spring2life take2

Having packed up work, it’s almost dark again, especially when thick clouds dim the little daylight even more. This matches the winter’s cold, and it makes the warm light out of the windows even more attractive. The best time to see and capture this is twilight, just before the street lights get switched on and shift the light’s colour to a, well, less attractive one.

The building in the background to the right is the old royal spa center (featured here, here, here, last image) and here), which has the most beautiful hall here in Bad Reichenhall, used for concerts and receptions.

“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.

Photography is not in highest esteem by everybody, but the people in my surroundings are accustomed to my switching to a cyclopean life-form from time to time. And the kids, so I thought up to yesterday, should see it as perfectly normal as they know about my hobby/obsession/… But my daughter was cringing when she saw me walking behind that lady with the orange coat: she felt my behaviour was completely indecent. It seems that next time I’ll have to go alone to buy bread if I dare to take a camera with me.

This morning I had 15 minutes after having dropped wife and kids at their respective schools. Without gloves and cap, I was glad that the time was limited as my hands were numb afterwards. But I enjoyed the play of the snowflakes and the intensified effect of aerial perspective, so these 15 minutes were really prolific. Having only the “wrong” lens, the 127mme tele, was not a problem at all. The compression effect also enhanced the snowfall, and all images got kind of a similar signature look.

Talk about secondary benefits: the kids had their fun catching sweets thrown from the windows and the balconies into the crowd, but I was much more interested in some snaps of the disguised figures. So I did, a welcome diversion from the cold landscapes that my photographical interest usually centers on in these days.

The lake we are heading for in the summer is now a cold, almost lifeless place (besides that one bald coot trying to destroy the reflection). But for a walk it is attractive now, even more so when light snowfall dampens the noise of the cars. Having the tripod with me instead of the fashy walking sticks meant that ground speed was lower than expected by my wife, but she managed to bear with me without suffering too noticable.

Update: Please find the wallpapers for February 2010 are online. You find them in the usual screen resolutions underhttp://markus-spring.info/wp/wallpapers/

Bad Reichenhall, Old Spa Center with concert hall. 42mme and f2.2 are sufficient to blur the background.

This bridge is in a park nearby. The reflections I showed you some days back. During yesterday’s grey weather with slight snowfall I needed a break, so I grabbed my camera with two primes (42 mme and 127 mme) and walked round the pond to the bridge. All postprocessing was done with the new bibble5. The more I use this just released stable version, the more convinced I am. For my quite straightforward style and sober, more reduced colors it is an excellent tool, zeroing the need for further processing in a full scale photo editor.

The newspapers and broadcasts on friday had one favorite headline: Depression ‘Daisy’ will bring blizzards with vast amounts of snow and will probably stop public life for quite some time. The German administration even advised to buy a stock of food, drinking water, flashlight batteries and so on.

Nothing happened so far, and now speculation is up why this depression was so over-estimated. Mind you, I’m not disappointed at all, as such catastrophic weather means danger and sometimes even death to the poorest or weakest, even in our rich country. But I take the grey winter weather with equanimity – no desire for images from warmer seasons like Paul Maxim – and see it as the right timeframe for “grey”, not-overly-vivid images.

One of those occasions, where everything falls into place: The bus is late for some minutes and the person appears in the window. Now: The right lens is on the camera, the right iso already dialed in, I can just take this one shot, the bus comes and off we go. Was it pure luck? A well-meaning muse? Probable fortune is, when chance meets preparedness.

It doesn’t happen too often.

Today the kids had their Christmas concert, organised by the harp teacher in the old saline chapel of Bad Reichenhall. The outside of the building,here, does not show what an architectural gem is inside.
As I wasn’t there for photography, here only two quick glances. But I will go back there, probably at a better time of the day to get more light through the stained glass.

The human, understandable reaction answer to the fading colors of our natural surroundings are, what else, more colors. The Christmas bauble and the reflection of the raindrops play nicely with the artificial light, only the blue LED’s, replacing the small Edison-type bulbs on many trees, can get enervating because of their overly bright and cold characteristics. And while we do not suffer from the really short days Juhaa is reporting here, on overcast and rainy days there is a substantial lack of brightness. *That* makes me long for snow – it becomes brighter then – and the sudden quietness, when the freshly fallen snow dampens all the sounds.

It’s still way too warm for the season. Last week it was like an experiment of snowfall, but it ended after three hours with barely noticable sludge on the streets. But the light is grey and tints the remaining leaves and fruits during the day.

Only at night, when the Christmas decoration starts to scintillate, some more warm tones mix into the de-energizing grey and pale blue. But there still remains beauty to be discovered, and new details get revealed to be savoured. Sometimes feeling chilly I enjoy the days.

In the alpine region there are still remnants from pagan or, more friendly, pre-christian times alive. The Krampus, in some traditions escorts of Bishop Nikolaus, are connected to the rite of the 12 days or Rauhnächte, where the expulsion of ghosts was tried with dances of wild, disguised figures. December 5/6 is taken into this old tradition, and the Krampus are now played by young men, who take the chance to wear threatening masks and – behave badly, horrify bystanders etc. Maybe 10 years ago this was really bad, resulting in as many innocent victims with injuries and traumas, now it has calmed down a bit. And while the group of Krampus now is accompagnied by their own security, trying to avoid assaults, the masks of the Krampus seem to be more and more influenced by horror movies. Now that is real horror.

In these not so bright days and with strictly limited daylight time budget for photography, the nearby parks and gardens are a natural choice. Using my primes at wide open f-stops, I always have to translate the image during framing as the viewfinder does not at all show the abstract patterns that get recorded by the sensor. What was first astonishing and then annoying me, has now become a nice exercise in visualizing beyond the image in the viefinder.

And sometimes the pattern of the plant repeats in the flow of the background lines. No, I did not see this before, but I was even happier when discovering it.

A year ago we have had some really cold days even before december started, but this year it’s been a wam fall and up to now a warm winter. The situation above I do remember as a freezing cold scenery where I added just a tiny bit colder color temperature to better visualize what I had felt. But this year – it’s more a summer evening scenery than anything else.

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.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, lived there and died in absolute poverty. Nowadays he’s one of the most important economic factors not only for Salzburg itself but also for Bad Reichenhall. Here we have one of the big producers of the ‘Mozartkugel’, a ball with different kind of chocolates inside. For a full background on this sweet stuff and also it’s not so sweet aspects, namely lawsuits, seethis wikipedia article.

To fire the business with the tourists, of course the Cafe Reber has a statue of W.A. Mozart as well as his sister Nannerl in their inner courtyard. Mozart himself is placed under a giant Mozartkugel, which in this way looks more as a menace than a temptation.

The only remaining cinema of Bad Reichenhall – when I came there first, there were three of them.

Just opposite my window is a really old hydrangea in, and this is special, tree form. Usually hydrangeas are shrubs, but this old specimen grows its efflorescences on a real stem and branches. And probably 2m over ground they collect all the dew from the cold and humid autumn nights, and in the blue morning light the  remaining pink of the petals glows. I have already lowered saturation a bit, but probably this is still not enough – pushing down exposure by 2 stops to compensate for exposing to the right gets wonderful colors, maybe a tad on the artificial side.

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

A climate change we have for sure, just no local warming, at least not for the moment: 9 days ago sweating in +25°C (which is 77°F) and now the rain is mixed with snowflakes already. But I do accept it, in spite of photography getting different if not more difficult with the receding light. And as today’s image clearly shows, this kid doesn’t mind as well.

I was so busy with that small scenery of grass and lake in almost complete darkness, hiding under a large umbrella held by my tip-toeing daughter, that I did not look up to the mountain and the clouds on the other side of the lake until the kid’s voice told me something about a strange light in the sky. With the clouds moving fast, this mystery soon was resolved: the mountain top hotel of Mt Predigtstuhl, were the world’s oldest large-cabin funicular drops passengers since the year 1928. But in the moving clouds one could have thought that a spaceship was looking for a place to land.

After a day full of small-small fuzz that left the feeling of having wasted too much time, I just had a short stroll with one of the daughters, the camera on tripod and an umbrella. It was a fine occasion for some father daughter talk, she was asking and I tried to come up with understandable explanations, trying to carefully correct half-understood things. Our path led to the inlet of an almost 120 year old power plant, which now has automatic scrapers. And interrupting the boredom of a walk in a beginning drizzle, those scrapers came to life, wonderfully enough in just the right speed for a 20s exposure that captured the movement of the arms in the perfectly still lake.

Just minutes before it had just looked like this. Seeing the father busy with his camera, my daughter supported me by holding the umbrella over us, a difficult task for an 8 year old who is not on the tall side. And I got the opportunity to talk about the way the images are captured in a camera, making it interesting enough and explaining why this image needs 20s exposure time. So for both (human) sides this walk ended satisfying, and for the camera as well.

A lively beer garden this place was, only a week ago, as we had the warmest october since the beginning of the weather records (climate change? or chance?). Now it’s a more melancholic view with the empty tables and the grey clouds touching the peaks already. In only four weeks, up there will be snow.

Addendum: For whatever reason, the picture embedded in the blog came out darker than the uploaded version. The latter you get as always in a lightbox when you click on the image.

“I shouldn’t have stayed behind the tripod that long – now it’s really hard to move.”

I found these elders some time ago, but with their leaves on, the stems were always in such a deep shadow that I couldn’t get a reasonable picture. One point for autumn for this one.

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.

At those times, when Bad Reichenhall was famous and rich and through it’s salt manufactures contributing one third to the state of Bavaria’s budget…

Can you imagine – a small place of only several thousand inhabitants contributing that much to a state’s budget? (Now it is a small place of just a bit more then average prominence, still struggling to find it’s link to presence and future)

At those times this place was so important that Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, sent his star architekt Friedrich von Gärtner to erect an administration building in the style of the capital’s (the City of Munich) most important boulevard.

Well, that was then. Now it’s still beautiful, especially early in the morning, when the low sun lets the sycamore trees cast their shadows on the facade.

our photowalk was a wet affair, but spirits were high. after 2 hours in all sorts of rain from drizzle to downpour the small group met in a local inn for hot drinks and a first review. in spite of the unfriendly weather we all had lots of fun, photographing or watching.

the saalach river, full with water from the rainfalls of the last days, provided a more dramatic scenery than the quiet grey and green landscape or the not-so-populated alleys.

an improvised slideshow immediately after collecting most of the images was the final part of an excursion that all of the participants want to repeat the nextx year

can’t help it: as a pupil this facade of your school just serves one duty: make you feel small, confronted with such uniform power. of course didactics inside this building have changed now, and every year dozens of girls successfully finish their education, but the outside still breathes the spirit of past centuries where the church was a power factor, supportive sometimes, oppressive not infrequently.

the old sycamore tree with its expressive figure and cortex iuxtaposes nicely the oh so mundane ‘parking tickets’ signboard.

lightzone again proved to be a valuable tool to darken the background a little bit and except it from the sharpening algorithms.

the second shot is the shadow of St. Ägidius church here in Bad Reichenhall. i love the sharp silhouette of the branches against the soft shadow of the clocktower.

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my daughter’s school had an art project at the banks of our river: on saturday morning they created this beautiful stone snake. Andy Goldsworthy was definitely an inspiration for this. his film “rivers and tides” (4 min. clip on youtube) is surely worth to be seen (again).

this photo on .

suddenly summer is over. cold rain starts, and the snow suddenly is visible again not high above my hometown. strange feeling to operate the camera with wet, cold, unwilling fingers again.

used lightzone for linux to differentiate the sky and faint mountains.

this photo on .

had a tremendous bathing day with the kids at thumsee next to bad reichenhall. Just opposite the beach through the leaves a now empty wooden house in the middle of the natural reserve area was visible, a nice target for a swim.

Processed this image with lightzone as most of my other pictures. unfortunately lightcrafts has still not released v3.0 for linux, there are only older versions still available for this platform under http://www-old.lightcrafts.com/linux/

On the Way to Kindergarden, originally uploaded by springm.

Picture processed with