Commuters Ghost

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Over at The Public Eye Martin Storz yesterday celebrated his post no. 1000. This is definitely a sign of perseverance, even more so as photoblogging in Germany (and in German) rarely leads to frequent commenting and lively discussions that can be seen in the English speaking net world. But even if you can't read German, his blog is worth regular visits - after all photographs are not that language dependent, and Martin's projects like 'Always take the weather' bring together different photographers and styles.

The two images shown today were made again when commuting. With the sun now setting earlier, twilight and night shots offer different moods. And the more I do live my photography, the easier it is to leave a bit the beaten tracks and take up not so populare approaches to picture making.

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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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Hot days - lively nights

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When the days are too hot, life changes to the night. After a buzzing 37°C day, the Camplin, Krk's main plaza, was buzzing even at 11:00 in the night. I took out my venerable 1,7/50mm lens, and did I praise the Anti-Shake in the camera already? So that photographing lady's pose got fixed in 1/8th of a second, quite unthinkable in film times.

Mixed light situations are usually meant as a mix of natural and tungsten light. Not so to the right: the modern, energy saving street lights gave a light that was almost purely yellow and even manual white balance or postprocessing tricks cannot make a normal lighting out of this. But leaving it yellow and balancing it with the tungsten light of a gallery makes it interesting (for me) again

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Game Hall

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After a thunderstorm night with not much sleep my spirits returned only in the afternoon. Strolling through Krk town (a small town, really small with 5000 inhabitants) brought us in the evening to a small jetty opposite of the harbour. The beginning of the way was lined with cafes and a game hall, which offered a nice view from above on the gamers.

Leaving the touristic center decimated the number of shops and burger restaurants, and it was only the presence of the daughters which commanded me back to the camp ground instead of having a beer out there and a silent and drawn out view of Krk.

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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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fun with 6400

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even the snowstorm was no hindrance: on the way home from a restaurant, celebrating the successful first half of the school year, the eldest daughter couldn't stop clowneries with her umbrella in the snow. grateful i am for those iso 6400 i can dial in now. and whilst the objective image quality may be poor, the image gives an excellent impression of that night lighting, snow drifting, kid jumping.

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the village behind the grove

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it seems that this is my blue period. fortunately enough this concentrates on photography and is not a general description of my mood.

however the self-assignment of 'learning to see' seems quite a bit harder here in the wintery bavaria than it is in sri lanka. it's not the time restrictions - on business trips they are even tighter - but the familiarity with the visual impressions around, i think. so opening the eyes, seeing without categorizing, absorbing optical stimuli and becoming aware of beauty in the well-known is what i learn.

beauty is a keyword in yesterday's post of 'the landscapist' mark hobson. whilst i do agree with large parts of his argumentation thread, i am not sure if this 'chasing the light' is something to condemn: what many of those landscape photographers do accomplish is to portray a perfection in nature that is unknown to the majority of mankind. in my eyes this can be way beyond mere pretty-ness, this can be beauty. and this beauty can be the bridge to love, and this love is the first step to acknowledgement of value, of worthiness.

if this feeling for value could only a little bit balance the race for hypothesized shareholder value, i think a great many of mark's concerns would be alleviated.

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looking through the woods

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the blue hour at the moment is quite pronounced, of course the thick clouds make the transit of the light a bit longer. lucky enough i managed to combine the weekly shopping super-task with an hour of walking the tripod. not far from the spot where i took cold winter and the sleeping witch in a winter night the trail i was following suddenly had only one thin layer of branches between me and the village of grossgmain and the untersberg behind it. and especially the branches high above me captured my attention, one of the rare opportunities where i used my 11-18 wideangle zoom.

this lens is quite special: whilst i use it only for a small fraction of my shots, a disproportionate high fraction of those i regard above average. and i had quite a steep learning curve and still do not master it in the way i would like to: making those pictures with a grand subject whilst including a lot of environment information in the background. but my feeling for it grows, and overall it seems to have been a good investment.

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the 'sleeping witch' in a winter night

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with the right gloves, even photographing in snowfall looses its scaring quality. yesterday evening i had some spare time between appointments, and due to the weather just sneaked into a place where i had been on quite a number of walks.

snowfall transforms all the vistas, softens contours, hides details (no dense photography any more...) but the mood i did enjoy very much - that approaching night, absence of light, dampening of the sounds due to the snow. those 15 minutes really managed to recharge my batteries.

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cold winter

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back to cold reality. here in my hometown winter is going strong. the scenery above could well be from astrid lindgren's the tomten, here on youtube.

i don't want to chime into the 'waiting for springtime/i love winter' posts. winter is not my favourite time of the year, but it is the season we will see change all too soon due to the warming of the atmosphere. so i'll catch it while i can.

today i want to pick up ilan breslers idea to feature a blog which i think is worth to be read: a blog from russia, http://photo.alick.ru/. i can't read any letter of the posts, but some of the photographs are fascinating. so feel free to follow the link under the thumbnail to the right. and of course, check ilans blog here.

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bad reichenhall in moonlight

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two days after full moon i finally managed to go out together with a handful of photographer friends to try some night shots of our hometown. the intensity of the moonlight was so high (and my lens protection filter probably not clean enough) that i got lens reflections - i never thought this could happen from moonlight.

"padinger alm" is a popular inn over the valley of bad reichenhall, just on the shoulder of mt. staufen, which you see in the background. image quality turns out to be less then optimal when pixel peeping, but the time was short and the purpose of the shots a slide show, so i didn't bother to always resort to the lowest iso.

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iron aristolochia

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done with the china series, carl weese's blog example as well as paul butzi's current statement motivated me (again) to record what i see.

in this fire ladder a crafted blacksmith commissioned by an art-inclined houseowner have created a functional item with aesthetic value. in winter time, the iron leaves are there alone, whereas in summer they mix with their natural counterparts.

where this is? here, thanks to my gps.

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night transport, beijing

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you remember the good ol' film days? when we had tri-x and pushed it to 1600 to get verrrry grainy b&w results? and were proud of the available light photography we were able to do then? at that days i would never have thought of snapping with a standard zoom lens late at night in not-so-well lit corners of the street, like here in beijing. a lot has changed, not everything for the better, but digital photography has brought me a whole new horizon of opportunities. available light among them, but also to shoot 500 frames without a single thought of regret...

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late customers and nightbirds

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late night wandering through nanjing. having experienced all the noise during the day, it's astonishing that street life pretty much closes down at 8 pm. only in the biggest shopping malls you might find open shops now, and it's better to find a place in a restaurant soon.

not only the people have transferred a lot of activities to the street, also the pets sometimes live out in the open. carefully taking a picture of those birds in cages, to my utter shock the dog started to bark at me. i should keep the not-on-the-viewfinder eye open...

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no way out (if you can't read chinese)

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any questions in which direction to go? where you are?

there is one major challenge when wandering alone through a chinese city: how to come back. the namecard of the hotel is a lifesaver, so i always had two in my pocket. but not every taxidriver has good eyesight and/or knows the way. to make it more difficult, nanjing for example had 4 nanjing hotels, and it took me a while until i knew to ask for the jinjiang nanjing hotel. and even then: the hotel was in a corner of a block and had 3 entrances, looking all different. people you ask in the street don't speak english and/or don't know where they have to send you.

so once i left the shuttle bus to walk the rest of the way late at night, got the wrong direction and landed in a cul-de-sac, which fortunately turned out to be the end point of a bus line. showing the hotel name card, i was sent from one bus driver to the next and motioned into a bus, where a lady of maybe 25 year in white cotton gloves started to maneuver the bus through the nightly streets. after 20 minutes of silence she suddenly gestured to show the card again and urged me to get of the bus right there. so out on the street i was, and after several tries to get information from the rare pedestrians, i finally got a cab. this cab drove the street for 150m, turned around, went back again 150m, entered through a gate and after another 100m dropped me - in front of my hotel door.

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construction site at night

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strolling at night, in the rain and without tripod usually is not a standard situation for good shots, but having only 8 days in china i wanted to get out the maximum of it. and this construction site offered some dramatic light effects, especially when the welding startet.

street photography in the true sense of the word, and dangerous it was: in europe we don't see and electric bicycles, and in china when you see them it is already quite late: quiet and fast they are, and in the rain the drivers were not too willing to take care of a mad photographer...

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waiting for customers

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nanjing is not at all accustomed to foreigners traveling without a guide or translators. the overwhelming friendliness however made up for most of the difficulties, also in the restaurants. not beeing able to use chopsticks is a major drawback here, as one restaurant we visited had only 2 forks and two knives for those westerners not wanting to accept the challenge.

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nanjing shopping street

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i came to china open eyed - ok only partly after that long trip - and open minded, and up to now my astonishment is a positive one, in all respect except the fog. i do hope it's just natural fog and not heavy air pollution, because if so, it must have killer qualities. the people i met were friendly, the food is just gorgeous and the visual treatments abundant. i need more time to process my images, so this is just a treat for the images to come. stay tuned - internet is slow here, so commenting will be difficult, but at least i can upload and blog.

and before i forget: high iso with the a700 is just great and indispensable here, as fog means low light already at 04:00 pm. the picture above is just a normal bibble pro/noise ninja registered conversion. If you want to se where it is, just follow this link to google maps. the coordinates were taken with a small i-blue bt747 gps logger.

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wing tsun

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the first time i made really use of the blue hour and the my old zoom. focused to close distance, wide open, the bokeh really becomes great. which is no wonder at the other hand as there are no diaphragm blades involved. again, anti-shake saved my day as handholding 320mm effective focal length at 1/20s shutter speed is next to impossible, even when leaning to a lamp post. iso 1600 as a usable sensor speed is a value in itself (as is auto-iso, when you are in a hurry), though i have to admit that with other subjects the grain is below the optimum.

it took some time, but it seems that i grow more and more accustomed to my camera and can detach myself from technique and concentrate more and more on seeing. and in the end, *this* is it what really matters.

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city lights - go yellow

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I had looked at this facade quite often during day- and nighttimes as the offer a rich play of effects - just see onion spire, reloaded

Whilst the moving body parts in the gym windows of the first floor don't really lend themselves for a (static) photograph, the reflections do so quite well.

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