Martin Zwick

The year 2015 was full of travel during the first months. After the Falkland Islands and Iceland, I had to stay in the office to do the postprocessing, keywording and so on. All the same I was out several times and I want to share some of the pictures.

5 days ago I returned from the Shetlands, but this will be covered in another blog, I just did not manage to publish my spring blog before I left for the Shetland Islands.

This blog is not so much about story telling, it will be more a picture compilation.

I guess that most of the readers know, that I am not much in flower or macro photography, but sometimes it is fun to do and I am getting better in it as well. To go out for Crocus however is something like a tradition already. It marks the beginning of a more productive time for destinations closer to Munich.

The birds are the result of an early morning in Nymphenburger Park in Munich. I always wanted to get pictures of the local goose population amidst spring flowers in full bloom. Moreover I had to test some settings for the Shetland trip. I was a bit unlucky, the weather was fine, the geese where around, but right next to the meadow full of wildflowers a sewage pipe was buried with all the associated heavy and noisy equipment. Even the Nymphenburg geese, which are used to many noisy poeple did not like that and avoided the meadow. Some shots worked all the same and after a while I moved to the nearby forest.

As every year during spring we stay for about two weeks in Szentendre near Budapest, the garden needs some care as well as the cottage. We had really good weather, some BBQs with hungarian wine and went out for a three nights trip to the hungarian lowlands.

In the Puszta, we did this year some of the have to's for the ordinary tourist and I must admit it was fun.

In Szentendre I finally prepared the itinery and necessary texts for the two workshops I will guide next year ( Fotoworkshop Iceland , already open for booking, and Fotoworkshop Orkney/Shetland ).

We also managed to visit the Hortobágy Wild Animal Park (Hortobágyi Vadaspark). As it was early in the year we where nearly the only visitors and I can recommend this place. It has a herd of the highly endangered Przewalski's horse, a true wild horse species, I was especially interested in. In the park the herd can roam free in a huge area, form natural herds and can get used to the social structures the horses will need when they are released to the wild in Mongolia.

As last year I tried my luck and skills again in the National Park Saechsische Schweiz (Saxon Switzerland). I waited for a spell of good and stable weather, but finally I just had to go as my Shetland travel came closer and closer. The first afternoon and night and the following morning have been breathtaking, the rest was so so. Spring seems to be an unstable season.

This years goal was to get river Elbe more into focus. The reason why there are the famous rock formations is nearly always the valley of river Elbe. It seems easy, but it is in fact quite difficult to show the conncetion, as the river is nearly always hidden in her valley.

Next on the list was to visit Burg Königstein (did not make it...) and some famous viewpoints around the Bastei. Some worked some not.

The first morning however resulted in really awesome images of the Elbe valley and in a very tired photographer. I drove 5 hours from Munich to Bad Schandau, climbed one of the mountains had a beautiful sunset, was back at the car at 23:00, was asleep at 01:00 and got up at 3:30 to climb the same mountain again. It started to rain at 13:00.

After my first location I moved to Mount Winterberg. It is a really good place to stay and towards the end of the trip I was doing some traditional houses in Schmilka and Bad Schandau, checked out new locations near the Bastei and near Königstein.

I will try to come back in October when the forest starts to get interesting again....

My next blog will be about the Shetland Islands, one of my favourite places in Northern Europe. More about that next time.

Please do not forget to share the information about my new workshops next year to Iceland and Orkney/Shetland, both are unique locations. More information can be found here:

Island im Winter - Informationen zum Foto Workshop

Offizielles Reiseprogramm - Island im Winter - Foto Workshop

Orkney und Shetland Inseln - Informationen zum Foto Workshop, the formal itinery including cost will be published soon

Munich, July 2015