spring2life take2

strolling through my surroundings (more often by bike now, trying to save co2 emissions) with the camera can be a real eye opener. the well known places reveal new aspects, details that i saw but did not cherish, and the sequence of development becomes more tangible (given that photons are tangible at all) because i pay much more attention to the right moment for an image. probably some zealots might criticise the camera as a crutch here, ideally everybody should be able to experience life without auxiliary means. but let them criticise, better to have a matching tool than none at all, better to experience with support than not experience at all.

a helper can be really valid, as was my daughter, owner of the hands in the picture to the right. changing tires together with her was fun, the support much more than her thin 8-years old arms would indicate. to see, to experience photography sometimes is my helper, and the relationship is bidirectional without doubt: what i see, what my eye and then the sensor captures results in images that hopefully fire perception of others, too. and clara learnt how to use a jack and where and why to apply grease.

the state-run german railway (“reichsbahn” at that time) played a supportive role in the murderous policies and actions of the third reich’s holocaust, transporting the victims – many children among them – into the concentration and extermination camps. the privately organized “train of remembrance” now travels over all the tracks that led to those camps. today it was to be visited in munich terminus.

insensitive enough, the (still state owned) “deutsche bahn” management decided to demand a substantial rent of approx. eur 1000,-/day for each day this train stands in one of the train stations. the munich city council has decided to reimburse those costs and in this way shows a much more appropriate sense of responsibility than the railway management does.

can’t help it: as a pupil this facade of your school just serves one duty: make you feel small, confronted with such uniform power. of course didactics inside this building have changed now, and every year dozens of girls successfully finish their education, but the outside still breathes the spirit of past centuries where the church was a power factor, supportive sometimes, oppressive not infrequently.

spring time makes the spirits rise, and of course martin luther’s proverbial apple tree as a symbol of undestroyable hope makes the apple tree and it’s blossoms well suited for an allegorical image. this horse (you may remember it from this post) certainly has found a paradise garden.

so today i rode my bicycle to his pastures, optimistic to find the apple blossoms now open, and i did not come in vain.

a traditional orchard like this one is rare nowadays in our intensified agricultural production devices (it’s not soil anymore, no, certainly not) and the owner probably would have converted it as well if he wouldn’t now grow tourist accomodations with associated riding occasions instead of milk cows. for the latter’s milk he would now get a price lower than even the basic cost per litre. this is the other side of progress.

in the mountains there is still abundant snow, especially on the north slopes, so the nights can become really cold – a permanent threat for all the blossoming trees. let’s see how much of that fragile beauty is left when i come back after my two commuting days.

regarding the right balance ilan remarked tongue-in-cheek ‘The most brilliant artists, are those who were unstable ’. undeniably, great works of art were created by borderline artists, and the world would be poorer without those pieces. in my humble opinion however, this is a role model that is connected with quite some drawbacks not only for the artists – they are solely responsible for their actions as everybody else – but also for their surroundings. not easy to have a brother who cuts his ear, to switch from bank business to painting and so on. undeniable those resumes hint to hardships for the relatives of the artist.

so balancing the artistic way with the necessities of daily life in my eyes has its merits (i don’t decline the possibility that this could be pure convenience) and looking at both sides of the medal, at action and reaction, at form and shadow for me does reveal things to see, to percieve and to appreciate – enough food for my photography at least.

the image above was accomplished in the very last minute of a family excursion, when i just went back to fetch my gear. now late in the evening, in the really quiet hours of the day, it revealed its quality for me and asked for a tiny bit extra treatment to balance the shapes.

and trying to balance my visual perception with some music, i found Joni Mitchell – Both Sides Now in a life recording on you tube. highly recommended.

biking itself is not the most important thing when going with the kids. this bog did not offer the frog spawn we were hoping to find, but the 2nd fallen tree was good for taking off the shoes and balancing over the water (the 1st broke under the weight of the testing father…).

finding the right balance also in photography is a permanent challenge for me. balancing the wishes and possibilities and coming to an equilibrium that is nirvana and not tedium means clearly weighing realistic opportunities, personal skills and wishful thinking. my goal of doing more landscape photography – last year i started photographing a nearby canyon – had slight compatibility issues with the family. getting up at sunday 05:00 yielded a decidedly negative reaction from the affected wife, somewhat understandable taking into account the workload. but instead photographing people, something i had ruled out because of an apparent lack of communication skills, yielded good results. Interestingly enough not communicating in my mother tongue – and not in the mother tongue of my counterparts – was easier than similar attempts earlier at home. and now i am trying to translate this back…

a term that i found as important as balance is ‘carpe diem’. envisioning images, open-eyedly perceiving light and moods means less procrastinating, as every moment offers different opportunities. the balance here is not to overstate own mission goals but to equate with other requirements. same i try to teach my daughters, but teaching by example sometimes is hard.

not that I like those overly vivid toys, but in the backlight…

i found this image going through my archives to add lacking keywords. 12000+ pictures without keywords don’t make too much sense, so i try to add at least place names, sometimes persons and subject types to support my not-so-excellent memory. my 76 years old father astonished me two weeks ago, finding three slides of a bronze after reviewing my shots of a sculpture in a nearby place. There are no exif-data in those slides, so either you know your archive or you write down systematically or – you just have a heap of incoherent images. life is so much easier digitally…

the spa district of bad reichenhall sported one beautiful villa next to the other, some used as early hotels, but many more just expression of the taste and wealth of their owner. those times are long ago, and the wave of renovation of the last 50 years has spared some places. depending of the financial power of their owners and/or the property scheme, a small number was run down and is now slumbering like the castle in sleeping beauty.

the parcels being in a pricey neighborhood but the renovation costs equally high, these places probably have to wait until the next change of ownership by inheritance and an irrefutable offer of an investor to get woken up.

the state run places like the spa center are almost everywhere in excellent condition – the comparably high tax load in germany makes (not only) this possible. and herewith i am also presenting the magnolia-must-be picture for 2009 (don’t know if i find another, better one…)

the castle of the bad reichenhall district ‘kirchberg’, in the vernacular dialect lovingly called ‘schlössl’, is the cradle of the spa activities of my hometown. dating back to 1130, it originally served as an estate. changing owners led to various utilisations, and in 1723 it got rebuilt in the now visible baroque form.

in the recent past it served as an upper class restaurant for a while and now is in private property. not the most prudent caretaking for such a historical building, as you can easily see from the lock in the door, which was inserted without only the minimum care for a historic place

but the painting and the forms still are widely intact, and the weatheredness of the color makes up for interesting details. sometimes it is really rewarding to explore the photographic possibilities nearby, especially regarding the lighting situation. here i didn’t have to take it at first chance but could come back when the light was a suitable, cloud dampened backlight.

the quality of the viewfinder was *the+ critical argument for my first dslr – wearing glasses, a high eyepoint makes a big difference. but even the good finder of my current camera didn’t show me recognizably what this shot would look like later on – the blurs of color, dabbed over the background like from an impressionist painter I did simply not see in the viewfinder. the bokeh of my tele zoom, focused at 450 mm-e on the background, created the most awesome stipples out of the cherry blossoms and some foreground leafs. and once more i was glad about my decision to *always* shoot raw: whilst the original showed a slight purple cast in the background, resulting from the low sun peering through dark clouds, bibble and especially the brenda plugin helped me to form an image that met my memory of the light situation. again – no saturation slider touched, no ‘vibrance’ added.

two days before i had tried the same scenery with the focus on the cherry blossoms. the result wasn’t nearly as good as there was no clear separation between what’s sharp and what should be unsharp, with a resulting not-really-sharp impression and lacking emphasize on what i meant to be singled out.

now i am content with the result.

sorry, i simply had to use this pun now. the light at the moment is gorgeous, especially if the sky is scattered with clouds and the backlight is less pungent and more revealing. even the lens flaws (my not-often-enough-used tamron 11-18) and the raw conversion problems don’t stop me to include the direct sun in the picture. f22 makes up for a nice star effect even without any criss-cross-filter – i do well remember the hype around those in the 80th of last century.

the animals enjoy the fresh pasture, too. this white stallion grazes at schleicherhof, subject of yesterday’s post, and enjoys its charity. with probably 30 years (24 according to the horse trader, but popular wisdom here in germany recommends to never believe a horse trader) there is no work any more, maybe a bit posing for the kids and the tourists, not to forget the photographer.

i guess is what the landscapist might label it, but i can’t help: this is part of bavarian pittoresque, like it or not. 10min by bike from my home, the farmers of “schleicherhof” accomodate guests and care for their fruit orchard and their horses. the farmhouse is situated at one of the most scenic points opposite the entrance of the valley to berchtesgaden, overlooking the meadows to grossgmain, a village already on the austrian side of the border.

only 2 steps left from the position where the lead shot was taken, the scenery to the right unfolds in front of the eye. probably this can be called ‘kitschig’, but at least i enjoyed the minutes up there, the talk with the farmer (well knowing the photogenic qualities of the orchard as well as the vista with the cross, “marterl” in local language), the smell of the blossoms the sounds of the bees within together with the warmth of the late afternoon sun. of course the cars from the valley could be heard, this is reality and not backdrop for a sentimental film.

a catkin and box bouquet like the one i showed in this post usually is put next to the cross in the living room or in the kitchen of the farmhouse, however big specimen of those (referring to probably pre-christian fertility rites) are traditionally put on the meadows for the easter week and later on may end up on the wall of the stable, like here.

another trip back into bad reichenhall’s glorious past: the karyatides of the entrance to one of the best hotels back in the ending 19th century. bad reichenhall was so famous in these days that even a bavarian king came there for 5 weeks. the spa offered healing of respiratory problems by inhalating brine dispersed by a 14m high and 200m long layer of twigs. the pumping machinery of that times is still partially functioning, and the excursion to those places is already planned.

from this past wealth only a fraction is there nowadays – tourists prefer to go abroad, and the rich clientel of the splendiferous hotel has sharply decreased in numbers. the beauty of some buildings and the scenery and landscape however has survived.

in search of the remnants of the prosperous times of my hometown – we are going to celebrate 850th birthday as a town this year – i am consequently strolling through the older quarters here. the different balcony grids grabbed my attention. whilst most of the old-style attice windows have been replaced by the better insulated and easier-to-clean one pane windows, some of the old balconies have survived without many modifications.

even on one of the houses that have been completely gutted during renovation, they re-attached the completely renovated grids. protection by-law of the cultural heritage does really help here, and savvy architects manage to balance it’s necessities with the functionality of the building. the only following injustice is that the owner bears the biggest part of the higher costs whilst the public enjoys the results. but this is covered up by our constitution, stating that ‘property entails obligations’.

just wondering where this is brought into application in the current financial disaster. but i’m disgressing.

folk wisdom has it – there is nothing to add.

found on a house near river saalach, next to the village of Schneizlreuth.

i am a bit insecure about the translation, the first word “schaff” could also be translated as ‘create’, but the rhythm and flow then is a bit off.

after a long dry period with excellent weather for easter, today the first spring rain set in, and i expect the leaves now to really shoot out of the twigs. rain plus twilight plus neon ads made up for a nice reflection on the plaster here.

and as everybody is glad about the end of snow and dirt and dreary weather, this skater didn’t want to be stopped by the drizzle.

when i started photography roughly 30 years back, lenses with a focal length of more than 300mm were regarded as professional tools only and priced like this. today aps-c digital slrs with their crop factor of 1.5 plus the development in the area of long telezooms offer the possibilities to use a 450mm-e lens (the mm-e were introduced by mike johnston here and i regard it as a sound concept, especially as it can take care of the different crop factors we have in the wild now: 1.3, 1.5, 1.6, 2…). count in optical stabilisation, and you have the ingredients for succesfull long-lens shots any pro would have licked her or his fingers up to the elbow only 20 years ago.

the really densely populated downtown of salzburg of course creates demand for some, and be it even the smallest, recreational space. down from mönchsberg, the hill where the castle is located, you have a magnificient view into a landscape of roofs, now and then interrupted by a small private spa. even a single sunlounger can qualify for this

a colorful island in all the matt roofs was this small garden with the forsythia in full blossom. spending a morning or evening hour up here for sure is exhilarating when you have to live and work the whole day confined in a building.

happy easter to all of you, and colorful months like those tulips i found in the market.

the light in salzburg was great this morning and the vision almost unreal. walking too long over mönchsberg for sure caused sore feet….

admittedly with a considerable delay econonmical considerations took over also in the bavarian state forest. whilst savings on staff costs and less supervision and support of private forest owners pretty quite strictly follow advices of a management consultancy, the admittance of does and deers remains pretty much regulated according to pre-democratic governing principles: as the hunters demand a high yield of antlers, the protective function of the forest in the mountains has to be achieved with expensive measures.

here the young trees are protected with plastic casings to make sure that the expensive seedlings reach a stage where their tree tops are out of the does’ teeth reach. almost no discussion about this here in bavaria as the hunters’ lobby managed to embrace the majority of our parlamentarians.

and what is true, should (read: most often is) beautiful

ehekracher – marriage firecracker – is the title of the advertisement for a theater comedy glued to the pole. the lady next to it seems a bit puzzled about this title, too. at least her glance could be interpreted in this way.

laufen at the salzach river tries hard to keep history vivid, the shown signboards are just a small excerpt of these efforts.the encroachment of public space with the various monstrosities that you find in bad reichenhall and many other places does not take place here.

of course, the wish to make business here as everywhere brings along the usual so-so display windows, and houseowners with only average feeling for adequate material did just shove in the most ugly anodised window frames, but the overall feeling of a historic city, especially on the main square, is still present.

in the countryside, the volunteer fire brigade is on duty at many official events, too. last weekend, two cities at both sides of the german-austrian border, laufen and oberndorf, arranged their two cities course for runners of all age groups over a track of 6km, and the volunteer fire brigade was responsible for the safety.

more interesting than the runners, crossing the bridge over river saalach salzach connecting the two cities, was that volunteer firefighter in the lead shot, waiting for the runners to come and pass by.

update: i stand corrected – johannes huss informed me about a geographical mistake. it’s the river salzach, not saalach, which separates laufen and oberndorf.

this wooden ornament decorates the door to maria bühel, a pilgrimage church dating back to the 17th century. located not far away from the holy-night-chapel in oberndorf, austria, it is a quiet place, not getting that tourist attention as the former one.

the architecture and the baroque paintings in the inside are marvellous, and i have decided to go there again early in the morning, by foot from the river salzach, following the path of the raftsmen for whom this church was built 4 centuries ago. and hopefully i will find the sacristan then to open the barrier and allow an unrestricted view of the paintings and statues.

spring time all around, today with matching weather. probably this season makes many of us sensitive for fresh and intensive colors. at least it did with me, and the family excursion to the small town of laufen remunerated me with this symphony in blue.

shop windows can tell a lot about the owner. in the case of this jeweller, i often saw pieces a bit off the mainstream of a sanitarium’s offerings. it turned out the owner still works as a goldsmith, immediately behind the shop windows. my question to come and take some pictures was answered positively.

when i arrived, he was just finishing a small golden pendant and setting the stone, so i had enough food for my lens. trying to avoid flashlight ’cause i never get that really right, i was glad to have iso 2000 available. together with in-camera-stabilisation and an old f2.8 lens it was more than sufficient.

grey sky in the morning, but the cranes formed an interesting pattern. Seeing it in large reveals some minuscule red lights of the signals, nice counterweights for the mainly blue tones.

there are shots that belong together (like my moon diptych, but also the landscapist does it, and carl weese recently published shots of a yellow suv/green wall that could be seen as belonging together), and so it’s just consistent to frame them together.

trees have been and are a favourite subject of mine, maybe inherited from my father, who knows a lot of them by figure, without having to look at leaves or fruits, and it is astonishing that i still haven’t set up a separate keyword or collection for them. well – time to go through the archives again. but now it’s time for backup of the latter.