I admit, I had to breath for a while after the 2012 Schlei marathon. But I don’t want to finish the series without a selection of my favorite photos and some thoughts and lessons I’ve learned.

First, it was great to find some new spots along the Schlei that I wouldn’t have found without this project, like the small inlet close to Missunde (Week 20 and 23) where we even saw two eagles. The photo above was taken on that same spot, in week 20.

I would have liked to find more of those places, though – but even those relatively short travels are time consuming, and more often than I wanted I had to limit my radius to the area around Schleswig, as can be seen in the map. That is especially true for the darker months – in autumn and winter it was pitch black outside when i arrived from work. Sometimes I managed to take a trip to the water in the mornings, but not as often as I had planned… oh, laziness.

The good thing of that limited working area: I had to find special moments or unusual views of the Scheli, as happened in weeks 11 and 44 (below).

Overall, I enjoyed the last 52 weeks photographically, and there are several photos that I am very happy with. I added my six favorites of the series below.

Would I repeat a project like this? Probably not. The pressure to have one photo and a blog post every week didn’t leave much space for posting much of my other photography taken over the year, I didn’t even have the chance to process some of the photos yet. After all, this is a hobby, and I only have so much time to spend on it. So, instead of hunting for that photo of the week, this year I’ll try to invest more time to develop my wildlife photography, which I am feeling more and more drawn to – without the pressure of needing something presentable every week. I’ll post some of my first humble steps here soon.

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It’s 2013 already! So – happy new year to everyone! The last year just rushed by, I feel like I just started my 52 photo project.

To close the Schlei:52 series I selected one of the classic Schlei views: The cathedral in Schleswig, fully lit in all it’s Christmas glory. St. Peter’s Cathedral doesn’t stand in the spotlights very often during the year, only for special occasions and in Christmas time, which is a shame for one of northern Germany’s most important churches.

I will use the next days to make a resume of the Schlei:52 project. What I know by now is that there won’t be a Schlei:52 part 2 – 2013 will be a busy year, and we will be moving further away from the Schlei. I also want to concentrate on other areas of photography and present my humble steps here on this blog.

More on that another time. Have a great start of 2013!

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To be honest, I was doubting I’d be able to catch up before the year ends. But here we are, finishing week 51 and I’m posting photo number 51!

This photo was taken yesterday, and it was ice-cold on that field, with stormy winds coming across the Schlei from the east and the sun already going down behind the clouds. And it was just after 2pm. Luckily, starting today the days are getting longer again…

The little trailer can even be seen on the maps. It seems to be standing there since forever and has certainly seen better days: It has a license plate that doesn’t exist since the 70′s…

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Winter took a break this week, leaving us with some grey days full of mud and fog. Yesterday things cleared up a little for some hours and I took a short break from the various Christmas preparations to see if there was some ice left on the Schlei.

And indeed there was surprisingly much, after some days with temperatures around 5 Celsius. On a little beach in a mini-bay near Stexwig there was a lot of crushed ice collected, forming a white line that was constantly moving in the waves.

I went some steps into the water with my rubber boots, put the camera down just above the water surface (thanks to the very usable live view of the Nikon D7000 with a horizontal level indicator) and shot several bursts of photos, hoping to get some sharp ones with the long-ish shutter speeds between 1/15 and 1/10 of a second. I got some nice photos with the ice dominating in the foreground, showing the movement of the water.

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On this winter’s coldest day I went out to the small fishing harbour Holm here in Schleswig. It was -12 when I arrived here in the morning, and this part of the Schlei was completely covered with ice. Everything was quiet, even the seagulls were silent and were barely moving in the cold air.

Later the day got even more beautiful with a clear blue sky and white trees shining in the low sun. Sadly, I could only enjoy it from the car while driving to work.

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It’s winter. In the previous week we hat the first snow, and it lasted until yesterday, when temperatures went up again and everything started to melt.

But that was yesterday… here’s a photo from one of the first snowy days. I was so busy that week that all I could have captured would have been foggy darkness.. but my dear wife Van had the chance to go out one afternoon and capture some of the winter beauty in Schleswig – lovely!

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Another photo from the archives to catch up. This one was taken one calm autumn morning on the Schlei, back in October.

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Another photo taken from my go-to position on the Schlei when it has to be fast and nice. This was taken just after sunrise on the first frosty morning in late October.

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It’s time to catch up. The last weeks have been to busy to blog, but I still have some autumn and winter photos to share!

This one was taken back in golden October, when we were trying to follow a white-tailed eagle that we had seen some 30 minutes before. Sadly, we didn’t see it again, but instead a bird-watcher showed us this family of Egyptian Geese.

This bird is (quite surprisingly) originally from Africa and is spreading more and more in Europe. It is indeed considered a danger for local species and very aggressive. Indeed they are even killing other waterbirds in their breeding territory – with hits of their pick or even by drowning them.

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Last night we had a serious autumn storm crossing Schleswig-Holstein. “Franziska” was strong and fast, but luckily didn’t leave a big mess, except for some fallen trees. Right now it’s already gone and the wind returned back to normal speeds (and the sky to it’s normal dull autumn grey of the last weeks).

The photo shows “Franziska’s” first clouds hunting across the sky south of the Schlei.

The biggest challenge here was to keep the front of the lens free of water drops, coming from two sides – from the waves breaking on the rocks and from the rain, which was getting stronger and stronger while we were on the little beach at Luisenbad in Schleswig’s Königswiesen park.

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