As fond as I am of the previous entry, it’s time to move on and get done with the shots from Jordan. Not that this would be the final entry with travel images, there’s still some to come.

Heading to to the Ma’an hot springs.

And getting the car dirty. Same car, 1.5 years ago…

Amazing scenery, amazing hotel, and a very warm welcome.

Made a friend there. Mo’taz insisted to help carry our equipment so that I could shoot :D

:)

Back at the Water Authority, my colleague giving a talk on our methods.

One of our nicest sampling sites this trip…

A hot spring close to the syrian border, inside an abandoned spa.

New methods of sampling.

Sometimes I suck at work. Literally.

Being terribly close to the syrian border, we had to pass a lot of military checkpoints.

Until we ran into a dead end, they wouldn’t let us pass to the next hot spring without proper paperwork from Amman.

Next one will be a weekend entry…

I’ve been shooting differently lately. More personal, less images I would put up on the blog (though a lot of images in this entry are really pushing the limits of what I’ve been publishing so far). That’s why it has been quite a while since I last posted a real ‘dailies’ entry. In fact, I’ve never been shooting as much as in April, both personal and on paid jobs – it’s been a pretty good month in almost any aspect. And there’s still a ‘few’ shots from Jordan left to post… but since this is by far my favorite collection of pictures in a long time, I’ll let this one stay on top for some time.

Portrait shooting with a friend. Thank you!

A lot more fun that I expected. Got to keep doing this :)

Finally made the decision to restart what I gave up more than ten years ago. One of the few things I regretted.

D7000 as a backup body for work – didn’t work out for me. So I did what I explicitly didn’t want to do: ordered a D800…

Spring cleaning. Nothing like the fun moment when you realize you just added more dirt to the sensor instead of removing the crap that was already on there. A lot more dirt. Somehow I never manage to skip that step.

At Mandy’s…

…contemplating whether we repeat something.

Nope.

Lunch with friends.

Great food with Jo, Andrea and Joelle.

Lightshow. Such a LED nerd :)

Hello Andrea!

Salvation for my feet.

Lots of work left little time for baking and cooking, had to reduce my sleep time to compensate :)

My professor and a colleague giving a lecture for children.

And now for something completely different…

…time to get out the brush again. Great fun :)

At Bonn, on a job.

Some hotel corridor in Bonn.

Ane Brun in concert at Heidelberg. Great one, and the supporting act, Linnea Olsson, was really nice as well!

Loved the color. Been spending a lot of time at the Marstall.

There’s always time and reason for ice cream with friends. Sometimes even without friends…

Marstall, again. Working a bit…

…and feigning interest in football.

Lab work.

Ran my first half marathon race. Without a shred of preparation. Shot by Fiete.

But obviously in a good mood. Shot by Christoph.

Finished. 1h55. Shot by Fiete.

Something I didn’t have time for this month, unfortunately.

Tourist shot.

It’s been a long time…

…the usual, got to try the jordan style next time.

Climbing with Eva and friends.

At Bensheim, nice walls. Outside would be even nicer though :)

Königstuhl, got to do more road biking this year.

Sunset.

Descent.

Night out with friends.

A little bit shy :D Shot by Jana.

That’s it, I’ll leave you with a bunch of cookies. Same old, same good recipe.

Driving to work early, not much traffic on the streets of Amman. Rather boring, without the heavy traffic. We drove a few hundred kilometers that day, from Amman, to the Dead Sea and up to North Shouna, near Irbid, in search for thermal springs and wells.

First, some office work.

Then some driving. Always looking for different angles (without falling out of the driving car…)

Dead Sea.

Downstream of a spring.

A bit of hiking.

There it is, a tiny cave with water close to 50 degrees Celsius.

Sampling, basically while sitting in a sauna.

Heading up north, to another hot well.

If you don’t mind traffic and like mountains, Jordan would have some great road bike routes to offer.

Some roadside impressions.

Not sure whether that was a greeting. I don’t think so..

Somewhere in North Shouna.

Sampling. That well looked wonderfully corroded.

That was a popular spot, occupied every time we passed it during our time there.

A fairly long day of work, mostly driving through the country until after dark.

There’s still a lot of images from Jordan. Four weeks is a long time…

Back to work in the desert.

The first noble gas samples of the trip.

:)

Leaking wells produced weird lake landscapes in the basalt desert.

Timing the nitrate test.

Playing with the 12mm lens.

Dinner after a successful day.

Qasr Al-Harrana, on the southern route to Asraq, lit by the setting sun, in front of looming dark rain clouds. It was a rainy and cold spring, which made for some very nice motives and lighting. However, a bit more warmth would have been welcome as well…

An invitation!

Falaffel, Hummus, Moutabal and more… This time around we had a lot of great food and were referred to or found some really nice places.

Rain.

Snow. Again.

Some street impressions…

It may look nice and warm – but it had about 3 degrees Celsius that day.

The many hills of Amman.

I really loved the way the houses grew wild, over hills and into wadis.

Nightfall.

The shot above is probably the best landscape shot I’ve taken in years. Back when I started photography, landscaping was what I did best. But things have changed quite a bit during the past years. It was however just the perfect moment, at the perfect time and weather…

Sunset on the road back to Amman.

A day of great weather…

…followed by a rainy day.

At the end of the stay, we didn’t even need the map for most routes.

Running through the desert.

Into better weather, though still damn cold.

Ruins, once more.

Azraq, once more.

It’s not like we were on a tourist trip, but sometimes there were small windows of time available to enjoy what Jordan had to offer aside from groundwater wells, springs and great people. During the second week, upon returning from Irbid to Amman, we stopped at Jerash and had a look at the local roman ruins. It’s a huge area, and we were extremely lucky with the season: all the hills stood in yellow blossom, it was a breathtaking view. Unfortunately we couldn’t see the entire area, as we arrived there at 3pm and were thrown out only about an hour later – wasn’t the only time we stood in front of closed gates after 4pm.

Zooming in. This year, I brought the 70-300, quite the nice lens for light traveling.

Sinkholes. And I thought they’d only occur at the dead sea ;)

Bäm!

Another favorite of mine.

Uhm? Looks like the british left some of their traditions, at least as tourist attractions.

A group of young girls arrived. Loved the way the soldier is watching the entire scene from above.

Looks like the enjoyed the bagpipers…

…much.

VERY MUCH! It was such a joy to watch them!

Being escorted from the premises by the ‘Tourist Police’

Spent the last two sundays shooting sports for SportOnlineFoto, first the Merck Straßenlauf & Deutsche Straßenmeisterschaft Halbmarathon and this sunday the Deutsche Post Marathon in Bonn. Both fun jobs, but I’m somewhat relieved to have a free weekend ahead this week…

Start in Griesheim..

So much for Griesheim, now the the larger event in Bonn…

Much larger!

Had the chance to shoot from above the course. Nice!

The start was divided in many groups, lots of chances for different angles.

Old school.

Halfmarathon winner.

Love the emotion at these running events :)

Start of the marathon.

Whaaaaa!

Bonn’s mayor. I had the job to collect impressions this time, no fixed spot on the track.

Lots of charity around the marathon.

Marco Schreyl for cystic fibrosis awareness.

DKMS for recruiting bone marrow donors.

The women’s marathon winner, exhausted after finishing the race.

Mixed weather…

The team, fun as always!

Finally a change in scenery: two weeks into our research trip, we went to Irbid, close to the Syrian border. It was my first time in the northern part of Jordan and I was really surprised by the entirely different, and extremely beautiful landscape.

Searching for monitoring wells in flourishing wadis.

He found us wandering close to his home and invited us for chai.

Not that he did speak any english, and neither did any of us speak arabic.

None the less, basic communication is always possible – and once again I was amazed by the kindness of the local people.

Driving through thriving green meadows. This time we had it all: snow, spring, green meadows, desert, rain.

Entering Irbid.

Still looking for wells. Came around quite a lot that day, though not very successfully.

Olives.

A final entry from the Albert Schweitzer Tournament in Mannheim. It was an extremely interesting job to me, and very much fun – especially since I had no clue about basketball as a game, and in fact never really shot it as a photographer. Got to do this again some time!

USA vs. France.

Russia vs. Italy.

Turkey vs. Germany, playing for the third place.

24mm shot from the baseline.

The coaches during a timeout.

The german team lost, unfortunately.

Suchbild.

Spain’s coach.

The serbian coach.

The chinese team watching.

One of my favorite shots.

Victory celebrations…

…speeches…

…

The spanish team, winners of the tournament.

The german team, saying goodbye…