taking up the topic of my recent post “eyes”, just a bullet list of what it means to be poor in batticaloa, sri lanka (but feel free to put in any other place): the husband (if present) works as a day labourer, earning barely enough to feed the family the kids leave school early to…
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tata and grapes
sometimes when the eyes open, gestalt reveals itself. though i am sweating for many of my pictures, on quite some occasions i just recognize, see. and sometimes, i also like the framing and don’t feel the necessity to crop or modify otherwise. rare moments that i really cherish.
beach abstract
at the moment i feel a bit like this pants on batticaloa beach: totally worn out after more than 30 hours work and traveling with only some naps. at least the official part of this mission was successful, so no reason to complain. photographically it still has to be evaluated. more after having slept, promised!
dancing feet
still under pressure, this time at the airport already, on the way home. today i got sad news again about the refugee situation in the north of sri lanka – ban ki moon seems to have categorized the situation ‘apalling’ regarding the government’s treatment of the tamil civilians – and he seemingly has seen only…
eyes
no words at the moment – time presses. i hope the picture speaks for itself
giving something back
photographing in exotic locations usually means meeting people only once in a lifetime. photographing the not-so-well-off means that you even can’t just send a picture or two as email, and even when they write down their address – in the present case i couldn’t read it as i don’t know tamil. but in this case…
sad holiday for the tamils
dark clouds over the sea here in batticaloa, no sunrise – matching weather for a holiday that is a holy day only for the sinhalese. from some tamil houses we heard funeral music. a sophisticated way to express their sadness that they seem to have lost their case.
a bitter victory
here on the east coast of sri lanka, the only people celebrating a victory were soldiers and policemen, all of them members of the 80% sinhalese majority of sri lanka’s population. the photo above was taken in dambulla. the tamils almost all were quiet, only the members of the ruling party tmvp showing open contentednes,…
knocking on (fire)wood
risking the fact that it sounds boring to hear the same thing over and over again: being here on the east cost of sri lanka changes (again) my perspective. whilst at home wood pellets form the ever available and theoretically co2-neutral alternative for burning oil to heat the rooms, and that ever-ready central heating makes…
crisis? what crisis
dubai is amazing, over and over again. in the last months they have greatly improved their terminal, not being shy of any costs (of course, if have enough crude to sell). the neuw skytrain is a large chrome/light/water construction – really amazing. of course that beauty has a dark backside: flickr is censored, as are…
on the train again
starting my journey to the east coast of sri lanka always is a train leg to munich airport. now train for a long way was a authochtonous, down-to-earth affair, ‘deutsche bahn’, ‘österreichische bundesbahn’ and so on, where the nationality in the name quite often meant also basic facilities. but already decades ago it started to…
up-and-coming cyclists
trying to get at a new ‘airiness’ as well as combining photography with family undertakings, i had to resort to some shots without framing. of course the reject rate was a bit more than marginally higher, however one shot came out as good as expected: those armstrongs-to-be had the road for themselves on a sunny…
encounter in red
over at paul lester photography, paul praises david du chemin’s just published book ‘within the frame’. living in germany, i probably have to wait some more days until my copy arrives. the pieces david offered to read in advance sound as motivating as paul’s reflection of his first glance does, so waiting for a book…
traditional fence and horses
using the most modern electronic gadgets in form of a dslr and a laptop should be proof enough that i am standing with both feet in modern information society. still, forms and textures and colors from 100 years back in many cases enthuse me more than a big number of modern things. especially in everyday…
out of my depth
i just received the following email from a colleague/friend from batticaloa: … our cousins daughter’s 8 years old baby kidnap on 28th April 2009 on her school. after we search in batticaloa area but we didn’t find her,2nd day mother received a phone call from unknown person they request money to release her amount is…
let the music play
a lazy mothers day brought no new images, instead some hours at the lake (17°c, swimming is possible but no real joy). late in the evening now the flat is quiet, time to go through the pictures of the last weeks again. the rosserer pilgrimage still has some images worth converting from raw. the little…
form follows function
form follows function was by no means invented by an architect of the 19th century, no, the farmers everywhere had followed this principle more or less intentionally probably everywhere in the world. in this farmer’s garden from maybe 100 years ago, now rebuilt in a museum village in austria, this guideline shows up in many…
interpreting ‘twins’
no time to go out shooting today. experimented with kids pics again, trying to move from illustration to interpretation, shakin’ off the fear of grain, trying to get hold of that ‘twins’ fascination. they are in many aspects so unresembling, but then again share quite a lot of attitudes like the posture of their head.…
time is running and still no plans
now we are already one week into sofobomo 2009, and i still even have no idea of a theme. i am really greatful for that fuzzy month which offers a great deal of flexibility, so i am still very optimistic that i will be able to finish a book. problem is that i am bound…
the approach
wordless wednesday – everybody is asked to use her/his imagination to find a storyline. enjoy. and if you want to see it *really* large, click here.
rosserer pilgrimage music
another small series from the rosserer pilgrimage. btw: rosserer is austrian/salzburg dialect for horse breeder. fascinating for me here was the surface of the instrument. usually you see high gloss, like in the last shot, but this guy’s bass tuba did not pretend to be new and without blemishes. it looked old, well used and…
rosserer pilgrimage maria plain
the traditional horse breeders’ pilgrimage from salzburg and surroundings to the church of ‘maria plain’ (see the 2nd image in this post) took place in marvellous weather. as a father of 3 girls, anything horse related of course is an attractive goal for an excursion, and hoping for photographic opportunities of course i did not…
raw power
no, i won’t bore you with this topic here again. but raw power this is, the power of the green weißbach waters (which is kind of oxymoronic as weißbach means white creek) cascading down in their canyon. having worked quite a while on this picture i am still not completely satisfied. i think i managed…
green weißbach waters
is there a life outside the raw (file)? probably there is. and i do know, yes, that the eye of the photographer is important for the picture, her or his feeling for composition, balance and all those factors that have to be considered in “the moment it clicks”. but all this fiercely defending the jpeg…
canyon beech
a big advantage of the (pre-)alpine region i am dwelling in is the long duration of spring you can get by moving just a little bit. whilst the petals of the apple trees now lay in the street of my hometown, washed down by the rainfall of the last 3 days, just 10km to the…