great white bear

Only polar bears can make curling for a snooze up on an ice sheet look so inviting.  I’ve had a thing for polar bears ever since Little Jacket and I went to this exhibition in London, which traced and tracked down every single polar bear that ever made it to the UK… stuffed. The photos of some of their final resting places (pub entrance, cobwebby attic corner) were a little sad, but some of the (very large) individuals who made it in bear-son were imposingly impressive.

Now Steve Kaslowski (who possibly has even more of a polar bear thing than me) has photographed several of them in Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago, in quite different, distinctly un-stuffed states. Visit here for a view that will transport you thousands of kilometers up North in an instant. Happy travelling!

awkward family photos

Awkward Family Photos is the latest addition to my RSS feed. This photo is entitled The Cling-ons.

It’s mean, really, but I feel justified in my giggling, if only because I know my own family album is full of similar gems with big glasses, big hair, and yes, day-glo clothes (so cool). I just hope I won’t find myself featured as an entry one day…

little house

As the site for many Myyear and Snow family (and friends) adventures, this little house has gotten quite a few mentions throughout My Year Online, but never the honour of its own photo.

This entry corrects that, and also serves to say that Mr. Snow and I will be going to visit again this weekend with Ma and Pa Snow. Mr Snow’s signed up for a 42 km cross country race… I think I’ll enter the waffle-sprint category.

hurtigruten

This shot was taken in between Christmas and New Year from Ma and Pa Snow’s Trondheim fjordside flat, which I always love visiting. As you can see, precious little snow then, though in the meantime it has arrived with a vengeance. I also really love watching the Coastal Express, or Hurtigruten, sailing past, though yesterday morning in high winds it actually ran aground in Trondheim harbour. No one was hurt, but all very dramatic!

icy new year!

This week it seems like other cities in Northern Europe are colder than Oslo. In the cool picture above by John Giles, a swan lands on a frozen lake in Yorkshire. So, a very happy – if icy – new year to you all! It seems like 2009 stole up on me while I wasn’t looking in December, and I didn’t get my 365 entries in as I had hoped (though I wasn’t too far off with 330). My Year Online got more than 15,000 hits in 2008, and is already over 16,000 today. Everyone keeps asking, will I continue? And if not, what will I do instead?

The good news for Myyear readers is that I’ve decided to keep going until I reach 365 posts, and then blog only about really cool stuff after. So don’t tune out just yet, and if anyone has any ideas of what I should challenge myself to in 2009 then let me know!

mama and baby hippo swim

I swear that despite this photo and this post, I don’t have a hippo thing going. But this series of photos of Berlin Zoo’s latest addition taught me more than I ever knew about how these creatures make their appearance on earth. This three-week old baby is not as stuffed-toy cute as Knut was, but then again that did all end very sadly.

What I learnt:

Weighing in at 40kg, the baby hippopotamus swims alongside her mother, Kathi. The calf is Kathi’s second baby and the first hippo to be born at Berlin Zoo in three years. Female hippos reach sexual maturity at five to six years old and have a gestation period of eight months. Baby hippos are born underwater and must swim to the surface to take their first breath. Calfs rest on their mother’s back when in deep water and swim underwater to suckle.

romeriksåsen

The flurries of snow on Friday piled up higher up the fjord, so conditions were perfect on Sunday. Bright sun and snow-covered trees, and at -10C cold enough to form ice crystals in your nose when you breathed in. But we all wrapped up warm, so we were still toasty by the time we got to Raasjøstua for waffles and coffee.

Special K taking in the view before she made a new friend with an electric bottom warmer.

A tactical planning error resulted in a dusk home run, which was surprisingly fast, pleasant and quiet . The moon was rising in the rosy sky, and we were almost alone in the forest.

my best shot

I love looking at photos, and deciding which ones I like, which ones I don’t, and sometimes why, though I have little technical experience. Which is why the series ‘My Best Shot‘ in the Guardian is so interesting. There, well-known photographers choose their best photograph, tell the story behind it and say why they think it is their best shot.

Platon spent five days in Moscow and almost burst into tears with the stress and nerves (and possibly the sniper guards) but was granted permission to take Putin’s photo. One of the shots he took on that day won 1st Prize in the World Press Photo portraits category and it seems like the man himself liked the pictures.

The other photographers and photos are no less interesting. Take a look.

nøklevann

A cold bright Sunday, but not a single flake of snow to be seen within three hours’ drive of Oslo. So we bundled up and made for the much closer Østmarka with Special K and our new outing accomplice Red. Four hours, a lake, a long walk, three goats and some ice skaters later, all were happy. But… is it greedy to wish for snow?

wildlife photographer of the year

The winners of this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition have been announced. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like I’ll be in any of the cities the exhibition is going on tour to soon, so I had to content myself with browsing their online gallery.

As always, lots of stunning images ranging from arresting to meditative, of plants and animals, the natural and man-made environments. It was hard to choose a favourite but having seen a family of ducks valiantly battling the current to swim upriver this summer, this photo by Dan Mead of an ostrich family heading straight up a 100 metre high sand dune at a 30 degree incline caught my attention. I don’t think I would have managed the same quite so quickly or gracefully!