Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

I hope this isn't getting old for you, dear visitor, endless shots of ice, snow, river, &c. I never tire of it, the infinity of nature's forms using two different atoms!

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia: Altered States

More play with colours on the Enguri River, also enjoying the endless variety of forms offered by water, ice and snow.

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia: Altered States

Congratulations to my first visitor from the 93rd country, Costa Rica!

Yeah, so I started experimenting with the colours of my EOS's RAW (original) files: colour temperature, tint and saturation changes. But I also tried to stay within the realms of possibility afforded by nature's lighting range. After all, sunlight does have a considerable spectrum of hues and intensities depending on how how high or low it is in the sky, and how much cloud is present.

In the top shot (this one's little altered from the original), I consider the dark mountain poking through at top right to be of major importance, along with the horseback figures, which add scale. I also thought about removing the post and wires, but a) it's a lot of work and b) they're there, so why not let them stay in this case?

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Nice cluster of towers, Chazhashi hamlet

A favourite bit of ice terracing

Some action on the river bank

More ice terraces (I'd never seen this on a river before; perhaps I've simply never had the needed combination of being in the right place at the right time and having the time to observe...)

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Today's images are all about the Enguri River, which has its source not far from Ushguli. I had the privilege this December of being there to watch it freeze over, seeing and documenting much of the process. H2O sure has a lot of different forms to offer - an infinite variety, in fact, between its 3 main phases and the various forms which it can take in them. This isn't the reason I was in Ushguli - I DO have more important things to do than watch water freeze! - but it was a pleasant few hours on a couple of afternoons.

Watchtower reflection in the water and ice

Ice, snow and water together

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Wow, this is frustrating, unable to upload more than 1 picture for this post. More to follow immediately.

Ice on the Enguri, cool patterns like terraced rice-field hillsides in South-East Asia, scale indeterminate.

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

More of the ancient, enigmatic stone watchtowers of this place of which I never tire. What have you seen over more than a millennium, standing silent as history washes over and around you? How many wars, avalanches, thaws, freezes have taken their tolls on you, or not? We don't even have the secret of your mortar.

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Dogball, anyone?

Framing again

Tower reflection in the ice

Last bit of free water as the ice-banks prepare to meet in the middle