spring2life take2

Na Perštýn, Prague

Malé Námestí, Prague

That V.J.Rott establishment seems to be connected to a court case re. privatization and possibly including corruption, but I had no opportunity to research the background.

Wenceslas Square, Prague

Prague, Wenceslas Square

It was to be expected: The center of Prague is an unholy mixture of internationally uniform chain stores and restaurants. But their concentration has a logarithmic fall off with distance, and optically, it can have its merits.

Prague, Politických vaznu

Blog note: Internet connection here in the Prague hotel seems to pertain to socialist times. Posting is extremely slow, so please excuse that I can’t answer to comments as I used to do until I come back.

Prague, Czech Republic

After an 8hrs train ride, 6hrs of it in local trains that were like a flashback into history of precapitalist times, I had some free hours to walk in Prague. Impressive in the amassing of beautiful old buildings, and also of tourists.

Train Station, Munich

As I am on my way to Prague today – 7h by train – a train station picture is in order. Hopefully there will be WiFi in the hotel, so I can resume posting tonight.

Update: Arrived, WiFi is only in the lobby. I will post the Prague pictures tomorrow.

Bayerstrasse, Munich

For the good reason of the Champions League Finals I am postponing the intended forest/landscape picture, but at least I can stick with the pertaining green tones. The banners make it pretty clear: this is a money affair, with millions shuffled by both the FC Bayern München and the FC Chelsea as well, and more millions invested and earned by sponsors and epiphytes. Me? It leaves me quite cold, like that morning drizzle.

Salzburg, Austria

Max-Reinhardt-Platz, Salzburg

“Gurkerln” by the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm.

Salzburg, Austria

Munich, Bavaria

BMW showroom in Munich, announcing the new 3 series some weeks ago. Toys for the rich boys.

Munich, Bavaria

re:public, Salzburg

Salzburg, Austria

Salzburg Train Station

Westend, Munich

The political orientation of this book shop/meeting point is not really obvious, besides may be that yellow/red no-nuclear-power sticker, but when you read the (German) texts of the posters, it becomes pretty clear that this is one of the rare outlets for leftist ideas. N.B. the communist party is next to inexistent in terms of political influence, and the “Die Linke” left wing party has only limited weight in the western part of Germany, more in the East. But what I noted was the fractur headline “wo die zeit urlaub macht”, translated “where time is on holidays”, demanding to “reeducate Bad Reichenhall”, my hometown.

Now Bad Reichenhall and even more Berchtesgaden were strongholds of NSDAP in the Third Reich, and there definitely are dregs of brown, national-socialist ideas in that area (but where aren’t they), partly also held alive by tourists demanding memorabilia, books about Hitler’s army etc. Also, the barracks are named after a at least contested Reichswehr general, and one of the newer bridges was named Kreta-bridge, which is insensitive or better outright stupid.

Still, I dare to say that Bad Reichenhall is in no more need of reeducation than most other places in Germany.

For that text on the left side of the reeducate poster I found at least an introductory translation: ““No one is to be reproached for coming from the country, but no one ought to turn it into a merit and insist upon it; whoever doesn’t succeed in emancipating himself from the province is exterritorial to education”. Quoted from: Adorno, Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit, l.c., p. 43. Matching, at least in the sense that Bad Reichenhall is well influenced by the rural surroundings.

Westend, Munich

Westend, Munich

Westend, Munich

Following Martina’s request, here is the translation of the graffito: “Eric has to throw up”. Goes well together with the shop’s branch of trade, isn’t it?

Westend, Munich

Munich, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Munich

This plant, German Felsenbirne, amelanchier ovalis, could be what is called serviceberry in English. However I’ve never seen fruits on one of these bushes, so it might be an urban hybrid, bred for early and rich blossoming but not carrying fruits to avoid delivery of food to birds and rats.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

In the last decades, Munich has built a well renowned museums quarter, which also houses a collection of American photographs well worth visiting – this Baldessari among them. And what I do appreciate: photographing is *not* forbidden there. I mean, we tax payers have already financed museum and collection, so I’d see it as only fair not to put up too many additional restrictions besides the substantial entrance fee.

Glyptothek, Munich

In the middle of the 19th century, Munich had a philhellenic king, Ludwig I, who caused a whole quarter of the city to be ornated with buildings remembering the zenith of Greece and their merits in arts and politics. Despite the abuse of this place in the third reich and the following damages by the bombings, most of these buildings have been restored. The image above shows just a sidewing of the Glyptothek, while this image shows the entrance of the Antikensammlung, a museum dedicate to greek sculptures and pottery.

Steingasse, Salzburg

Steingasse, Salzburg

This image also refers to Tyler Monson’s Austrian Symbolism: The sign here marks the end of the “free contracting zone”. Proof: The image to the right, found some 100m before the sign.

Steingasse, Salzburg

Steingasse, Salzburg

Steingasse, Salzburg

Salzburg’s Steingasse certainly is a road with many different faces, the modern architecture of yesterday just a small number of steps away from this abandoned antiques shop.

Steingasse, Salzburg

Steingasse, Salzburg

An answer to Martina’s comment on yesterday’s post “It’s the same everywhere in Germany, isn’t it?”: In urban areas, probably yes – even in Austria.
Admittedly I like Bauhaus design very much, so I am somewhat ambivalent especially regarding the architecture in yesterday’s image. In dreary weather it looks depressing for me, whereas today’s Salzburg example with blue skies and blossoms certainly looks more appealing.

Bonn, North Rhine-Westfalia

Bonn, North Rhine-Westfalia

After the German reunification it was decided that Berlin becomes the capital again. To mitigate the consequences for the former capital, Bonn, several ministeries and federal administration headquarters had to stay in Bonn. This is one of them.

Bonn, North Rhine-Westfalia

Bad Godesberg, Bonn

Kaiserplatz, Bonn

For sure it was not my intention to tilt the camera that much, but looking at the image I learned to enjoy it, especially as the fervent red box balances it so nicely. That it became a subconscious hommage to Winogrand is not unlikely, as I had recently seen an original print of his famous image ‘World’s Fair, New York, 1964′ in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich as part of the exhibition ‘True Stories’, featuring many American photographers of the last decades.

Siegburg/Bonn

The relative darkness of the half-underground railway station spares you the most ugly magenta I’ve ever seen a tramway painted in – completely (at least only the outside). This is part of the sponsoring the local public transport company has with one of it’s sponsors, the Deutsche Telekom. Whilst I understand that emptied public budgets need relief in every possible way, I still would hope that it could be done in a not so obtrusive manner.

Donnersbergerbrücke, Munich

Car advertisements still play on the more spinal cord level, it seems. As they are so successful – most Germans are tremendously car-conscious – they do indeed hit the right spot.

Myself, I was heading for the train to a meeting in Bonn at 06:19 in the morning. City administration’s rules are strict: No national flights if there is any possibility of a train connection, except in rare, unavoidable cases. Yes, we do have a CO₂ reduction programme, and we take it serious.

Ludwigsvorstadt, Munich

“Lebensmittel” means groceries, but the letters are just leftovers now, as gentrification took place in this quarter along with the centralisation of food stores. But people obviously like the reminiscences to the past so much that the keep the now irrelevant lettering.

Ludwigsvorstadt, Munich

Ludwigsvorstadt, Munich

The German word “Freud” means joy. I don’t know if the advertisement was here first (and what purpose it should serve) or the graffiti writing, but at least the go together nicely.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Lindenplatz, Bad Reichenhall

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Heilingbrunnerschule, Bad Reichenhall

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Matching Carl Weese’s Photographed Trees. Usually Martin Storz comes up with the inevitable, too. Let’s see…

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Schwanthalerhöhe, Munich

With all this xenophobic hysteria around, I was reminded of Sting’s “Russians”. At least outside of Germany you should be able to see it on youtube.

Schwanthalerhöhe, Munich

Ludwigsvorstadt, Munich

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

And a riddle for Martina: What does that mean?

Oberstadt, Bad Reichenhall

Frescos of saints are quite popular in traditional areas of Bavaria, but this interpretation on a newly rebuilt house in the oldest quarter of Bad Reichenhall was really astonishing for me.

Oberstadt, Bad Reichenhall

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

The Easter Fire is lighted at 04:30, before the holy mass, and churchgoers assemble here before entering the fully dark church. When service was over, the fire was still burning, nicely contrasting with the snowflakes.

Update: Tyler Monson of More Original Refrigerator Art fame gave me a hint about the color balance beeing slightly off in the first version of the image (now in the thumbnail to the right). Of course he was correct, and when revising the image I marginally adjusted tint and saturation (the latter only outside the fire), and I have to admit that the missing cyan offset now makes the image a lot more attractive. When you click on one of the images to see it large, you can easily switch forward and back again. Thanks, Tyler!

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Maxvorstadt, Munich

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Maxvorstadt, Munich

Maxvorstadt, Munich

Altstadt-Lehel, Munich

When this building of the “Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechselbank” was constructed in 1895, ‘sex sells’ was probably not the leading paradigm of business, instead statues of naked men and women where used as pointers to the famous greek past – Munich has a clearly philhellenic tradition, which might just have subsided a bit nowadays. We usually prefer to sell luxury cars to the Greek to paying for their debths.

Munich, Bavaria

Promenadenplatz, Munich

More about Montgelas here. The statue was created by Karin Sander in 2005.

Ludwigstrasse, Munich

The place where empress Elisabeth of Austria, better known under her pet name “Sissy” (note to self: try to find out if an empress really can have a ‘pet name’) was born 175 years ago, seems to still attract people.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Not as terse as today’s image, the wallpapers for April are here. Enjoy.

Maxvorstadt, Munich

“Palais Ludwig Ferdinand” is the name of the building as indicated by the signboard. It was built 1825 by one of the master architects at that time, Leo von Klenze. Most probably he would have objected to the surveillance camera.

Maxvorstadt, Munich

Munich, Bavaria

Normally I have no big complaints about wordpress’ scaling functionality, but in this image it clearly introduces asome moiree that will vanish when you click on the image to see it in the size AfterShotPro has rendered it to. Oh yes, and least I forget, enlarging the images by click should work on all images in this blog.

Donnersbergerbrücke, Munich

Munich, Bavaria

Ludwigsvorstadt, Munich

When I saw that peace tag, I immediately was reminded of Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece” (here on youtube).

And today my thoughts are with the parents of Trayvon Martin, 17 years old, whose violent death is a tragic memento that peace in our societies is still not guaranteed, that instead racism rises its ugly head in oh too many places – and finds its support in the silence of the masses.

Update: I exchanged the image for a different version without those burned out taillights – it seems I was a bit unconcentrated when posting. The original is under the thumbnail.

Ludwigsvorstadt, Munich

Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Deutsche Bank, Salzburg

Just wondering what secrets a king’s daughter disguising as a goose farm servant might nowadays communicate with the head of a horse…

Nonntal, Salzburg

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

The setting of an alpine cabin is a synonym for snugness in Bavaria, and of course it gets purported for all the (expected) tourists even more. Strange, in which places it materialises…

Salzburg, Austria

Salzburg, Austria

Munich, Bavaria

Nonntal, Salzburg

Nonntal, Salzburg

Nonntal, Salzburg

Hopper’s light here immediately struck my eyes.

Karl-Weiser-Platz, Salzburg

With the title I am connecting to Andreas Manessinger’s recent series of non places.

Haidhausen, Munich

Haidhausen, Munich

Haidhausen, Munich

Haidhausen, Munich

Haidhausen, Munich

Sendling, Munich

Haidhausen, Munich

Trappentreustrasse, Munich

Getreidegasse, Salzburg

Munich, Bavaria

The snowfall that decorated the booth in this picture happened already last week. Together with the following frost it substantially slowed down street life in the center of Munich, to the extent that the street vendors closed some of their outlets because only smallest numbers of visitors wanted to stop and buy some food in that excessive cold.

Munich, Bavaria

Shameless plug: The Public Eye Blog features my image “Peace At School” today. Have a look!

Munich, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Many shops are closed here, probably due to a certain imbalance between rent prices and profit, especially in the colder half of the year, when there are no tourists. This small cafe was open for 5 years, but couldn’t go on longer.

Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

The red “A” in that old lettering is the symbol for a pharmacy here in Germany. Inside the letter there is also visible an „Äskulapnatter“, a particular snake which is part of the symbol of medical healing.

Munich, Bavaria

Thanks to the winter and the so-called daylight saving time – more honestly to be called expenditure enticing time – it is still night when I arrive in the office, and sometimes the moon shows up over the vis-à-vis blocks. Nota bene: The sky was that incredibly blue in spite of my lowering the saturation value.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Munich, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Not without reason, Bavarians are seen as the German variety of the common redneck. But living here, I can testify that their renommee by far exceeds reality. It’s only for the visitors from inside Germany – especially the northern part – and from abroad, that some try to live up to the clichée. And that’s why undergarments like the depicted ones are sold, almost exclusively however in cities, and to non-Bavarians (Update: I hope).

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.

Freilassing, Bavaria

Freilassing is a small town on the German-Austrian border, having grown fast between the World Wars as a significant crossing of railway lines along and cross the border. I sometimes go there for shopping, but more often than not my stay is compulsory due to some hickups in the railway system (percentually small, but often annoying none the less). One hour delay gives a good timeframe to explore at least the surroundings of the station. When the results are good, the annoyance subsides somewhat…

Freilassing, Bavaria

Update: Modified the spelling of the title to better reflect the German (Un-)orthography. Don’t know why I missed this when writing the post.

Freilassing, Bavaria

I scrutinized the car for statements that would explain that medieval style icon in the window but found nothing exept a fragmentary hint to a Mercedes-Benz website. Well, not so rarely cars make up as drop-in replacements for religion, but here this was at least not the obvious case.

Munich, Bavaria

This truck delivered plaster just opposite my office window. The inscription struck me as somewhat dissonant, and after some consideration I discovered why: .com is for commercial enterprises. “Gott kennen”, knowing God is, well, not really commercial, at least not here in Europe. I’d even dare to say that there is a certain antagonism, just thinking of the traders in the temple.

But then, if they signed not to vote in favour of any tax increase, maybe they think they have made a good deal with God?

Freilassing, Bavaria

For a given reason it might have been appropriate to photograph those pinstriped pants and leather shoes *descending* the stairs. Taking into account that I took this image several weeks back, I can only state that my augural capacities are not really sufficient.

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.

Freilassing, Bavaria

Back in 2009 I have bought a copy of “Eye, Mind, Spirit – The Enduring Legacy Of Minor White”, out of a gut reaction when having read Geoff Wittig’s review in the “Online Photographer”. That Amazon had shipped it in insufficient packaging, damaging the corners, is more than an annoyance when dealing with a limited edition of only 1500, but I saw no sense in sending it back and just getting the money refunded. Anyhow, this book features White’s image “Portland, Maine, 1966″, a tight framing of a truck side and wheel with salt forming patterns on the tyre and the paint. This image had anchored itself in the back of my mind and got immediately remembered when I saw that side of the lorry in the image above. Strange enough, I could not find any reproduction of that image on the web.

On a side note: I should stop complaining about stopovers enforced by train delays. This image, again, found me during such a stay in a place where I had not chosen to be, and certainly not at that time. Maybe I should work back through all my posts and add a special tag “train delay” to all the images having been created at such an occasion. It could be that a pattern becomes visible.

University of Salzburg, Austria

Krk, Croatia

Silo, Krk

Krk, Croatia

Krk, Croatia

Silo, Krk

Silo, Croatia

Silo, Croatia

Silo, Croatia

Shipyard, Krk

Andreas certainly is right: once you learn the square, it comes natural. This again was made with the SLR.

Krk, Croatia

Until I had bought the LX3, I had felt quite handicapped when trying to compose square images without any guidelines in the viewfinder. As I feel a certain affinity for that aspect ratio, most images with the LX3 I created in that mode. In the bright mediterranean light, the LX3 without EVF is no joy to use, so without any resentments the DSLR again became my tool of choice. And, unexpectedly, now I am much better in composing the image into the square. I admit, precision is sometimes still lacking, but framing a tiny bit looser and precisely cropping on the computer screen helps a lot. Anyhow, the viewfinder is not 100% precise, so making use of sometimes unexpected slack is nothing new for me.

Krk, Croatia

I just had spotted the flower pots on the AC units placed on those balcony remnants, when…

Trappentreustrasse, Munich

Not the most inviting kind of lounge.

If all goes well, the next post will be from the island of Krk, again.

Munich, Germany

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Central Underground Parking, Salzburg

Salzburg, Austria

Forstamtsstrasse, Bad Reichenhall

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

The appropriate image for a sunday. When looking at it, I am pondering the question how they paid the royalities for using this intellectual property. I mean, in times of those anti-democratic ACTA negotiations and treaties, you become quite vulnerable if you get caught with a brand you don’t own.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Promenadenplatz, Munich

Me thinks, the LX3 is just the right camera for this kind of photography. Behave like a tourist, and nobody cares.

Train Station, Munich

Department of Health and Environment, Munich

Salvatorstrasse, Munich

The ‘Urban Trees’ seem to give this castle an even more brusque semblance. What I do enjoy very much is that early summer’s sunshine that lights up the slot canyons of the streets here.

Trappentreustrasse, Munich

Administrative Court, Munich

Town Hall Square, Bad Reichenhall

Spa Center, Bad Reichenhall

Bayerstrasse, Munich

Thierschstrasse, Munich

Maximilianstrasse, Munich

“Think while you shoot” is an advice, that Martin Munkacsi gave when asked for a recipe to create good photographs. The exhibition in the hall of a great Bavarian insurance company was curated by F. C. Gundlach, himself not only a famous photographer in the middle of last century, but also a collector of photographs, Munkacsi’s among them. For me it was utmost amazing to see how lively his images were, especially when taking into account the technical difficulties of photography let’s say in 1930. I guess I should never complain about the performance of my own equipment…

Also interesting for me was that the great H.C-B named Munkacsi’s image, ‘Boys Running Into the Surf at Lake Tanganyika’, as his sole and most important “spark that ignited my enthusiasm.” This image is also among the images that I remember from my early encounters with photography, and do recall it was in the back of my mind when I framed the image to the right in 2006.

Maximilianstrasse, Munich

It’s not the perfect Rodin pose, I know, but it was my first association. That aside, I am still at a loss for explanations about a diver’s helmet W.A.F. Maybe somebody can help?

Maximilianstrasse, Munich

I can only speculate about the motives why a young lady would label herself ‘Odd Molly’, but most probably the keyword is ‘Label’. Even considerate, above-average intelligent people sometimes can mutate to voluntary advertising pillars, if the label is in or hot or both. I admit, I prefer to stick with Naomi Klein’s “no logo” motto. But probably some mollies are odd.

Train Station, Munich

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Old Saline, Bad Reichenhall

Update: I replaced the image with a newer version that I prepared for printing: keystoned horizontals, some vignetting to take emphasis from the corners. In my eyes it works even better.

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Himmelreich, Austria

The name of this village right outside of Salzburg is indeed “Himmelreich”, not to be translated other than “Kingdom Of Heaven”. And a true kingdom of consumer’s lust it is, with probably more square meters of shopping area than for housing!

Downtown Salzburg, Austria

Update: Replaced the image with a new jpg version from raw, where a tad Noise Ninja USM adds sharpness. I am still in the experimenting phase with the raw conversion from the LX3.

And please remember that most of the images in this blog open in a larger version when you click on them.

Kaiser-Ludwig-Platz, Munich

Lindwurmstrasse, Munich

Ludwigsvorstadt, Munich

St. Andrew’s Church, Munich

Schmellerstr., München

Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria

Westend, Munich

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

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.

Found early in the morning on the way to work, when a traffic accident had enforced a walk for the last 2 km to work.

Carl Weese recently showed a diptych of cinema ads and cars, here, so a twilight scenery advertising the (in Germandy new) twilight series, makes up a nice complement. And from the sceneries I’ve seen from that TV-event, cars do play a major role there. But then, I’m neither in cars nor in TV, which I both see more a necessary evil than something attractive I’d like to spend my time with…

Stuttgart and the surrounding cities are one of the carmakers’ centers, with Mercedes-Benz and Porsche both having their head offices there, surrounded by innumerable component suppliers.

This orientation also shows in the residential streets, even the very new ones.

Meanwhile the snow is thawing everywhere here. But the artificial blue light – different to Juha Haataja’s “night” here – renders the oversweetened urban flavour of cold and wannabe coolness.

The cold and already snowy October weather had only been an interlude, for now it’s pretty wam again. But in the city the colors have lost their power, their radiance, and this creates a certain feeling of alienation here.

Wordless Thursday. Too leached out for writing.

No, this is not a comment on the election results, I swear.
But look – there’s red in it, and blue…

New chances can be triggered by railway construction works, too: As “my” train is canceled for some weeks, I had to get up earlier, only to find a familiar place in new light. I don’t know what makes the Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) do rent their emptied, service-deprived stations preferably to gambling saloons (my guess: money, what else), but this seems business seems to be booming in a way that the time slot for cleaning is somewhere around 5 in the morning. So the Casino’s door was open and their primary tool was there on display. For everybody to learn, but then, the ability to learn is maybe not the strong point of their customers.

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.

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…

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!

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

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.

It seems that commuting problems become a root of photographic endeavours: The “Batticaloa Fences” gallery finally was realized due to a delay, several of my commuting images resulted of unplanned stops, and today’s mini gallery of the “Dust Bikes” resulted from me leaving too late for the station and missing the train for just seconds…
I’ll have to explore the kind of mysterious connection that exists between those two unrelated kinds of events.

Anyhow, here you find a small gallery of “Dust Bikes” that grabbed my attention in a dirty garage under a office building. Beyond the incredibly soft surface I found the idea of such a powdered bike fascinating: This coating is the result of probably monthes of standstill, the plain opposite of the movement a bicycle is meant for.

Leaving the subway on a steep escalator, I was greeted by skywards reaching facades, and felt really relieved having finally reached the inner courtyard, planted with trees. Only after a while I recognized that those trees were not all of the same kind.

For a given reason I made several visits to this hospital. Whilst the medical treatment without doubt is first class – many families from the near east oil dynasties travel here – the space made a somewhat depressing impression on me. The only minuscule changes between the images certainly speak of a leaden time.

October September 26h, 1980: Thousands of visitors are entering the Octoberfest in Munich through the main entrance. Suddenly a detonation shreds the constant flow of people: A right-wing extremist had detonated a bomb inmidst the crowd, killing 13 and wounding hundreds. The attacker, too, got killed in the explosion.

At that time Germany was still in a state of fear of terrorist attacks – from the left side. And in that climate a right wing bomber did not fit in. The ruling conservative party in the state of Bavaria very fast came to the conclusion that this had to be a single perpetrator, and the state attorneys after a while agreed. As the culprit was dead, this of course was the most convenient solution. Already in 1982 all court exhibits were destroyed, long before DNA analyis for example could have helped to identify the contacts of the attacker.

Today, as every year, the Lord Mayor of Munich laid down flowers in a small commemorative event. There are multiple wishes, supported from his side, to take up the investigations again, yet the Bavarian State Government (still the same conservative party does rule) up to now does block.

The image shows the memorial for the victims of this crime, with an innocent, typically masqueraded Octoberfest visitor, probably using the memorial as a meeting point.

Update: Steve notified me that I had given the wrong date of the bomb blast in the original post. Thanks!

Sometimes the small iuxtapositions grab the view – with sparse colors, like here, and just an antagonism in their basic shapes: rectangle vs. circle.

The office building currently gets heavily renovated, and while most of the basement garage driveway was taken down, that small part – the former doorman’s office – was marked to remain.

The administration of the City of Munich is distributed over many buildings, and commuting to and from meetings is mandatorily done via public transport (the Lord Mayor and a handful of Heads of Department being the only exception). And me, I carried a camera when meeting colleagues of the survey department, so I could document this unexpected encounter with an octopus in the heart of the city.

For platform furnishing only the most robust plants are suitable. Here a Pine tree, a Box bush and Olibanum (?) have to suffer for the assumed desideratum of the passengers to see some green.

First part of this early morning commuting trip was a walk in the rain, and against my usual habit I had enough time when reaching the station. Well, meanwhile it’s still dark when I leave, but the wet plaster made up for nice reflections to frame those poor, forlorn-looking small box bushes. It will take a decade until they get the figure appropriate for this setting.

No words for today.

The Vienna architect cooperative Coop Himmelb(l)au is responsible for some remarkable buildings in Munich. Their Munich Academy of Fine Arts is featured in the gallery here, and for this years opera festival they have created a pavillion for the more avantgarde presentations. This pavillion is transportable and will travel the world after having served here, a true messenger of architecture’s ingeniosity.

Found this just stepping out of the tramway, before entering the office. It seems there are certain predispositions where I just see. Now if I could only find the switch or trigger for it…

Working on prominent lines and combining strong foreground with a blurred, yet still informative background, I found new joy in wideangle perspectives. Of course I am curious if the partial unsharpness I deplored in my widangle images from Budapest and Krk is a problem of the lens – then I would be willing to replace it – or the photographer. If it’s, as I tend to assume now, the photographer, then I could assign the money set aside to replace it for a workshop, probably on the landscape subject.

The house in the image to the right was already subject of a post, here. This time I got a glimpse of the shadows’ play out of the bus window, and instead of changing immediately (and reaching the office early) I decided in favor of the sunlight’s spectacle on the walls. Processing of these images was easy – early morning front light doesn’t stress the dynamic range too much – but the leading image did benefit from some selective fill light at the bottom. Bibble5 as usual, it gets improved every minor version step. That it still lacks some of the plugins of the 4 version, this for me is more then compensated by the possibility to work in regions on the raw file itself. Definitely a straightforward workflow for no-frills raw conversion.

“He, who saves one single person, could also save the whole world” – This is the talmudian inscription on the memorial by the Hungarian sculptor Tamas Szabo for the Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz in the Jewish Quarter of Budapest. Carl Lutz worked from 1942 onwards in the Swiss embassy in Budapest, and together with the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg he helped 60.000 hungarian Jews to escape the holocaust. Some more photos from those times, including a portrait of Carl Lutz, can be found here.

You see, I like contrasts. But it’s not a purposeful act, accomplished by searching through the images and combining the most contrasty ones, no – such finds like the above are only meters away from the wonderful Mai Mano house of yesterday’s post.

With Tyler Monson I had a short exchange originating of the reactions he got on his 113 Reykjavik blog. My feeling is that there are very often two realities in an image: The subject matter as it was recorded by the lens, creating immediate resonance in the viewers, and the perception of the artist, realized through the way the images was selected and composed. What I show you from the things I’ve seen in Budapest might probably tell more about me then Budapest.

“Imperial and Royal Court Photographer” – at those times the a good photographer was held in high esteem. Mai Mano, who was allowed to wear this title, was famous for his portraits of children in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Now his house is the “Hungarian House of Photography” with exhibitions, a bookshop and the daylight studio, used for meetings and presentations.

Thanks to the long midsummer days, light was sufficient even in the evening for some nice impressions outside the Gellert Bath. The lanterns seem to origin (as the building does) from times of Vienna Secession.

The coffeehouses in Budapest were inviting, especially now as it was neither crowded nor too hot. And with a good sense for design and a certain facileness in decoration they very often formed attractive places to stay. Difficult to resist for someone like me, whose engine runs on coffee of all kinds.

I am posting this from back home again. The trip was short, intense and filled to the brim with interesting discussion about our project’s features like thermal mapping of city quarters as a support for decisions to thermally renovate buildings in order to cut their CO₂ footprint. Photography was for the fringe time, like early in the morning. At that time only some locals were already in the thermal bassins (they open at 6 a.m.) and the relaxing effect was proportional to the absence of other hotel guest’s idle chit-chat.

Built in the style of the Vienna Secession, the Gellert Bath was opened in 1918, and since then the thermal bath has changed only marginally. The thermal fountains in the underground provide the hot water for the basins since the 13th century, throughout the times when the Turkish occupied Hungary, up to the very presence.

Update: I added one more image from the Bath – I hope my fascination for the room and its colors gets transported.

On special request from Martina, whose dry humour every day is a cause for a smile, just two around-the-corner images from downtown Budapest. The glory of some of the buildings is amazing, comparable only with Vienna or Prague. And just steps away you find buildings that have not been renovated probably since cold war times.

On top of Gellert Hill in Budapest is the Liberty Statue, commemorating the liberation of Hungary from the demons of National Socialism, embodied by german troops and ‘special units’. The translated inscription at the foot of the liberty statue reads “Erected by the grateful Hungarian Nation in memory of the liberating Russian heroes.”

At that time the red army was. with good reason, welcome because in a long bloody war they had defeated the Gerrman troops. That this was the starting point of a long and bloody suppression, culminating in 1956′ (failed) Hungarian Revolution, could not be foreseen then.

A short business has led me to Budapest: A multinational EU funded project working on CO₂ reduction by better energy usage has its kickoff meeting here. The first free hours I used for a walk through the center, which shows amazing contrasts between Gucci shops and decaying building blocks just within eyesight.

Here in Europe all new buildings have to be insulated according to highest standards. Those styrofoam boards are among the most important component to achieve lower CO₂ emissions while maintaining a high comfort level. And they have sometimes even optical merits.

I am astonished again and again how much I have missed over the many years that I use this bus stop. Or expressed positively: Since working to develop my photographic skills my visual sensorium perceives interesting things in constantly increasing numbers. And the contentment lies more and more in discovering and in sharing subtle things than in waiting for a unique occasion and image.

Forcedly spending some time at the fairground (too noisy, too many too young kids and too much alcohol around), I exercised my 85mm lens, trying to find out the right compression for that cacophonia of light and movement and sound. It was only when editing the images that I found that face included in all the screaming bulbs, words and signs. It seems I was prepared for the luck.

My personal relationship with Thuja bushes is quite negative – I seem them as plants adequate for graveyards, and that is all the places I would think they are suitable for. In the last decades however they became really popular here to mark parcel borders or even to decorate front yards, gardens and facades. In the image above Thuja plants and garage doors form a harmonious ensemble. Leaves me thinking why.

The Honda car dealership here in Munich at the moment shows this poster. It seems that Eggleston’s image material (see the original here on the Washington Times website) was regarded insufficient for the intended purpose, so I guess a talented photoshop artist had to add blue sky and clouds as well as some warm tones to the grass under the tricycle.

Just thinking: Does Eggleston really know?

In spite of the temperatures starting to rise to summerly heights, in those streets where the trees get only part-time exposition to the sun, the spring colors are still delicate. Fine for a walk when commuting traffic already subsides and the last sunlight gives the white blossoms a golden glow. (Oh yes, and I have to plead guilty again. I added some saturation. Mea culpa.)

Another kind of street photography, easier for me as the continous sneezing announces my activity to all potential human subject matter. The two different kinds of line interested me, and exploring the image in it, I tried b&w for a moment, but gave up again as the bluish tones of the shadows and the warm colors of the bright areas added more to the image than I could win by stronger abstraction.

A Westend street scenery. I probably can count myself lucky for not having been accused being a stalker, re-using that red parka as a welcome color element.

Next to the Resurrection Church, in an architectonic ensemble meanwhile under preservation order, is the last “Ledigenwohnheim” in Europe. It was built in 1926, visible by close inspection of the relief to the right, and was meant as a means to fight the increasing cheapest variant of lodging, where sleeping facilities where rented out only for hours a day. The citizens feared the immorality and growing numbers of illegitimate offsprings and tried to offered the poor workers room for reasonable price, but only single persons were admitted. Why a rooster was chosen as symbol for this “Ledigenheim” I can’t explain, especially as in this Lodgers Home women were off limits.

Built in the first decade of the 20th century, the “Church of Resurrection” in Munich showcases the “New Objectivity”, replacing Art Nouveau’s rich decoration with a really sober style where the material of the structure does not only serve a functional purpose but became visible facade and decoration, too.

Any doubts that he has golden hands, Hugo the Boss? Well, all those gazillions of fashion addicts should have made them golden in the meantime… But the company still can develop: At the moment there’s only fashion, perfumes, spectacle frames and watches from this brand. And the real money is not made by producing something real, but by shifting irreal amounts of borrowed money in order to separate the real losses (keep them for the naives, the tax payers, the voters) and the real profits. The latter have to go into boni and donations for the big parties to keep the game goin’.

Me? You’ll find me probably more often than not on the ‘No Logo’ side of things. This I like better.

Oral tradition from Italy tells that once a week young boys in certain parts of Italy are made to stand on the kitchen table, while the female members of the family dance around the table and the boy, clapping their hands and shouting “Que Bello!”.

This story flashed up in the back of my mind when I saw this mannequin in the shop window, where pseudo traditional costumes are advertised for bavarian and wanna-be bavarian geeks.

This is one of the personal rewards of photography for me: Standing in exact the same place I had been thousands of time before, commuting from work, and opening the eyes – discovering something new, something that triggers a cell way back in the innards of the brain. Reacting with the camera, quick, as the bus is already at the stop. Reviewing, making thoughtful connections to a topic on the inner todo list. Editing and making an image out of a snapshot. What else is needed but to wait for the print from the lab?

The title of course is an hommage to Otto Steinert and his famous “Einfussgänger”, here on artnet.

I did not much postprocessing in bibble5, just a careful enhancement of the red color of the shoes. In retrospect it seems like a wonder to me that I managed to frame this so perfectly that any further cropping was unnecessary.

Update: The wallpapers for April are here. Enjoy.

Today I spent some time in the corridor of an administrative building, waiting in vain for a meeting.  Such an environment in literature usually is described in words that try to express absolute and ultimate bleakness, and I admit that this is really not the best way to spend one’s time. But in wise providence I had brought the camera with the 11-18mm lens, and that not so dreary place rewarded me with some images I like.

The morning sun is already golden, promising warm days to come. Life sometimes shows its swell sides. A happy weekend to all!

Being 5 minutes early for the morning bus gave me a small time slice to see and play. Interesting enough the result corresponds quite a bit with Carl Weese’s post “Thumbs up”, which I don’t remember to have actively seen before taking this photograph of mine.

“Sizzling Silhouette” would have been a headline matching the ad for an “Erotic Trade Fair” even better, but Debra from A Passion in Frames had already used it for her post of today. Maybe take it as an encouragement to look in her blog.

One of the results of a lunchtime stroll. No story behind, just delight about that blue-white combination. You can’t always resort to greek islands for this color combination, so I decided to take what I could get.

Thoreau’s Walden for sure is not on everybody’s reading list over here, but the craving for the “genuine” life out there in the woods seems to become stronger with every degree of civilisation’s comfort and amenities.

My snowstorm images of the last days finally got distilled into a new small gallery, here.

Sitting in the bus, peering through the front window, I suddenly had this feeling that the scenery of red lights in front of me might unfold into an image worth recording. Some quick fiddling brought out the camera of the backpack, luckily with the 1.8/28mm lens alread mounted, and I took the first shot without thinking, but before the second and third I dialed in exposure compensation. Well, what shall I say: the first shot was “right” in the way that it recorded that ghostly scenery of light sources and reflections, giving not too much clue of the real scenery. The 3rd shot turned out mundane, interesting more as reference for comparison then anything else.

And now it’s high time to tune the formatting of the blog again – the highslide plugin I use for the image popups used up the minimum distance between text and image. This needs to be addressed.

Found in my hometown, where usually naked bottoms don’t get wiped in open public…

Photographed in raw, converted in bibble5 with the Andrea plugin set to Tri-X, fine-tuned in gimp as bibble5 currently doesn’t support the perspective correction plugin. Other than that, it’s just having the camera at hand and reasonably pre-set.

I had planned to show more diptychs, but with the current means of presentation I am a bit unhappy: Combined as one image, the current blog layout shows them so small that they become quite unattractive. Of course clicking on the image enlarges it, but the first impression is not inviting. I started to experiment with some blending methods, but the day job proved to be more time-consuming than expected.

So today’s image is a snap taken when returning from a meeting via subway: One of the stations, next to the museum quarter in Munich, exhibits some replicas of greek statues, hijacked by a graecophil Bavarian king and since then shown in a local Museum.

The raw image was converted in bibble5, and I used a LAB plugin to emphasize the greenish light. But for the last treatment I had to resort to digikam’s local contrast enhancement function, without it the image was too “flat”.

Update: I added a screenshot of bibble5 in action on this image. In the top row you find the thumbnail of the unmodified raw just right to the highlighted thumbnail. The effect of the LAB modification is the extreme narrowing of the blue and green values. The tint was achieved by moving the grey point of the histogram out of the center towards darker.

made of a rainstorm and early morning traffic lights during commuting in Munich. And you are right: commuting traffic is more like a horror trip.

Last weekend was sort of a landmark in the change of the seasons: for the first time we had direct sunlight again in our kitchen since beginning of december last year, as now the sun higher on the horizon again. But the during the week work usually finishes only when it’s already dark again. Learning to see differently, there is so much to discover even at night, and in the city it’s not a problem to hand hold most of the shots, cranking up the ISO to 800 or sometimes 1600.

These different trees were again treated in bibble5, applying a bleach bypass preset after masking out the (already sun-bleached) public transport signs and emphasizing the structure of the naked sycamore tree.

While it is not always convenient to take photographs during winter time, leastwise it is a challenge: familiar subjects change completely, some vanish, others appear, many of them in a quite volatile way, especially when related to snow. Seeing better the more images I take, the orange-yellow color of the snow catched my eye. Together with the black lines of the tramway tracks and the irregular patterns of the pedestrian’s tracks it formed an image where the conversion of matter by light and framing becomes a subject in its own sense. And yes, I am onPaul Butzi’s side, when he emphasizes the importance of subject. If there’s no connection between my mind and the subject, no image will start to exist, just a wasted file.

Found in downtown Munich.

The past years have seen a constant revival of “traditional” in every context. This led to some odd results, especially ugly and hard to escape in “folksy” music. So please notice that in fashion speak men don’t really need a head – a facility for fixing the hat would suffice.

Couldn’t help it: That Santa Claus head next to a red garter reminded me of Salome’s dance and its tragic consequences…

Sorry, but this kind of Santa Claus creates stomach churning feelings – it’s more a threat than a friendly reminder of christmas-to-be. I think it qualifies for a gallery of the “most ugly chrismas decorations” that Bernd over at babaoskar shoots back was intending. I do like the less agressively painted “Nikolaus” figures, the ones that don’t look like a comic creature brought to life (and nightmare). But this one… Alas, I am quite alone.

Addendum: There’s a new set of wallpapers for december. As there was still no wintery weather, I resorted to an image from the archive: the deeply frozen pond in Schönram. The scenery is maybe a bit depressing with all the dead trees, but then, it may be just anticipate the Kopenhagen climate talk results. Only that we won’t have that much cold winters any more.

Not only the windtalkers were specialists in unbreakable code, in a certain way all generations have developed their own codex, much to the annoyance of the elders, who did not understand a single word of this language. So this day marks a birthday: I stood before this sticker and no clue at all what it could mean. At least I did not remain stupid, thanks to my mighty friends, the search engines. And to reveal the secret: the “rude girls” is a local series of drum/bass events, featuring djanes and promoting female artists in that scene. Now you know. Me, I prefer that photography to the real music, probably.

The locomotive driver probably did not share my adventurous feelings regarding a trip to Rome – and I guess he had to go up to the border to Austria only anyhow. Different perspectives everywhere, and differentiate I did also (again) with a big f-stop, and afterwards in postprocessing by working on that cold-warm contrast as well.

From the number of keepers within that week that I own this lens now it seems that this purchase was a good decision. That (slow zoom lens induced) lack of shallow DoF is the only drawback I see at the moment with my APS-C format camera. But with the right prime it is not an issue any more. That I get high shutter speeds even in the darker times of the day is another benefit, albeit a smaller one when taking that great high-iso performance of the current camera generation into account. Oh – I have to say yesterday’s camera generation, as my model is already 2 years old – an eon in today’s camera makers fast development rhythm.

When Munich is grey, cold and wet, a train to Rome is an alternative definetely worth considering. Well, I guess I am too duteous or too inflexible, and so I chose the well known path to the office.

Originally on the sticker is written “Rettet die Bürger, nicht die Banken”, which translates to the words of the headline. The “socialist german workers youth”, SDAJ does not even play a minor role in the political scenery of today, and only in dispersed parts of the city you can find their stickers or illegally sticked posters. But the headline on the stickers nicely matches the fire like lights in the street.

Beginning with today I have added the opportunity to send e-cards and buy prints or cards from the images on the blog. www.fotomoto.com offers a promising service. As I cannot realistically expect fine art prints from such this lab, I have opted for low prices, always keeping in the back of my mind the words from Tyler Monson: “No work of art should cost more than a fine meal, nor be required to last any longer.”. And in case you did not visit his blogs More Original Refrigerator Art and Here now, gone before long up to now, this might be a good cause.

To avert the impression that my new lens had made me forget how to use a smaller f-stop like 1/5.6 here are three images from a road construction machine. Here I sometimes missed the universality of my zoom, but this restriction of course provoked more flexibility. And I am still asking myself why I didn’t make more use of my 50mm lens, similarly fast. It could be that I am somewhat drawn to the extremes in focal lengths, either really short or much longer than normal. The 50mm I tried for portraits, but this focal length distorts the proportions of the face when you try a tighter framing.

Ok, and an image with wide open f-stop at last – I simply couldn’t help it.

Found in the pedestrian area. Due to the (usually) moderate climate, sycamore trees grow to large sizes here in Bad Reichenhall.

are the leaves for all the house managers and municipal workers – at least it seems so. Only hours after heavy gusts of wind had poured down all the fruits from beeches and chestnuts, together with some leaves, the leaf blowers/suckers started a concerto grosso, underpinned by the diesel growl of the road sweeping vehicle. Autumn music that is.

Some peoply say that my all-time disposedness for coffee is bordering addiction already, but be it as it is, I simply had to take this image. And at least it’s subtle enough to make the thought of a coffee only sneak into your consciousness.

Well, the laughter may be electric (so were the movements) but obviously it was not really electrifying. By now, you know for sure that I am not one of the great fans of the octoberfest, an attitude that certainly puts me into quite some distance of the fanatic pro-octoberfest statements like those on the Boston Globe (thanks to Martina for pointing this out).

I am, however, a bit concerned about the impression this event gives the world about Munich: beer abundant, drunk people in somewhat traditional clothing, and, on the back side of the medal, average 10 rapes/octoberfest (official, the dark figure is about 200) and probably 2000 police operations in those mad 16 days. Well, there is not only fun and hight times.

Usually the locals prefer the quieter hours, and in the afternoon you see families with young kids enjoying all the roundabouts, horse riding places and even a genuine flea circus. I have updated my gallery section with an Octoberfest section (Wies’n is the bavarian word for this event, originally meaning simply meadow).

Octoberfest generally is an easy place for candids, but in terms of speed, especially focusing speed with longer focal lengths, it can be demanding. But the people usually don’t object being photographed. Only inside the beer halls the breweries now imposed quite strict regulations to stop the publication of images showing drunk or half-naked customers.

I am more interested in small details like those gingerbread hearts. Last year I photographed them in the food stalls where the color is really overwhelming, especially at night when the lack of light makes it easy to direct the views. The small collection of Octoberfest posts you can find here.

Rarely I have seen such determination as in the posture of this man, wandering to the beer halls of the Octoberfest here in Munich. Prost!

So we had general elections today in Germany, and whilst it will take some hours until we see the official results, it is obvious that the majority of the voters preferred a coalition of parties that told them oh-so-good-to-believe lies: The main messages of the to-be ruling parties is that they will lower the taxes. Good – everybody loves to have more money in his/her pocket. The bad thing only is, there is no money left to be distributed after that crisis. Furtheron that agreement on abandoning atomic energy is at risk, to say the least, in spite of the now accessible proof that in research for an ultimate disposal place truth was the first victim. Fine.

But it seems that nobody cares about this. Better than facing reality is an illusion like in today’s picture: behind the reflection of middle-class houses wait the mercedes-benz cars for everybody.

Since the weekend, parts of Munich are in a state of emergency, as the Octoberfest has started. For reasons almost completely opaque to me, within 16 days up to 7 millions of national and international visitors drink approx. 5 million litres of beer in temporary beer halls while listening to to dem-idiotic music that is so loud that municipal engineers have to check that it is at least not immediately damaging the sense of hearing.

But even for the locals here the Octoberfest is still attractive and a reason to wear traditional bavarian clothing (or what designers decide to deviate from it). The lady in the image above I met in one of the attractive, now completely gentrified quarters of Munich in front of an old house, probably dating back to the 2nd half of the 19th century. The colors and cut of her dress, ‘Dirndl’, are quite traditional, without visible ingratiation on fake cottage style.

Graphically appealing as it is, my heart does still not beat for streets like this. Fearing the small town’s tight social control, the lack of variety, the sometimes hardly tolerable stubbornness and/or naivite in the countryside, I still do not feel at home strolling through the city where I have spent my youth. So I live from week to week with the balance and tension of these antipoles and learn to enjoy the fine balance, trying to visually embrace all the interesting sceneries here and there.

Those lichens have gotten a political importance here in Germany, as their disappearance was discovered to be an indicator for high air pollution. I do well remember that probably 12 years back we did a map of lichens in the city of munich to document the air pollution. As the consolidated efforts of european, state level and municipal administrations were successful, the lichens are back in the city now. And now we are waiting what will be a noticable indicator plant  for the climate change.

You see, the billboard vs. car top is fascinating me. More than in the countryside or a small town, the city still has the flair of unlimited possibilities, and in this context advertisements seem to sit in a much more suitable habitat than in a town of let’s say 15.000 inhabitants. What would be just a reason for laughter there looks like a real possibility when proposed in the glamourous environment of the city: you just need the right shoes and your posterieror will magically reshape…

I am not always fond of small town / countryside life, but its more down-to-earth attitude is very sympathetic.

Office rooms on the ground floor with at least partial possibility to peek in from outside are rare. Therefore I was a bit astonished when I saw that Chagall poster on the wall and, after a while, noticing the head of the employee, motionless, either on the phone or using a computer in a very concentrated manner.

The posts and wires that form the shadows on the office walls come from a side arm of the multitude of railway tracks that lead to Munich terminus. Turning around by 180°  and walking some 20 meters, the scenery was as such:

Moving to the new wordpress blog still has some issues. Notifications are coming in that commenting does not work, the feed does not show images, load times are too long, the blogroll is not sorted correctly and so on. Even with 2 computers at hand it is difficult to find out the culprits, and it is time consuming.

Probably the web 2.0 functionality of the fusion wordpress theme with its usage of the jquery library has some compatibility issues with certain browsers, and maybe wordpress needs another plugin to pep up the feeds. A lot of things to explore, but the weather forecast for the weekend predicts rain, so there are probably some time slots to tune the blog.

Today’s fine weather seduced me to make a detour on my way home, leading to unknown places along the main railroad track into Munich terminus. I had left the office building for maximum 2 minutes until my mind had switched completeley to photography and recreation. Great.

The image to the right is probably in danger of being kitschy. Still, the city has its quiet corners and some of them offer remnants of wilderness contrasting with machinery. And since several years, the ecological value of those niches is accepted and measures are taken to ensure that those stepping stone biotops don’t get degraded by accident. New development plans do take into account the biospherical qualities of those areas and respect lifelines for some rare species inhabiting such places.

Revolutions without fighting, bloodshed and destruction do have their merits, even 90+ years later: When the monarchy in Bavaria was abolished in 1918, the palaces, castles, gardens etc. became public property and in the course of the years became almost completely fully accessible for the public. Some of the most beautiful gardens now serve the promenaders and joggers and attract a huge crowd of visitors throughout the year. Buildings inside the parks are now transformed into restaurants where everybod
y enjoys the fine royal ambiente.

Last week my parents celebrated their golden wedding and invited family and friends into the Nymphenburg park’s restaurant in the former orangery. Busy with my camera I followed my family and got the opportunity to photograph them in a really royal scene
ry.

It’s easy to guess from the headline that I am not smoking. Not smoking any more, that is.

But here I was more fascinated by the replicating leaning forms that manifested themselves in the viewfinder. To emphasize this a little bit I used bibble5′s layers for burning and a bit desaturating the borders. The more I play with this software, the more interesting it becomes despite its overly long beta status and still unresolved bugs. It is just the right tool for my way of handling the raw files, quite straightforward, no fancy effects, just carefully helping to show what’s already in the raw file. As a linux user, all that lightroom and photoshop is a non-option, so I am even more glad that bibble5 now fulfills such a great part of my processing wishes.

And despite all criticism in the forums about bibble’s slow development process, this definitely is not a case of ‘hopes to ashes’.

I found this scribbling on a mobile phone advertisement poster in the train station in Munich. To be honest, my colleague found it, I just took the picture again with a short focal length and in a different angle.

The slogan of the mobile phone company is “You are not on this world to be silent”. Well, the author of this scribbling really took it literally. But I can’t deduce if he wanted to criticize all that talk about climate change or the absence of such a discussion among many young people. But at least he provoked my thinking.

taking the camera always with me has become a habit since quite some time. it helps me to get into that feeling where the images come to me and i do not have to fuzz too much about photographing but can merely react and cut out that noteworthy slice of time. but i still cannot toggle this feeling – sometimes it is there and i can see 10 good sceneries in an hour, and sometimes nothing comes. getting distracted by company very often but not always is an adverse factor, so is nervousness, but also the wilful intent to find images.

Usually however, attentiveness and a certain ease of mood seems to motivate the muses to come and kiss me.

the way home from office in munich invariably leads my steps along a hairdresser’s shop on one of the main roads, and the light and reflections as well as the colors are always interesting. this window was already subject matter for this post, but this time i caught the barber in action.

who invented the white-balance automatic? and who told me to leave it switched on? egad, sometimes i feel sympathy for mike johnston’s ‘the leica as a teacher idea. at least no whitebalance-automatic that, as every automatic, does as good as it can, but doesn’t help me thinking. and getting the balance manually, just by optical impression, was impossible for me, at least at first take.

note to self: one more automatic to switch off on certain occasions. oh yes, and i do this when shooting panos, but here i simply forgot.

the wet weather here in bavaria was not only in the headlines of the yellow press. even serious newspapers ask meteorologists for scientific explanations and/or longer-term forecasts – which are impossible to give for our geographic situation. the only reliable trends are for higher average temperatures, but this is not so surprising. and for local weather in the next 2 weeks it doesn’t determine anything. and umbrellas keep being accessoire du jour.

but the bad weather makes it easier to set aside some time to read sofobomo books. i started to read the books of photographers whom i already knew from their blogs but quite soon got hooked and peeped into other books – only to the effect that i have a reading list now and am quite determined to read all of them. i hope i can finish before next sofobomo starts…

the rainy weather continues, but, having adapted to it at least photographically (and anyway sitting in the office during the day) i do not mind that much any more.

even here, from the train window, the rain has it’s merits. and i would definitely not like to swap seat with those drivers that are speeding through the rain.

now we are already one week into sofobomo 2009, and i still even have no idea of a theme. i am really greatful for that fuzzy month which offers a great deal of flexibility, so i am still very optimistic that i will be able to finish a book. problem is that i am bound for a new 10 day business mission to sri lanka one week from today, and afterwards for 2 weeks of holiday with the family. either period can bring or cannot bring sufficient occasion for shooting, but in both cases time for editing and compiling will be restricted to the two last weeks of the fuzzy month.

reason to be pessimistic? no, other then last year i am much more confident in my skills, both visually and technical, i have already a scribus framework for a book, so i will manage to accomplish the task and finish in time if not some completely unforseeable and unsurmountable obstacles turn up.

today’s shot is from my commuting days in munich, a barber closing his shop for the evening, carefully having decorated the window with the flowers. i like the several subjects combining in time and space in this frame. and what looks quite straightforward still has 5 layers to select areas for darkening, sharpening and intensifying the colors.

grey sky in the morning, but the cranes formed an interesting pattern. Seeing it in large reveals some minuscule red lights of the signals, nice counterweights for the mainly blue tones.

the sludge in our driveway became the material for some experimenting with the saturation level: how much of color saturation can you remove and it still remains a color picture, giving a different expression than a real conversion to black and white. it was astonishing how far i could go.

but winter does not want to go. in spite fo the kids’ easter decoration, the garden is still covered under 2″ of wet snow. at least the stamina of the hazels are, too, according to the bavarian saying: there is rarely a damage without some kind of profit going along…

grateful i am for the fact that my job leads me out of the countryside into the big city (munich) every week. in spite of the ww2 destructions, many places are still or again intact, and a lot of substance has survived the centuries. the councillors follow a quite strict no-scyscrapers policy, on the one hand leaving munich a bit in a small-town state, on the other hand avoiding the not so small risc of 2nd, non-war destruction.

and what a harmony you can enjoy there, and what a difference this is to my hometown, where the fountain sculptures shown to the right shall enjoy the guests. sometimes i have the feeling that well-meant will never reach well-done. am i just oversensible?

a treasure not only for the photgraphically inclined, but probably also for art business happened to be hidden in an innsbruck basement: the original pictures of magnum’s first exhibition, 1955, fittingly titled ‘magnum’s first’.

cartier bresson’s images of his session with mahatma gandhi, only hours before his assassination, are there, followed by the immensely powerful picture of mourning relatives and friends in his sleeping room. the images are still as found glued to the wooden plates, roughly cut from the panel on which they were shown in the sixties of last century and then forgotten in 2 large boxes.

so if you happen to come through munich until may 8th, 2009, this is certainly an exhibition not to be missed.

my first disappointment about the shots from the new synagogue in munich proved to be premature. scrutinizing the raws, in found the above one combining the massive, block-like quality of the building not only with the light emanating from the entrance door in the foreground, but also with the movement of the lady just in front of the wall. the latter made my ‘punctum’.

lesson learnt: dont judge precipitate (and don’t throw away raw files too early).

bad weather with rain, temperatures just above 0°c, low light because i could leave office later than planned. but still, after an uncomfortable day some visual excercise deemed necessary to compensate for all the frowning and sweating because of murky software. the planned target for my activities, the (not so) new synagoge of munich (see here, definitely worth a return) turned out to be not so attractive because of the dull light, and so i headed home. taking a shortcut through a building block however got me immediately hobbled.

that silvery sphere, open-worked and reflecting inside and out, was just amazing, and the tiny rest of daylight together with the lamps in the surrounding offices made up for the most wonderful symphony of reflections. so i stood there and watched and shot until the fingers were numb and the protection filter in front of the lens was sprinkled with raindrops.

up to now i could not make out the artist who had created this sculpture (one of the rare cases where google did not come up immediately with a solution), so there’s some work left. and a lesson learnt: don’t rule out bad weather, instead go out shooting.

and now for something completely different…

commuting to the city twice a week certainly helps changing perspectives. and if i can convince myself to get up really early and get to the office a little bit later, then opportunities like this show up, just by strolling 2 stops instead of taking the tramway. and in terms of dynamics of the lines as well as making optically use of what is there, i did learn a lot from this graffito.

i guess it was not the wedding in the church that made the pidgeons flee… the church is beautiful, freshly renovated, which indicates that the roman catholic church in bavaria is still well-heeled in spite of the many difficulties it is facing in these fast changing times.

in the inside the church is decorated in this certain baroque, joyful style that together with traces of incense give a special light feeling, very different to the sobriety you experience in most of the lutheran churches.

dachau, situated approx. 40km away from munich, is a small town with a history: temporary domain of one of the well renowned bavarian writers, ludwig thoma, 1867-1921 (who unfortunately enough had a mostly pushed aside renommee as anti-semite) and site of the first nazi concentration camp in germany. the concentration camp is now a memorial place, and a majority of bavarian pupils have their first real exposure to 3rd-reich cruelty there.

the memories of ludwig thoma are conserved at least for economic reasons, and even 100 years later some houses there seem to have retained a bit of the look-and-feel of those days.

in a sense this is an attempted conservation of an aura that has lost its life and importance since a long time, but reading thoma’s (non-political) books can fire one’s imagination where his characters might come to life in an environment like these old houses.

my stroll round dachau palace also led me to the brewery. the proximity to the palace itself is stunning, especially given the olfactoric annoyance a brewery can create. it seems though that the former rulers were not that sensible regarding smells.

the brewery is now in a quite derelict state, not used any more. here in bavaria the structure of the beer business has completely changed in the last 3 decades, pretty much all the beer is produced by large companies. wherever there is still local beer, people do like it very much, but only some of them are willing to pay a higher price for it. and economies of scale of course work in favour of the big ones, selling “aktienblempel”. the latter is a colloquial term for low quality beer with a high return on interest, “aktie” being the german word for share.

one of the best sources for beer in munich actually is outside of munich: freising not only hosts the oldest brewery of the world, but for sure one of the smallest. the ‘airbräu’ inn at the airport of munich brews the beer in front of all guests in the bar parlor. the beer is convincing, the optical impression of the fittings even more.

reason enough to start my journey with a visit of the airbräu – no beer also, as it was early morning – and then let the etihad plane bring me to abu dhabi. no beer there, just too tired and not wanting to miss the connecting flight.

octoberfest with the camera was fun, and i was lucky to have company in person of a colleague who protected me from drunkards pivoting one liter glasses of beer (the famous “Maßkrug”) in front of my lens. The beer halls were too noisy for me – you have to drink in there, talking slows down drinking so the band pushes the volume of the music to the limits in order to increase the beer consume – but outside the sellers of the gingerbread hearts grabbed my attention.

you can find quite a number of them, and the hearts are a real relict of the early times of octoberfest. of course now you find international inscriptions on the hearts, too, but the basic form still is the “i love you”.

and when processing these shots, i found a way to make use of lightzone’s regions to simulate a bit of vignetting, both in brightness, but also in selective sharpening.

octoberfest alone is a reason for quite a “Rausch” (inebriation). but bavaria’s all time governing party has just lost landslide-like 17%, and their strongest supporters have been and still are the “Trachtler”, men and women wearing traditional clothes and quite often of a conservative mindset.

so probably this disaster was one more reason for those guys to drink.

^*do legst di nida: local speak for: this is so strong, you have to lay down…

high tech flowers at the octoberfest: the successor of the chairoplane lifts the visitors 50m above the ground. at dusk, it looks like a giant flower in front of the sky.

the haunted house could be a synonym for the whole thing: shrieking noise to no end, flashy colors, the whole bandwidth of agreeable and disagreeable smells and a similar bandwidth of visitors and their degree of drunkenness. as a local, i will probably go there round noon on a warm day and stay only for a beer if i can find a place without 105 dbA of the most incredibly stupid music which is not folksy any more

tuesday they ordered me to exchange my business mobile. not worth mentioning normally, but this gave the opportunity to see munich’s new steel/glass constructed technical town hall. in my eyes a well designed and crafted construction, though i don’t know if the workers here are happy with it.

at least i was, optically, and the light was sufficient in spite of the completely overcast sky to shoot hand-held. again in-body-stabilisation is a key factor for success here. glad that the sony has it.

one of the rare occasions i did more to a picture than dodgin/burning/sharpening aka. their equivalents in lightzone. the red light on top of the antenna mast was there, but not as prominent as it is now. in the the evening light and so much out-of-focus, it is a mere glow in the raw file. lightzone’s regionized saturation and blur tools helped me to make it better visible and in this way to create the visual descant i regarded necessary in this picture.

in retrospective, last week’s 13min. wait for the bus were a really creative time slice. 4 images that i regarded worth showing taken in a really short timeframe…

and i am lucky, too, that i still have them: having no cardreader at hand, late in the night i moved them from the cf card to my fathers computer’s /tmp directory in order to transfer them over the network to my laptop. too tired to think i shut down his computer immediately after moving, and linux clears the /tmp space at that occasion. bummer! but: search engines to the rescue, in this case Aurélien’s room – it is no problem to recover deleted files from a vfat file system. so i did not loose a single raw file.

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the first time i made really use of the blue hour and the my old zoom. focused to close distance, wide open, the bokeh really becomes great. which is no wonder at the other hand as there are no diaphragm blades involved. again, anti-shake saved my day as handholding 320mm effective focal length at 1/20s shutter speed is next to impossible, even when leaning to a lamp post. iso 1600 as a usable sensor speed is a value in itself (as is auto-iso, when you are in a hurry), though i have to admit that with other subjects the grain is below the optimum.

it took some time, but it seems that i grow more and more accustomed to my camera and can detach myself from technique and concentrate more and more on seeing. and in the end, *this* is it what really matters.

as it is brighter now when i leave the office, more photogenic sceneries show up. waiting for the bus, large numbers of bikers, ringing their bells, chased the waiting passengers from the bike lane. across the street, the scenery was different – the biker graffiti seemed to get chased by the cars.

spring in the city has its own photogenic qualities. what i love most is the opposition of nature against man made structures. and, again, i have discovered my love for shallow depth of field. usually a bit difficult to aquire with an aps-c format dslr, the more than 20 year old minolta 3.5-4.5/70-210 zoom makes this possible at least at the long end.

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I had looked at this facade quite often during day- and nighttimes as the offer a rich play of effects – just see onion spire, reloaded

Whilst the moving body parts in the gym windows of the first floor don’t really lend themselves for a (static) photograph, the reflections do so quite well.

the artificial climate I feel in the city is (for me) very well represented through this reflected tree.

I do love the city lights at night, especially when they emphasize parts of the architecture not visible during the daylight.

Detail from the basis. I like the contrast between this very strict sober style

and some of the old houses in the surroundings.

The outside pretty much emphatises the Wailing wall. The building is discussed

controversely here in Munich, but for me it evokes positive emotions, and it is

a challenge to cope with it’s aesthetics.

Burning Sky over Munich, originally uploaded by springm.

Picture processed with

In Haste, originally uploaded by springm.

Picture taken in the Munich subway

reflections, originally uploaded by springm.