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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Westend again. Some of last weeks images (Westend Strip Light, City Life) originate from there, and the streets are always worth a deviation from the shortest way to work. Today I indulged in my bokeh passion again, this time with the long zoom on the camera. A conscious decision for a certain lens influences my way of seeing, and while I was a fan of very long tele lenses earlier, this passion has somewhat subsided. But in this image I see a good combination of sharp detail and blurred shapes of the street and its inventory, f5.6 seemed to have been just right.
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Strolling through the city last week seemed to get my optical receptors going. Both images were shot on the way to/from work. For an unknown reason it is much easier for me to set aside some 20 minutes from the way to the office, knowing that I have to stay longer, then to get up early on a saturday morning.
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strange - some small areas turn out to be real photographic bounties whenever you walk through. the 'westend' is a quarter, formerly located at the western end of the city, but now quite near to the center, that was traditionally a lower-to-middle class quarter. some decades ago quite a number of immigrants mixed under the inhabitants and it was a quiet region. only the transfer of the trade fair center and the sudden availability of building lots, immediately occupied by big companies, brought a sudden change. now you see chaps in suits and ties everywhere, and the styles of the pubs have changed, too. one of the not so rare cases where gentrification takes place here in munich.
oh yes, and the plate in the picture is probably 40 years old. not too much change in this very place up to now, but no forecast possible either.
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these images, created while commuting in the rain, might have also fit martin storz' always-take-the-weather project on his blog 'the public eye', but i decided to show them here as part of my bokeh mini-series. and for martin i will try to create a sunny weather image, given that we get such a thing in the next days.
and as always: click on the images to see them large in a javascript lightbox.
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since i bought my first dslr in 2005 i am lusting for a 1.4/85mm lens just to indulge in my passion for shallow dof and fine bokeh. for the minolta a-mount, taken over by sony without modifications, this lens is available in zeiss brand for a zeiss price and used in a variety of minolta makes for less then half the price, but still hefty. just recently i've got permission from my departement of finances, but since then not a single reasonable priced specimen showed up on *bay. the strange thing now is that am not too shure anymore that i really need it. and i learned to get my airy discs by using the existing lenses, which means that i do not have to carry an additional piece of glass, which is not too bad either.
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travelling home last week I was really p***ed: again the fast train from munich was late and the connecting train was gone when we arrived. such is the service of the deutsche bahn. my bad mood prevailed for quite some time, proportional to the non-facilities of the province railway station that freilassing is. it was late, a thunderstorm was coming and i had to carry some things so the hands were not free for the camera.
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if you think 'what a antagonism, yesterday traditional costumes and today such a urban scenery' then you are right. but life in bavaria can be like this. my hometown with 18.000 inhabitants is just 2 train hours away from munich with its 1.3 millions, of which 30% have a migration background.
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this photo i took already in june, but only now, reading hans-michael koetzle's "photo icons" and the chapter about louis jacques mande daguerre's image "boulevard du temple" (1838) i noticed the stunning similarity in the poses. you can find a reproduction of this image on the website of timm starl.
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now we are already one week into sofobomo 2009, and i still even have no idea of a theme. i am really greatful for that fuzzy month which offers a great deal of flexibility, so i am still very optimistic that i will be able to finish a book. problem is that i am bound for a new 10 day business mission to sri lanka one week from today, and afterwards for 2 weeks of holiday with the family. either period can bring or cannot bring sufficient occasion for shooting, but in both cases time for editing and compiling will be restricted to the two last weeks of the fuzzy month.
reason to be pessimistic? no, other then last year i am much more confident in my skills, both visually and technical, i have already a scribus framework for a book, so i will manage to accomplish the task and finish in time if not some completely unforseeable and unsurmountable obstacles turn up.
today's shot is from my commuting days in munich, a barber closing his shop for the evening, carefully having decorated the window with the flowers. i like the several subjects combining in time and space in this frame. and what looks quite straightforward still has 5 layers to select areas for darkening, sharpening and intensifying the colors.
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commuting once a week to the office by public transport offers photographic opportunities (it is a burden, too - 2 hours in early morning buses/trains, well, some of you will know). carrying the camera with me every week did not really pay out, in spite of all efforts. this week i got this picture when waiting at a crossing, getting the bus driver lightened by the reflection of the headlights in the white train surface, with the dashboard lights adding some surreal glow.
technically it is more than astonishing: 5000 ISO is a sensibility we could only dream of in film days, but also beeing able to use a shutter speed of 0.4 sec (on a 16mme wideangle) without tripod, thanks to in-body-stabilisation is a great achievement. so i have to make even better use of these possibilities.
diverting from my usual techniques i used bibble to convert the raw file. the current 4.1 version lacks the wonderful region tools of lightzone, but has a much better noise reduction on noise ninja basis. and, it is available for linux.
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