“Those who god loves, he lets fall into this country” – a free translation of one of our great regional writers, Ludwig Ganghofer. Probably a bit declamatory, but on the other hand – the early fall days here in Klausbachtal don’t make it difficult to believe that this sentence is true.
Blog
Octoberfest – alternative draft
My complaints that the perception of “Octoberfest equals Bavaria” is wrong of course deserves some evidence. OK – today I had the luck to experience it (again) and hopefully I can show you some convincing images. Beginning of october is the time of the return of livestock from high alpine summer pastures vulgo ‘Almabtrieb’, and…
Electric laughing puppet
Well, the laughter may be electric (so were the movements) but obviously it was not really electrifying. By now, you know for sure that I am not one of the great fans of the octoberfest, an attitude that certainly puts me into quite some distance of the fanatic pro-octoberfest statements like those on the Boston…
Statements
Octoberfest generally is an easy place for candids, but in terms of speed, especially focusing speed with longer focal lengths, it can be demanding. But the people usually don’t object being photographed. Only inside the beer halls the breweries now imposed quite strict regulations to stop the publication of images showing drunk or half-naked customers.…
Determination
Rarely I have seen such determination as in the posture of this man, wandering to the beer halls of the Octoberfest here in Munich. Prost!
Krk Bracelet
During our holidays in Krk I bought a bracelet and matching armlet from a local artist. The ‘Galerija Dagmar’ is located at the main plaza of Krk and is the showroom of a family of artists. The water colour paintings shown there carry a wonderful reflection of the mediterranean light, and the silver works have…
Germany has voted: Illusions for all
So we had general elections today in Germany, and whilst it will take some hours until we see the official results, it is obvious that the majority of the voters preferred a coalition of parties that told them oh-so-good-to-believe lies: The main messages of the to-be ruling parties is that they will lower the taxes.…
Autumn Maple
After a greyish morning the weather became really fine in the afternoon, with warm and slightly golden sunlight, a fine match for the leaves that have not yet started their descent from summer’s green into autumn yellow and brown. In the city, where the temperatures yet don’t become really low at night, the geranium plants…
Garden Colors
Today, garden excursions continued – working on the fascination of the fading colors, trying to emphasize this by not compensation the exposure to the right in postprocessing, instead working with the bright colors and playing with the depth-of-field. By underexposing half a stop, it would have been easy to reproduce the colors in a more…
Autumn ’round the corner
The days are still warm, but the leaves here start to loose their fresh green. Not all of them of course, but brown and yellow now mixes in between the still saturated deep greens. And the air in the evenings doesn’t have that summer’s crispness any more, some high altitude fog makes the sunlight look…
Blue hour
As long as I can think back, my father has been planting his garden. With great sense of style he arranges plants, stones and some decorative objects that please the eye and give a sense of harmony. Combining elements from japanese gardening with traditional as well as foreign plants in pots and flower beds there…
Coming from the Octoberfest
Since the weekend, parts of Munich are in a state of emergency, as the Octoberfest has started. For reasons almost completely opaque to me, within 16 days up to 7 millions of national and international visitors drink approx. 5 million litres of beer in temporary beer halls while listening to to dem-idiotic music that is…
Crossing the City Streets
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…
K.i.s.s. – Keep it simple, stupid!
Nice new blog, isnt’t it? I got several thumbs-up comments and was happy – sleek new design, not too distracting and all. But – those comments came from those who could comment. And with ‘could’ I don’t want to hint to their ability to write, but to the sheer technical possibility to get their comment…
City Bokeh II
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…
City Illusions II
You see, the billboard vs. car top is fascinating me. More than in the countryside or a small town, the city still has the flair of unlimited possibilities, and in this context advertisements seem to sit in a much more suitable habitat than in a town of let’s say 15.000 inhabitants. What would be just…
Chagall on the Wall
Office rooms on the ground floor with at least partial possibility to peek in from outside are rare. Therefore I was a bit astonished when I saw that Chagall poster on the wall and, after a while, noticing the head of the employee, motionless, either on the phone or using a computer in a very…
City Illusions
Moving to the new wordpress blog still has some issues. Notifications are coming in that commenting does not work, the feed does not show images, load times are too long, the blogroll is not sorted correctly and so on. Even with 2 computers at hand it is difficult to find out the culprits, and it…
Autumn flowers in the city
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…
On the way to the palace
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…
The blog has moved
Finally I did switch from Blogger to WordPress on a shared server. The reasons I will explain in a later post, for the time being I am glad that the import of the old posts and even 95% of the comments went without any problems. Most of the widgets are in a useful state now,…
Pellets Storage Room
For 1.5 days now I have changed the computer keyboard (and the camera) for a power drill, circular saw, cordless screwdriver and so on. Reason was that the pellets storage room for the central heating needed an improved floor to ensure that the material is gravitation-driven moved to the conveyor screw. The old, already angled…
Summertime
Here in Germany nobody uses the term ‘daylight saving time’. It was introduced decades back under the pretense that it would support energy saving, but there are serious doubts: in the end everybody makes best use of the longer evenings, and many activities are connected with energy consumption. We use the term ‘summertime’ here, and…
Commuters Ghost
Over at The Public Eye Martin Storz yesterday celebrated his post no. 1000. This is definitely a sign of perseverance, even more so as photoblogging in Germany (and in German) rarely leads to frequent commenting and lively discussions that can be seen in the English speaking net world. But even if you can’t read German,…
Decaying Surfboard
Living throughout the year in a small town in the alps, everything in a harbour is potentially interesting. At sunrise I found these reminders of a ‘HiFly’ windsurfer, turned into plastic trash over the years, hazardous waste if you would take it really correctly – but nobody does bother here. The small series is visibly…