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…)…
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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…
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 đ 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…