Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Amazing delicacy of solid H2O - oh yeah, but wasn't that the material which destroyed the Titanic?

Nicely lichened fenceposts

This sign means, "Welcome, tourist, you're on the right path"

The guys of all ages playing footie in the fading sunset light of Shkhara, Georgia's highest mountain, some 7 km away from them

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Several more random images from the last week or so. As with the previous post, I'm posting this "in the future" in case, as often happens here in winter, we're a few days without electricity.

Panoramas, Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Posting this entirely using battery power on laptop & cellphone as, after a night of fairly heavy snow, we lost electricity as expected.

Hmm, looks like I was a bit hasty in writing off the EOS's bundled panorama stitching software.  It doesn't give a great size or tonal range when you work with RAW files, but convert them to .tif - lowering the contrast and getting the component images as close as possible to each other in tone in the process - & suddenly you're at full original resolution.  Here are a couple of pairs of panoramas to compare for the new and old ways of doing things, old attempt on top, new underneath.  A vast improvement.

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Top: 2 of my 3rd-group English student boys taking the manure sled back home after a trip to the field

Clearing a potato field for footie - a line of guys walking with linked arms to trample the knee-deep snow.  I joined in, but after 2 round trips I felt as though I'd played the whole of a 2-hour game, so here I am collapsed in repose, watching the actual game, which ended up being played in the cows' day-paddock, once this had been suitably shovelled of cow-pats (final shot, ball helpfully false-coloured yellow so you can see it!).  Such is footie in Ushguli.

Textures, Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

More fantastic surfaces: cracking paint on wood, rust on sheet metal, lichen on rock and frost on window

Ushguli Panoramas, Svaneti, Georgia

Two 6-shot Ushguli panoramas hot off yesterday's press - the top one from the afternoon, bottom from the morning.  So it's either 12 new pictures or 2 for you today, depending on whether you're a glass-half-full or -half-empty type. I used the stitching software which came with my Canon EOS camera - not that I consider it to be the best; it's too limited in file size output, and only offers 8-bit/channel colour depth; but it does give a quick-&-dirty look at what the result will be when I shell out for a better panorama stitching programme.  Which I must do eventually.

Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia

Welcome to my first visitor frm country number 96: Senegal!  Climbing towards 100 countries in 10000 visitors!

A mixed bag from my last few days.

The water bucket at -15 C or so (it's not so cold now)

Zamir's folk-art barn door, cut from sheet metal - I especially like the dove on top of the watchtower

I call this "Clinging to Hope"

View from the livingroom window after the frost has been melted by the wood stove