I am still on the west coast of Norway visiting my parents, and of course I have to venture out trying to get some shots. Mybe the most spectacular pieces of history around these parts is this old wooden church (Holdhus gamle kirke), that dates all the way back to 1306. Still looks impressive after all these years.
-Ray
Grytviken was the biggest whaling station in the Southern Oceans , when whaling was still being done down there. As a Norwegian it was quite fascinating to see the share size of the operation, and how big the industry was. As as we all know, what kind of impact it had on the whale population. The image is of a standard whaling ship that is beach in the harbour of the complex, and is possible to see from site, that today serves a kind of museum.
-Ray
This is remembrance of yesteryear. There are a lot of old abandoned whaling stations all over the southern oceans , and today they are manly rusty pieces of history. Image is shot at the old whaling station at “Stromness bay” in South Georgia.
-Ray
The port of Stanley in the Falkland Islands is a quite fascinating place. And one of the major attractions is this iron Barque , the “Lady Elizabeth”, that beached and became shipwrecked here in 1913, and in 1936 she drifted to where she currently i located in a small cove just outside the town. I think she is quite the sight, and for those of you have seen my maritime images, I enjoy presenting them in black and white , and with a little grain to bring out the “history”.
-Ray
Today is geology day. I have to admit, this was kind of new to me, but still… Around my hometown there are a lot of famous mountain, and the most famous is Torghatten that have a gigantic hole thru the entire mountain, and is quite the phenomenon in the geology field. You get a sense of the size of this hole in the image below. So today there where an excursion up to the mountain, and a professor gave a lecture about the mountain and how it have been shaped and so on. Very nice hike, and quite interesting lecture.
-Ray
Another from the archive, but previously not shown. This is shot at the mighty Mekong river in Vietnam last year. A very interesting place to be, with a lot of history and culture. The Mekong is the lifeline, and todays image is of what I guess are some local fisherman that are out doing what they to, surrounded by stunning scenery.
-Ray
Here is a little history from one of Antigua`s large tourist attractions. The Betty`s Hope suger plantation
This little quote is from http://www.antigua-barbuda.org. :
Betty’s Hope was the first large sugar plantation on Antigua, and its success led to the island’s rapid development of large-scale sugar production. Although the only surviving structures are two stone sugar mills and the remains of the stillhouse, the site’s importance in Antiguan history has prompted the government to begin developing it as an open air museum. About a hundred stone windmill towers dot the Antiguan landscape, and the two restored examples at Betty’s Hope provide a dramatic sense of the way these mills must have dominated the island during the hundreds of years that sugar production was the dominant industry. Betty’s Hope was built by Sir Christopher Codrington, who came to Antigua in 1674 from Barbados, and was named for his daughter.
Here is a image in HDR that I took of the structures
-Ray
This natural phenomena is located on the eastern shores of Antigua.
It have a grim history, and hence the name. This little text is a quote from http://www.antiguanice.com.
“On the east coast of the island is the famous Devil’s Bridge. Devil’s Bridge was call so because a lot of slaves from the neighboring estates use to go there and throw themselves overboard. That was an area of mass suicide, so people use to say the Devil have to be there. The waters around Devil’s Bridge is always rough and anyone fall over the bridge never come out alive”.
Still. The site it self is quite spectacular:
-Ray
My hometown was as many other places during WW2 a place of strategic importance. And to be able to protect it during its occupation the Germans made a lot fortifications.
There structures still exists today, and here are some images.
This is a small bunker
A searchlight for locating planes
A artillery gun
One of the underground caves that connects the different parts of the fortification
Here are a small movie that shows how the fortification looks from the inside, it is no light, and the filming is not that good, but I hope you get an ide of how it looks.
Here you have a overview image of the site, and you can se the strategic value with the town in the background, and its proximity to the shipping lanes.
