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Archive for the 'Travel' Category
Photography: Branson DeCou Archive
Photographer Branson DeCou traveled the world for thirty years before his death in 1941. Since 1971, when the University of California - Santa Cruz received his huge slide collection it has been the home of the archive of photographer Branson DeCou.
Branson DeCou produced mainly lantern slides imprinted on glass twice as big as 35-mm slides, that made them delicate to handle and almost impossible for general or public use.
Thanks to a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation the UCSC could buy state-of-the-art scanning equipment and process 1,475 of the 10,000 DeCou slides in their collection.
The 1,475 slides processed and made available online are photographs that Branson DeCou took in Italy during several trips in the 1920s and early 1930s. They show scenes of daily life as well as artwork and destinations…
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World: The price of beer in 128 countries
How much will it cost you to shout out “Mine’s a pint!” in pubs around the globe? Well, a new online database of beer prices in 128 countries will provide the answer.
With the price of a pint of beer being a similar economic indicator as the BigMac index, there might be more to it then just finding the best watering hole. Pint Price - as the database is called - provides the most data in beer drinking countries like the UK (more than 50 cities listed), US (more than 20 cities) or Germany (4 cities list) but also more exotic destinations like…
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HDR: Tokyo Gardens (2)
Another shot of an old Japanese Garden in central Tokyo.
This one had huge water features with lots of fish in them. There was something rather peculiar about these fish.
When a person was crossing one of the bridges they…
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HDR: Tokyo Gardens (1)
Tokyo has many outstandingly beautiful parks and gardens. Most of them are only visited by locals and keep their treasures hidden away from tourists. We have seen fields of flowers in bloom, meticulously clipped shrubbery and artificial hills that have got their soft green coverage by centuries of trimming.
Many of these gardens have been more and more confined by the growing sprawl of modern Tokyo but a few larger ones remained. All of them create a strong contrast to their surroundings and…
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Have a look: 2008 dirtiest hotels list
TripAdvisor’s list of the dirtiest hotels does only include hotels in the US and the UK but that is already a good start.
When you look at the traveler photos for the worst 10 hotels for each of the two countries you know why they made the list. We feel sorry for those that ended up in such dumps during their holidays…
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HDR: View from Tokyo Mandarin Oriental
This is an evening view from a room at the Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo.
HDR image created from 9 RAW pictures taken with Nikon D200 12mm F4 1.8 - 30 sec (not photoshopped)
They gave us a really nice room just aside of their best suite hence the fantastic view. On a clear day you can see Mount Fuji in the background and - one thing you should not miss out when in Tokyo - you get the same view from their Sauna and Spa - yes we mean it - from inside their sauna or sitting in a jacuzzi
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A380: High Resolution Cockpit panoramas
In an earlier post last year we pointed you to the great “high resolution interior panoramas” of the A380 by French photographer Gilles Vidal.
Now he has added equally great panoramas allowing you to virtually visit the cockpit of the new A380.
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Space travel: Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo
Today Richard Branson’s space travel company “Virgin Galactic” has unveiled the design of its new space launch system.
Together with the new SpaceShipTwo the carrier aircraft called White Knight Two (WK2) was presented. Virgin Galactic says that WK2 is very close to completion and is expected to begin flight testing in the summer of 2008.
The carrier aircraft WK2 will get SpaceShipTwo up into the sky to about 60,000 feet (18,288 meters) where the two vessel then separate and SpaceShipTwo rockets into outer space.
For an expected ticket price of USD 200,000 six passengers and two crew members will then get about 4 1/2 minutes of zero-gravity time 68 miles (110 km) above us mere mortals before gliding back to Earth…
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Earthrace - the last run on its 2007 record attempt (Part 2)
Earlier this year - in May - we had a chance to participate for a few days on the attempt of “Earthrace” to break the UIM world record for circumnavigation with their bio-diesel boat.
(this post a continuation of the post Earthrace - the last run on its 2007 record attempt (Part 1) )
We have (together with another company) sponsored their last leg on their attempt to break the world record during 2007. On their “web site” there is now information that their second run to break the record will commence in March 2008 from Valencia, Spain. Good luck with that…
While a lot could be said about the 4-5 days leg from Port Suez to Valencia we participated - one thing’s for sure - it was quite an experience.
We have not taken many images after heading out into the Mediterranean, but some of the pictures from the Suez Canal came out quite well…
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Europe: Skiing season starts with record snow
After a few seasons with very little snow this skiing season in Europe is starting with new records of snow heights.
The last days of massive snow falls throughout Europe - it was even snowing on some Spanish islands normally considered by many as a warm winter refuge - have brought amounts of snow to Austrian, German, Swiss and French resorts some of them have not seen for the whole season the last years and never been seen in November before.
While the US and Canada the last years where lucky with record snow heights, in Europe many resorts experienced “droughts” to the extend that in Switzerland the last two winters fire warnings had to be issues to prevent forest fires.
Lets hope this year will be different and it looks like it might be.
And people are desperate to go…
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