This looks absolutely amazing! The grass is so unbelieveble green, and the cliffs... no words to describe that.
Thank you for sharing this Celeborn.

Second, welcome to this forum.

Well, tomorrow would be a month from the last post and the topic would disappear from the list, which I don't want to happen. And I think I have good reason. Looking at some photos of waterfalls, I discovered this beautiful one: the Falls of Sirion:



It shows in fact the Baatara Gorge in Lebanon, and I would love to see it in person. It looks really spectacular.

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Tolkien maniac collection! - Amazon (a list that I made for people much interested in Tolkien works and studies)

With the bad economy, many cities are turning off streetlights. An article I read puts a positive spin on it, decreasing light pollution. Parts of it reminded me of Arda....

"the original glory of an unlit night—dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadows on Earth—is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost. And yet above the city's pale ceiling lies the rest of the universe, utterly undiminished by the light we waste—a bright shoal of stars and planets and galaxies, shining in seemingly infinite darkness."

And...

"…in Galileo’s time people assumed that the Milky Way must be some kind of continuous substance. It truly resembled a streak of spilled liquid—our word “galaxy” comes from the Greek for milk—and it was so bright that it cast shadows on the ground (as did Jupiter and Venus). Today, by contrast, most Americans are unable to see the Milky Way in the sky above the place where they live, and those who can see it are sometimes baffled by its name. The stars have not become dimmer; rather, the Earth has become vastly brighter, so that celestial objects are harder to see. Air pollution has made the atmosphere less transparent and more reflective, and high levels of terrestrial illumination have washed out the stars overhead—a phenomenon called “sky glow.”

I can now better imagine how the Elves lived under the stars without the sun. I always thought it would be too dark for them to live happily but now I have a clearer image.

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... the seas of the Bent World fell away beneath it, and the winds of the round sky troubled it no more...

Indeed pollution is such a sad reality of our times, and I am sure the Elves (and for that matter, even our real ancestors) would have had such a good time looking at and studying the sky, if only they had had the chance.

In case anyone is interested, I made a simulation using the software Starry Night of a portion of the sky with and without pollution. The difference is striking (click on the photo for the full resolution):



Also, there are other things I wanted to show you too. To quote from 'The Silmarillion':

"There came a time of winter, when night was dark and without moon; and the wide plain of Ard-galen stretched dim beneath the cold stars, from the hillforts of the Noldor to the feet of Thangorodrim. The watch-fires burned low, and the guards were few; on the plain few were waking in the camps of the horsemen of Hithlum. Then suddenly Morgoth sent forth great rivers of flame that ran down swifter than Balrogs from Thangorodrim, and poured over all the plain; and the Mountains of Iron belched forth fires of many poisonous hues, and the fume of them stank upon the air, and was deadly. Thus Ard-galen perished, and fire devoured its grasses; and it became a burned and desolate waste, full of a choking dust, barren and lifeless. Thereafter its name was changed, and it was called Anfauglith, the Gasping Dust."



The image came in a PowerPoint presentation I was sent, but I have no idea where this place is in reality. I only know that the photographer is Chinese.


And lastly, a beautiful and virgin shore. This can be anywhere you like in Arda. For me, it shows the shores of the Ekkaia, in the west of Valinor, with the Sun setting.



In reality, this photo was made somewhere in Mexico.

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Tolkien maniac collection! - Amazon (a list that I made for people much interested in Tolkien works and studies)

somewhere in the misty mountain's




somewhere in hobbiton

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Oulmo, thanks for the images! It's really nice when someone jumps in with whatever images or texts (thanks, Beth, too!) that help expand and enrich this topic that I started long long ago with the purpose of 'finding' the real Arda. I'm happy it got to be such a visited topic, also (more than 8700 views at the time of my writing this).

However, oulmo: do you also happen to know where the places you showed us are in reality? In fact, I am positive that the first one represents the Huang Shan mountains in China. Here are two other views (I'm only posting the links - they are hosted on Wikipedia):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Huangshan_pic_4.jpg - this very much reminds me of the Misty Mountains in 'The Hobbit'.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/HuangShan.JPG - this I think is the same peak as in oulmo's post, from a different angle.


So the question remains: where is the second place located?


(45 photos)

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Tolkien maniac collection! - Amazon (a list that I made for people much interested in Tolkien works and studies)

could be somewhere in the east, or maybe in russia/ eastern europe.
It's hard to find a field with some mountains in the back in the world that is exactly the same.

Well, well, long time no see! I am getting a bit anxious about this topic - usually if no one posts anything, I wait for about a month before posting again, but I just stumbled over so many gorgeous, breathtaking, exhilarating pictures that I simply wanted to share with you all my joy. You'll see that Paradise is on Earth in what follows!

Firstly, however, I see that oulmo's photos have been deleted. I can supply the first photo again, but unfortunately I don't have the second, because neither of us knew where it was. So here are the Misty Mountains (Huang Shan, China):





And now, let us see what I managed to find in these last days. I will start with a view of the Cape of Forochel in the north of Middle-earth.



In fact, the photo is of Rype Fjord, in Greenland.


Secondly, you may remember that long ago (first photo on the second page) I proposed a view of Lake Helevorn, the source of the river Gelion. If that picture faces west, towards the direction Gelion is flowing, then let us assume that this second picture faces east, towards the peak of Rerir, which can be discerned in the background, at the far side of the lake.



The photo really shows Consolation Lake, in the Banff National Park, Canada.


Thirdly, a view towards the north from the banks of Lake Nenuial, where the city of Annuminas was built. The low mountains in the back are the Hills of Evendim.



This is in fact Lake Moriri in the province of Ladakh, in the Indian Kashmir region.


Fourthly, I found a stunning image of the Misty Mountains above Moria taken from between the branches a mallorn in Lothlorien.



The photo is taken in Pakistan, in the vicinity of the village Pasu, far in the north of the country, in the Karakoram range.


Finally, some photos from Valinor, which we haven't explored for quite a while. The following three photos all show the mighty peak Hyarmentir in the Pelori Mountains.







All three photos are in fact showing the Cathedral Range near Pasu, Pakistan.

That's all for now, and I hope you like them.

(52 photos)

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Tolkien maniac collection! - Amazon (a list that I made for people much interested in Tolkien works and studies)

Wow, nice photographes!

Interesting, Beth. Thank you for posting it!

What is equally interesting (for me at least) is the fact that the photographer is Romanian and even shares my (real) surname.

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Tolkien maniac collection! - Amazon (a list that I made for people much interested in Tolkien works and studies)