During 2025 I was still tied up with the renovation work on my parent's house. Therefore I could not be as productive as usual and besides Greenland and Finland no longer travel was possible. Right now I expect 2026 to be very different.

For leisure and photography (muscle memory....) I am a regular visitor in the Munich Zoo Hellabrunn, a great place to spend some hours behind the camera. This year the snowy owl had chicks and I focused (pun intended...) a little on the group of Northern bald ibis in the aviary. 

A bigger project was to cover the Nationalpark Kalkalpen in Austria (Limestone Alps National Park). It was on my list for a long time without even knowing much about it and this year I finally managed to visit it several times. Finally I heard, that the lynx in one of the enclosures of the NP Bavarian Forests got a new litter with three cubs. Very interesting and a much more demanding photography than I ever would have expected.

That's what happened during 2025 as a photographer...

Isn't it cute? It was fun and a little sad to see the chicks of the sowy owl growing up. In the wild this is nearly impossible and as somebody from central europe it is completely impossible. The aviary of the snowy owls is small and normally open to visitors. As the owls seem to be very protective they closed it for visitors and you just could watch them through a mesh of very thin threads. Photography was ok, if you managed to avoid to get the threads in the central area of you picture! And to see them grow up was something very special.....

You might think that seeing the chicks might have been guaranteed, but that was not the case. Quite often they hid in the shrubbery of the aviary especially as soon as the Zoo got more crowded. It added a little suspense to the visits. And why sad? Only one of the chicks survived.

Northern bald ibises do not have the "cuteness factor" of the chicks of the snowy owl, but they have their own special charm..... More or less extinct in the wild, Zoos and breeding centers are the only way to see and photograph these rare birds. In Hellabrunn they are kept in a huge walk in aviary together with many other species. Photography is great, you just have to be careful not to have some strange roommates of the ibises in your picture....

Let's see, maybe they have chicks next year.... I will check it and let you know.

Finally some other species from Hellabrunn, the Red Panda is always a favourite......

This national park is awesome because it is not spectacular. There is not a single viewpoint, which is famous or postcard picture like. There is no road to photo stops, there is no iconic view or landmark and it is not discovered by the instagram or tiktok crowd. The peaks just make it above 2000m and there is not a single famous climbing route.

It is a National Park and some parts are even a UNESCO world heritage site with the unwieldy name "Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe". As usual I checked the big picture agencies how good their coverage of an area is and for this National Park only very few pictures do exist at least compared to the famous NP's like Hohe Tauern.

Photography is demanding in several ways. Location finding is time consuming, as no documentation does exist. The hikes are long, often full days with all equipment on your back and finally, as no spectacular landmarks exist, it is all about picture idea and composition. Maybe that's the reason why not many pictures do exist.

There are no roads, which cross the NP, but at least a dense forest track network dating back to the times when it was heavily forested. This network is now used by MTB riders. To give you an idea about the length of the hikes. If you want to reach the heart of the NP it will be 3 hours one way without any alpine huts with accomodation. A MTB or eMTB would really help sometimes!

By now you will probably know, that I liked the area and the involved challenges. It is definitly a place I recommend, if you want to explore, compose, have plenty of time and a certain physical fitness. As a bonus the southern access offers very nice walks in more alpine mountains close by, which are not as crowded as other parts of the alps.

The National Park is about wild forests, deep valleys, karst springs (very interesting...) and some (not so spectacular) lakes and peaks.

I was there three times for several days, in early summer we stayed south of the park and during autumn twice at the northern edge of it. In the south the main town is Windischgarsten and in the north you do have only even smaller towns like Molln. In neither of these places you will find huge hotel comlexes or mass tourism.

The area of the NP was of course always used, either as hunting area for the noblemen or as source for wood for fuel and buildings. The rivers and creeks where used to float the logs down the steep valleys often by artificial flooding of the riverbeds. Dams where constructed and the dammed water was realesed in a kind of flash flood to wash thousands of logs down to the bigger rivers where huge rafts where buildt to transport the wood to the cities like Linz or Vienna. In the 20th century narrow gauge railways took over and later trucks had been used for the final years of wood cutting.

In the 70ties and 80ties of the last century things changed. Plans where made public, that the valleys in the north of the not yet existing park should be flooded by huge dams to produce energy and the remaing area could be used as a shooting range for the defence industry. All this would have resulted in a loss of jobs and the loss of quite prestine beech forests. Expecially in the remote areas the forests never saw a chainsaw und where unique in the eastern alps. 

Opposition formed and after several years of protests all plans where scrapped and the idea was born to establish  an "alpine forest NP". And so it came. In 1997 the NP was founded, which included the already protected Sengsengebirge. The forest is now left to itself, the tracks for the lumber trucks are now used be hikers, mountain bikers and the NP staff.

I am sure to come back to the NP. After understanding what this NP is about and what it can offer for photographers, it is much easier to plan a few days in this area. If you are interested you should know, that one of the decisions you have to make is your base. To cover the NP from one base is not feasable, it would result in hours of driving to the trailheads. You have to decide upfront whether you want to visit the valleys of the Hintergebirge, or the Sengsengebirge or the Bodinggraben and so on.

But remember, good pictures do not come easy and I am still not completely satisfied with my coverage. I have to work on ideas how to find the essence of this area. It is not to far away and an good stopover on our way to Hungary.

When I heard, that in one of the (huge) enclosures the Lynx produced a litter of three, I knew that I have to use this opportunity to take pictures. As the enclosures are visited by many people including noisy school classes, barking dogs and crying babies, it should not be so difficult to get some pictures, I thought. The lynxes are used to people and so will be the kittens.

The enclosure near Bayerisch Eisenstein is big and heavily forested and most of the open area ist full of fern. However you do not have only a viewing platform, but the walking path gives access to at least half of the enclosure. It should not be so difficult, I thought. And that was very far from true! 

My first stay was during late summer, my second in November.

During my first stay the mother was very careful and kept the litter very well hidden during the whole day. I never saw them during dusk or during daylight. If ever you saw a fern moving or a little patch of the fur of a lynx. The mother mybe is used to noisy crowds of visitors, but as a mother she kept the kittens hidden!

It all changed well after sunset, suddenly she guided her litter out of the thickets into the open forest for playing and tussling. It was big fun to watch the three cubs cavorting in the forest. 

The light was already very dim and even darker in the forest. To capture the kittens in action was impossible and they nearly never stood still. Only with big luck the more curious kitten came to the edge of the forest, watch for a few seconds and gone it was. Shutter speed of 1/60th and a focal length of at least 500mm (FF) was necessary to have a just acceptable iso and reach. As ususal tripods where useless as you needed the agility to follow the animals.

It was a challenge, good exercise and gave good insights, what your sensor can deliver! It was much harder then I thought to get some results, but the result is nice! They are really cute little things and they hardly ever stop moving, I can tell you.....

During my stay they never left the forest. Some other visitors told me, that it happened in very rare occasions! On the FB page of the NP I saw some pictures, I guess they either spent days there or they just had been lucky or probably both. But I was happy to watch them and to have some very nice pictures. I cannot complain. It was very exciting to watch a litter of young lynxes, even if it was in an enclosure, but they where not tame at all and their behaviour was very "natural".

But in winter, I thought, it will be different, the kittens will be half grown, will explore the terrain and the visiblity will be much better, as the fern will be gone and the leaves will have fallen.....

Yes, the visibility was much better and watching them was much easier, but to take marketable pictures was as difficult or even more difficult than during my stay in summer. The mother kept them as far as possible away from the viewing areas, they played in the most remote corner of the enclosure, also during the day.

It was big fun and unique to watch them, I will always remember what we have seen, but taking usable pictures.....

During dusk they slept, no trace, during the day and during dawn they played far away and the mother still had an eye on them. They still did not explore anything without "permission" of the mother! Only once for some seconds they showed up at the edge of the forest during late dawn, good for 2 or 3 sequences and again they where gone.

The action started even later. The moonlight was already stronger than the daylight, the mother showed the way and the cubs followed. They started to play right in front of us, exploring the rocky outcrop, lots of activity, again a unique experience, but impossible to take pictures. Anyway, it was something very special!

When we left the Bavarian Forest it was a bit sad, as we will probably not watch them again. I will be in the Falklands and little later in Scandinavia until end of March and then they are probably gone. We will see!

I guess that's it for 2025!

Soon I have to pack my stuff as I will fly with a group to the Falkland Islands early January 2026. It is not much time left to update all my files, I want to show as examples for the wildlife and composition. In February we will be in the north of Sweden, Finland and Norway. My Shetland workshop is now closed for further bookings, but the autumn trip to the Falklands and awesome South Georgia in Antarctica is still open for booking.

And Greenland? Look at this new offering. The core is an expedition cruise from Nuuk, the captal of Greenland to the very north of the west coast. It includes all the awesome places like Uummannaq and Upernavik. We will add some land based days in the beginning and the end. It is a unique and awesome trip along one of the wildest coastline in the northern hemisphere!

A very peaceful Christmas and a happy new year to all of you

Munich, December 2025

Wir sind jetzt wieder regelmäßig auf den Fototagen und Reisemessen unterwegs. Wenn Ihr wollt besucht uns, ich werde in Freiburg und Fürstenfeldbruck auch vor Ort sein. Die nächsten Messen sind:

Fernweh Festival Göttingen: 17. - 18.01.2026

Mundologia Freiburg: 30.01. - 01.02.2026

Naturfototage Fürstenfeldbruck: 24. - 26.04.2026

Norddeutsche Naturfototage: 08. - 10.05.2026