Diesel Night

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The triangle of blue colors grabbed my attention, and then the self-aware laziness of the pose on the billboard. The whole image speaks 'night', just the billboard seems out of any time context here.

It's not an image I would try to print really large - it was too late at night and the wine was too good, making me forget to check the f-stop and shutter speed, so sharpness is probably insufficient. But then I just might rely on Cartier-Bresson and proving that I am no bourgeois...

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Street Flowers

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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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Climate Change!! Yeah!!

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I found this scribbling on a mobile phone advertisement poster in the train station in Munich. To be honest, my colleague found it, I just took the picture again with a short focal length and in a different angle.

The slogan of the mobile phone company is "You are not on this world to be silent". Well, the author of this scribbling really took it literally. But I can't deduce if he wanted to criticize all that talk about climate change or the absence of such a discussion among many young people. But at least he provoked my thinking.

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westend strip light

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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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1843

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taking the camera always with me has become a habit since quite some time. it helps me to get into that feeling where the images come to me and i do not have to fuzz too much about photographing but can merely react and cut out that noteworthy slice of time. but i still cannot toggle this feeling - sometimes it is there and i can see 10 good sceneries in an hour, and sometimes nothing comes. getting distracted by company very often but not always is an adverse factor, so is nervousness, but also the wilful intent to find images.

Usually however, attentiveness and a certain ease of mood seems to motivate the muses to come and kiss me.

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portraying the che

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please don't think that i am getting cocky because i post two self-portraits in a row - these are 2 out of maybe 5 self-portraits i tried over several years.

when i saw this rare bill of a socialist/marxist group in munich (there aren't many of them left) i knew i wanted to do something with it. alone it didn't shine too much, but as it was sticking to the back of a bus stand, there was not much possibility to add something that would make a picture work. the glass material of the bus stand finally made me try out reflections, but there were not so many people around and time was running. so in the end a self-portrait with the che was all i could make out of this. romanticising mode on: that's not that bad, i think...

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le figaro

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the way home from office in munich invariably leads my steps along a hairdresser's shop on one of the main roads, and the light and reflections as well as the colors are always interesting. this window was already subject matter for this post, but this time i caught the barber in action.

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car triptych

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who invented the white-balance automatic? and who told me to leave it switched on? egad, sometimes i feel sympathy for mike johnston's 'the leica as a teacher idea. at least no whitebalance-automatic that, as every automatic, does as good as it can, but doesn't help me thinking. and getting the balance manually, just by optical impression, was impossible for me, at least at first take.

note to self: one more automatic to switch off on certain occasions. oh yes, and i do this when shooting panos, but here i simply forgot.

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time is running and still no plans

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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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train of remembrance

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the state-run german railway ("reichsbahn" at that time) played a supportive role in the murderous policies and actions of the third reich's holocaust, transporting the victims - many children among them - into the concentration and extermination camps. the privately organized "train of remembrance" now travels over all the tracks that led to those camps. today it was to be visited in munich terminus.

insensitive enough, the (still state owned) "deutsche bahn" management decided to demand a substantial rent of approx. eur 1000,-/day for each day this train stands in one of the train stations. the munich city council has decided to reimburse those costs and in this way shows a much more appropriate sense of responsibility than the railway management does.

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marriage firecracker

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ehekracher - marriage firecracker - is the title of the advertisement for a theater comedy glued to the pole. the lady next to it seems a bit puzzled about this title, too. at least her glance could be interpreted in this way.

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munich terminus, track 6

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grey sky in the morning, but the cranes formed an interesting pattern. Seeing it in large reveals some minuscule red lights of the signals, nice counterweights for the mainly blue tones.

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the new synagogue in munich

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my first disappointment about the shots from the new synagogue in munich proved to be premature. scrutinizing the raws, in found the above one combining the massive, block-like quality of the building not only with the light emanating from the entrance door in the foreground, but also with the movement of the lady just in front of the wall. the latter made my 'punctum'.

lesson learnt: dont judge precipitate (and don't throw away raw files too early).

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percentage for art / kunst am bau

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bad weather with rain, temperatures just above 0°c, low light because i could leave office later than planned. but still, after an uncomfortable day some visual excercise deemed necessary to compensate for all the frowning and sweating because of murky software. the planned target for my activities, the (not so) new synagoge of munich (see here, definitely worth a return) turned out to be not so attractive because of the dull light, and so i headed home. taking a shortcut through a building block however got me immediately hobbled.

that silvery sphere, open-worked and reflecting inside and out, was just amazing, and the tiny rest of daylight together with the lamps in the surrounding offices made up for the most wonderful symphony of reflections. so i stood there and watched and shot until the fingers were numb and the protection filter in front of the lens was sprinkled with raindrops.

up to now i could not make out the artist who had created this sculpture (one of the rare cases where google did not come up immediately with a solution), so there's some work left. and a lesson learnt: don't rule out bad weather, instead go out shooting.

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moon diptychon

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speaking about time constraints, just imagine the following situation: you leave the house to catch the bus (2 days a week i work away from home in munich), the bus is early and leaves you waiting 10 min at -8°c, which is 18°f and not really comfortable. to make the best out of it you start shooting, notice the moon, notice the lamp post and try to figure out something reasonable, cropping loose, cropping tight and so on. finally you see the next bus approaching, pack away your gear when suddenly the streetlights switch off and the scenery changes. get the camera again, frame the shot hastily now as the bus is almost there, press the shutter and run for the bus, glad to get into the warm interior....

now that really was tight...

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copper delight

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one of the best sources for beer in munich actually is outside of munich: freising not only hosts the oldest brewery of the world, but for sure one of the smallest. the 'airbräu' inn at the airport of munich brews the beer in front of all guests in the bar parlor. the beer is convincing, the optical impression of the fittings even more.

reason enough to start my journey with a visit of the airbräu - no beer also, as it was early morning - and then let the etihad plane bring me to abu dhabi. no beer there, just too tired and not wanting to miss the connecting flight.

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octoberfest gingerbread heart attack

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octoberfest with the camera was fun, and i was lucky to have company in person of a colleague who protected me from drunkards pivoting one liter glasses of beer (the famous "Maßkrug") in front of my lens. The beer halls were too noisy for me - you have to drink in there, talking slows down drinking so the band pushes the volume of the music to the limits in order to increase the beer consume - but outside the sellers of the gingerbread hearts grabbed my attention.

you can find quite a number of them, and the hearts are a real relict of the early times of octoberfest. of course now you find international inscriptions on the hearts, too, but the basic form still is the "i love you".

and when processing these shots, i found a way to make use of lightzone's regions to simulate a bit of vignetting, both in brightness, but also in selective sharpening.

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minus 17% - do legst di nida*

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octoberfest alone is a reason for quite a "Rausch" (inebriation). but bavaria's all time governing party has just lost landslide-like 17%, and their strongest supporters have been and still are the "Trachtler", men and women wearing traditional clothes and quite often of a conservative mindset.

so probably this disaster was one more reason for those guys to drink.

^*do legst di nida: local speak for: this is so strong, you have to lay down...

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octoberfest: starfly

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high tech flowers at the octoberfest: the successor of the chairoplane lifts the visitors 50m above the ground. at dusk, it looks like a giant flower in front of the sky.

the haunted house could be a synonym for the whole thing: shrieking noise to no end, flashy colors, the whole bandwidth of agreeable and disagreeable smells and a similar bandwidth of visitors and their degree of drunkenness. as a local, i will probably go there round noon on a warm day and stay only for a beer if i can find a place without 105 dbA of the most incredibly stupid music which is not folksy any more

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stairs in technical town hall, munich

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tuesday they ordered me to exchange my business mobile. not worth mentioning normally, but this gave the opportunity to see munich's new steel/glass constructed technical town hall. in my eyes a well designed and crafted construction, though i don't know if the workers here are happy with it.

at least i was, optically, and the light was sufficient in spite of the completely overcast sky to shoot hand-held. again in-body-stabilisation is a key factor for success here. glad that the sony has it.

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