, have to do our bit, our part, every day – to save our enigmatic and fantastic planet. Start with the little things…don’t use plastic bags, bring your own when you go shopping. Don’t throw old medicine in the toilet, in Sweden we leave them at the pharmacy for destruction.

Can you say you try to do everything you can to help? I know I try – but I also know I can do so much more.