Forest Shapes

Last week I visited the Lüneburger Heide Area in Germany and I was surprised how sparsely populated this area is, unlike the Teutoburger Wald which I visited last autumn and which was crowded. In the forests and heathlands of the Lüneburg region I was out alone (except the National Park Lüneburger Heide) and impressed by the large amount of (eatable) mushrooms. 
This time I decided to travel without modern support, no laptop(s), no external hard disk, no adapters, no internet, no telephone.....nothing except my camera, lenses, battery-charger and ONE memory card. I was longing to experience pure nature and enjoyed all weather types.
On the picture above I tried to catch a falling drop of a Ink Cap which of course failed due to the 'bad' light circumstances (it was too dark for a quick shuttertime). As the beeches had no indian summer colours I was busy on the forest floor with mushrooms until I met a very attractive beech:

Some other highlights during this week were my visits to the heathland. The first time I entered an outlying part of the Lüneburger Heide and started with my telelens to search for landscape details when suddenly I noticed some resting and eating deers in the heath. During the second visit to an unknown heath area I saw (and heard) hundreds of Cranes in the air and enjoyed the last butterflies and dragonflies.

During an other visit to the Lüneburger Heide I met an other sexy male shape with red eyes: a viper. As it was that cold that I had to wear my winter coat I did not expect to see a snake. It was very exciting to photograph a venomous snake with my 180 mm macro lens. Unfortunately my week in Germany went by too quick so I will return one day to this area again. Hopefully when all the heathland will be pink and purple!

More autumn photos of this lovely region can be found in the chapter Lüneburger Heide.

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