spring2life take2

Sidi Bou Saïd, Tunisia

Blog note: This blog suffers since months from degrading performance, culminating in suspension of service because of allegiated overusage of ressources twice this week. I am taking the necessary steps and search for a better hosting. This consumes time however, and a solution probably will not be at hand within days. Please bear with me.

Thumsee, Bavaria

Jezevac, Krk

In spite of the danger of getting this image labeled as just another “marine painting”, I do enjoy the shades of grey and subtle colors. The bibble5 raw converter is a wonderful tool for me when it comes to carefully nuancing and enhancing without overdoing such color scales. Also the camera, a beaten Sony A700, seems to be good in delivering this kind of tonalities, whereas in the realm of saturated colors at least I am not overly happy with it. But it could be that my non-preference for very vivid images influences my evaluation here.

in case you have difficulties to find the bluebells: better click on the image and see it large! trying to find the best compromise between sharp water droplets and the impression of fast moving water i did a small series with different exposure times, and 1/100s gave the best result. this was a bit astonishing for me as i had expected the best effect at slower speeds of maybe 1/30s, i guess this is due to the the big amount of water coming down the mountains after the rainfalls.

the raw file was converted with the bibble5 preview 2 version, and despite some flaws, the region tool and selective color tool can give already great results. without it, the bluebells would be almost invisible in the small image size.

the amount of rainwater we received in the last two weeks changed also the appearance of the small cascades that are tributaries of the ‘weissbach’, a creek in a canyon not far from home. a canyon walk in the summer is nice as you experience temperature and brightness differences, but at that time of the year the water is low and those cascades are more or less trickling down. now the water is really vivid, and this is what i tried to capture here and afterwards to emphasize in postprocessing.

and not only the waters are vivid, the colors of the leaves are as well. and it was a beautiful different experience from summer’s heat and glaring light. even the kids sometimes stood and looked, which doesn’t happen too often with 8-years old ones. but the white-throated dipper of course was more interesting for them, only i was too slow to photograph it.

no, i won’t bore you with this topic here again. but raw power this is, the power of the green weißbach waters (which is kind of oxymoronic as weißbach means white creek) cascading down in their canyon. having worked quite a while on this picture i am still not completely satisfied. i think i managed quite well to bring out the deep colors of water and moss as well as the brilliance of the reflections, but compositionally the right border puzzles me because of the out-of-focus blur. f-stop was already 11, 16 might have been better but at an focal length of 180 mm-e i doubt it would have rendered the rock in complete sharpness. i tried some cropping, but for several reasons i want to stick with the old barnackian 3:2 ratio (i estimate it to be more dynamic than 4:3) and then i loose too much of the diagonals, rocks and whitewater. so i will have to live with it. a view camera might have helped to solve this problem, or 2 shots with different planes of focus (i had used a tripod anyhow) and following combination in the gimp. alas – would/should/could doesn’t really help, so i enjoy what i have got and what i am able to destill out of it.

is there a life outside the raw (file)? probably there is. and i do know, yes, that the eye of the photographer is important for the picture, her or his feeling for composition, balance and all those factors that have to be considered in “the moment it clicks”. but all this fiercely defending the jpeg as the only necessary format that a good photographer needs (ken rockwell comes to no good remembrance here) in my eyes suffers from a singular flaw: the file from the camera is just another factor for a successful image.

it’s an undisputable fact that great photographic art can originate from media that do detract some factors from the photographers influence – think only of the polaroid process – and some pictures work because of qualities that allow to disregard technical qualities in the printmaking process. but the raw file in my eyes is the equivalent for the film original, the basis for an image, basis in a process that reveals image components that would remain hidden without diligent work.

decades ago this work could only be done in the darkroom, now the computer screen has replaced for many of us the darkroom work (let’s put aside the new possibilities of this tool or toolkit), but at least i do similar things as before: dodging, burning in, now complemented with local contrast enhancement and local sharpening, partial control of saturation etc.

the preview image to the right at first glance looks dull, but working with the new layer tools of bibble5 (still in preview) and subsequent local contrast enhancement plus refocus sharpening in gimp created a whole new image out of the raw file.

no, at least for pictures like this there is no life outside the raw.

this is why am here. it is good to know that the support we try to bring really reaches the people in need. and when content meets form, out of beauty happiness can rise. sorry for being pathetic, this is an unstaged shot right out of today morning’s site visit, and maybe the jet lag also has its effect.

ok, kids pics always go to the heart, but i can’t help to like it. we can talk about the lighting situation, backlight/striplight in both situations, reduced color sets also which almost leave out a part of the spectrum, so a lot of my ingredients for a good picture are there.

post-dated publishing is nice-to-have. when you get to see this icicle from frozen bavaria, i am supposed to be in abu dhabi, bound for sri lanka.

there should be internet connection in the hotel, so there hopefully will be no break in posting.

water is always an interesting topic for me. todays trip to drop my daughter at a birthday party resulted in a walk along a small creek in Ainring, not far from home.

the rain had stopped only one hour ago, so the leaves were still glistening wet in the new sunlight.

flare obviously is a weak spot of the tamron 11-18, on the other hands the situation present was pretty extreme and the front lens not completely clean. oh yeah, there is something to learn from every shot… the rock formation down there is really gorgeous and i decided to come back in june to get some flood water shots. 1954 water level was so high that the whole canyon was flooded, some 5 m higher than the standpoint of this shot.

the 2nd image is from the same canyon, just a detail of the rocks. the whole place, a visitor balkony glued to the rocks maybe 10 m above the water and 20 or even more m below the surface makes you feel pretty small and humble, especially if you are almost alone like this time on a rainy father’s day.

what a wonderful world: convinced my wife and the kids to walk along the whole weissbach canyon. ok, there was a wholesome goal, mauthäusl inn, with a terasse overlooking part of the canyon, and the prospect of an icecream worked more than accelerative. and we had a break in the canyon, which offered the opportunity for this shot – the other parts of the path we had to attentively guide the kids in order to avoid an unintended bath. conclusion: walking with kids is fun as long as you take it as what it is, not as an opportunity to make all the pictures you’d probably like to.

the oscillation of the strong sunlight in parts of the canyon is what i visualized here, enforced by the fidgety pattern of the rock.

recently i had discussions with colleagues of the local photo group about moving water in photography. there are obviously two fractions: flow haters aka. freeze lovers and soft flow lovers. whilst the latter enjoy the extension to the human eye in form of the camera’s ability to show the movement of the water, the first party bluntly rejects such pictures. for me, both forms of rendering are valid but I do enjoy very much the flow, expressing a distinct feeling of time passing, energy coming and dissipating and offering the eyes and the soul a place to dive in, melt in and re-unite with nature.

the little Weißbach canyon becomes more and more a place of rest and regeneration for me, and capturing the stimulation of all senses in a photography is an everlasting challenge.

the image to the right is a crisp rendering of a spot nearby, strong more in the colors and in the v-shaped direction of the falling waters.

there is only little water in weissbach at this time of the year, while in early summer this is a spot well known for whitewater kayaking.

the warm weather of the last weeks made the snow melt even down in the canyon, but the old snow on the path is now almost like ice, so it was not possible to walk deep into the gorge. still there were some interesting spots, and the water carried and displayed a very intense feeling of cold and freshness.

from yesterday’s excursion into weissbach canyon. The light was quite flat on site, but raw processing with lightzone did small wonders. i tried to work out a good effect of the negative space embracing the icicles but still do wonder if it’s the best possible crop.

paypal almost ruined the shot. if you could see this shot in full resolution, you would notice it’s not razor sharp inspite having been taken with a tripod. But: it was taken with my old tripod, as paypal hold up the (bank collection) payment for the new one for 6 days and therefore it did not arrive in time. and the old tripod is too weak for camera plus zoom. can you imagine how furious I am?