In the last weeks I did not take very many pictures. One reason is because I was not traveling to other countries and I do not get too excited to take pictures in Germany, because I live there and so it does not seem as interesting as a foreign place.

Another reason is because it is cold and dark most of time right now, so I do not really want to go out.

Today I forced myself to go out and I actually took some pictures. Of trees without leaves in the fog. They looked really depressing and almost colorless. At home I turned the pictures in complete black & white and did not like it either way. It seemed really boring and sad to me.

Well there are some really great black & white photographers and their pictures do not look boring at all, but to me they always transfer kind of a sad feeling.

I just rarely take pictures in black & white, because I think it is such a pity to take away all the color. It seems like there is an infinite number of colors in our world. Why would I want to get rid of it? For me color is what makes a picture interesting and lively.

So I had to find something else to take a picture of with some more color. Finally I took one of my orchid at home. I really love orchids and I love macros.

On this close up you can see what amazing things our nature can build and what great colors. The closer you get the more details you will see and in this case also a lot of wonderful colors.

Cuba has a great nature. There are a lot of plants and animals that only exit on this island and some parts are biospheric parks that are protected by the government.

The cubans have a very little ecological footprint. Not because they know much about sustainability or environmental protection. They use very little resources, because they only have very little resources. While a citizens of the European Union needs three to four times as much resources as they should, cubans are doing pretty well.

If something is broken we just buy it new. Cubans try to repair everything they have to use it as long as possible. I am sure that can be quite hard, but they do not really have a choice.

For us it so much easier to buy a new TV, a new car or a new phone when it is broken. Why would you bother repair something if you have enough money to buy it new?

Even if Cuba is not environmental friendly because they want to – we can still learn from them. Sweden for example just past a law to reduce tax on repairing services so that people are more willing to get things repaired instead of throwing them away.

But you do not have to wait for your government to make things easier. You can do a lot of things on you own to reduce your ecological footprint. I sold my car some months ago, because in Stuttgart it possible to got everywhere you want by train, bus or by renting a electric car. So it would not make sense to keep my car and produce a lot of CO2 all the time. I am sure if you just think about it you will also find a lot of things in your life that you could change to use less resources – without having any real disadvantages by doing that.

Our world is a beautiful place with stunning nature. What are you willing to do to keep the beauty of our world?

This picture has been taken in a botanical garden in Viñales, Cuba in September 2016.

When my sister first asked me to visit her in South Africa I was not sure if I wanted to go there. Africa in general has never really been on my focus and I just do not know much about the continent. So I also did not know anything about South Africa.

I sort of imagined South Africa as a boring desert with poor people and nothing interesting to see. But I did not know how wrong I was…

My sister did a semester abroad to study at the university in Durban and from the first moment she was in love with the country. So finally she convinced me to come and we spent one of our greatest holidays there.

Well there are a lot of poor people, there is a lot of criminality and black and white people are still separated. These are definitely big disadvantages that kind of destroy the beauty of the country.

But the landscape is the most beautiful I have ever seen.

In the eastern area there is a subtropical climate where you can find rain forests with waterfalls. While there is desert in the north west.

In the Stellenbosch area (close to Cape Town) there is a mediterranean climate where all the vineyards are. Besides you see mountains and wonderful trees, which reminded me of North Italy.

But there is not only a great diversity of different landscapes, you will also a find a lot of rare animals in a huge variety. You can see pinguins and ostriches at the Cape of good hope. If you do a safari in the east you will see lions, elephants, rhinos, zebras, crocodiles, hippos and dangerous snakes. And the greatness does not stop here.

In addition South Africa is supposed to have the most beautiful sunsets of the world – and as far as I can tell this is definitely true!

Watching the sunset on the coast around Cape Town is just stunning. This picture has been taken at Camps Bay.

I went there with no expectations and came back with very unique and great impressions.

If you do not have any expectations you can never get disappointed.

This is another picture I took in the zoo “Wilhelma” in Stuttgart.

I like taking macro photos of flowers a lot, especially when it is an exotic or extraordinary flower like this one.

Taking macro photos with my sony bridge camera is pretty easy. I just use the automatic mode because there are no special settings necessary to create a picture like this. Sometimes I also use the aperture mode for this kind of pictures with the biggest aperture of f2.8. But the result is about the same as in automatic mode. You just have to make sure that there is enough light. Afterwards I intensified the colors on photoshop a bit and that’s it!

The lily pads on this picture are so huge and stable that small persons like children can sit on them without drowning. But I was also really impressed by their nice green and red colors.

The picture has been taken in July in a big zoo that also has a great botanical garden. The zoo is named “Wilhema” and is located in Stuttgart (South Germany) where I live. I was not too interested in seeing animals in cages, but I enjoyed the botanical garden with all its exotic plants.

I really like taking macro photos. If you just get close enough you can create a really interesting photo of ordinary things.

Last weekend I went to the Black Forest which is a really nice area in Germany. While I was hiking I started recognizing how different the structures of tree barks can be. So I got closer and took a picture of it.