The call has ended

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Open for interpretations, maybe even inviting to it - I found this empty phone booth on a very late walk back home when the bus hadn't come, rain was setting, I was tired and all that. No "saturation to the max", I swear it. The magenta of the handset is like that (this is the brand color of German Telekom), and what is ok in this context can hurt your eyes when you see it on larger installations in historical places.

In case you haven't found and followed it on Joerg Colberg's Conscientious, writer/photographer Matt Mendelsohn's piece The Lessons of Lindsay is highly recommended 'though tough. And if you are at it, do read a Q & A with Matt about this story here: http://www.sportsshooter.com/news/2267. That this story was published in sportsshooter is a revelating thing in itself - more fitting papers had declined to bring it. Highly recommended.

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A Rose is a Rose is a Rose

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In the back of my mind there was this sentence "A Rose is a Rose is a Rose", immediately connecting with this image. Still I was not sure where from I knew the words, thoughts targeting Antoine de Saint Exyperie's Little Prince... Until google and wikipedia corrected me, nominating Gertrude Stein as the author.

But this rose looks withered already in august, which is a bit unusual. The explanation is (again) the long rainfalls which made the water level rise so much that this rose stood in the water for some weeks, ruining the roots and make the leaves and blossoms fade much too early.

Still this rose is a rose is a rose...

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bokeh locomotive

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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.

for me these airy disks are something genuinely photographic, along with shallow dof, which can not be reasonably reproduced in painting or other arts and crafts. maybe this is the reason why i get so fascinated by those two phenomena.

and as always: click on the images to see them large in a javascript lightbox.

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travellers in upcoming storm

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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.

after a while my better side prevailed and i managed to get some shots of the trains in the upcoming storm as well as the fellow victims in this inhospitable location.

and when that guy on the next platform started his wheelies in the dry zone under the roof, just stopping before he got out into the rain, i was fascinated enough to forget about my anger and switch my camera to those fine iso 6400, not fast enough to stop his motion but sufficient for panning.

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climb aboard, please

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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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moss, aruncus

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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.

and so did the 'waldgeissbart' (aruncus dioicus). unfortunately the compositions showing white out-of-focus dots of the white blossoms in the background of a sharp one didn't work as expected. but according to the weather forecast i will have the opportunity to re-do this subject.

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street encounter

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the wet weather here in bavaria was not only in the headlines of the yellow press. even serious newspapers ask meteorologists for scientific explanations and/or longer-term forecasts - which are impossible to give for our geographic situation. the only reliable trends are for higher average temperatures, but this is not so surprising. and for local weather in the next 2 weeks it doesn't determine anything. and umbrellas keep being accessoire du jour.

but the bad weather makes it easier to set aside some time to read sofobomo books. i started to read the books of photographers whom i already knew from their blogs but quite soon got hooked and peeped into other books - only to the effect that i have a reading list now and am quite determined to read all of them. i hope i can finish before next sofobomo starts...

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rainy days

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the rainy weather continues, but, having adapted to it at least photographically (and anyway sitting in the office during the day) i do not mind that much any more.

even here, from the train window, the rain has it's merits. and i would definitely not like to swap seat with those drivers that are speeding through the rain.

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rainy reflection

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after a long dry period with excellent weather for easter, today the first spring rain set in, and i expect the leaves now to really shoot out of the twigs. rain plus twilight plus neon ads made up for a nice reflection on the plaster here.

and as everybody is glad about the end of snow and dirt and dreary weather, this skater didn't want to be stopped by the drizzle.

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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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it's raining again

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ok, so what do you expect from april. but this weather definitely has its photographic merits, too.

technically i feel a bit suspended in mid-air at the moment. my favourite raw editor, lightzone is available for linux only as a time limited public beta at the moment. only 5 days left and still no official announcement from the company. i do enjoy the smoothness of this application so much that i am without hesitation willing to pay the full price for a license, in spite of the availability of other good raw converters. lightzone has such a tremendous ease of use and blatant similarity to wet darkroom techniques, that it became my favorite 'developer' in almost no time. so please, lightcrafts inc., go ahead with a linux version, either fully company supported-full price licensed or for (almost) free as a community support version.

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woods and lichens, schneizlreuth

these pre-winter mornings have a certain depressive quality.

cold but not really cold, old snow turned grey by pollution and simple dirt, low diffuse light and fog taking out a lot of the colors of the already de-coloured landscape. so i thought. but getting off sunday early morning and getting out from the warm air in the flat into the rain-cleaned moist air in the woods seemed to help clear my sight and vision. and so i found those lichen spots on the trees, forming an almost camouflage like pattern in the fog remainders.

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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.

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reflection in rain

that rain lasted for a whole week. getting accustomed to the noise of raindrops on the trailer roof, I slowly adjusted myself to it. And sometimes, the rain made up for a really pretty scenery.

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more rain

so I had rain before my holidays and in my holidays. my nephew didn't mind and kept standing in the water in search for a fish. after three unsuccessful days he started using a canoe and voila, out on the lake he was lucky.

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rain

not the worst thing to do: editing your photos while rain is hitting the window.

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monsoon in colombo

the pouring rain and the humidity provided a natural soft focus effect. at times rain was so heavy that you just had to hide under a roof and wait.

galle face hotel was quite empty at that pre-monsoon time in colombo, in this way aggravating the feeling of lost former times and their glory.

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monsoon train

Sri Lanka

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