World in a Bottle

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It seems as I can't escape the heat, so this beach photo is more then adequate. Today was an office day here in Munich, and temperatures in the street are up in the high thirties again. In a southbound office room this does mean quite a bit.

Fortunately enough Munich tap water is at least as good as Croatian bottled water, so my liquid level does not suffer - add a bit of coffeine to the (hot) water and I can be happy!

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sofobomo 'batticaloa fishermen' as blurb book

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yesterday i received the printed version of my sofobomo book from print. i had been really curious about the quality, especially the rendering of the difficult, so i thought, darker regions. in this respect there is hardly a fault to find. problems however arise in two other aspects: colors, especially red and blue, come out definitely more vivid than on my calibrated monitor, and fine structures like sand on the beach or a fishing net suffer from the printing resolution. sometimes even in fine nuanced bright areas it seems that compression artifacts become visible. now i stop nitpicking, because i know only too well that i can definitely not expect steidl quality for a print-on-demand book in that price class. we always get what we pay for.

the positive experience of the first self-made book, where i did not resort to the pre-fabricated layouts of photobook making software, is simply unbeatable. and in this sense i have learned a lot in this year's sofobomo, and i guess i'll be in next year again. the image above was taken on the beach of batticaloa and is the back title of my book.

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sofobomo: a victim of the selection process

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nice synonym for the catch i sometimes find on my flash cards. but sometimes those emblematic empty bottles just hide their merits (or less sugarcoated: they have to wait for a more clear-sighted moment). carl weese hinted in a comment he made yesterday on the value of an archive and the necessity of a 2nd look, and of course he is right. especially the rejected images deserve this re-evaluation, and in this way i found my empty bottles.

postscriptum: i have uploaded the book to issuu, too, and am astonished how hassle-free this was. so if you want to see it more book-style in a nifty flash version, klick here: Batticaloa Fishermen on issuu.

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sofobomo 09: strengthening my vision

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reviewing my selection process for the images to be included into the book, i made an interesting observation, for which today's lead shot can serve as an example. during the first review of the pictures within days after their creation, i had a very different attitude towards their qualities. the image above came out only 2nd, the lower image, already posted on 2009/05/20, won.

now creating a set for the sofobomo book, the criteria changed. the silhouette of the man in the lead image won over the more interesting structure of the water. and suddenly i realized that for too long a time i had tried to carefully avoid people in my images of situations and sceneries. for a reason unknown to myself even now i did not want humans in the photographs. only now i felt the added value that men/women and their interaction bring even into such scenes.

and here lies for me the added benefit of sofobomo: i had to re-evaluate my images, thoroughly weighing there merits plus their function in a sequence, something i wouldn't have done without this project. and i think this improved my vision.

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krk beach

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family holidays in krk mean spending quite some time on the beach, often without the camera. but when i finally took it with me and dug out my 11-18 lens, it was quite nice to make a wide beach scenery out of a nice small spot. guess it should qualify for the mindful eye's assignment of complimentary colors.

again bibble5's region feature helped to emphasize the sky in addition to the polarizing filter. if you are not already determined on "your" raw converter, bibble5 is definitely worth more than a try. it is now even faster then the old version was and scales well with multicore cpus.

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beach abstract

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at the moment i feel a bit like this pants on batticaloa beach: totally worn out after more than 30 hours work and traveling with only some naps. at least the official part of this mission was successful, so no reason to complain. photographically it still has to be evaluated. more after having slept, promised!

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dancing feet

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still under pressure, this time at the airport already, on the way home. today i got sad news again about the refugee situation in the north of sri lanka - ban ki moon seems to have categorized the situation 'apalling' regarding the government's treatment of the tamil civilians - and he seemingly has seen only the least awful part of it. will try to compile something more coherent about this tragedy. meanwhile i share with you this image from the beach.

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kalmunai beach boys

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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 be preprogrammed.

the kids, and the boys especially, meanwhile do enjoy their life, and a stranger on the beach is definitely a reason to say hello and try one's language skills.

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throwing the net

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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 merely got two handful of fish in the morning, definitely not sufficient to nourish a family. poverty in the city is often combining an acceptable income with bad living conditions, but here in the villages the lack of incomes is what hurts the people the most, and this is the situation where sometimes the children have to add to the family income instead of attending school.

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won't brake anyway

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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 transport for man and loads.

those traces i discovered on the beach recently - rarely have seen such a strict evidence of encounter and afterwards going it's way.

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boat and flipflop, batticaloa

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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 much i like bibble for its speed, lightzone is incredible in its possibility to enhance low contrast structures. even in the thumbnail you can easily spot the difference.

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landing the leviathan

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the recitations of the muezzin woke me up after a short night, but i was grateful for this invitation to start the new day early. my hotel was next to the beach - the tsunami at that time had not done much damage as the structure was new and sturdy concrete - so after 10 minutes i was out in the golden light. walking around, not yet decided on what to concentrate, i suddenly saw a scenery that reminded my very much of hemingways "the old man and the sea".

the presence of me photographing probably made the crowd surrounding the swordfish even bigger, and before negotiating the price they wanted group photos to be taken.

for roughly 170 US$ the trader made the deal, and soon after one of the fishermen came up and chopped away the non-marketable parts, leaving only the torso to be iced and kept for transport.

the crows were already waiting for the remainders of this beautiful animal, one of the fastest in the sea. ironically, while prices especially of the red-tipped-fin subspecies are high up for assumed aphrodisiac effects, in europe the meat would not be allowed to the market: swordfish collect great amounts of cadmium and quicksilver, and the older and bigger the specimen, the higher the concentration of the toxics

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yellow fin thuna, batticaloa

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before the winter monsoon rains start, the usual catch for the outrigger boats is small. bigger boats with outboard motors then are the only ones that bring home what they catch by long lines.

even then the catch is small. only 5 small thunas for one early morning of fishing is barely sufficient, given that you have to pay the high fuel price also.

the images were converted in bibble - on the laptop this is a good choice because of the more effective cpu usage than with lightzone - and slightly desaturated to work out the silver color of the fish.

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batticaloa fishermen or the rewards of procrastination

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finding a time to go for a photowalk to the beach at sunrise was difficult during the last mission - jet lag, early appointments, changes of the venue and so on. in the end, i had to take the last morning - and ended up without visible sunrise due to the clouds.

not wanting to return without any picture, i overcame my shyness and asked the fishermen by gesture if they would allow me to take their pictures. and indeed this was not a problem, but the display of the camera broke the ice and we all had fun time.

so what did i learn from this morning: procrastination is not necessarily evil, but will demand more flexibility. to overcome shyness is not that difficult but also a question of self-esteem. having decided to bring an album with the portraits for my next visit makes the whole thing a much less one-sided affair.

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long shadows on the beach

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batticaloa beach again - a real bonanza of photographic opportunities this has turned out to be. my first pictures dates back to 2004, still before the tsunami. at that time i had only 1.5 days there and was surprised about the peaceful place batticaloa was then. to my utmost luck my friends idea of going there with the families for christmas holidays did not materialize. 2nd day of christmas 2004 the tsunami struck.

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hauling in the net

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the raw files from the last sri lanka mission are still a treasure chest. today i found this one. some adjustments in lightzone created a picture that appeals a lot to me - definitely not a "picture that sucks" as it was the topic of paul lester's post yesterday.

the recipe given there 'practice, practice, practice' is a good one, but in my experience somtimes a pat on the back from an experienced, open-eyed fellow can help a lot to bring one's vision forward. that's the reason why i am deliberating about visiting a workshop.

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fishermen at sunrise

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the beauty of sunrise again. the kitsch-or-not-kitsch debate i have decided for myself to be not-existing anymore: beauty is a superior principle, taste is something indivdual and nobody has to like or dislike what i happen to like. for me this beauty (and my activity of capturing it) has a high value of its own, otherwise i would not bother to overcome jet lag, face tmvp militias in the form of 16yr old boys wearing kalashnikovs (oh no, not terrorists, on the "good" side!) and walk to a beach lugging around 2 kg of glass and electronics. so much for motivation.

even the klichee-like sunrise with palms: i don't want to resist. those early morning moments, between night and day, are mysterious, powerful, promising, loaded with energy, still quiet but already carrying the noise of the day - they are just great.

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silvery sea

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if there is a single one photographic situation that i do like most, it's backlight in all its variations. it gives so much opportunity for drama, for hiding distracting things, for abstracting from a world full of diverting colors into the essence of shapes and silhouettes. in the picture above as well as in the prior "kalmunai fishermen" the beauty of form is intensified.

in grey past a.k.a. my film days, backlight was always difficult, specifically when shooting slides. in my experience, dslrs are well suited for backlight especially in situations where you can easily chimp or bracket. and my sony a700 seems to keep a lot of highlight information in its raw files for discovery with a suitable tool, lightzone in my case.

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colorful catch II

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this image is a mystery to me. i regard it very highly (otherwise i wouldn't show it), but flickr seems to have a differing opinion, or better no opinion at all of it. all the pictures i put on flickr get views, comments even without promoting them, but this one: not a single view in the three days since it has been uploaded.

so i do hope i can blame it on flickr...

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