Despite the urban heat islands, vegetation in Munich is in many places still in a pre-vernal stage, with cherry trees and sometimes Magnolias being the notable exception. The city tree subject remains interesting, especially in this stage when the trees are more a structure than a corpus. Pre- and after-work strolls led to a number…
This mini-series of city trees reminds me again of that Dorothea Lange quote “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”. None of these images had required me to make a special effort regarding location. No, the only energy I had to invest was to lift my head and…
Today was the first really warm spring day with temperatures above 20° C (68° F) which means an explosive developement of the vegetation – my nose feels this earlier than it becomes visible. Anyhow, the soft light around sunset was inviting enough for a walk, where this tree saw me, maybe 150m from home. It…
I clearly admit that I did not (yet) fully understand Roland Barthes’ book ‘Camera Lucida’. Thanks to The Online Photographer I do know now that this is not a failure. Barthes’ concept of studium and punctum is convincing, and it helps me to understand why another viewer’s reaction can be so different from mine. Also…
The city of Munich for sure is one of the “green” cities in Europe, thanks mostly to the former kings who created the park “Englischer Garten”. But also in the very center of the city you find huge trees, facing exhaust gas and polluted rain water seasoned with de-icing salt during the winter. Optically and…
It’s just a weeks ago, that the time of the cherry blossom has lost it’s exclusively happy associations. It’s a poignant beauty now and probable will be for a long time. My sympathy is with all the people of Japan, who had, have and will have to suffer from the consequences of those natural disasters…
Commuting delights, visual. Meets in a certain sense what Joel Meyerowitz states in his foreword interview to ‘Cape Light’ here, which I found through the ‘Landscapist’.
Found early in the morning on the way to work, when a traffic accident had enforced a walk for the last 2 km to work.
Carl Weese recently showed a diptych of cinema ads and cars, here, so a twilight scenery advertising the (in Germandy new) twilight series, makes up a nice complement. And from the sceneries I’ve seen from that TV-event, cars do play a major role there. But then, I’m neither in cars nor in TV, which I…
Stuttgart and the surrounding cities are one of the carmakers’ centers, with Mercedes-Benz and Porsche both having their head offices there, surrounded by innumerable component suppliers. This orientation also shows in the residential streets, even the very new ones.
The nice play of the shadows I had only seen from the corner of the eye, and asking the protagonists to repeat it occurred to me only later – there it shows up that I am not a professional. For this time it’s the last anti-nuclear image I am pestering you with. But then, for…
It seems that I am already billions years old – taking into account the specialist’s arithmetics that a core meltdown in a nuclear power plant will happen only once in a billion of years. Returning from my meeting in Ludwigsburg, I was lucky to meet fellow photographer Martin Storz from The Public Eye Blog. It…
Spending the last days in the transnational meeting of the European project “Energycity”, dealing with prediction methods to calculate the efficiency of energy saving methods and in this way contributing to the reduction of CO2 emissions, I happened to have a hotel room next to an election rally event hall. German politics really have been…
This can happen: you walk to see a show in a gallery, and get greeted by one of Edward Weston’s “Pepper” images in the window. Ok, in this place, the gallery Stephen Hoffmann in Munich, it can’t be seen as unusual, but it is still astonishing, kind of a mild shock. The other very positive…
Sometimes images don’t get recognized immediately. After downloading it from the memory card, it got buried in the todo-pile, and it took quite a while until I unearthed it. Only when playing around with the overall contrast and the rendering of the textures – there’s still some headroom – I noticed small details that finally…
Found on a barn wall near “Wachterl”, a pass height of the major transalpine road in Bavaria. Such trophies usually have a great value for the hunter and are treated and presented very carefully. Using big visible screws and washers to fix them shows substantial ironical traits – or are blunt blasphemy in the eyes…
Beware of drunken drivers!
No wonder that real Bavarians are a race on the brink of extinction.
The camera at hand pays out, even at occasions like waiting for the family to enter the car. And the association to Friedlander’s famous “America by Car” series came immediately. But for me it’s more than a simple imitation of his way of framing his image with parts of his car, I tried to capture…
Fine evening light, the familiar silhouette of our valley’s mountain, Staufen, but… If “CHINA SHIPPING” is here, Japan can’t be that far. Suddenly our small place sees itself embedded in a global world, where Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and following nuclear disaster are just a truckload away. And while I feel with the suffering people in…
To get some fresh air and give the daughter a walk and an opportunity to exercise her new camera, we climbed the hill behind our place and got a glimpse of the last evening light. Have a happy and relaxing weekend!
The valleys already are a brownish green with Hazelnut-signs of spring (I can tell from my itching nose and sore eyes) but above 1000m winter does not want to give in yet. As this crisp air is more pollen-free, I thoroughly enjoy it. And being able to create another Landscape (genre-wise) image that includes the…
Meanwhile the snow is thawing everywhere here. But the artificial blue light – different to Juha Haataja’s “night” here – renders the oversweetened urban flavour of cold and wannabe coolness.
Tyler Monson again provoked me for an image selection with his wonderful Museum Scenery. My image was made in the Salzburg Museum of Modern Art, a place where photography (not of the artwork) is usually allowed.
When seeing Tyler Monson’s “Portland Public Toilet” and Carl Weese’s “Public Accomodations”, I immediately remembered my encounter with the “future of the bathroom” in Colombo last year. Enjoy! And be reminded: you can click on every image to enlarge it.