maria gern in the evening

always good for a postcard-quality picture, the church of maria gern is located on a very powerful place just over the street coming from berchtesgaden. evening is an excellent time to go there as it is almost abandoned then and the noise from the surroundings and the streets has pretty much died down. the mountains in the background - untersberg - are still and proud in their serenity and watch over the place.

sounds to much like a cliche? it just is as it is, maybe you have to experience it to believe.

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

evening light over chiemsee, bavaria

This is no b&w picture... The evening light was incredibly soft, showing only faint layers of the mountains in the slight fog. In the lower right corner you see Fraueninsel with the clocktower of the monastery's church. Taken from a public transport boat to Chieming on the east coast of Chiemsee.

The original contrast range was around 3 f-stops. I used lightzone for linux to restore the original impression of the situation.

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

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 ;)

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

fall is in town

suddenly summer is over. cold rain starts, and the snow suddenly is visible again not high above my hometown. strange feeling to operate the camera with wet, cold, unwilling fingers again.

used lightzone for linux to differentiate the sky and faint mountains.

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

chinese dancers at shenzhen festival, nuremberg

as there is no time to go out shooting, one last from the shenzen festival in nuremberg. The others are here, here and here.
i found their pose really striking in front of the black background.

raw file developed with lightzone for linux.

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

St. Nikolaus, Bad Reichenhall

it was quite dark in this church - 0.5s on a monopod is long, even with internal stabilization.

i love the scenery with that single woman adding scale to this big hall.

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

bavaria, as icon

if i would need to capture all of bavaria in on picture, that might come close: costume, music, beer, reflection helping to view the world not as it is...

bavaria is really special. a (in its majority) rural country thrown in the 21st century, still believing in conservative doctrines.

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

cast-iron doorhandle, Bad Reichenhall

another one from Bad Reichenhall: on an old deserted house I saw this wonderful door handle. lightzone again for postprocessing, but I had to burn/mask/blur to make the handle really stand out.

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

old marble doorframe in bad reichenhall

took a walk yesterday through my hometown. one of the doors i often pass by stood open this time and formed a much more inviting picture than the times before. i had admired the marble doorframe quite often, but it never made a picture for me.

lightzone for linux helped in dodging the corridor so that the details became visible in the picture. finally gimp helped to rectify the lines as I had to take a non-centric point of view to include the chair in the corridor into the picture.

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

ship approaching weggis/lake lucerne

taken earlier this year in switzerland. the scenery was difficult for a digital sensor to capture due to the extreme bright light, but i think the camera (minolta 7D/maxxum 7) did amazingly well.

re-processed the raw file with lightzone for linux and tweaked the saturation of the flag with a mask. Other than that just standard tone curve adaption and sharpening

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

skywards, bw

i already had worked on this picture in color, but when finally deciding to try a b&w conversion it turned out much stronger.

work done in lightzone for linux

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

water world

strange world far away from us - quiet, graphical in this picture, and with no proper means of communicating with us humans.

lightzone for linux again, to pimp that raw file with only a small contrast range due to the nature of the light. Great software, poor company.

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

mongolian dancer at shenshen-festival in nuremberg

the mongolian troop formed the first part of the shenshen festival - their performance and especially their music was really amazing. The ended with a song in frankonian tongue - the local dialect of nuremberg - in something like a "zwiefacher" rhythm (two rhythms alternating) whicht showed their extreme musical capabilites.

lightzone again made my day through its versatility and flexible layer techniques.

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

chinese dancers at shenshen festival, nuremberg

i have to admit i was ebbing between fascination and a certain kind of distance to these chinese dancers. quite a lot reminded of old american dance films just teleported to chinese costumes and music.

still the images that formed on the stage were sometimes stunning. And if Karl Moik would perform in Shenshen, probably nobody there would now about the artistic level

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

chinese spectator at shenshen festival, nuremberg

i get the taste for available light again. fortunately i was seated at a table from which i got support for my elbows. i liked specially her self-forlornness in front of a stage with very active performances.

on a sidenote: supporters for the freedom of tibet were waving banners. the chinese consulate-general wanted to get them removed. but of course this was "Hauptmarkt", not Tiannamen...

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

four-legged piano concerto

how to symbolize a music schools summer concert where children show what they have learnt in the last six months? listening intently to the performance of a girl together with her mother playing four-handed on the piano, i suddenly realized the nice composition of their feet

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

solitary reed, b&w

i start getting the taste for b&w again - positve feedback helps. and it makes no sense comparing the b&w version with the color original, because each has merits of its own. and they require different treatment, as i have seen with with the picture above.

Whilst the original needed no extra treatment for the lower left corner, in b&w this region was too bright for me. Thanks to lightzone for linux (hey guys, wake up - we are waiting), this was not a big issue. Their region tools work well and are extremely flexible

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.

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.

Some rights reserved.

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

Some rights reserved.

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.

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.