Tag: winter

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contemplations Germany morning coffee talk Photography

Daily Coffee Talk~ 73/365

Hi again from Germany.

The sun is finally shining bright the and the days are starting to stretch and yawn loudly with the music of birds around here.

Where do the birds hide in winter time? You still see some of them here and there but as spring comes closer they start to sing their little hearts out in joy.

After another pandemic winter confinement, you can almost feel the urge in everyone to run outdoors and sing their song.

Hoping for a peaceful spring time of creativity and that the war that is threatening to happen in Europe fizzles down to sane talks instead. Because honestly, we need a break!

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children contemplations Germany inspiration morning coffee talk Photography

Daily Coffee Talk~56/365

Hi from a cold German Evening,

The world feels more and more alien to me with every passing day. 2022 is proving to be an even more intense transition into a changing future than the years that preceded it.

What kind of world are we leaving our children? They are a generation that was born and grew up in an accelerating age of technological advancement and an ever narrowing focus toward screens and social media with less and less connection to nature and its wonders.

How will they reconnect to what matters the most? How can we guide them towards a more harmonious, connected and natural state of affairs?

Maybe winter weather , shorter days and exploding covid numbers are promoting these thoughts and contemplations, but they are real and dominate my thoughts.

Good night from here and I hope you wake up to a bright new day full of promise and change to the better.

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contemplations Germany inspiration LEBANON morning coffee talk Photography

Daily Coffee Talk~51/365

So I am changing this to from morning to daily since more and more coffee is making its way into my day. I hope that you day is going very well and is filled with your favourite beverage of choice.

a Lebanese bee~

Since I got back from the Emirates more than 10 days ago, I have seen nothing but grey skies and rain in Germany. I miss the sun, I miss its warming rays, I miss Lebanon, I miss summertime and I miss the feeling of being outdoors all the time.

With photography I can travel in my mind to the sun, I can be where I was when I took the photograph and I can almost feel the warmth. Our minds are amazing like that, we build all kinds of connections through our senses that allow us to travel mentally to certain moments that we mark on the calendar of our life history.

Doesn’t a smell sometimes bring back to a special moment in time that had its impact on your life? It happens to me all the time, or a piece of music, or the taste of something.

And the sun just came out as I write this… funny how things work.

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contemplations Germany inspiration morning coffee talk Photography street photography

Morning Coffee Talk~24/365

Good Morning,

It’s cloudy here in North West Germany with clouds threatening to rain, and all feels ready to make a pause. Families are doing their last minute shopping and preparing for dinners at home with cozy lights, Christmas trees and gifts that get opened this evening. You can feel and see the excitement of children in their eyes.

It feels like a very good time to hit a reset button and settle into a contemplative place in oneself. For my daughter, it has always been the highlight (of several highlights) of the year and she counted the days till it finally arrived and the ceremony began.

I wish you all a healthy and peaceful Christmas and a gentle journey inwards if that is your aim.

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contemplations morning coffee talk Netherlands Photography street photography

Morning Coffee Talk~ 21/365

Good Morning,

Today the Winter Solstice takes place at 10:59 local time here in Germany. Our beautiful planet will start to swing her hips back the other way and tilt her axis to begin our journey into longer days. We start the astronomical winter today and changes are expected to happen, well because they actually do.

‘Solstice’ comes from the latin Solstitium mean literally ‘sun stand still’. Between summer time and now we saw the sun’s path in the sky move gradually from north to south. For a few days before and after the solstice, the sun’s path appears to show no change, so it stands still, before starting to change northwards, as our days get longer.

This is all incredibly fascinating to me, and we can never say that the celestial bodies we live on and around are ever boring. So much tradition and folklore exists throughout history about this event, but for us here now, I just want to acknowledge it, light a candle to signal the start of longer days and welcome the winter and what new possibilities my be lying in store for us.

Image taken on a bridge in Maastricht, Netherlands.

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CHINA contemplations Germany myanmar Photography street street photography

Morning Coffee Talk~18/365

young girl in Kashgar, 2011
woman in old alley, Shanghai, 2013
girl on bus, Yangon, 2016
girl behind train window, Istanbul, 2021

Good Morning,

It is winter in this part of the world and everyone spends a large part of their day indoors, seeing the world through window panes. How much of our lives is actually lived behind such barriers, in our cars, homes, schools, offices, airplanes, buses…

It feels like we see the world and the people around us through a frame, a view finder and that can only be part of the picture. How much does that influence our communication, tolerance, understanding of others, well-being, and humanity?

As the pandemic progresses, this lifestyle becomes more and more the normal way of going on and we are limited to our confined environments and lack of physical contact with others.

How many of our children are living mostly behind screens and communicating virtually with their friends? What influence will this have on our future as a human race?

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animation Fine art Germany morning coffee talk Photography

Morning Coffee Talk~ 8/365

Good morning,

This morning I smell winter in the air, and it smells calm, quiet, contained and protective. Can you smell the weather?

I thought for today to use some motion in the imagery that I chose. It’s a funny thing when you add some skills to your toolbox, you begin to see through them. I used to always dream of translating what I see into reality and with motion this becomes slowly a reality.

It is amazing how the world around us influences our mood, our state of being and how we then handle and merge with the day as we step into it. Today feels careful, but armed with well being of a quiet kind. With the imagery and snow videos I captured from last year I try to translate the feelings into imagery.

Thank you for joining me on this journey of discovery…

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contemplations Germany inspiration morning coffee talk Photography

Morning Coffee Talk~7/365

Good morning, it’s a little after 6 am. I love the early morning, the smell of the first cup of coffee, the calm that envelopes the world around me, the promise of the first light to come reminding me that I live on a spinning sphere, a mind boggling fact on its own.

My thoughts travel today to the balance needed in these times of increasing intensity. Everything seems to register on our lives with more power, life events, world happenings, personal changes,.. it’s all quite impactful and I have the sense it is not just me registering this.

It feels more important than ever to take a moment every now and then and weigh the balances, do a self check on personal well-being, and perform some necessary housekeeping internally.

The white blanket of passage into winter is here and it feels like a cloud of peace inside all the hurry and scurry of the world.

I wish you a peaceful next weeks of crossing into the new year that I am certain will bring its own surprises and changes.

The images were taken earlier this month and last month in Duesseldorf, Germany.

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art contemplations Germany inspiration morning coffee talk Photography

Morning Coffee Talk~ 3/265

The early days of Covid-19

Good morning from my desk somewhere in Germany on a cold winter day. It is dark still before 6 am with our very short daylight hours at this time of year. Candles are lit, Christmas lights are on outside and that makes the world around me brighter and cosier.

I created this photo with my daughter in the image at the start of the pandemic when we all was still new, unknown, and in our minds a very temporary state of affairs. Here we are now almost 2 years later, looking at a 4th wave in Germany and watching the world grapple with this virus.

Familiarity is a strange thing, isn’t it? We used to perceive masks as a strange thing as we lived in China, where they were a common sight, but then as we lived there almost 12 years, they became part of the normals. Then in 2019, to wear and see masks around us in the European streets felt extremely strange, until that again became the normal, but is it?

Will we look back at this time of our lives and see it for the strange and impactful part of human history that it really is?

Hoping you are healthy, safe and happy wherever you are…

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Germany Photography

A Fresh New Beginning~

As the fresh new snow blankets the ground and lays a layer of white powder on everything standing still, it feels like a permission for a new beginning. All is still, all is clean, all is white and a new chapter can now begin.

Yesterday the sun was shining as it still is today and the whole day, snowflakes shimmered in the sun, floating, dancing and eventually landing gently on surfaces, each in its unique glory.

Despite the bitter cold, I kept finding myself jumping up, grabbing my camera and heading outdoors to try and capture the magic of what was going on.

Let’ see what today brings…