The days becomes shorter, the sun rises later, and the distinctive golden glow of the light is definitely a sign of ending summer. The good thing is that I don't have to get up that early to stalk the first light, and the golden gleam paints everything in the most favorable colors. In that way, parting with summer is easy, and the misty, cold, grey daysare are still far away.
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Early morning has a quality of its own. The mind is not loaded already with all the associations and patterns of the day, and the thoughts can run freely. This new built house seemed to be guarded by the cypress soldiers, whilst an officer in yellow is in charge of the guardsmen.
In maybe two or three years these Thuja bushes will have grown to a veritable wall, completing the repelling expression of this house.
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At those times, when Bad Reichenhall was famous and rich and through it's salt manufactures contributing one third to the state of Bavaria's budget...
Can you imagine - a small place of only several thousand inhabitants contributing that much to a state's budget? (Now it is a small place of just a bit more then average prominence, still struggling to find it's link to presence and future)
At those times this place was so important that Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, sent his star architekt Friedrich von Gärtner to erect an administration building in the style of the capital's (the City of Munich) most important boulevard.
Well, that was then. Now it's still beautiful, especially early in the morning, when the low sun lets the sycamore trees cast their shadows on the facade.
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in the course of such a long event there are enough occasions to concentrate on the details. the chokers i've shown some days ago would be worth a photo essay of their own, and so could be the marchin' feet together with the lower parts of the costumes.
this is the last installment of the 'trachten-gaufest'. if you want to see more images of this event, just have a look at the slideshow of these images on flickr.
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the 'gamsbart', literally chamois beard, is a tuft of chamois hair worn as a hat decoration. needless to say that the size of this thingie closely correlates with the wealth and influence of its owner.
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bavaria generally and the traditional mountain costume associations (what a monster expression, we just say 'trachtler') especially are inseparably connected with brass music. only at indoor events, we call it 'hoagascht', guitar, zither and hammer dulcimer replace the wind instruments.
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the translation of 'kropfband' - the traditional necklace these women are wearing - as choker made me mistrust the various online dictionaries, as in my ears this sounds a bit weird. but as they all agree, who am i to dissent.
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in the course of the festivities of the 850th anniversary of bad reichenhall as a city (it was a camp already at roman times) today we had the "gaufest" of the traditional mountain costumes association. the started at 6:00 in the morning with silver salute, which was resumed for probably 45 minutes after church had ended and the groups were assembling for the procession through the city.
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tomorrow is the second annual world wide photo walk. i do highly regard such events as opportunities to meet and see different styles of photographing, different styles of seeing and getting new ideas. as there was no photowalk organised in or near my hometown, i decided to lead one myself. it will be a small group tomorrow, but given decent weather, maybe clouds mixed with sunshine, we should have sufficient opportunities to see and make good images.
the lead image from today is a door handle from stift nonnreit in salzburg, widely known as one of the sets of the film "the sound of music".
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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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indulging my passion for canyons, i arranged the last family excursion to target to of the smaller canyons of salzach tributaries. unfortunately i did not pay attention to the lack directions, and arriving there it turned out that this canyon for the lack of a footpath was only accessible with ladders and climbing gear. and before we arrived at the second one, rain set in...
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the axelmannstein hotel, where i found this abandoned showroom, had it's high times in the 20th of last century. at that time, everybody who was rich and/or famous spent his/her time in this summer health resort, famous for the healing effects of the brine aerosols on the respiratory system. the tailors had their summer business here in bad reichenhall, and in the winter time they went to Merano in south tyrol.
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today was city festival here in bad reichenhall, so a lot of people went around even in areas that are normally not open for the public - a good occasion for a seeing wanderer. on my ways i came to see the outside facilities of one of the oldest and most renowned hotels here, the axelmannstein (which now belongs to the radisson group). on the fence to their tennis court, unused probably for years now as i never heard the typical plop-plop, i found this sign, informing about the siesta hours. stunning for me was the typography: a font that was used around the time of the 2nd world war, but probably not much later. this is the first sign i found with a seemingly eternal life.
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contrary to the common beliefs (read the landscapist for details, especially the nonsense about 'hue and saturation to the max') what the 'beautiful pictures crowd' does, i was working with the saturation slider in negative direction. the forenoon light, evened out by some clouds, made the spirea glow, so i could reduce the corkscrew hazel to just some decorative silhouettes. probably i should blame it on someone else, maybe (quote again) the creator got it wrong.
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in case you have difficulties to find the bluebells: better click on the image and see it large! trying to find the best compromise between sharp water droplets and the impression of fast moving water i did a small series with different exposure times, and 1/100s gave the best result. this was a bit astonishing for me as i had expected the best effect at slower speeds of maybe 1/30s, i guess this is due to the the big amount of water coming down the mountains after the rainfalls.
the raw file was converted with the bibble5 preview 2 version, and despite some flaws, the region tool and selective color tool can give already great results. without it, the bluebells would be almost invisible in the small image size.
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having re-vitalized the rubber boots was the first step for enjoying the rain, and having learned to trust the weather sealing of the camera is the second and even more important one. usually i am quite concerned about my gear and don't want to take a risk, but taking no photos at all because of the rain is not an option. the moss on the trees in the weissbach canyon really seemed to ask to be photographed.
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the amount of rainwater we received in the last two weeks changed also the appearance of the small cascades that are tributaries of the 'weissbach', a creek in a canyon not far from home. a canyon walk in the summer is nice as you experience temperature and brightness differences, but at that time of the year the water is low and those cascades are more or less trickling down. now the water is really vivid, and this is what i tried to capture here and afterwards to emphasize in postprocessing.
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using the most modern electronic gadgets in form of a dslr and a laptop should be proof enough that i am standing with both feet in modern information society. still, forms and textures and colors from 100 years back in many cases enthuse me more than a big number of modern things. especially in everyday life i sometimes feel surrounded by things that raise the suspicion of beeing deliberately created ugly.
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