up-and-coming cyclists

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trying to get at a new 'airiness' as well as combining photography with family undertakings, i had to resort to some shots without framing. of course the reject rate was a bit more than marginally higher, however one shot came out as good as expected: those armstrongs-to-be had the road for themselves on a sunny sunday in april, when all cars were banned round attersee in austria. and whilst some made a race out of it, dressed like top performers of the giro, others had their fun and aching muscles the next day.

and not being pressed (on the contrary, slowed down by the daughters) i had time enough to have a look over the lake to the shore we had passed some hours ago. early spring is a wonderful season, cautious, almost retained sometimes but already full of promises. what a wonderful time.

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rosserer pilgrimage maria plain

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the traditional horse breeders' pilgrimage from salzburg and surroundings to the church of 'maria plain' (see the 2nd image in this post) took place in marvellous weather. as a father of 3 girls, anything horse related of course is an attractive goal for an excursion, and hoping for photographic opportunities of course i did not oppose.

my first take on portraying horses and teams of horses was more so so than successful, but among the better shots are some nice portraits of coachmen and -women.

over the next days i will fill up the flickr set of this event and maybe post some more here.

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lammeröfen

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flare obviously is a weak spot of the tamron 11-18, on the other hands the situation present was pretty extreme and the front lens not completely clean. oh yeah, there is something to learn from every shot... the rock formation down there is really gorgeous and i decided to come back in june to get some flood water shots. 1954 water level was so high that the whole canyon was flooded, some 5 m higher than the standpoint of this shot.

the 2nd image is from the same canyon, just a detail of the rocks. the whole place, a visitor balkony glued to the rocks maybe 10 m above the water and 20 or even more m below the surface makes you feel pretty small and humble, especially if you are almost alone like this time on a rainy father's day.

this photo on flickr.

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wild cherry trees

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rainy day, subdued light, so the Father's day was not a overly buoyant affair. still the walk with my nephew and his hour-long talk about the playstation and the possible hacks (oh how far away am i from a boy's hobbies - my toys are much more expensive at least) were some fun. he silently carried my tripod and never complained when i was stopping for a picture.
the different kinds of green and the white of the cherries make up for a great scenery. this image again did teach me that close framing helps to concentrate what i really want to show. i was negligent when shooting, so i had to to re-compose through cropping.

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snow and fence

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a lesson in 'learning to see'. i had a bland image on my monitor, taken when i was quite tired at the end of an excursion with the family. i remembered that i had taken it because of the beautiful curve of the fence posts and the shadow curves of the fence's wire, but there was too much optical garbage clobbering the real subject. so out of a 12.7 MB file i cropped 1.5 MB, the resolution of a 2 year old mobile phone camera...

this photo on flickr.

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salzburg from mönchsberg

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back to salzburg after a long time, and for the first time on the mönchsberg. the weather was fine for a short time and the sun already low at 3:00 pm which caused fine shadows and a great plasticity in the structures below. my favourite is this jumble of roofs and chimneys, lined up along a curved street with market stalls deep down in the shadow.

the cupolas and towers of the churches of salzburg of course form a nice scenery for themselves, and especially from this high vantage point of the so called "stadtalm" they are arranged almost in layers. aah, and if i only could blog the taste of the beer up there...

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soap roses

found outside a soap shop in st. wolfgang, austria.

taken with the famous beercan (ofenrohr for german-speaking), and i had to learn holding it steady ;)

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balcony on blue wall, St. Wolfgang, austria

one of the rare sceneries if have found that express a nothing-more-nothing-less than utterly relaxing mood.

usually i develop my raw files, but this jpeg was already so good that i did only really minor tweaking in digikam before uploading it.

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facade in St. Wolfgang, austria

abundant flowers (pelargonium) on this facade of an old house in St. Wolfgang, austria.

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cross, st. peter's cemetary, salzburg

the wrought iron crosses on St. Peter's graveyard in Salzburg probably catched my attention. it is a nice and quiet place in spite of the many tourists that come and go.

lightzone's region feature helped in accentuating the foreground cross by just a little darkening of the wall of the chapel.

the slr's viewfinder, especially the bright focusing ground glass was of only little support when deciding if the subject was really sharp. the engineers' optimization for a bright screen unfortunately sacrifices the distinction between sharp and not sharp on the screen itself. i wanted to shoot wide open to have a nice bokeh on the background and make the viewer concentrate on the one foreground cross.

this photo on flickr.

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clocktowers of salzburg, Austria

the raw file gave an severely underexposed impression, but this retained the sky instead of letting it become just white. masking in (lightzone/linux allowed to keep the sky and brighten the clocktowers to realistic values again. this is just a great piece of software.

this photo on flickr.

and here is a b&w version of this picture. i have to admit that i am still undecided which one to prefer

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salzburg, cupola of the cathedral

heavily clouded sky alternating with drizzle provided extremely soft light during yesterday's walk through salzburg, austria. Inside the cathedral it was amazingly bright.

without any tricks or excessive processing, the b&w conversion of this picture already achieved highly graphic and abstract quality. this photo may give an hdr-like impression or a change between a positive and negative form, and that's why I like it.

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waiting for the thunderstorm

last day of holidays was the 2nd day with fairly good weather. in the late afternoon clouds gathered and formed a thunderstorm front over the valley of river Drau. when the first flashes appeared far away, the kids stopped playing on the beach and started watching out for the thunderstorm.

and the light was just great.

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evening quiescence

vacancies in rainy weather do not include too many activities.

even though the evening quiescence on the campground, when all kids were in their respective sleeping bags and only very little people walked along the tiny stretch of beach was really recreative - only some minutes for myself made up for the whole day of bad weather.

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reflection in rain

that rain lasted for a whole week. getting accustomed to the noise of raindrops on the trailer roof, I slowly adjusted myself to it. And sometimes, the rain made up for a really pretty scenery.

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more rain

so I had rain before my holidays and in my holidays. my nephew didn't mind and kept standing in the water in search for a fish. after three unsuccessful days he started using a canoe and voila, out on the lake he was lucky.

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statue of St. Florian in Hallstatt, Austria

the seafront of a hotel in Hallstatt, Austria, is decorated with this statue of St. Florian under a window with a romanesque double arc.

on mother's day 2007 Hallstatt was really quiet and definitely worth the visit with the whole family.

this photo on flickr.

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