spring2life take2

I have not been in this café, just wandered by. But the situation was just perfect, the lens adequate for the light and my hands steady enough, and so I enjoy this image more and more. I have no idea yet how it will print, those night images are always a bit dangerous and need a fine balance between shadow details and a careful noise supression. I will see how the lab manages this, probably sending two versions and decide afterwards.

“He, who saves one single person, could also save the whole world” – This is the talmudian inscription on the memorial by the Hungarian sculptor Tamas Szabo for the Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz in the Jewish Quarter of Budapest. Carl Lutz worked from 1942 onwards in the Swiss embassy in Budapest, and together with the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg he helped 60.000 hungarian Jews to escape the holocaust. Some more photos from those times, including a portrait of Carl Lutz, can be found here.

You see, I like contrasts. But it’s not a purposeful act, accomplished by searching through the images and combining the most contrasty ones, no – such finds like the above are only meters away from the wonderful Mai Mano house of yesterday’s post.

With Tyler Monson I had a short exchange originating of the reactions he got on his 113 Reykjavik blog. My feeling is that there are very often two realities in an image: The subject matter as it was recorded by the lens, creating immediate resonance in the viewers, and the perception of the artist, realized through the way the images was selected and composed. What I show you from the things I’ve seen in Budapest might probably tell more about me then Budapest.

“Imperial and Royal Court Photographer” – at those times the a good photographer was held in high esteem. Mai Mano, who was allowed to wear this title, was famous for his portraits of children in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Now his house is the “Hungarian House of Photography” with exhibitions, a bookshop and the daylight studio, used for meetings and presentations.

Tyler Monson (author of the blogs Here Now, Gone Before Long and More Original Refrigerator Art) today published his new book-blog 113 Reykjavik. This is more a book than a blog, presented in its final form, with now additional posts coming, and intended to be read sequentially.

Fans of icelandic landscapes with volcanoes of bad reputation, glaciers and black rock in this blog can discover another side of this island: urban scenes, graffiti, doors, windows, facades, people.

For sure Tyler’s approach is miles away from what the average tourist would seek, notice and photograph in Iceland. Yet it’s a comprehensive school of what Iceland is, too. I will definitely spend some more time looking there, savouring Tyler’s non-mainstream way of visiting this country.

Mikroszkóp Színpad is a theater in Budapest. While my wideangle zoom gets only rarely exercise, sometimes it proves to be a real asset. But the drawback of using it only rarely is, that I sometimes forget the basics, like in this case: The fastest f-stop was definitely an inconsiderate (non-)choice and introduced a lot of avoidable blurriness into the image. This is a major problem, as the lens is de-centered and the left side of the image is considerably softer than the right side. Still – point of view/perspective and dynamics make this image a keeper for me.

Thanks to the long midsummer days, light was sufficient even in the evening for some nice impressions outside the Gellert Bath. The lanterns seem to origin (as the building does) from times of Vienna Secession.

The coffeehouses in Budapest were inviting, especially now as it was neither crowded nor too hot. And with a good sense for design and a certain facileness in decoration they very often formed attractive places to stay. Difficult to resist for someone like me, whose engine runs on coffee of all kinds.

The kickoff meeting for our project (EnerCity, at the moment of this writing in a preliminary stage) took place in the Technical University of Budapest, where we were warmly welcomed by Prof. János Szlávik, Head of Department of Environmental Economics. In his keynote he mentioned just in passing a small detail which still remains in my memory: We sat only 20m away from the place, where the planning for the 1956 revolution took place. And that thought influenced my mind when peering down into the hall where the statues of two former professors seemed to whisper, watched by two faces on the balustrade.

I am posting this from back home again. The trip was short, intense and filled to the brim with interesting discussion about our project’s features like thermal mapping of city quarters as a support for decisions to thermally renovate buildings in order to cut their CO₂ footprint. Photography was for the fringe time, like early in the morning. At that time only some locals were already in the thermal bassins (they open at 6 a.m.) and the relaxing effect was proportional to the absence of other hotel guest’s idle chit-chat.

Built in the style of the Vienna Secession, the Gellert Bath was opened in 1918, and since then the thermal bath has changed only marginally. The thermal fountains in the underground provide the hot water for the basins since the 13th century, throughout the times when the Turkish occupied Hungary, up to the very presence.

Update: I added one more image from the Bath – I hope my fascination for the room and its colors gets transported.

On special request from Martina, whose dry humour every day is a cause for a smile, just two around-the-corner images from downtown Budapest. The glory of some of the buildings is amazing, comparable only with Vienna or Prague. And just steps away you find buildings that have not been renovated probably since cold war times.

On top of Gellert Hill in Budapest is the Liberty Statue, commemorating the liberation of Hungary from the demons of National Socialism, embodied by german troops and ‘special units’. The translated inscription at the foot of the liberty statue reads “Erected by the grateful Hungarian Nation in memory of the liberating Russian heroes.”

At that time the red army was. with good reason, welcome because in a long bloody war they had defeated the Gerrman troops. That this was the starting point of a long and bloody suppression, culminating in 1956′ (failed) Hungarian Revolution, could not be foreseen then.

A short business has led me to Budapest: A multinational EU funded project working on CO₂ reduction by better energy usage has its kickoff meeting here. The first free hours I used for a walk through the center, which shows amazing contrasts between Gucci shops and decaying building blocks just within eyesight.

I started this sequence with images from the island of Krk with a clouds scenery, and with an image of clouds I want to finish it. At this time of the year such evening clouds are not uncommon, as are heavy thunderstorms at night. In a trailer or even a tent these are memorable events. To emphasize the drama in the image I made use of the details-slider in lightzone, an instrument that I could not replicate neither in my favourite bibble5 nor in gimp.

One of the cool places in Krk, the cafe Casa dei Frangipane in the harbour, is named after the dynasty of the Frankopan, which was very influential in Croatia up to the 16th century. The Frankopan sovereigns tried to defend their estate both against the turkish invaders and the Venetians and where ultimately defeated by the Austrians, when Croatia got absorbed in the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Always eager to avoid security risks hidden in older software, I first tried the new 3.0 version of the blog software WordPress on my local installation. I was impressed by the smoothness and speed of the upgrade process, which did not cause any hickups or even minor changes in the look of my handcrafted theme. So I upgraded the life site, too – without any problem.

That came only minutes later when I used the bulk upgrade for one plugin just out of curiosity (which always is a bad counselor): The blog went into maintenance mode but never came out again.

Lucky me that I was not the first person with this problem. One web search immediately yielded in the right recipe to correct this: Deleting the file .maintenance in the wordpress installation directory. And I was even more lucky to have a web presence with ssh-access, that made correcting this error a matter of seconds.

Fazit: WordPress 3.0 runs like a charm, but for the time being be careful with the bulk update for plugins.

Sherri’s remark on the “kid colors” of the Egglestonian trike reminded me of the slides on a playground in Krk, and recently searching through Carl Weese’s Pennsylvania images brought that Wadesville playground slide to my attention. What a difference in the obtrusiveness of the coloring.

Personally I am less than convinced that we do kids a favour by presenting them such a color overkill like in the image above. I do fear that this conditions their perception to strieve for “louder, shriller, pushier”, and this principle is going to be applied not only to toys, but, to name a few, food, TV, school entertainment and the like. The designers of these (probably chinese) cheapo plastic slides have certainly accomplished a leap towards that kind of perfection, and the overall (sales) success probably proves them right. The trike in my earlier image has in comparison harmonic colors, and I won’t contradict Sherri regarding the attractiveness towards kids.

In most places of the island of Krk, the fire plugs are painted in (weathered) red. But wherever new units are set up, the standard color is a fresh blue, clearly signalling water. And they do make up for nice focusing points in their surroundings.

Whilst it made up for attractive subject matter, I admit being astonished about this amount of fenders, especially in a quiet harbour and a mooring area where the ships don’t stay even overnight. But then, who knows, maybe this is a local way of demonstrating power.

Back from my holidays since a week, I still have some images from Krk I regard as worthy to be shown, like these from the church and monastery in Glavotok. Sometimes this blue sky, old buildings and/or the sea can create almost a sensory overload for some precious moments.

At least since my unexpected encounter with Eggleston’s famous trike on a Honda Poster (here) I am somewhat sensitized for those small vehicles. So my heart leaped for a moment when I saw this symphony in blue, consisting of that chinese-made little threewheeler and the harbour scenery and intensified by the red tail light. Of course the trike did not stand in the right position for the image, so in constant fear of an impulsive accusation in croatian language I carefully repositioned it and took 4 handheld frames at slowest shutter speeds from the lowest position possible – difficult without an angle viewfinder or lifeview. The image is not 100% sharp due to camera shake, but nevertheless a keeper for me.

The two last years I have collected images of the red shipping vessels moored in the harbour of Krk. The best frames went into the small gallery “Red Ship Details” here on this site. In a certain sense finding these images was simple as red is compelling, almost shouting at you. Add to that the fact that where I live red is a rare color (only some train waggons are red) and it is easy to understand my fascination.

The new gallery “Blue Ship Details” is less “pushy” in its colours. The blue ships in Krk have wooden hulls and are generally older. Here my interest was sparked by the weathered surfaces and the blue-white contrast. These images are more quiet, but I love them not lesser than my red series.

As Krk has a strict regime on construction activities, the historic (aka 19th century) appearance of its structure is mostly intact inside the city walls. The houses are of similar height and irregular floor plan and the walls richly structured. Thus the interesting play of shadows everywhere. The challenge for the council now will be to find the right balance between the justified demands of the population for more comfort and the demands of tourism to retain that pittoresque appearance. At the moment there is an unlimited spread of ACs everwhere, which will certainly damage the attractivity of the city if not channeled where necessary.

The sun decided to work as an artist again: Sitting already low above the horizon and using the chimneys of the small and mostly old houses of Krk, she painted wonderful shadows on the facades.

One third of June has already passed, so I am really late with my wallpapers. But as I do like this pair of images so much, especially the delicacy of the Iris, I decided to publish those anyway.

The reflection in the first image is the replica of a Thai Temple situated in the pond in one of Munich’s biggest parks. It was set up 25 years ago for a national garden show and I did photograph it several times over the years, but it has a whimsical quality making the direct images all looking somewhat out-of-order, maybe because of a certain sterility of an unused yet best-maintained religious building. The reflection or a peek through the surrounding leaves works much better for me.

Searching for the church of Sveti Krsevan, we stopped in the small village of Poljica for lunch. And a fine lunch this was, by far the best grilled lamb that I’ve eaten on this island. But really spectacular was the walnut schnapps, served before *and* after the meal. Sometimes it’s really good not being the driver.

Update: That home made sausage was served as a delicious appetizer. Wanderer, if you ever come to the island of Krk, do find your way to Poljica and have a meal there.

Off season here in Krk means time for the locals to sit and chat in places that will be humming from the voices of tourists within four weeks time

I am taking my holidays seriously: Instead of sweating for Sofbomo, I just see what comes along. Serious work has to wait a bit, it doesn’t really comply with family holidays anyway.

These days are the festivities for the name day of St. Quirin, patron of the church and the diocese. The local Brass Band gave a concert on the plaza.

Today was the Feast of Corpus Christi, and as the town of Krk on the island of Krk is the seat of the bishop, there was a large procession through all of the alleys.
Krk itself is the town of Sveti Kvirin, Saint Quirin.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am the last to deny religious feelings, being Roman Catholic myself, but the places chosen for the altars awoke humorous feelings and made me invent those modern saints.

Found in one of the alleys in Krk, where ACs are blooming on the walls now like mushrooms in a moist forest.

Seen in the small village of Milohnići in Krk