Best Keep Secrets of Austria - Spring Comes in Phases

"The little windflower, 

whose just opened eye is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at."

William C. Bryant

Antonio Vivaldi - "The Right of Spring - Allegro"

Growing up in Australia, the seasons we learnt about didn't quite apply as explained in the textbooks with the information borrowed from the English school system. Unless you were in Tasmania and the cooler areas of the country, the four seasons were not obvious. We kept the four seasons, in reverse from the Northern Hemisphere by date, despite the fact that the weather failed to shape up to the labels. Depending where you were in the Antipodes, there could be more than four seasons in a year and the variations in temperature could be subtle or extreme.

In Austria, the seasons are very much as I learnt, even though they don’t happen all at once, or by date, there are obviously four of them. In the “wild” and uncultivated areas, spring occurs slowly and in phases. There can also be a variance throughout the country, when it commences. It starts in the valleys and the sheltered places and slowly moves upwards, with the thaw, into the mountains. The cultivated gardens found in country and urban areas are different story of spring.

Raindrops Keep Fallin’...

 
 
 
 
 
"Let the rain kiss you. 

Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. 
Let the rain sing you a lullaby."

Langston Hughes 

Frédéric Chopin - "Raindrop" Prelude, Op 28, No. 15

My last trip to the Alps gave me spring and April showers. I decided then that I should start pushing my camera to the max and improve my photography skills. It was basically let’s see what we are both made of. Of course my PENTAX K-7 DSLR is made of metal, rubber, circuitry and glass. Me? Well, I am “made of  sugar and spice and everything nice,” because that is what little girls are made of, according to an old popular nursery rhyme, "What are little boys made of". That, of course, is another story. 

The above aside, I spent that trip photographing everything that caught my eye, and really gave the Pentax a workout, while improving on my skills. Since then I haven’t stopped. Besides the flower, insects, mountains and anything of interest that catches my eye, I also photograph raindrops. Raindrops are not simple things to photograph, (or anything small for that matter), when you don’t always have both lenses with you and you are sometimes stuck using the 55-200mm. This is the case with these wet green snaps.