To integrate my blog with a gallery and portfolio website, I have decided to move from blogger.
The new site is http://markus-spring.de, and I would glad if you would follow me to this new home for my photography on the internet.
Thanks for your interest - we'll meet over at the new blog.
Markus Spring
For 1.5 days now I have changed the computer keyboard (and the camera) for a power drill, circular saw, cordless screwdriver and so on. Reason was that the pellets storage room for the central heating needed an improved floor to ensure that the material is gravitation-driven moved to the conveyor screw. The old, already angled floor was not steep enough so that huge piles of pellets never got transported to the oven.
My father in law as house-owner was chief engineer while I worked as saw-servant and screw driver. The whole thing was made complicated by the existing floor that was already angled in two directions, so all metering had to take into account those non-horizontals and verticals. Furtheron leading the pellets to a circular transport area required sophisticated bended forms of the new flooring in order not to waste storage room.
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Here in Germany nobody uses the term 'daylight saving time'. It was introduced decades back under the pretense that it would support energy saving, but there are serious doubts: in the end everybody makes best use of the longer evenings, and many activities are connected with energy consumption. We use the term 'summertime' here, and that's the reason for the title.
I found it a quite creative way of tackling the DST problem in a zero-emission-clock, but of course nobody is allowed to be really picky about precision here.
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I found this beer brand poster in a window in Bakar, Croatia. The bar behind it was as empty as this poster is weathered.
Meanwhile I am fiddling with the domain name system for my new web presence. What is easy and straightforward when you order domain and web presence in one shot can become at least a bit demanding when you distribute those parts on different companies. At the moment I keep my fingers crossed that by tomorrow the DNS will know about that 'markus-spring.info' domain and point to the correct server.
Update: http://markus-spring.info is now working. I have added another gallery to the 'peoples' category. Now I have to fix the rss links.
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Over at The Public Eye Martin Storz yesterday celebrated his post no. 1000. This is definitely a sign of perseverance, even more so as photoblogging in Germany (and in German) rarely leads to frequent commenting and lively discussions that can be seen in the English speaking net world. But even if you can't read German, his blog is worth regular visits - after all photographs are not that language dependent, and Martin's projects like 'Always take the weather' bring together different photographers and styles.
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Living throughout the year in a small town in the alps, everything in a harbour is potentially interesting. At sunrise I found these reminders of a 'HiFly' windsurfer, turned into plastic trash over the years, hazardous waste if you would take it really correctly - but nobody does bother here.
The small series is visibly now on my gallery-website-to-be, still under a makeshift domain name here.
As soon as I have finished the works over there, I will shift the blog, too. But hardening the blog against attacks is serious work, and I don't want to hurry this. Experience has taught me that amount of time necessery to clean up after a successful attack is a multitude of the amount to be invested before.
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With such a foreground, it is probably hard for a small town to survive. This coal loading/unloading unit claims a similar amount as the whole city of Bakar. Up to the nineties it served a coke oven plan, which is not running any more. It has had a changeful history: Up to the first world war, the Austro-Hungarian navy had one of its most important bases here.
Now the croatian flag is flying high again, but Bakar has lost its importance.
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... make sure that you get some of the finest liquor made on the island. That it is presented so invitingly makes the purchase decision not easier as there are so many different flavours. And the opportunity to taste could easily lead to a purchase bigger than originally intended.
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Today I am on a short trip to Croatia again, helping my sister to clear up the caravan and prepare it for hibernation in a local garage. Travelling alone, I could afford to stop in Bakar, a former important harbour in the bay of Rijeka in Croatia. It once hosted one of the croatian navigation schools and was the home of a number of captains.
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It's easy to guess from the headline that I am not smoking. Not smoking any more, that is.
But here I was more fascinated by the replicating leaning forms that manifested themselves in the viewfinder. To emphasize this a little bit I used bibble5's layers for burning and a bit desaturating the borders. The more I play with this software, the more interesting it becomes despite its overly long beta status and still unresolved bugs. It is just the right tool for my way of handling the raw files, quite straightforward, no fancy effects, just carefully helping to show what's already in the raw file. As a linux user, all that lightroom and photoshop is a non-option, so I am even more glad that bibble5 now fulfills such a great part of my processing wishes.
And despite all criticism in the forums about bibble's slow development process, this definitely is not a case of 'hopes to ashes'.
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The triangle of blue colors grabbed my attention, and then the self-aware laziness of the pose on the billboard. The whole image speaks 'night', just the billboard seems out of any time context here.
It's not an image I would try to print really large - it was too late at night and the wine was too good, making me forget to check the f-stop and shutter speed, so sharpness is probably insufficient. But then I just might rely on Cartier-Bresson and proving that I am no bourgeois...
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Mornings can be hard; The unread paper in one hand, the camera in the other, eyes still tired, brain slow - the night was just too short. Only 1 minute left until the train leaves. Fumblin' with numb fingers at the f-stop dial, knowing that some DoF is needed. 06:06 - just getting two shots.
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