Christmas Market, Munich The human, understandable reaction answer to the fading colors of our natural surroundings are, what else, more colors. The Christmas bauble and the reflection of the raindrops play nicely with the artificial light, only the blue LED’s, replacing the small Edison-type bulbs on many trees, can get enervating because of their overly…
It’s still too warm for the season. Last week it was like an experiment of snowfall, but it ended after three hours with barely noticable sludge on the streets. But the light is grey and tints the remaining leaves and fruits during the day. Only at night, when the Christmas decoration starts to scintillate, some…
The past years have seen a constant revival of “traditional” in every context. This led to some odd results, especially ugly and hard to escape in “folksy” music. So please notice that in fashion speak men don’t really need a head – a facility for fixing the hat would suffice.
Couldn’t help it: That Santa Claus head next to a red garter reminded me of Salome’s dance and its tragic consequences…
In the alpine region there are still remnants from pagan or, more friendly, pre-christian times alive. The Krampus, in some traditions escorts of Bishop Nikolaus, are connected to the rite of the 12 days or Rauhnächte, where the expulsion of ghosts was tried with dances of wild, disguised figures. December 5/6 is taken into this…
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…
A year ago we have had some really cold days even before december started, but this year it’s been a wam fall and up to now a warm winter. The situation above I do remember as a freezing cold scenery where I added just a tiny bit colder color temperature to better visualize what I…
Sorry, but this kind of Santa Claus creates stomach churning feelings – it’s more a threat than a friendly reminder of christmas-to-be. I think it qualifies for a gallery of the “most ugly chrismas decorations” that Bernd over at babaoskar shoots back was intending. I do like the less agressively painted “Nikolaus” figures, the ones…
found at the entrance of a private park, open to the public.
More leaves, less words. These pictures seem to become more interesting the more time I spend editing and closely looking at them. And not only on the main subject, the leaves, but also on the way they interact with their environment. Can’t help it – I really like those images.
You see, my obsession with shallow DoF continues. Even so, the images are very different: An almost abstract rendering of the red fruit on a background that dissolves into unidentifiable shapes and the spadix in the second image, that shows up in front of structures that, whilst blurred, still carry some information about the environment…
Despite of the frost the bramble leaves have kept a marvellous deep red, so deep that indeed I decided to turn down the saturation a bit in order to avoid an artificial ‘vivid’ look that was significantly enhanced by the warm sunrise light. The birch leaves did not need such treatment, their thick and meanwhile…
The various groups of birches, just at the border of the tarn and interspersed into the pines in the elevated areas form excellent graphical elements with their white bark. The morning hours were not really cold, especially not for november, but this year we have the warmest november since 35 years. Oh, but don’t care…
Today I spent some morning hours with a friend in Schönram bog. I have been at this place several times now, in different weather and light situations – like here in deep winter. Today it was warm, unexpected so in November, and besides some reflections in the tarn I found grasses and leaves to be…
In some places the Christmas decoration encroachment is really subtle, like in this window of the Spieldiener coffee house here in Bad Reichenhall. This is really cool! Ok, I admit it: I had to tune the white balance to get that effect, but so blue it meets much more my vision of a quiet and…
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, lived there and died in absolute poverty. Nowadays he’s one of the most important economic factors not only for Salzburg itself but also for Bad Reichenhall. Here we have one of the big producers of the ‘Mozartkugel’, a ball with different kind of chocolates inside. For a full…
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…
The only remaining cinema of Bad Reichenhall – when I came there first, there were three of them.
The weekend was weather-wise pretty much grey in grey, so this picture from last week might be a good representation. It is the time between the bright colors of fall and the beginning non-colors of early winter, where the drizzle is still stronger than the snow. But it is the first year where I can…
November is in Germany also called ‘month of the dead’. The grey, cold weather, lack of daylight, falling of the leaves, all this is usually associated with death. And yes, during spring or midsummer, I would probably not have had the idea to capture the special mood of a cemetery, but now in November I…
The Stihl sound is quite different from the steel guitar sound, despite of similar sounds of the words. The first one is giving these days an almoust continous concerto. It’s end is not yet foreseeable as the trees still have good stock of leaves to distribute. Oh, and if you wont to see wonderful portrait…
I still can’t get enough of my 85mm lens – after years with zooms in the f3.5 upwards speed class, beeing able to sharply differentiate by focus and to include informative background without letting it get too prominent is a welcome experience. And it leaves me wondering why lenses like this have become so rare…
An evening hike, a bit away from the wanderers’ tracks, invited me into the brushwood. It was dark, cold, humid, and a nice smell of funghi (mostly decaying already) in the air, but not until turning around and searching my way back I found something suitable for an image: a flame like beech, gleaming in…
Today’s flat light didn’t bring much inspiration. So I went out only when daylight was fading already and I could expect the street lights to be switched on soon. Their bokeh gave the twist I was looking for to these old, dried efflorescences. In her comment to Warm yellow, Martina asked: “what is it with…