Instagram birds, 2014–2017
Part two of reposting an old instagram account, this time with some lo-fi, urban wildlife photography (i.e. crappy bird pics).
MoreDeleted my personal Instagram account some time last year, but thought I’d repost some pics here for posterity. The first batch are photos from my old hometown of Oslo. (Warning: I’m the only person to find these interesting.)
February 6th, 2014: This is the river (or creek, really) Akerselva, that splits downtown Oslo in twain. Most of these pictures are taken nearby, since I lived and worked right next to it for many years. (See the bird pics post for more of those mallards.)
May 8th, 2014: Out for an evening walk and photo safari with my buddy Peder. This is outside the lab building, Bygg 25, at Ullevål Hospital. (There will be more photos of that building.)
Also May 8th, 2014: Earlier that evening, we came across this sinister-looking elephant in someone’s garden. Maybe an evil sculptor lives there.
February 10th, 2015: This sunset was crazy, but simply too garish to reproduce in color. (As a sidenote, this was the view from my office, and my apartment was at the other end of the park. Short commute!)
March 20th, 2015: Watching a partial solar eclipse from my balcony. The cloud cover made it possible to watch the eclipse without sunglasses or anything, which was pretty cool! At 10:53AM, the sun was just this little grin in the sky.
August 12th, 2015: Another balcony shot of unusual things in the sky, this time: a hot air balloon! (And some chimneys, I guess.)
August 15th, 2015: More rooftops, this time from downtown Oslo. The brick towers belong to Oslo’s City Hall. The green thing on top of the left one is a marvellous carillon, playing live music (!) every hour from 7AM to midnight.
October 26th, 2015: Sunset view from my apartment, liked the rooftop silhouette.
November 2nd, 2015: Here’s that lab building again, Bygg 25. It might be brutalism. I love it.
January 7th, 2016: Left-hand sun dog.
January 8th, 2016: An old Ford of some kind? Project cars, I guess.
February 17th, 2016: Retro-looking, not-in-a-good-way-but-somehow-cool-anyway, signage above Grensen.
Pepsi was invented by a pharmacist in 1893. That very same year, the royal apothecary Kronen opened right across the street from this, a pharmacy run by my great grandfather from 1931 to 1950.
February 27th, 2016: An old tram! Beautiful old machines, a rare treat to see one out and about. This one is barreling down Vogts gate, through Torshov.
July 1st, 2016: I love rooftops. These particular rooftops are seen from a theatre building downtown. The domed building near the top-right corner is the National Theatre, a much grander specimen.
October 18th, 2016: Oslo has these little oases of old, wooden buildings right in the middle of downtown, it’s like stumbling into a time machine.
The yellow house is called Biermannsgården and dates back to the first half of the 18th century. It houses a music school for kids, among other things.
December 7th, 2016: Another elephant! Was walking to work one morning when someone had installed this sad-looking elephant statue during the night. The mallards seemed to enjoy its company.
February 8th, 2017: From the main stairwell in my old apartment building at Sagene. Used to be a dorm for nurses. (The apartments were very small.)
April 7th, 2017: Vandalism, Maridalsveien
April 23rd, 2017: Liked this little stairway down from Stensparken.
May 24th, 2017: St. Pauli Biergarten (and nursing home!), upper Grünerløkka.
August 17th, 2017: That building again.
September 23rd, 2017: Having a hipster moment at Akershus Fortress, watching the koi and writing in my Moleskine notebook after attending a talk by extraordinary illustrator Malika Favre.
October 19th, 2017: Can’t get enough of Bygg 25, apparently. (The reason why we were visiting the hospital so much this fall, by the way, was because we were expecting our first daughter in November.)
December 7th, 2017: Back to school! Spent most of December at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design’s library, doing research and preparing to work on my diploma project.
December 8th, 2017: An alley behind the buildings of Oslo’s main street, Karl Johans Gate. Love stumbling into these hidden areas.
January 16th, 2018: Oslo had one heck of a snowfall. This is a bus and tram stop, the glowing numbers are expected waiting time. Oslo’s public transport is never on time, but rarely more than 5 minutes late. 17 minutes usually means: “nothing’s running today, hope y’all have good shoes and a warm coat”. (I had good shoes.)
April 21st, 2018: Visited Oslo Transport Museum, a dusty old train garage full of time machines you can climb aboard. (It’s one of my favorite museums.)
Was there to do research on a network of trolley buses that no longer exists. The regular trolleybus was called a hippo, and the extra large hippo was lovingly referred to as svigermor, meaning mother-in-law.
The tram with the fancy behind is a goldfish.
May 16th, 2018: The last week of working on my master thesis, I drove up to the woods to get some peace and quiet. Here I’m sitting with my feet in the water, after rocking in a fetal position for a while. A few days later I hiked for an hour and set up my laptop on a picnic table, which was nice.
May 25th, 2018: Clop clop, it’s the sound of the police. The long face of the law spotted at Karl Johans Gate.
July 15th, 2018: Some of our neighbors used their dry-ass balcony flower pot as an ashtray. Shouldn’t have done that.
August 23rd, 2018: Karl Johans Gate again, bootleg Mickey sneakin’ around. (Where are the horse cops when you need ’em?)
October 21, 2018: Strolling through the graveyard.
February 8th, 2019: From Grensen, looking toward Stortorvet and Oslo Cathedral a chilly morning.