Cold winter days

We've had some very cold winter days her in South Sweden.

During nights the temperatures went down to 15 below zero.

Even during the days it didn't get any warmer then that.

But now things seem to calm down a bit, at least here where we live.

The wind is coming from east and is blowing really hard since yesterday.

The thermometer shows temperatures around zero now, but the stormy wind makes the outdoors feel very hostile at the moment.

It's quite a challenge to keep the house warm at this point, the rooms are just too big and the house seems to have bad insolation.

(Good it's a rental and not our own, we would know where most of our money would go through the renovation process. )

The central heating is doing part of the job, the open fireplace here in the living room has to do the rest.

It's funny to see how the animals curl up around the fireplace.

We do too btw. :)

I was brave yesterday and went outside with my camera for a while.

I read an online tutorial about my camera all evening the day before and found out a lot of new things I didn't really know before.

I found out that I could preset things like sharpness and contrast IN the camera.

So I played around with that out in the cold!

Of course!

And I tried to get a nice HDR shot as well which is posted first on this post.

It's not really obvious maybe (compared to others) but it's a start.

I will play with this some more and post the results when it's time.

Conditions were not so good for trying this and I have to get to know the software I use to merge the images before I can present a couple of decent results.

(HRD means High dynamic range. An HDR image is composed of two or more separate exposures, taken at different exposure levels to capture the dynamic range that the eye can see but the camera cannot. So you take 3 images of the same object or landscape and special software layers them on top of each other.)

Here I took a "simple" shot of bunny-tracks in the backyard. :))

Cleo doesn't like it that they come into "HER" territory...

but I guess the bunnys have to take risks when they are in need for food (we throw out some old bread every now and then for them)

even though they know that this is the home of a very dangerous and wild little Jack Russel Terrier.

This is tracks in the snow on the field just outside of our yard. Someone seemed to have been looking for food there...

Following two pictures were taken on the inner yard.

The wind was blowing the snow off the roof.

In the second picture I was in IN the snow cloud myself.

Now it's time for me to start on my homework assignment.

And I have to take my meds too, that cold is still messing with me...

Have a great Sunday everyone!

:)