late in the day the light was soft and the green regained its power after the blazing sunlight. the combination of the red rocks and the plants was very soothing, calming and inviting for a rest. this is my first try with the beta of the new bibble5. its region feature allowed to keep the…
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hard ride
probably something for andreas manessinger, who is quite often posting bicycle pictures. i started to travel regularly to sri lanka in 2003, and since then a lot has changed regarding bikes. while you still find a lot of bikes like this – they are just means of transport, and when income is lacking, nobody bothers…
tube well, batticaloa
this is what i am in sri lanka for: bringing locally adapted low cost technology to improve drinking water supply of the people in need, mainly the poor, low caste, incomplete families. the pump you see here consists of material available in the local hardware store, mainly pvc and metal pipes (pvc to avoid corrosion),…
and the best shot i didn’t get
early morning, shortly after sunrise at the beach. half a dozen fishermen are there, but due to the rough sea beach fishery is impossible. one of them tries with a hand net, half an hour of work results in a handful of really small fishes of maybe zero market value. i decided to leave but…
no diamonds, just rust
one of the rare occasions i could break out of that usual mission cycle of visiting one rainwater harvesting tank or well or toilet after the other, and just take 7 minutes on the road, for a moment concentrating only on shape, graphics structure. not that i would take this monitoring not seriously, it is…
street food stall, batticaloa
sometimes i am just too shy. the owner of this food stall greeted me, as do most of the people you meet on the early morning streets in batticaloa, but for one reason or the other i refrained from asking if i could make a picture and went into a side street. only after 50m…
the emperors pool, sigiriya
not that the impression comes up that ranting about the present situation in sri lanka is my one and only preoccupation. whenever possible i try to find beauty, and so i did here in this ruins of the emperors of a kingdom long forgotten. on the top of a monolitic, magmatic rock, to be reached…
30 lost years
my colleage in batticaloa told me this about his life (he’s only 37). roughly 30 years this conflict between ltte and the sinhalese majority now scars the life, public as well as private. when he was 17 he had to flee his village, living 3 months in the jungle, because his life was in danger…
the banal traces of death
i stand corrected. while my blog entry had claimed that 4 had been killed by a bomb explosion in batticaloa, it were in fact two, a bystanding riksha driver one of them. it doesn’t make the act less atrocious, to be explained only through a completele contorted logic inherent to terrorism. terrorism has been means…
throwing the net
two more from the beach. the waves are so high at the moment that the traditional paddled outrigger fishery from the beach has to pause. no fishery means no income, so some of the men take their hand net and throw it from the shore. catch is low however. the day i met them they…
won’t brake anyway
i am on my way again, back to colombo. if things go well we’ll have a stopover in sigiriya, which i think i well deserve after 7 full days of working/traveling/working. this bicycle i discovered on the beach in batticaloa. it would be never considered roadworthy in europe, but here is an undisputed means of…
teaching gis
*in kalmunai, on the east coast of sri lanka. the lady is a newly trained gis specialist and is holding a mobile phone as one symbol for her bridging traditions and the “modern” world. kalmunai is a town where islam values are held very high – in general it is a really patriarchal society. having…
boat and flipflop, batticaloa
peaceful, isn’t it? unfortunately the morning wasn’t. a claymore mine exploded next to the police station in batticaloa, killed 4 and injured a dozen, 4 school students among them. on the beach we only heard a muted ‘booff’. what a discrepancy between those sceneries. Update: just replaced the lead image with a lightzone version. the…
fence abstract
getting up early and trying to meet again the fishermen i had portrayed in an earlier visit, i found the beach empty, with a force 5 wind making all beach based fishery impossible. so i resorted to collecting small details, of which this fence part is one. the fact that is a piece of asbestos…
checking the water
this is why am here. it is good to know that the support we try to bring really reaches the people in need. and when content meets form, out of beauty happiness can rise. sorry for being pathetic, this is an unstaged shot right out of today morning’s site visit, and maybe the jet lag…
“happiness is the galle face hotel”
colombo does nothing for me. it is too chaotic, too loud and too depressing, the numerous checkpoints with young ak-47 equipped soldiers not really adding to a comfortable feeling. the galle face hotel in a certain way is a resort from reality, incompletely (and that is good) reviving colonial spirit. were it not for official…
copper delight
one of the best sources for beer in munich actually is outside of munich: freising not only hosts the oldest brewery of the world, but for sure one of the smallest. the ‘airbräu’ inn at the airport of munich brews the beer in front of all guests in the bar parlor. the beer is convincing,…
icycle
another pre-written post. should give me some time to go shooting and enjoy myself 😉 and the contrast of the hoarfrost and the 30°+ in colombo is just too nice to think of. this icycle was well locked to the handrail of a culvert, but obviously not in use for quite some time, as there…
footed icicles
post-dated publishing is nice-to-have. when you get to see this icicle from frozen bavaria, i am supposed to be in abu dhabi, bound for sri lanka. there should be internet connection in the hotel, so there hopefully will be no break in posting.
the old saline of bad reichenhall
this building was re-built after the 1834’s blaze of bad reichenhall, that destroyed most of the city, by an architect of one of the kings of bavaria. the reason for this royal care was simple: over times the saline of bad reichenhall had earned up to 30% of the bavarian state’s total income. nowadays its…
bad reichenhall in moonlight
two days after full moon i finally managed to go out together with a handful of photographer friends to try some night shots of our hometown. the intensity of the moonlight was so high (and my lens protection filter probably not clean enough) that i got lens reflections – i never thought this could happen…
happy end of a sleigh riding accident
thanks god the eeg showed that everything is ok now. our youngest daughter suffered from a concussion after a sleigh riding collision on new years eve. today we went for the 2nd eeg as the first one was not to the full contentment of the neurologist, and now there are no signs of an adverse…
tree house
(pun? what pun?) sometimes the pictures come at you when you just lift your eyes to search for your way. i tried variations of this, some with a small roadside cross as foreground, but in the end the tightly framed plain shadow on the facade was the most convincing shot for me. well – kill…
as cold as blue
it was today. -12°c make you very grateful for your gloves and very ungrateful towards camera ‘engineers’ creating itsy-bitsy-teenie-weenie rubber knobs on the remote control of your camera, which refuse to be operated with gloves. i had found a small streambed just below a seamill, which sported besides the usual icicles also this wonderful transparent…
winter clematis
after yesterdays cold colored post, here is something warmer. i need it, as we have temperatures well below 0°c for several days now, with the side effect of blue sky and wonderful sunlight especially in the afternoon. taking a walk, it was just a natural decision to stay on the warm, sunny side of the…