spring2life take2

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.

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.

One of those golden autumn days we had today. In the evening I went to one of the creeks, but the best image of today turned out to be this one, taken on the way to the post office – the sun in the spa gardens was warm and inviting. Inviting for this leaf probably, too, to dry up a little bit more and fall down, leaving the twigs bare until next spring.

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.

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.

Maybe I am overdoing it with my faible for low DoF, but then I find the autumn leaves in that context really wonderful – beauty not in a grain of sand but in a single leaf, alone or against just the idea of a background, blurred to an extend where the colors only signal the wonders of an autumnal forest.

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.

Today I finally held in my hand what I was looking for since re-starting photography: A probably 15 years old second hand Minolta 1.4/85mm lens. Aah – that were the times when all lenses were built completely from metal. That definitely gives a solid feeling! And then that front lens, what an amount of glass! But I didn’t bother for long with admiring the outer qualities, instead I used my lunch break for a walk in the nearest park. That shallow DoF and blurry background is amazing (the shot above was taken stopped down half a f-stop) but what was demanding at least for the first frames is the discrepancy between the viewfinder image and what gets recorded on the sensor: In the viewfinder you simply do not see that shallow DoF and background blur or bokeh. The reason is the “optimisation” of the former ground glass into an array of micro-structures that are much brighter than any groundglass could be, but similarly to a loupe offers a virtual image to the eye. And this image does not obey to even only widely similar optical laws of the rendering on a groundglass. Well, without that artifice the viewfinder would be unbearably dark with the zoom lenses that are the standard now.

I am a happy camper for now, as this lens allows me to bask in low DoF images and, as I hope, those wonderful airy discs of out-of-focus light sources. Additionally I will try those fine portraits where only the pupils are rendered sharply but already nose and ears get enwrapped in soft and flattering unsharpness.

I’ve always been interested in reflections and the corresponding circles of confusion that the backlight brings out so strongly. But photographing for decades, up to now I had never deliberately misfocused – sharpness for a long time was like a holy cow for me, as I see it as one of the genuine characteristics of photography to render the scene sharp and full of details. This small creek I found 2 weeks back during our hike in the Berchtesgaden national park, and the quality of the autumn light I found transported best in this blurred rendering of the scene.

This image is probably more conventional, and it was easy for me to accept. Backlight is the light I cherish the most since decades, however it eluded me often back in the film days. Chimping has improved my skills in dealing with this light form very much, and now I find more time to deal with the colours in this light situation.

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.

Westend again. Some of last weeks images (Westend Strip Light, City Life) originate from there, and the streets are always worth a deviation from the shortest way to work. Today I indulged in my bokeh passion again, this time with the long zoom on the camera. A conscious decision for a certain lens influences my way of seeing, and while I was a fan of very long tele lenses earlier, this passion has somewhat subsided. But in this image I see a good combination of sharp detail and blurred shapes of the street and its inventory, f5.6 seemed to have been just right.