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Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

“Tageskarte” is written on that paper fixed to the mannequin, this is the German word for menu of the day.

Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

The red “S” for “Sparkasse” is the trademark of all the Municipal Savings Banks here in Germany. As they don’t participate in high risk stock adventures, they usually are in held in high esteem. Only their architecture is not allways adapted to their surroundings, but viewed in an isolated and a bit abstracted way like here it certainly can be attractive.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Moving a bit away from the window theme I was pursuing in my posts lately, this image was a gift of today’s snowfall. Later in the afternoon we had rain again, providing us with abundant grey slush. Not my kind of weather now, but I was prudent enough to sample some snow images when occasion was there.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Salzburg, Austria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Update: I once again had the LX3 automatic white balance allowed to fool me. Manually corrected in this version.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Epiphany marks the end of Christmas decoration here in Bavaria. As we will have winds up to 10 beaufort this night, it could be that a lot of un-decoration will be done by the storm.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Salzburg, Austria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Hofgarten, Munich, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

The pig as mount is rather unique, probably a Bavarian specialty, given our love affair with roast pork.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Taken on the very same spot as Just A Gentle Wipe. This one keeps me wondering why the male brain seems to be so easy to trigger.

Update: The white balance in the original image was off. In this version it seems better.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

With this post I wish all of you a Merry Christmas!

Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Sidi Bou Saïd, Tunisia

Sidi Bou Saïd, Tunisia

Macke, Cafe des Nattes, 1912, watercolour

Tunis, Tunisia

Maybe the more fitting title would have been “Shapes of Maghreb”, but then, non-colors are colors, too, and I wanted to stay in the pattern of headings.

Tunis, Tunisia

I am back home from my trip to Tunisia, and whilst it was prolific in terms of (administrative) business, photography-wise it was sub-par. Especially the lack of time, combined with the accomodation remote from Tunis’ center did not cater for abundant opportunities. But then, I took what offered itself, and the colours of Coca Cola are certainly endemic in the contemporary Maghreb.

Tunis, Tunisia

Again from the so-called theme hotel where I found yesterday’s “Seats”.

Bolzano, Italy

I found this staircase decoration in an administrational building in Bolzano. If I compare this kind of spirited architecture and sophisticated and witty placement of art with our precast-concrete-slab ashlar, tears are not far.

Currently I am sitting in Frankfurt airport – having successfully circumvented a police block because of a bomb threat – waiting to board the plane to Tunis, where the almighty superiors have decided to send me for a meeting on inter-communal partnership possibilities with cities of the Maghreb region (not that they, the decisionmakers, would have had any difficulties to convince me). For me it’s the first time to set my feet on African soil, and I am really looking forward to everything that awaits me there, even if it would be only subliminal time slices before, between, and after meetings in probably uniform and/or universal conference rooms. But the organizers have announced a visit of the ancient site of former Carthago, and, having suffered in Latin lessons for five long years, this of course sounds promising. So I am enjoying my last sip of Cappucino for now, for the rest of the week I will probably replace this with Thé Menthe, and with it I will try to dig out the reminiscences of French knowledge, not much used for the last two decades.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Enthusiastic business hopes quite often founder here, leaving empty shop windows sometimes even in prime locations. Here the leaves in the pedestrian area seem to have extended right into the shop.

Bad Reichenhall, Germany

Bolzano, Italy

On a short visit to Bolzano for a meeting on Open-Source GIS software, I (again) had the camera at hand when walking to the venue. Many of my images get created on such occasions, and I constantly improve the mechanisms of self-conditioning to see instead of just walk. Just sometimes the camera becomes heavy, so I have (re-)pondered the question if a M4/3 or Sony-E would justify the expenditure by equal or better image quality coming out of half the weight. But I (again) came to no decision, and one reason is that I don’t want to give up the 24-120mm zoom range of my Zeiss lens, the wide end being especially handy when creating square images, which narrows down the angle of view quite a bit. And 24mm-e lenses for M4/3 are rare – I know only of the 7-14mm Oly zoom (Update: and the Oly 2.0/12mm), which has a hefty price point. But then, only half the weight – sounds really convincing.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

In this deeply Catholic country, the Buddha’s eyes on a facade are still unusual.

Bad Reichenhall, Germany – click the image to see a larger version

Update: Corrected the spelling of the title thanks to the hint from Tyler.

Munich, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Found in the Spa Center. Some more ‘Brr’ for Martina. And congratulations to Carl Weese for his post No. 2500, which he celebrated with a wonderful quiet, beautiful instead of pretty image. That’s what I call real perseverance.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Taking up Juha’s recommendation on yesterday’s post, here is squareness presented in square format. You find assembled a good deal of the necessary ingredients for solid square enjoyment: freshly brushed tar, neatly trimmed bushes in cast-concrete pots, a high and opaque fence and last but not least the silver Benz…

Using the square format without a square viewfinder is possible, at least with non-moving subjects, and so I continue to use my familiar DSLR. Skimming the web for information about alternative cameras, I had to learn that 6:6 is superior to 1:1, at least it has to be, otherwise Olympus wouldn’t denote the square format as 6:6 in their data sheets – but well, maybe this is just another twist in their (former) management’s attempt to hide facts. Who knows?

The new Sony A77 however does offer neither 6:6 nor 1:1 aspect ratios, a fact that I can’t understand, as it would have been extremely simple to implement with an exclusive electronic viewfinder. Without that, the camera looses quite some attractivity for me, additionally to the 24 MP image size that I do not need yet and that only would slow down my workflow and flood my harddisks.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Re-thinking what is typical for my hometown, I came to the conclusion that cleanliness, probably even squareness, and the 99% complete absence of disorder is one of the characteristic of this place. Certainly worth deeper inspection.

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest, Hungary

A new variety (at least for me) of energy drink that is. I mean, I knew that the infamous “R.d Bull” is supposed to contain taurin, regardless of its pharmazeutical value, but tesztoszteron certainly goes one step further. But if it makes people shell out their money for this bullsh.t, good for the producers.

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest, Hungary

Hard to believe that this is “just a train station”. But when it was built (1881-1884), such architecture was used to showcase and aggrandize the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal splendor. No talking of a lean state at that time.

Budapest, Hungary

In yesterday’s post I mentioned that there was enough interesting to see in order not to waste time with bad (instant) coffee. The entrance door to the business lounge was one of them – perfect secessionist style, and it is at least noteworthy that this door handle in seemingly original condition is still in place.

Budapest, Hungary

Unfortunately the coffee shop in the north wing of Keleti train station was closed and my kaffeine level dropped to an all day low. But the place was too interesting to spend time with bad coffee (and good coffee seemed not to be at hand).

Debrecen, Hungary

The store with the hard-to-pronounce name (at least for non-Hungarians) seems to be part of a large chain of shopping malls. When it comes to attract the bargain hunting crowd, the inner part of the art nouveau entrance is just a suitable area for a big banner shouting ‘Discount’.

Debrecen, Hungary

The many images of graffiti I made in Debrecen finally found their way into a folio in pdf-format, Debrecen Tagged, now available in the books section. Again my thanks go to Eric Jeschke from redskiesatnight.com for his latex framework, published under GPL and forming the basis for my work.

Debrecen, Hungary

Debrecen, Hungary

Debrecen, Hungary

Debrecen, Hungary

Debrecen, Hungary

Debrecen, Hungary

Debrecen, Hungary

Debrecen, Hungary

Debrecen, Hungary

Debrecen, Hungary

Debrecen, Hungary

Debrecen, Hungary

Debrecen, Hungary

Budapest-Zugló, Hungary

Budapest-Zugló, Hungary

Budapest-Zugló, Hungary

Budapest-Zugló, Hungary

Budapest-Zugló, Hungary

With best regards to Carl Weese, whose underpass work is still unsurpassed. My reaction was too slow to dial in the right shutter speed for a blurred vehicle (again © Carl Weese, here), but I wanted to get that pale yellow car plus the lady with the pale yellow coat in the frame.

I am meanwhile in Debrecen, near the Eastern border of Hungary, for a conference and project meeting on CO₂ reduction. Budapest inadvertedly offered me one hour of photographing, uncomfortable with the luggage at my side, but still prolific.

Stay tuned, I put up some more images as scheduled posts.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Westend, Munich

Westend, Munich

Westend, Munich

Westend, Munich

My hosting company suffered from a DDOS attack, so until they clean up the mess and get their credentials back, the blog’s reading list has to be remain disabled as it relays on the networked mashup with a google service.

Westend, Munich

Not taking the tramway for the way home from office, my path led through the smaller streets – less car traffic and more bikers. The Munich administration engages in many activities to make cycling through the city more attractive. Diverting the car traffic into the main roads by selective speed limits in residential streets as well as the limited (and therefore expensive) parking space helped to convince quite a number of citizens to complement the main family car with a bike instead of the 2nd and 3rd car, and even to use the bike instead of the car. So when you walk home through Westend, chance is you wouldn’t get overrun by a SUV, but more likely to be met by the agressive ringing of a bike’s bell when leaving the sidewalk without proper caution.

Westend, Munich

On the brink of gentrification, the Westend in Munich is one of the old quarters, traditionally home of workers and craftsmen, now to be taken over by business school graduates and the like. The still mixed indigenious population – many Turkish people live here, you get Halal food on every corner – recedes slowly with rising rents for the flats and the advance of stylish cafés.

Munich Train Station

Got suspected that my camera is glued to my right hand, but that’s ok with me, especially when running errands brings in interesting photographic opportunities like this one. As Earl remarked on the previous image, this picture, too, contains sub-sceneries that make it a bit more complex.

Munich Train Station

Commuting by train offers time for reading or programming, but unlike traveling by car, only limited occasions for photography. Nevertheless, approaching the station means not only packing book and/or laptop, but also unpacking the camera for the 5 minutes walk to the office. When asked beforehand I would have negated that this could mean any quality time for photography, but experience has taught me different – quite a number of keepers resulted from these short walks on always the same path.

Octoberfest, Munich

Octoberfest of course is an attraction from people from all over the world. With these international visitors of course public announcements and advertisement become more and more – at least – English, too. What once was a “Schmankerl” (delicacy) and in this word communicating only to the indigenious people, caricaturized on the maypoles in the background, now is Bavarian Fingerfood, trying to treat to all the biggest-party attracted from around the globe. That at the same time classical Coca Cola gets advertised is just one more sign how much the “Wiesn” adapts to the time being.

Update: The wallpapers are here.

Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Hammerau, Bavaria

I hope that not too many of you have suffered from the technical issues this blog had in the last days. Today the account got moved by the truly responsive Hosting24 service crew to a new datacenter, it seems at least to me that load times are considerable shorter now. Additionally I have tried to distribute the load by using the Cloudflare caching and content distribution network services. The latter doesn’t seem to be without side-effects though, at least Martina has seen a number of error screens. I have meanwhile tuned down the cloudflare settings quite a bit, but I depend on your, the visitors from allover this planet, feedback to learn if the blogs behaviour and speed are acceptable or if there are continuing errors. For this I have created the email address blogerror@markus-spring.info, which I kindly ask you to use for positive or negative feedback on the blog performance. Thanks.

Hammerau, Bavaria

Noticed and framed during one of my prime-expeditions earlier this year, with a borrowed Minolta 1.7/50mm. Too long for an allround lens on APS-C, it is well suited to concentrate on the subject and cut off distracting elements.

Munich, Bavaria

I am working my way towards primes, and how to get to love them. Besides some remembrances of the past and the prospect of superior image quality (difficult as my standard zoom is well-renowned Carl Zeiss 16-80) and of course the possibility to use faster lenses, it is, well, demanding. Not so much the fact thatT a prime lens means framing with my feet, but more the lack of flexibility and/or speed to adapt to different situations is what makes me not so rarely longing for a zoom. Of course the reason for this need for speed are my usual picture-making conditions: Only rarely I am dedicatedly pursuing only photography, in maybe 70% of my photographic endeavours, taking/making images is a by-product of errands, business trips, shopping tasks and whatever you can think of. This makes a good zoom more than just nice-to-have.

Excursion: The LX3 I use as the alternative camera is fine by itself, with a small but optically excellent zoom range it would fit the bill, if it just had a viewfinder (and some more leeway for correction in the raw files)! But after 30 years with finder-equipped cameras, framing with a display feels simply ‘not right’.

Back to zoom vs. prime: For example my 1.4/85mm I love very much for the images I can create with it and couldn’t create with the zoom. Admittedly this happens only on rare occasions, as it usually stays at home when I head out with a small kit. The 2.8/24mm lens that was used for today’s image, I would see as basically indistinguishable from the 16-80 zoom. With only one stop faster than the zoom at 24mm, the images look pretty similar, and in-body-stabilisation of the camera as well as the good image quality even at ISO 800 de facto annihilate the speed advantage it has. The real difference however is size and with it conspiciousness: Here the primes shine (albeit not the 1.4/85). And when going out on the street, this can become an important factor.

I think I will continue trying to learn to love the primes, but I make no predictions if I could imagine a jobless future for my 16-80 zoom.

Krk, Croatia

For an old seafarer tribe as the people from the island of Krk, the boat certainly was as dear as cars are now. So it’s not astonishing to see normal boats, not the leasure type, next to many houses.

Krk, Croatia

The Kamplin is the main place next to the Bishop’s church in the town of Krk, and in the summer evenings visited by big numbers of tourists. In the mornings usually it’s quiet (and clean), good to visit when the shadows are still long.

Krk, Krk

Having fallen in love with the square format – the LX3 helped a lot as it offers it as a native format – I continue using it under much more difficult circumstances with the DSLR. There are two marks for the square in the viewfinder, visible but not really helpful when it comes to aligning lines with the frame borders or corners. Currently I lean towards slack framing, offering enough leeway to position a rectangular frame during postprocessing, but this is
a not really satisfying as it is quite imprecise. And I loose a bit the feeling for the image when not beeing able to use the SLR viewfinder as the tool it was meant for. Given that my DSLR in many other aspects allows to achieve fine results, an adjustable and configurable viewfinder (together with a much better rendering of shallow DoF) is at the top of an imaginary wish list.

Freilassing, Bavaria

Freilassing, Bavaria

Pure Germany, for Martina. As sober as it probably can get, no frills, yet (for me) of a certain innate beauty I cannot name.