#StandWithUkraine

monet hiding in my lens

the quality of the viewfinder was *the+ critical argument for my first dslr – wearing glasses, a high eyepoint makes a big difference. but even the good finder of my current camera didn’t show me recognizably what this shot would look like later on – the blurs of color, dabbed over the background like from…

spring springs to life

sorry, i simply had to use this pun now. the light at the moment is gorgeous, especially if the sky is scattered with clouds and the backlight is less pungent and more revealing. even the lens flaws (my not-often-enough-used tamron 11-18) and the raw conversion problems don’t stop me to include the direct sun in…

stalkin’ the light

i guess is what the landscapist might label it, but i can’t help: this is part of bavarian pittoresque, like it or not. 10min by bike from my home, the farmers of “schleicherhof” accomodate guests and care for their fruit orchard and their horses. the farmhouse is situated at one of the most scenic points…

past glory and nowadays beauty

another trip back into bad reichenhall’s glorious past: the karyatides of the entrance to one of the best hotels back in the ending 19th century. bad reichenhall was so famous in these days that even a bavarian king came there for 5 weeks. the spa offered healing of respiratory problems by inhalating brine dispersed by…

property entails obligations

in search of the remnants of the prosperous times of my hometown – we are going to celebrate 850th birthday as a town this year – i am consequently strolling through the older quarters here. the different balcony grids grabbed my attention. whilst most of the old-style attice windows have been replaced by the better…

rooftop spa

when i started photography roughly 30 years back, lenses with a focal length of more than 300mm were regarded as professional tools only and priced like this. today aps-c digital slrs with their crop factor of 1.5 plus the development in the area of long telezooms offer the possibilities to use a 450mm-e lens (the…

shareholder value’s truth

admittedly with a considerable delay econonmical considerations took over also in the bavarian state forest. whilst savings on staff costs and less supervision and support of private forest owners pretty quite strictly follow advices of a management consultancy, the admittance of does and deers remains pretty much regulated according to pre-democratic governing principles: as the…

sign boards in laufen

laufen at the salzach river tries hard to keep history vivid, the shown signboards are just a small excerpt of these efforts.the encroachment of public space with the various monstrosities that you find in bad reichenhall and many other places does not take place here. of course, the wish to make business here as everywhere…

safety attendant waiting

in the countryside, the volunteer fire brigade is on duty at many official events, too. last weekend, two cities at both sides of the german-austrian border, laufen and oberndorf, arranged their two cities course for runners of all age groups over a track of 6km, and the volunteer fire brigade was responsible for the safety.…

door of maria büchel

this wooden ornament decorates the door to maria bühel, a pilgrimage church dating back to the 17th century. located not far away from the holy-night-chapel in oberndorf, austria, it is a quiet place, not getting that tourist attention as the former one. the architecture and the baroque paintings in the inside are marvellous, and i…

heating to remove from the resin

shop windows can tell a lot about the owner. in the case of this jeweller, i often saw pieces a bit off the mainstream of a sanitarium’s offerings. it turned out the owner still works as a goldsmith, immediately behind the shop windows. my question to come and take some pictures was answered positively. when…

sludge or: winter wants to stay

the sludge in our driveway became the material for some experimenting with the saturation level: how much of color saturation can you remove and it still remains a color picture, giving a different expression than a real conversion to black and white. it was astonishing how far i could go. but winter does not want…

vamping up tradition

rainlight saving time started today. ‘dis is a well thought out marketing idea of some leasure outfits lobbyists, nothing else. as bavaria is really strong in traditions, we had our easter egg fountain this year again, with more than 4000 hand-painted eggs. closer inspection leaded to the conclusion, that guinness beer now got incorporated into…