Traffic | spring2life take2

Hurrying Home

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

The weather here on the northern slope of the Alps reminds me a bit of what Paul Maxim wrote not long ago about the weather in the Rochester area. What we have at the moment is more like a late winter with night temperatures below 10°C and 15°C during the day – only the intensive green of the flora is a proof for the early summer.

Taking the train for commuting at least means a relaxed situation without confrontation with testosterone-loaded freedom-on-the-highway seekers, given the waggon’s airspace doesn’t get completely pervaded by the busy chit-chat of students on a school trip. The extended living room, that is so often projected into a car, *can* be a major motivation. That it’s not a sustainable one can easily be blocked out.

Tags:rain, spring, sustainability, tracks, traffic, train, window
Posted in commuting | No Comments »

Playing with Shapes and Colors

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

/home/springm/Bilder/2010/2010-03/dsc27424_v2b.jpg

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.

Tags:color, DoF, movement, red, shape, street, traffic
Posted in urban | No Comments »

The Old Song: Commuting, Rain

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

/home/springm/Bilder/2010/2010-03/dsc26754b.jpg

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.

Tags:brake light, bus, munich, traffic
Posted in commuting, urban | 2 Comments »

fully insured

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

to describe traffic in sri lanka along european criteria, there is just one word: insane. even for a seasoned driver, not shy of left-hand driving, it is so much better to have a careful sri lanka driver and a working seat belt.

and when you have the lorry so close in front of you, it is definitely a reassurance that it is “fully insured”

Tags:fully insured, leyland, lorry, traffic
Posted in Sri lanka | No Comments »

no way out (if you can’t read chinese)

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

any questions in which direction to go? where you are?

there is one major challenge when wandering alone through a chinese city: how to come back. the namecard of the hotel is a lifesaver, so i always had two in my pocket. but not every taxidriver has good eyesight and/or knows the way. to make it more difficult, nanjing for example had 4 nanjing hotels, and it took me a while until i knew to ask for the jinjiang nanjing hotel. and even then: the hotel was in a corner of a block and had 3 entrances, looking all different. people you ask in the street don’t speak english and/or don’t know where they have to send you.

so once i left the shuttle bus to walk the rest of the way late at night, got the wrong direction and landed in a cul-de-sac, which fortunately turned out to be the end point of a bus line. showing the hotel name card, i was sent from one bus driver to the next and motioned into a bus, where a lady of maybe 25 year in white cotton gloves started to maneuver the bus through the nightly streets. after 20 minutes of silence she suddenly gestured to show the card again and urged me to get of the bus right there. so out on the street i was, and after several tries to get information from the rare pedestrians, i finally got a cab. this cab drove the street for 150m, turned around, went back again 150m, entered through a gate and after another 100m dropped me – in front of my hotel door.

Tags:signpost, sony a700, traffic
Posted in nanjing | 5 Comments »

construction site at night

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

strolling at night, in the rain and without tripod usually is not a standard situation for good shots, but having only 8 days in china i wanted to get out the maximum of it. and this construction site offered some dramatic light effects, especially when the welding startet.

street photography in the true sense of the word, and dangerous it was: in europe we don’t see and electric bicycles, and in china when you see them it is already quite late: quiet and fast they are, and in the rain the drivers were not too willing to take care of a mad photographer…