Sorry, but this kind of Santa Claus creates stomach churning feelings – it’s more a threat than a friendly reminder of christmas-to-be. I think it qualifies for a gallery of the “most ugly chrismas decorations” that Bernd over at babaoskar shoots back was intending. I do like the less agressively painted “Nikolaus” figures, the ones…
found at the entrance of a private park, open to the public.
More leaves, less words. These pictures seem to become more interesting the more time I spend editing and closely looking at them. And not only on the main subject, the leaves, but also on the way they interact with their environment. Can’t help it – I really like those images.
You see, my obsession with shallow DoF continues. Even so, the images are very different: An almost abstract rendering of the red fruit on a background that dissolves into unidentifiable shapes and the spadix in the second image, that shows up in front of structures that, whilst blurred, still carry some information about the environment…
Despite of the frost the bramble leaves have kept a marvellous deep red, so deep that indeed I decided to turn down the saturation a bit in order to avoid an artificial ‘vivid’ look that was significantly enhanced by the warm sunrise light. The birch leaves did not need such treatment, their thick and meanwhile…
The various groups of birches, just at the border of the tarn and interspersed into the pines in the elevated areas form excellent graphical elements with their white bark. The morning hours were not really cold, especially not for november, but this year we have the warmest november since 35 years. Oh, but don’t care…
Today I spent some morning hours with a friend in Schönram bog. I have been at this place several times now, in different weather and light situations – like here in deep winter. Today it was warm, unexpected so in November, and besides some reflections in the tarn I found grasses and leaves to be…
In some places the Christmas decoration encroachment is really subtle, like in this window of the Spieldiener coffee house here in Bad Reichenhall. This is really cool! Ok, I admit it: I had to tune the white balance to get that effect, but so blue it meets much more my vision of a quiet and…
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, lived there and died in absolute poverty. Nowadays he’s one of the most important economic factors not only for Salzburg itself but also for Bad Reichenhall. Here we have one of the big producers of the ‘Mozartkugel’, a ball with different kind of chocolates inside. For a full…
Not only the windtalkers were specialists in unbreakable code, in a certain way all generations have developed their own codex, much to the annoyance of the elders, who did not understand a single word of this language. So this day marks a birthday: I stood before this sticker and no clue at all what it…
The only remaining cinema of Bad Reichenhall – when I came there first, there were three of them.
The weekend was weather-wise pretty much grey in grey, so this picture from last week might be a good representation. It is the time between the bright colors of fall and the beginning non-colors of early winter, where the drizzle is still stronger than the snow. But it is the first year where I can…
November is in Germany also called ‘month of the dead’. The grey, cold weather, lack of daylight, falling of the leaves, all this is usually associated with death. And yes, during spring or midsummer, I would probably not have had the idea to capture the special mood of a cemetery, but now in November I…
The Stihl sound is quite different from the steel guitar sound, despite of similar sounds of the words. The first one is giving these days an almoust continous concerto. It’s end is not yet foreseeable as the trees still have good stock of leaves to distribute. Oh, and if you wont to see wonderful portrait…
I still can’t get enough of my 85mm lens – after years with zooms in the f3.5 upwards speed class, beeing able to sharply differentiate by focus and to include informative background without letting it get too prominent is a welcome experience. And it leaves me wondering why lenses like this have become so rare…
An evening hike, a bit away from the wanderers’ tracks, invited me into the brushwood. It was dark, cold, humid, and a nice smell of funghi (mostly decaying already) in the air, but not until turning around and searching my way back I found something suitable for an image: a flame like beech, gleaming in…
Today’s flat light didn’t bring much inspiration. So I went out only when daylight was fading already and I could expect the street lights to be switched on soon. Their bokeh gave the twist I was looking for to these old, dried efflorescences. In her comment to Warm yellow, Martina asked: “what is it with…
Let me direct your attention to a new blog: babaoskar shoots back. Bernd is a friend and avid photographer since many years, running the film-only flag until recently and now enjoying his treasured optics on a new DSLR body. The 2nd image in his blog, posted today, matches this November 9th very well. I am…
Not related to today’s historical date, these maple leaves grabbed my attention because of their graphical complementarity.
Wandering along some paths not that frequented any more I came along that bench which seems to be quite advanced on its way back into a primordial level in nature’s circuit. The more frequent guests here are probably chipmunks and birds for whom the capacity of the wooden boards should still be sufficient. The dark…
One of those golden autumn days we had today. In the evening I went to one of the creeks, but the best image of today turned out to be this one, taken on the way to the post office – the sun in the spa gardens was warm and inviting. Inviting for this leaf probably,…
My hometown accomodates a huge number of guests during the summer, but now things get more and more quiet: the fountains are covered, chairs moved out of the pedestrian area, an icecream parlour is changed into a lebkuchen sales point. Luckily enough christmas decoration is almost non-existing yet, but that’s probably a grace period to…
The locomotive driver probably did not share my adventurous feelings regarding a trip to Rome – and I guess he had to go up to the border to Austria only anyhow. Different perspectives everywhere, and differentiate I did also (again) with a big f-stop, and afterwards in postprocessing by working on that cold-warm contrast as…
When Munich is grey, cold and wet, a train to Rome is an alternative definetely worth considering. Well, I guess I am too duteous or too inflexible, and so I chose the well known path to the office.