spring2life take2

Streitbichl, Bavaria

One of the reasons to enjoy life: It’s beautiful in my hometown. This image was taken on a stroll, barely 10 minutes from our flat. Photographically one could argue if there is enough detail in the shadows, but I decided against some technical surgeries for the simple reason that, observing the sky and the clouds, I did not see too much minutiae in the trees, and I wanted to render it as it was, leaving it dark and not having to crank up saturation to reanimate a brighter image. Enjoy!

Thumsee, Bavaria

Another signboard, this one for a less orderly reason.

Hotel Axelmannstein, Bad Reichenhall

For sure, Germany doesn’t suffer from a scarcity of “Es ist verboten/It is forbidden” signs. Reassuring to see that even these decay, loose their strictness and their statement, and nothing remains than an empty frame.

Florianiplatz, Bad Reichenhall

Kaiser-Ludwig-Platz, Munich

NH-Hotel, Ludwigsburg, Germany

twentyfive years back for the first time earnestly in Tchernobyl, as Three Mile Islands before had only been a feign attack from which nobody had wanted to learn. My deepest sympathy is with all the innocent victims of human hybris.

Marzoll, Bad Reichenhall

The title of this post actually is a a Bavarian pun: “she has wood in front of the cabin” is the local way of describing a well endowed lady. But so much literal wood in front of a farm house I haven’t seen before. But maybe in Kansas…

Florianiplatz, Bad Reichenhall

Thumsee, Bad Reichenhall

Lindwurmstrasse, Munich

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Ludwigsvorstadt, Munich

St. Andrew’s Church, Munich

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Schmellerstr., München

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

At the 2007 Documenta in Kassel, the Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei (here is a clip from his TED talk) showed a project called “Fairytale”. Part of this project was not only freedom of travel for 1001 “ordinary Chinese”, whom he had invited to visit Documenta, but also 1001 old Chinese chairs, which first served as utilities for the Chinese visitors and later were sold.

Ai Weiwei was arrested on April 4th under allegiations of “economic crimes”. His state and whereabouts are still unknown, the Chinese authorities give no information. Today saw many protest actions to support him, all over the world Chinese embassies were confronted with chairs.

I have visited China in 2008 for only a short time, and I was deeply impressed both by historic artifacts as well as daily life in modern China. But the human rights are indivisable, freedom of speech is part of it, and it is high time for all governments in the world to acknowledge this.

Karlstein, Bad Reichenhall

Westend, Munich

Staffabruck, Bad Reichenhall

Westend, Munich

I have adapted Carl Weese’s style of image captions for the time being. My flu/pollinosis/work overloaded head doesn’t allow for elaborated sentences in the evening when I’ve time for the blog. And besides, there isn’t so much to say for the moment

Ludwigsvorstadt, Munich

Sorry, too exhausted for more words.

Westend, Munich

Dedicated to all my friends in the U.S. of A., (especially Tyler Monson of O.R.A. and Mike Johnston of The Online Photographer, the latter even half-heartedly interrupting blogging for this occasion), sweating now filling out their tax forms.

1981, after having finished my service in the German army, I started for a lengthy trip through Nepal and India. Extending the visa in both countries was no problem, leaving Nepal was easy as well, just India took it more seriously: Administration was functioning well (and I was warned beforehand), so before being allowed to leave the country after a trip exceeding the simple tourist 3 month period, I had to go to the tax office in Tiruchirapally and meet the officer in charge. My memories are already somewhat faint, but the office was in a semi-high-riser concrete building, dusty and hot even in India winter, and after some benevolent conversation and filing of forms, I received that tax clearance certificate. The original forms were put in a folder, wrapped with official two-color thread and put into the filing room, where I grasped just a glimps of the piles of files in there – I did’t dare to ask to take a picture at that time.

Anyhow, in comparison to the tax form work I have to do now every year, this really was the most pain free one.

Trapped between two house, the still winterly-bare tree is more like a skeleton, branches and twigs setting irregular counterpoints against the rectangularity of the architectural elements. In two weeks times, the shapes will be much more soothing, the leaves forming green shields for the people on the balconies.

Since quite some time I have been discontent with my blog theme. One could image, that among the ‘zillion of wordpress themes on the web, there should be one for me, too. Alas, if there is, I didn’t find it. So I took an evolutionary step forward from my old theme, tried to enhance readability and allow for bigger image sizes on the front page. Thanks to wordpress’ open source code and excellent documentation, the technical best way turned out to be even really elegant!

So I hope I have not overlooked too many quirks. Enjoy – and feedback is welcome!

Taking on the topic of trees in the city, these “talking” shadows caught my eye.

I was not aware about the extent to which a self-set theme can intensify seeing. Ok, I was interested in trees before, also in that conflict area of nature in the city, so I did not have to go out of my way, but the thematic reflection, the pondering on the facets of city trees created positive attention that was gratified by new awareness of image-worthy sceneries.

George Barr from the “Behind the Lens” blog had recently opened a discussion on the topic “Do we need to do projects”, which provoked a variety of answers (and a slightly academic deviation). That Brooks Jensen of Lenswork had used trees as his example of how to anchor images in projects I read just now – my tree imaging had already started before.

These trees grow next to one of the busiest streets in Munich, they must be of real strong constitution. That the exhaust gases of the cars also contain nutrients for plants is a theoretical advantage, lack of root space in the soil and de-icing salt in the winter will more than compensate for this.

Despite the urban heat islands, vegetation in Munich is in many places still in a pre-vernal stage, with cherry trees and sometimes Magnolias being the notable exception.

The city tree subject remains interesting, especially in this stage when the trees are more a structure than a corpus. Pre- and after-work strolls led to a number of interesting frames and even more challenged ones, deserving further exploration of the topic.

Trees have numerous technical functions in the city, being it absorption and slow release of rain water or the filtration of particulate matter from the air, not to mention shade and habitat they offer to all kind of creatures. The metaphysical qualities of the trees have gained importance even more with progress of urban lifestyle, and Bertold Brecht’s statement from “Mr. K. and Nature” is as valid now as it was written:

“Now and then I would like to see a couple of trees when I step out of the house. Particularly because, thanks to their different appearance, according to the time of day and the season, they attain such a special degree of reality.”

Read more here in google books

This mini-series of city trees reminds me again of that Dorothea Lange quote “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”. None of these images had required me to make a special effort regarding location. No, the only energy I had to invest was to lift my head and open my eyes, maybe cast away banal thoughts and silence that everworking categorizing machine between my ears.

I am grateful for that state of heightened (or should I say non-subdued?) awareness that photography teaches me.

Today was the first really warm spring day with temperatures above 20° C (68° F) which means an explosive developement of the vegetation – my nose feels this earlier than it becomes visible. Anyhow, the soft light around sunset was inviting enough for a walk, where this tree saw me, maybe 150m from home.

It may serve also as an illustration for a topic that was recently discussed on the Landscapist’s blog: the question of color accuracy. The software I use for raw conversion, bibble5, offers several basic color characteristics, on which one can base the treatment of each image. For me the ‘product reduced’ way is in most cases the profile to start with, while the ‘product’ profile (to the right) starts with a clearly higher saturation, but still within the correct range, according to my memory.

Much more than the question of accuracy I ask the question of purpose. In this image, the subtle grace, the fine patterns and textures of the bark on the stem, all get supported by choosing the variant with the lower saturation. It could well be that the color in the sample to the right is more correct, for example I did not pay attention to the color of the junctions between stem and branches, but from my gut’s feeling, the impression of the big image comes closer to what resonated within me when making this image. Color accuracy here certainly is of secondary importance.

I clearly admit that I did not (yet) fully understand Roland Barthes’ book ‘Camera Lucida’. Thanks to The Online Photographer I do know now that this is not a failure. Barthes’ concept of studium and punctum is convincing, and it helps me to understand why another viewer’s reaction can be so different from mine. Also his emphasis on things not plainly visible in an image, yet connected through the knowledge of the observer, is an interesting aspect – and hard to take into consideration when creating an image.

In today’s picture it is a small detail that for me creates an additional connection point to this image. Only at the corners you may notice some blue grains. I do know that these come from styrodur material, proving that this construction was insulated against energy losses in winter as well as overheating in summer. In these times, where an oecologically acceptable energy supply gets the focus it has always deserved, these blue grains could be grains of hope.

The city of Munich for sure is one of the “green” cities in Europe, thanks mostly to the former kings who created the park “Englischer Garten”. But also in the very center of the city you find huge trees, facing exhaust gas and polluted rain water seasoned with de-icing salt during the winter. Optically and size-wise they concur with the buildings (Munich is also special here, allowing only 5-storey buildings in the inner city), and I do enjoy their organic shapes opposed to the 70ies style sober window patterns here.