Statue | spring2life take2

Fighting Dragons or Liberty, Kind Of

Monday, June 21st, 2010

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.

Tags:budapest, hungary, liberty, national socialism, nationalsozialismus, nazi, statue
Posted in politics, urban | No Comments »

Water Garden

Friday, May 14th, 2010

This certainly is a diametral counterdraft to yesterday’s Bus Stop photos. Prince Archbishop Markus Sitticus erected this garden with its aquatic surprises in the early 17th century for the pleasure of himself and his aristocats. Democratized now, they are visited by legions of tourists and provide a major source of income for Salzburg.

Tags:acquatic games, castle, garden, Hellbrunn, pond, reflection, statue, water
Posted in Salzburg | No Comments »

Next Stop: Agora

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

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.

Tags:Aegineten, bibble5, Königsplatz, munich, statue, subway
Posted in urban | 4 Comments »

No Daisy no Snow

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

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.

Tags:Bad Reichenhall, flute player, grey, statue
Posted in dahoam (at home) | 7 Comments »