spring2life take2

That wonderglass I unwrapped yesterday of course stayed on the camera for quite some time – to be honest, it still stays. I was longing such a long time for that shallow DoF that I guess it will take some time until that deprivation is compensated for. I was using zoom lenses almost exclusively for the last 4 years, and of course for recording of events they do have their merits. But I was astonished how fast I got accustomed to that ‘framing with the feet’, and the fixed focal length is no hindrance, at least for the photography I am doing at the moment.

Pixel-peeping (of course you do that, as you can do it so easily in digital photography) I found some CA, but to be honest, I couldn’t care less. It is not too difficult to correct, but even uncorrected probably barely visible, and then I won’t do reproductions or architecture photography with emphasis on ultimate sharpness with this lens. It’s for (soft) moods, I think, and these it can capture in nonpareil style.

Just a remark on that image of the red maple: I barely was able to rescue it as the reds were clipped in quite some areas. Bibble5 highlight recovery did a good job, but still I’ll try to capture this again when light and winds permit.

Today I finally held in my hand what I was looking for since re-starting photography: A probably 15 years old second hand Minolta 1.4/85mm lens. Aah – that were the times when all lenses were built completely from metal. That definitely gives a solid feeling! And then that front lens, what an amount of glass! But I didn’t bother for long with admiring the outer qualities, instead I used my lunch break for a walk in the nearest park. That shallow DoF and blurry background is amazing (the shot above was taken stopped down half a f-stop) but what was demanding at least for the first frames is the discrepancy between the viewfinder image and what gets recorded on the sensor: In the viewfinder you simply do not see that shallow DoF and background blur or bokeh. The reason is the “optimisation” of the former ground glass into an array of micro-structures that are much brighter than any groundglass could be, but similarly to a loupe offers a virtual image to the eye. And this image does not obey to even only widely similar optical laws of the rendering on a groundglass. Well, without that artifice the viewfinder would be unbearably dark with the zoom lenses that are the standard now.

I am a happy camper for now, as this lens allows me to bask in low DoF images and, as I hope, those wonderful airy discs of out-of-focus light sources. Additionally I will try those fine portraits where only the pupils are rendered sharply but already nose and ears get enwrapped in soft and flattering unsharpness.

The time in the train I spent mostly for the wallpapers today. You can reach them through the top menu. I have created them in a variety of resolutions, so you should find a matching size. If not, use the contact page. If you like them, you could use the contact form as well.

I have to admit that processing this image took me overly long time, despite it looks so uniform. The difficulty was in the intended rendering of a dark, humid forest. I had to overcome my inhibitions to leave a substantial part of the histogram unused in order to get that impression of a dark forest. Opening up enough shadows to get details into the picture was simpler then, choosing the right amount of sharpening tricky again. And that dry tree to the left originally had a tad too much red for my taste – but at least a stem’s shape is rectangular, so it was easy to mask it and treat it separately.

From this image I will create desktop wallpapers with calendar, so stay tuned.

Sometimes an image can beam us decades back, right into the time when we were listening with red eyes to the fairy tales.

After days I spent mainly in the flat, I needed a walk. Today’s dying light gave a wonderful backdrop for the dried flowers and shrubs along a small logging road.

Just opposite my window is a really old hydrangea in, and this is special, tree form. Usually hydrangeas are shrubs, but this old specimen grows its efflorescences on a real stem and branches. And probably 2m over ground they collect all the dew from the cold and humid autumn nights, and in the blue morning light the  remaining pink of the petals glows. I have already lowered saturation a bit, but probably this is still not enough – pushing down exposure by 2 stops to compensate for exposing to the right gets wonderful colors, maybe a tad on the artificial side.

Hunger is the best sauce – and that is definitely true on a hike in the mountains. The doughnuts – Auszogne in local terms – were kept warm in the wood-fired oven and served with powdered sugar. Delicious, I can tell you!

I’ve always been interested in reflections and the corresponding circles of confusion that the backlight brings out so strongly. But photographing for decades, up to now I had never deliberately misfocused – sharpness for a long time was like a holy cow for me, as I see it as one of the genuine characteristics of photography to render the scene sharp and full of details. This small creek I found 2 weeks back during our hike in the Berchtesgaden national park, and the quality of the autumn light I found transported best in this blurred rendering of the scene.

This image is probably more conventional, and it was easy for me to accept. Backlight is the light I cherish the most since decades, however it eluded me often back in the film days. Chimping has improved my skills in dealing with this light form very much, and now I find more time to deal with the colours in this light situation.

Found in the pedestrian area. Due to the (usually) moderate climate, sycamore trees grow to large sizes here in Bad Reichenhall.

A climate change we have for sure, just no local warming, at least not for the moment: 9 days ago sweating in +25°C (which is 77°F) and now the rain is mixed with snowflakes already. But I do accept it, in spite of photography getting different if not more difficult with the receding light. And as today’s image clearly shows, this kid doesn’t mind as well.

Ok, what you are seeing here is just a gimped view into the future. The sad thing is that it is not far from extrapolated reality, except probably the plane. At the time the Maledives are devoured be the rising sea level, there probably will be no kerosene guzzlers transporting tourists away from ruined environment at home into to-be-ruined environment elsewhere. Sorry for sounding pessimistic, unfortunately all my pessimism will be topped by reality.

The presidents of the Maledives seem to be pessimistic as well as you might like to read on BBC (2004) and following. Nobody can claim that we do not know what we are doing. What I really fear are not the consequences for my own life – no cheap gas any more – but the curses of my children and grandchildren.

P.S. In case you didn’t notice: Today is blog action day. Only about 8000 out of the gazillions of blogs are participating. I guess that climate change is still an inconvenient truth.

I was so busy with that small scenery of grass and lake in almost complete darkness, hiding under a large umbrella held by my tip-toeing daughter, that I did not look up to the mountain and the clouds on the other side of the lake until the kid’s voice told me something about a strange light in the sky. With the clouds moving fast, this mystery soon was resolved: the mountain top hotel of Mt Predigtstuhl, were the world’s oldest large-cabin funicular drops passengers since the year 1928. But in the moving clouds one could have thought that a spaceship was looking for a place to land.

are the leaves for all the house managers and municipal workers – at least it seems so. Only hours after heavy gusts of wind had poured down all the fruits from beeches and chestnuts, together with some leaves, the leaf blowers/suckers started a concerto grosso, underpinned by the diesel growl of the road sweeping vehicle. Autumn music that is.

After a day full of small-small fuzz that left the feeling of having wasted too much time, I just had a short stroll with one of the daughters, the camera on tripod and an umbrella. It was a fine occasion for some father daughter talk, she was asking and I tried to come up with understandable explanations, trying to carefully correct half-understood things. Our path led to the inlet of an almost 120 year old power plant, which now has automatic scrapers. And interrupting the boredom of a walk in a beginning drizzle, those scrapers came to life, wonderfully enough in just the right speed for a 20s exposure that captured the movement of the arms in the perfectly still lake.

Just minutes before it had just looked like this. Seeing the father busy with his camera, my daughter supported me by holding the umbrella over us, a difficult task for an 8 year old who is not on the tall side. And I got the opportunity to talk about the way the images are captured in a camera, making it interesting enough and explaining why this image needs 20s exposure time. So for both (human) sides this walk ended satisfying, and for the camera as well.

A lively beer garden this place was, only a week ago, as we had the warmest october since the beginning of the weather records (climate change? or chance?). Now it’s a more melancholic view with the empty tables and the grey clouds touching the peaks already. In only four weeks, up there will be snow.

Addendum: For whatever reason, the picture embedded in the blog came out darker than the uploaded version. The latter you get as always in a lightbox when you click on the image.

“I shouldn’t have stayed behind the tripod that long – now it’s really hard to move.”

I found these elders some time ago, but with their leaves on, the stems were always in such a deep shadow that I couldn’t get a reasonable picture. One point for autumn for this one.

Some peoply say that my all-time disposedness for coffee is bordering addiction already, but be it as it is, I simply had to take this image. And at least it’s subtle enough to make the thought of a coffee only sneak into your consciousness.

Walter Neiger, who writes the blog a picture a day keeps the doctor away with interesting, often whimsical black and white photographs – definitely well worth every visit – wrote a poem by Friedrich Hebbel in the comment to Autumn in Berchtesgaden National Park, which did delight me very much.

After some research I found this translation by Walter A. Aue:

 

Autumn Scene

This is a fall day like I never saw!

The air ist still, almost of breathing free,

but here and there are falling, without flaw,

the finest-looking fruits from every tree.

 

Do not disturb ripe nature’s holy day!

This is a harvest that is all her own,

because, today, each fruit that breaks away

falls from a milder ray of sun alone.

 

 
 
Thank you very much, Walter!

After yesterday’s feasting in colors, today somewhat more sober autumnal colors from the city. This year’s dry autumn weather makes fall arrive in the city earlier than in the countryside, for the sheer lack of humidity in the restricted room for the roots.

“Those who god loves, he lets fall into this country” – a free translation of one of our great regional writers, Ludwig Ganghofer. Probably a bit declamatory, but on the other hand – the early fall days here in Klausbachtal don’t make it difficult to believe that this sentence is true.

My complaints that the perception of “Octoberfest equals Bavaria” is wrong of course deserves some evidence. OK – today I had the luck to experience it (again) and hopefully I can show you some convincing images.

Beginning of october is the time of the return of livestock from high alpine summer pastures vulgo ‘Almabtrieb’, and this is also the time for some small local festivities like the ‘Almfest’ (alpine pasture festival) that we had today at the ‘Harbachalm’ (here on google maps). A local traditional band was playing, no electricity and therefore no PA, only traditional tunes from the band, but also participation from the audience in form of vocals or interspersed songs accompagnied on a solo accordeon. The weather was fine, temperatures moderately high, the beer of the local brewery cold, the backlight demanding only for the photographer… Only the sanitary facilities were sub-standard, as my daughters complained. The OO-sign points to the respective appliance, consisting basically of a deep hole…

To avoid the impression that Bavaria is some kind of backward-oriented, old fashioned, dyed-in-the-wool conservative country (no, I don’t want to talk about the elections again), just have scrutinizing look at the image to the right: You see that guy in leather pants (Lederhosen) with the Oakley – replica? -  over his eyes? No, Bavaria can be really modern, with Laptop und Lederhosen, as one of our former prime minister had put it. And still some of us don’t forget the really god things from the good old days.

 

Real brass music and vocals belong to those things, preferably in a small, manageable setting. You may see yourself, the gallery with all the images can be found here.

Well, the laughter may be electric (so were the movements) but obviously it was not really electrifying. By now, you know for sure that I am not one of the great fans of the octoberfest, an attitude that certainly puts me into quite some distance of the fanatic pro-octoberfest statements like those on the Boston Globe (thanks to Martina for pointing this out).

I am, however, a bit concerned about the impression this event gives the world about Munich: beer abundant, drunk people in somewhat traditional clothing, and, on the back side of the medal, average 10 rapes/octoberfest (official, the dark figure is about 200) and probably 2000 police operations in those mad 16 days. Well, there is not only fun and hight times.

Usually the locals prefer the quieter hours, and in the afternoon you see families with young kids enjoying all the roundabouts, horse riding places and even a genuine flea circus. I have updated my gallery section with an Octoberfest section (Wies’n is the bavarian word for this event, originally meaning simply meadow).