Baldur Bjarnason

Photos (22 July 2024)

– Baldur Bjarnason

Two themes for the photos this week:

  1. Local birds around where I live in Hveragerði.
  2. Old photos taken by my grandfather or grandmother that we found in a box and my sister has been scanning.

The bird life here in Hveragerði seems to have recovered nicely after a cold spring. The grey-ish ball of fluff is probably a fledgling white wagtail investigating its surroundings. The grainy photo on the other hand is the male blackbird that regularly visits my bird feeder. He does not like to pose in good light, preferring to relax in the shadows where he’s less likely to be spotted.

A bird that is a little ball of fluff stands on a rooftop and looks at the photographer. That same little ball of fluff looks a bit downwards. A grainy photograph of a male common blackbird perching in a tree.

One of the discoveries was that he was fonder of taking “arty” photos than we expected. Turns out people kept making fun of his taking photos of “sunsets and sheep and stuff” so these were never included in the slide shows or albums.

Some of them are quite interesting, though.

The view of a red-hued sunset over a fishing village A photo taken from inside a small airplane turning around a small Icelandic fishing village.

He himself could look quite dapper on occasion.

My granddad as a young man. Standing out in the Icelandic countryside. Clearly at a wedding even as his suit is quite fancy.

And, like so many photographers, he took pictures of cats. This white kitten was a rescue that they had to wean themselves back when my dad was a young boy, sixty years ago. The cat never got neutered or a name (always “the white cat”) so for years afterwards Kópavogur had a substantial population of white cats.

A white kitten lounges on a patterned mattress That same white kitten appears as a motion blur as it pounces on something on a lawn The white kitten stands confident between a pair of outdoor flower pots.