¢ Carl Weese
My friend Carl Weese sent me this image today: Their cat Marshall scrutinizing the last post on spring2life, probably checking if that small biker might make up a substitute for a mouse. Seems that spring2life has some renommee also with quadrupeds. Thanks Carl!
Found this just stepping out of the tramway, before entering the office. It seems there are certain predispositions where I just see. Now if I could only find the switch or trigger for it…
Commuting again, while the summer weather takes a break to make place for rain showers and cold temperatures around 13°C in the morning (that’s 55°F for you folks outside the metric system). My self chosen lens diet – only the wideangle – is not a diet in the sense of restriction, instead reveals constantly new images to me. And meanwhile I even manage to create shallow DoF frames – it’s all a question of moving near enough.
Working on prominent lines and combining strong foreground with a blurred, yet still informative background, I found new joy in wideangle perspectives. Of course I am curious if the partial unsharpness I deplored in my widangle images from Budapest and Krk is a problem of the lens – then I would be willing to replace it – or the photographer. If it’s, as I tend to assume now, the photographer, then I could assign the money set aside to replace it for a workshop, probably on the landscape subject.
Sunday ended with a short excursion, one of the daughters with me. Talking a little bit, explaining to her an older film camera but also various plants and insects, and enjoying the last light of the sun, already hiding behind rain-filled clouds, but still providing a golden shine. Quality time, a reservoir for a week full of work.
And this is another aspect of landscape photography, not the grand scale, and not the glorious light and full creamy color. I recently had a conversation with Martin Storz of the public eye blog, and I would highly recommend to have a look at his blog and his take on ‘landscape’.
Never leave the house without the camera – and never hurry. I was sent on a mission to capture some pastries for sunday afternoon and did hide the camera well to avoid admonishments re. loitering et. al. And after business I saw this board, which I have probably passed hundreds of times, always in the car, bound for something important. Stop I did this time, got the 25+ years old minolta tele zoom lens (the famous beercan), which allowed me to stand in safety and cover the distance over the street and get just the right crop. Sunday saved.
Again from yesterday’s photowalk: One of the main tourist attractions here is the Old Saline, dating back to 1837 and filled with the most advanced pumping machinery invented at that time. The staircase to the miner’s chapel (here) proved a rain protected vantage point for this image.
Hard to believe, but this year’s weather for the photowalk was even more wet than last year’s. The palm trees (planted in pots and brought into the streets by the spa administration, only to pretend a mediterranean climate) were dripping with rain. At least I was lucky having brought my own model (to the right). Other than that a fine time was having had by all, and plans were made for next year, maybe sporting a wet suit and fins then. So I will save my money for an underwater housing for the camera.
Can’t resist to answer Tyler Monson’s duplicities in “American View”, which gave me such a lasting smile today.
That late summer look was achieved by some curves magic in bibble5.
The house in the image to the right was already subject of a post, here. This time I got a glimpse of the shadows’ play out of the bus window, and instead of changing immediately (and reaching the office early) I decided in favor of the sunlight’s spectacle on the walls. Processing of these images was easy – early morning front light doesn’t stress the dynamic range too much – but the leading image did benefit from some selective fill light at the bottom. Bibble5 as usual, it gets improved every minor version step. That it still lacks some of the plugins of the 4 version, this for me is more then compensated by the possibility to work in regions on the raw file itself. Definitely a straightforward workflow for no-frills raw conversion.
A missed deadline is a missed deadline, and a SoFoBoMo book that takes more to complete than the given 31 day period is not a SoFoBoMo book. Such as mine.
What is a failure in SoFoBoMo categories is still not a failure for me. I made my book, and the process of selecting, editing and laying out was… well, it was not fun, but a pleasure, especially when seeing the product. You can download it here , and I will also adapt the menu structure to accomodate the books, as there are now two. And I guess they will not stay alone there.
So, deadline missed, but personal mission accomplished.
The view of a cello, especially in such a somewhat surreal situation, always reminds me of the Swiss author and cabaret performer Franz Hohler, who used to accompagny his performances with his cello. The English wikipedia article unfortunately is not more than a stub, and even Amazon doesn’t list any books available in English. At least one translated story title I found, “The Little Scottish Ghost”, and if you could find this, it would make up for a wonderful introduction into his whimsical humour.
With temperatures up to 37°C the brass band really had a hard job: Marching and playing was severely aggravated by the traditional costumes. Where the man have to suffer under hats with eagle dawns, the women are sweating under long black skirts.
The traditional wishes for the newly wedded couple were given in form of a poem, recited by a five years old relative in autochthonous idiom. A pleasure both to hear and see.
After having returned from church, again marching behind the brass band, and before entering the inn for the meal, a traditional “Burschenrennen” – a race of the unmarried young men – was held. The price for the winner was a dance with the bride.
As I was kind of backup-photographer at this wedding, I had time and freedom enough to get the “different” frames. It was interesting to see how far I could get without flash. Of course in the church I had the advantage of an overall bright situation, allowing to use a long tele zoom to pick out details without interfering, yet the limitations in form of shadow noise became clearly visible in the darker parts of the church.
Interrupting the merely started series from the Country Wedding, I want to announce the two additions in the galleries section: “Wrapped Trailers”, a find from this year on the island of Krk, Croatia, and “Salzburg From Above”, the result of excursions on the Kapuzinerberg in Salzburg, Austria.
The Wedding Series will continue tomorrow.
A country wedding here in Bavaria was and is a day-long event. Family and guests meet well before church for a drink and maybe a soup, the brass band starts playing, and after a while the festive procession of 150+ people walks together towards the decorated church.
The only activity I was able to perform to day was a bit of resting in the shadow, reading a book. So this is a hat shot, summarizing this hot summer day.
And this is one of the rare occasions I use shoot/shot in context with photography – for me it’s a much too belligerent term to be used in the context of photography, especially the ‘head shot’. Only this time I didn’t want to pass on the pun. Of course having been socialised in a continent that bans all kind of arms from private property (sport and hunting being the only exemptions) has formed my mindset. That a google search for +”head shot” +photo results in more than 500.000 hits shows however that my position in this regard is clearly the one of a minority.
Carl Weese’s Pink Fire Plug inspired me to for today’s posting.
Yesterday I was at a wedding, but those 1200+ images are an intimidating amount even for skulling. It was a rural-style wedding, which had lasted already for 11 hours when I left early, so the number of pictures per hour is not that big as the total would indicate. Expect some images from the public part of the wedding during the next days.
The third Worldwide Photowalk takes place on July 24th, 2010. Following up last year’s event, I will again lead a photowalk in my hometown, Bad Reichenhall – come rain or come shine. 2009 we had plenty of fun in plenty of rain, so I am optimistic that the first part of the term will be the same, regardless of the weather.
If you are interested in joining us, just subscribe here: http://worldwidephotowalk.com/walk/bad-reichenhall-by-deutschland-2/.
Technical University Budapest
Gellert hill, Budapest
There seems to be still an unimpeded joy of colors you won’t find in Germany. But then, we are far more north, probably with a tendency towards melancholy and graveness. Found in the Jewish quarters of Budapest.
Astonishing, what an administration can come up which is forbidden…
Still Budapest, still doorways. Amazing enough that those doors have survived a 100 years or even more, through times when money was an even more scarce resource than now and sensitivity for bourgeouis architectural monuments was certainly not overwhelming. For me it was a bit like delving into the past, or more precisely, swinging between past and presence.
I read this labelling recently on The Online Photographer and I can’t help the feeling that it sounds a tad patronizing – but maybe I am only overly sensitive and don’t want to see such a readymade denomination fitting my own selection of images.
Yet those streets, facades and doors are a substantial part of a city meeting a visitor (or vice versa), and they for sure do this in a defining manner. For me this was the second visit to Budapest, and the first where I had even some hours to stroll without other liabilities, just following my open eyes. It definitely made a difference to walk in a town where I didn’t understand a single word that was talked in the street – it really let me fall back on my visual perception, and this sense was in a certain oscillating motion between the recognition of the many similarities with my home surroundings and the blunt differences in many details. I certainly got into a mood of higher sensitivity for shapes, colors and details – especially those of the urban-detail-and-doorway genre, as they offered themselves so willingly to the stranger.
The wallpapers for July are ready for download on the wallpapers page. This month’s image is from the Kapuzinerberg in Salzburg, where I spent a fruitful evening with friends from the local photography group (not camera club). More images from this event are in the pipeline. Enjoy.
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