spring2life take2

No words sunday…

This is an interesting image in the sense that it wouldn’t be one if not photographed. Our perception (usually) has no fram borders, especially no straight-lined ones. Viewing from normal height, scanning a wider angle of view, at least I do rarely relate any lines to the boundaries of my field of view. But this image works through exactly this relationship, with all those lines and shapes forming non-rectangles (with the exception of the fence). And many of the lines get their direction only from the fact that the camera with the 24mm-e lens was tilted forward.

This is one of the rare images I have created that not only differs very much from what we perceive to see, but that even came into existence in that way only in the camera frame.

Where is that button for “seeing”? This image found me on the way to the pharmacy, suffering from a heavy cold and otherwise pretty much oblivious for everything going on around me. For sure I was not in a deliberate state of “heightened awareness” (to quote the Landscapist, here), but perhaps that flu induced tunnel vision just helped me to blend out the unnecessary things and “just see”. Don’t know if that’s a reasonable explanation, however it for sure is not a recipe to be followed voluntarily.

On a side note: If you look at the large version of the image (by clicking on it), make sure you get the full size by clicking on the “square with arrow” symbol to get the original size instead of a browser-calculated downsized version.

The walk home after a long day commuting to the office brought and unexpected picture: Progressing autumn had coloured the Gingko tree’s leaves yellow, the spotlight from below enhanced it and the night sky had just the right brightness as a contrast.

However it did not meet me unexpected: I had already seen other trees in different states of foliage, with different lights and different states of the evening sky, but in spite of carrying the camera I did not bother with making an image – in the viewfinder, the scenery did not form an image.

This process of deciding when to try an image, of estimating the pictoral power of the elements is still a mysterium to me. And while I am intently following the Landscapist’s series of posts On Seeing, I have still not found even a thread that would allow to untangle that mysterium. Instead I have decided to practise, not letting the theoretical discussion completely fall below the horizon, instead hoping for something like a critical mass that would suddenly bring a great leap in the process of understanding.

I do know this procedure from my day job as GIS analyst/programmer, where I sometimes spent days on a single problem, then got diverted, read and gained knowledge and practice by doing, and suddenly the first problem got resolved – not by determined analysis, but by a broad gain of knowlege and skill.

So I keep my fingers crossed that this works in photography in a similar way.

On the same construction site as pictured here, the landscape gardeners are now planting trees. In my naivité I had been under the impression that tree nurseries still are local companies, taking into account the low work intensity and the (erroneously assumed) high transportation costs. Obviously I was wrong…

Fall is progressing, many of the leaves already on the floor, but some of the weeds’ stems are still standing, dried, prone to fall with the next rain soaking their brittle structure.

My recents strolls through landscape and city were easy, recreative and at the same time prolific. Recently the amount of gear I use (and carry) reduced itself drastically: at the moment I have less need for both long or very short focal lengths. Most of my images were/are created with either the 28mm/85mm primes or the standard zoom, substantially wider but also substantially slower – most of the time I settle for the faster primes. And instead of feeling restricted, it seems I concentrate more by less concentrating, ’cause I simply don’t scan the extreme narrow or wide angles, and instead the images discover me. Very agreeable!

The notorious “Fallen Leaves” of this season are hard to avoid. But then, why should I – they provide a unique and quickly changing coloring, grabbing the view in many variations and situations, even when scrunched, like these.

… and I do swear that I didn’t touch the saturation slider.

Poaching in the twig photographers’ claims… With best regards from Thumsee to Martha in Vienna, connected with the recommendation to visit her blog.

Best seen large (click on the image, as always), as this also darkens the background.

To have break from the notorious colorful fall leaves here leaves in a different context: Autumn in Germany traditionally is the time to plant trees, and this is was they did behind my office building.

Pun intended

Leaves again, but this time in a different scale and context. This image profits a lot from beeing seen in large and on a dark background, so – as always – feel free to click on it.

An hour or so later than the images for yesterday’s post were captured, the sun was already to low for intensive direct light, and everthing got a softer, maybe a bit elegic appearance. Still, limiting the depth of field seemed adequate for me to express the felt solitude and time of decay in my images.

Up to now, bokeh for me was something soft, to be achieved with a longer focal length. But last week at the river Saalach backwaters, the afternoon sun came almost violently through the already sparse leaves. I did not want to romanticize this light, and so I switched to my 28mm (42mme) prime, a fast lens that I love for the normal angle of view it has on APS-C, and for its macro capacities: it focuses almost to the front lens. The unsharp regions regions show not those soft transitions that I am used from my 85mm lens, but I found it matching to the overall lighting situation. Of course focusing was not really simple, as wide open the DoF is to measured in single-digit millimeters, but several attempts at the same subject helped to get an acceptable result. Next time I might try continous exposure mode, something I had never needed up to now.

This flock of houses I visit (irregularly) over probably a decade, from the very beginning of the construction up to now, where houses and gardens have melted into the older structures and become part of them. But fresh ideas are still visible and now leave a positive, less artificial impression than in the beginning. On the one hand this for sure is a question of familiarization, but as the whole situation is less ostentatious, details like this yellow door become welcome and are not part of something peregrine any more.

In a certain sense this also would hold true for the immigration debate here in Germany, where many of the (not only) petty bourgeois dart their common angst of social descent against the visible unfamiliar, closing perception and replacing percipience with prejudice: doors are not yellow, they never have been.

The fact is that the German society and economy would crash immediately after all immigrants of the last 40 years would have left. And I have no doubt that the same holds true for pretty much all states of the so-called first world.

Temperatures have dropped here, and the drizzle now is so cold that it’s really uncomfortable outside. This image is from somewhat better days, when fog was doing miracles in the street.

Admittedly I am drawn to quiet color schemes, restricted palettes, harmonious forms. And I am always glad when I find it in landscape, being it rural or natural. I guess this is so because it is rare.

Update: Just for clarification: this photo was not distorted for any effect, only tonal corrections where applied to the raw file. The man in the image is roughly 60 years old, a now retired municipal worker, extremely skinny and in a bad health state.

I am just coming from the shower, having had my share of the 200+ l/head the typical European consumes per day. I grew up and live in a region of our world, where clean drinking water neither was nor is a scarce ressource – it’s a commodity, available in apparent abundance, for a reasonable price (the bigger part of the price comes from the sewage treatment anyhow).

But I have seen regions of our world where this is not the case. Regions, where children or elderly people die because of the lack of clean drinking water. Regions where you call yourself lucky if there is a single water outlet on your premises which, and this borders on sheer luxury, provides clean water at least for the greater part of the day. This old man in Kalmunai, Sri Lanka, now is in this lucky situation, and he is grateful for it. A much too big number of people is not.

So if you get the opportunity, support the cause of clean drinking water wherever possible. It starts with asking smart questions, at home, and might end with support for one of the many NGOs that are active on this field. I myself will continue my support for and cooperation with a German NGO, EMAS, and set up and monitor a project providing drinking water especially for victims of the civil war in Sri Lanka.

Again from my stroll through the park. I enjoyed very much the characteristics of the color, coming out much stronger in the absence of direct sunlight. All images were made with the 1.4/85, stopped down usually to 2.0, resulting in a wise compromise between bokeh and acceptable DoF/achievable focus accuracy.

As sunset is early meanwhile – I am waiting for the end of Daylight Saving Time – I decided to leave work early and spend some time in the park, catching the sunrays at low angles, beautifully backlighting some foreign grass in the background. That preference for backlight dates back into my boyhood: In some photography book I had read that backlight is supposed to be the most difficult, yet most rewarding kind of light. And whilst I’ve produced tons of waste that way, especially slides, the results indeed where often interesting enough to justify the effort. The image above for sure is nothing extraordinary in terms of subject matter, yet the sharp backlight makes it special.

Probably the one and only true fall flower, at least in Europe: The Meadow Saffron’s German name is “Herbstzeitlose” (Herbst = autumn). It blooms now and makes best use of the weaker competition for pollinators. As beautiful as it looks, as poisonous it is, and in earlier times intoxications were not rare among humans as well as grazers. But the alcaloid Colchizin was and is used for medical purposes, too.

At least for the lens it proved to be harmless, and I could sing a similar song of praise for my venerable Minolta 1,4/85 as Andreas Manessinger does for the Nikon counterpart here.

Hearing descending steps on the road below, I decided to react quickly: Dialling down the ISO, cramming in the slowest possible f-stop I estimated I should get a low shutter speed, slow enough to render the pedestrian in a blurry manner, avoiding the impression of a frozen moment and setting her in contrast to the static rectangles of the buildings. I managed, and internal stabilisation helped to keep the sensor steady.

Using the same camera always and everwhere seems to pay out. Of course sometimes I’d enjoy a small P&S, but I do fear the effect of being not completely in unison with the tool, the camera being quirky in the wrong moment. Juha Hataaja from Lightscrape does wonders with his LX-3, and besides his visual and creative powers he knows his tool after 125.000+ exposures. I could imagine that this really makes up the distinction from many of the interested hobby photographers: Doing it, excercising it, coming to a level where all the settings become self-evident and the tool becomes part of eye and hand. In the end it’s what Herrigel describes in “Zen In The Art Of Archery”. And it seems there’s no shortcut.

Saturday morning provided opportunity for a short stroll through the neighborhood when overcast sky and slight fog were still prominent. I like this kind of light very much, and as I had only two fast primes with me, the light level was not a problem. Only the autofocus was, wide open I sometimes had the feeling it’s more like hit or miss. Oh well – in the end it was worth the trouble, but I definitely would not want to depend on it for street or reportage like photography. And it seems I am not alone with this issue, even Andreas Manessinger complains about a similar problem with his Nikon.

The lack of leaf coloring makes the other factors of autumn more prominent, especially draught and funguses, starting their work now already when the leaves are still on the trees. I enjoy this diversion from normal fall routine, giving opportunity to picture it in a different manner.

¢ Dania Maxwell

Through a post on Conscientious I was directed to the work of Dania Patricia Maxwell, a graduate student in the School of Visual Communications at Ohio University. Strong work in her portfolios (check out at least “Home Drive” and “Singles”) as well as her blog. She really manages to transport her vision through the lens.

While the green layers of the landscape to the right have their charms, I was more interested in the play of light and shadow on the weathered spruce wood of the old barn.

The place, where these and the previous images were taken is “Nonner Oberland”, probably the warmest part in our valley. I was once living there, and I do remember we could sit outside in the sun sometimes even in January, when the rays of the sun more than compensated the coldness of the frozen soil and the snow. And at the times of the Romans, even wine was grown there. Now they started again, probably taking into account the climate change.

I had already packed the camera into the trunk of the car, having finished a sunday stroll with the family, when I suddenly saw those peculiar “hats” on the fenceposts. The first frame suffered from a bad background – too light, competing for attention with the toppings – so I left the car again, in spite of some admonishments from the back seats, and inverted the direction of view. With a longer focal length and open f-stop I finally managed to frame it to my content.

Wordless wednesday, again.

Some 20 years ago, Basketball became popular for a short time also here in Germany – and the home improvement stores all sold basketball baskets in great numbers. But Germany is a soccer world all over again, the nets on the baskets faded, disintegrated, and vanished. The metal rings you still find as mementos even in strange places like this stable door.

Photokina is over, and nothing world-shattering happened. This year for the first time I had tickets for it – what would I have given for that opportunity as a gear headed boy – and I didn’t go. It simply seemed not interesting enough to sacrifice a working day plus the price for the train ticket for it. My indifference for new tools right now is almost distressing. Of course there are lenses available that would look interesting, but to what avail? At the moment I don’t have the feeling that my photography would improve or my joy in pursuing it would grow “if I only had this lens/camera/flash etc.”. The gear I use is simply good enough, and I see many fields of improvement – improving the photographer, not his equipment. Even talking or reading about cameras currently interests me in only a very detached, whereas images do fascinate me more. So: photokina R.I.P.

This goes with best wishes to Carl Weese.

I found these doors barely 200m away from our flat, having passed by that place probably thousands of times. It seems that my eyes have opened a tiny bit wider

The City of Munich is proud of its villagey character and therefore has decided in the year 2004 not to allow new high-risers to be built in the (largely drawn) center of the city – only outside the ring streets this remains possible. But in the very center of Munich there still is a 12-storey building, erected 1928 following the plans of Hermann Leitensdorfer, as the then technical/engineering town hall for the city administration. The most interesting part inside is probably the staircase in an extremely sober style of New Objectivity, yet still the influence of a bit of Art Nouveau’s stylistic vocabulary seems to be visible.

The beginning of the cold season usually awakens new melancholic feelings in me, this year is not different from the last ones. The wall with traces of dirty rainwater was already subject of a post one year ago, but this time I concentrated more on the almost repelling character of a cold rhythm of roof tiles, plaster, trees.