late afternoon light had already left st. pankraz church in the shade. due to the cold air and light wind there were almost no distortions by the heatings from the houses of bad reichenhall under this scenery, only the object contrast turned out to be really low – a bit more then 3 f-stops is…
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sofobomo 2009: i’ve taken the plunge
having been on the brink already last year and in the end procrastinated for too long, i had already decided to participate in 2009 sofobomo when there were the first rumors on paul butzi’s blog and now i have registered online. the book’s topic is not yet decided as the fuzzy month from may 1st…
moon diptychon
speaking about time constraints, just imagine the following situation: you leave the house to catch the bus (2 days a week i work away from home in munich), the bus is early and leaves you waiting 10 min at -8°c, which is 18°f and not really comfortable. to make the best out of it you…
the village behind the grove
it seems that this is my blue period. fortunately enough this concentrates on photography and is not a general description of my mood. however the self-assignment of ‘learning to see’ seems quite a bit harder here in the wintery bavaria than it is in sri lanka. it’s not the time restrictions – on business trips…
the old castle
at the moment those late afternoon hours seem to be really rewarding for me. i had tried to portray gruttenstein castle, only 10 min away from our house, on quite some occasions, but all i got were mere reproductions. today’s image is different: the old trees (another found-again partiality) do not reveal much of the…
looking through the woods
the blue hour at the moment is quite pronounced, of course the thick clouds make the transit of the light a bit longer. lucky enough i managed to combine the weekly shopping super-task with an hour of walking the tripod. not far from the spot where i took cold winter and the sleeping witch in…
the ‘sleeping witch’ in a winter night
with the right gloves, even photographing in snowfall looses its scaring quality. yesterday evening i had some spare time between appointments, and due to the weather just sneaked into a place where i had been on quite a number of walks. snowfall transforms all the vistas, softens contours, hides details (no dense photography any more…)…
cold winter
back to cold reality. here in my hometown winter is going strong. the scenery above could well be from astrid lindgren’s the tomten, here on youtube. i don’t want to chime into the ‘waiting for springtime/i love winter’ posts. winter is not my favourite time of the year, but it is the season we will…
fishing boat flags
let the beauty of the flags speak for itself. the flag doesn’t bother who is raising it and why. even this much abused national symbols keep their relevance, the more so when all those malpractioners are gone.
batti kids
some of our youngest beneficiaries: their families received rainwater harvesting tanks or toilets through our project. we are targeting especially the poor families, among them so many woman headed families, having lost the husband/father in the tsunami or the war. the stories you get to hear there are sad, sometimes hard to bear: one woman…
catching fish in the waves
since my first official visit to batticaloa and kalmunai, fishermen were the subject of numerous shots, from beach overviews up to portraits, details of their catch and their tools. this time i brought two small albums as tokens of my gratitude for their acceptance of my photography. trying to find the essence of the pictures,…
repairing the net
catching the small fish, and only small numbers, is hard work, tearing on muscles and gear. the sharp corals brought by the waves to the shore constantly tear holes into the net. a good part of the morning this fisherman spent repairing the net. he had a helper, and after having tried one spot and…
kalmunai beach boys
no dessert for me after a working dinner, instead 10 min. break and a very short walk on the beach. the colors here were wonderful, the beach certainly attractive for tourists. however i was told that people here in kalmunai would not feel at ease with tourists as conflicts with muslim traditions and teachings would…
sigiriya ruins
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…
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…