spring2life take2

Bayerisch Gmain

This sky, especially when dotted with white clouds like in the mirrored section, is what was made emblematic – and then abused by tourist agencies and politicians – for Bavaria.

Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Thumsee, Bavaria

Krk, Croatia

On my last day in Krk there was an occasion to photograph reflections in the harbour, as the winds had pushed all dirt into a remote corner of the basin. The image above stood out during the first culling, the others remain to be inspected more thoroughly. The colourful dots are the reflection of a Croation flag (red, blue, white) attached to of the stays on a sailing boat.

This reflection series was made with long focal lengths, something I do very rarely meanwhile, even though a tele zoom was the first acquisition after the purchase of the DSLR – maybe a remnant of pubertary reflexes.

Krk, Croatia

After a long trip back home and a good night’s sleep I finally managed to update the blog: Here are the September wallpapers for your kind perusal. Maybe they can keep the feeling and smell of summer alive into Autumn.

Krk, Croatia

Freilassing, Bavaria

Different tax rates in Germany and Austria have lead to the closing down of most gas stations in the border towns. And when there is not much movement in the real estate sector, even central parcels remain unused.

Krk Harbour

Here are the Wallpapers for July 2011, downloadable as usual from the wallpapers page. I had experimented with those harbour water reflections already last year, but found a different brightness distribution this year, as the boats “park” now in a different order.

Bay of Krk, Croatia

Konzum parking, Krk

Waiting for the shoppers to return, I tried some framings including the mirror, when suddenly the view changed and the lady’s silhouette added some “drama”. Basically Carl Weese’s recipe: Having an image 90% ready and wait for something that comes and completes the composition.

Salzburg, Austria

Thierschstrasse, Munich

Salzburg, Austria

Maybe this can be explained by the fact that Austria has lost all their Imperial and Royal coasts in WWI. Other attempts might result in speculations if air pollution is so high, or it is necessary to hide something… or there might be nothing to hide given you buy this outfit, or or or… Most probably I am truly, completely and forever lost for the world of fashion. But I don’t repent!

Update:

It’s not the Salzburg girls (or boys?). That much I can confirm.

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.

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.

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.

Again from Thumsee, the magic place. The water of this lake is cold and very clear even in the summer, and now in the winter time the reflections on the jet black surface are just magical.

Just to show you what it is like in the summer. And no, I don’t really suffer from winter’s cold and snow up to now. The less so as pollen season is about to start, so I do know what I am trading in for the warmer times of spring and early summer.

The harbour water is not such an attractive medium – oily, smelly and so on, probably the same in every harbour of the world. Amazing enough locals are fishing there, and I guess even that fish is ending on the table.

But the reflective qualities of the water are still intact, and the way the ripples dissolve the form of the ships was really amazing.

Those images just required some adjustment of the black point and a bit tuning of the curves. It was already late in the day when I took the images and the low light required a high sensitivity resulting in higher noise levels in the shadows. But the Bibble5 beta did a great job here.

please don’t think that i am getting cocky because i post two self-portraits in a row – these are 2 out of maybe 5 self-portraits i tried over several years.

when i saw this rare bill of a socialist/marxist group in munich (there aren’t many of them left) i knew i wanted to do something with it. alone it didn’t shine too much, but as it was sticking to the back of a bus stand, there was not much possibility to add something that would make a picture work. the glass material of the bus stand finally made me try out reflections, but there were not so many people around and time was running. so in the end a self-portrait with the che was all i could make out of this. romanticising mode on: that’s not that bad, i think…

many of the howto-photobooks i have read recommend repeating patterns as a recipe for better pictures. so i couldn’t resist this setup (in the science center of salzburg’s “house of the nature”). the first pictures with only yours truly as subject were a bit dull, but soon one of the daughters came to look. this was already better, but really good it became when she was joined by her twin sister. aah – and don’t think that clothing them equal is a quirk or a deliberate decision of the parents: it is purely a strategy to avoid unnecessary fights for this or that special t-shirt (replace t-shirt with pants, sweater and so on, ad nauseam).

with the colors i am still not completely content, but the color cast from the green walls was so strong that i couldn’t find a better correction without loosing that green, which in itself is a strong component of the picture.

the prospect is wet: meteorologists predict heavy rainfall for my hometown, up to 100mm within 24 hours, which means flooding of many secondary roads and potential damage to the railways, too.

in the long term, i guess it’s better to get used to weather extremes as this might be the future: the climate change will come not as a steady increase of temperatures but as more unstable weather conditions that challenge the vital infrastructure. but probably in a week or so the cat will dance on a hot tin roof again.

after a long dry period with excellent weather for easter, today the first spring rain set in, and i expect the leaves now to really shoot out of the twigs. rain plus twilight plus neon ads made up for a nice reflection on the plaster here.

and as everybody is glad about the end of snow and dirt and dreary weather, this skater didn’t want to be stopped by the drizzle.

it seems that i start to enjoy turning down saturation more and more. the weather was grey, daytime was busy, no fresh shots but still some old ones deserving to be evaluated and worked upon. in my eyes it’s not a disadvantage of shooting raw that i have to re-judge my images again when deciding which one to convert and edit, it’s a bit like old-fashioned black and white darkroom work: it made and makes no sense to mechanically convert/develop because the results were and are average at best.

additionally to toning down saturation i found that adding a bit of vignetting is good for some images. even if it’s only a small, barely visible amount, it seems to center the view quite a bit. it is a bit a contradiction to my own infuriation about the vignetting my standard lens adds now and then, but the latter is beyond my control and not predictable for me, and probably that is what annoys me so much.

my daughters were invited by a classmate for a birthday party in salzburg airport center’s burger king, and i did prefer not to stay. hence the title (which is an adaption of moscow art trio’s “instead of making children”, a worthy recommendation for you jazz fans out there), and my mood then was comparable to today’s when i did my tax declaration.

in spite of low light and a not so pleasant surrounding – at least i had managed to flee, but came out in the floodplain forest of river saalach, just next to the sewerage treatment plant – i cooled down (literally) and made the best out of it: pictures. and even if they are all but drop-dead-gorgeous, i had a fine hour just concentrating on seeing and creating.

no narrative text today, this image i value just because of its graphical values in terms of colors, distribution of areas and lines. hope you enjoy it, too.

feasting in red was a major attraction in the past holidays. here are two last images, the upper one really grabbed me with its strong forms. red is a major signal color with its own significance in the human perception system, and it is a rare color in my habitat (of course these facts are connected, an abundant color could not have that signalling capacity). here in old europe, especially in the bavarian countryside almost nothing is painted in bright red, and cars that are have a decent ‘show off’ quality and therefore get despised.

but that croatian fisher boat wore an almost painful red, and when i saw it in the first morning sunlight this red was boosted by the low sun to almost insufferableness.

krk harbour is a busy place. during the day dozens of leasure boats fill the air with their noise, the sound of alternatively diesel or 2-stroke fuel is abundant. but what a bonanza in reflections, color patches, harmonious forms it is, especially early in the morning. stay tuned – there is more of it to come.

yesterday was commuting day. spring in the city is so different and, at least for me, partially depressing when the songs of the birds mingle with the traffic noise. but optically it has it’s merits, translating trees into patterns, creating trompe l’oeil like bird silhouettes, bending straight lines, mixing coating colors of the glass with the most wonderful blue of the sky (bavaria, you may know, is very proud of its skies)

and ‘stary, stary night’ is seen differently here in the city too. not inspiring in the romantic sense, but more so in the business, prestige, non-sustainability sense.

unfortunately. especially for my kids.

i already had worked on this picture in color, but when finally deciding to try a b&w conversion it turned out much stronger.

work done in lightzone for linux

this is an emblematic picture for the governing period of the still-in-charge bavarian premier e. stoiber. he was harvesting the fruits of an ongoing change since the end of ww2 in bavaria from a rural and somewhat backward country to a modern habitat for hi-tec companies.

the onion spire on the clocktower was almost a badge for bavarian villages, and now the antennas for mobile services are the new hallmarks.

brave new world…

that rain lasted for a whole week. getting accustomed to the noise of raindrops on the trailer roof, I slowly adjusted myself to it. And sometimes, the rain made up for a really pretty scenery.

found on a stroll round lake Höglwörth