spring2life take2

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.

Contemporary architecture in Vienna seems to mix effortlessly with all the well restaurated buildings from the k.u.k. times, and even the extreme examples like the Museum of Modern Art above convince (me) with their intransigence and their presence. This certainly is a field, in which my 2nd hometown, Munich, is falling behind substantially. The Automobility Temple of BMW (here) is the only recent example and far away from the center of the city, only the Academy of the Fine Arts by the same architects as the BMW World, coop himmelblau.

Having discovered that my images of the Academy never got published in any way, I have set up a small gallery here.

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.

Lucky enough not having to drive my car over wintery roads, I got rewarded by the railway system with a perfect winter scenery. They really made my day.

Found in downtown Munich.

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.

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.

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.

strange – some small areas turn out to be real photographic bounties whenever you walk through. the ‘westend’ is a quarter, formerly located at the western end of the city, but now quite near to the center, that was traditionally a lower-to-middle class quarter. some decades ago quite a number of immigrants mixed under the inhabitants and it was a quiet region. only the transfer of the trade fair center and the sudden availability of building lots, immediately occupied by big companies, brought a sudden change. now you see chaps in suits and ties everywhere, and the styles of the pubs have changed, too. one of the not so rare cases where gentrification takes place here in munich.

oh yes, and the plate in the picture is probably 40 years old. not too much change in this very place up to now, but no forecast possible either.

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…

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).

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…

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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I love the overwhelming impression that the interior of this church imposes on the visitor through its narrowness and height.

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

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.