giving something back

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photographing in exotic locations usually means meeting people only once in a lifetime. photographing the not-so-well-off means that you even can't just send a picture or two as email, and even when they write down their address - in the present case i couldn't read it as i don't know tamil.

but in this case i was happy: i had the opportunity to meet the fisherman of this post again and present them a print of the photo where he was posing 5 seconds for me.

it was a joy for him and for me. of course, some others now also want their portrait taken...

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past glory and nowadays beauty

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another trip back into bad reichenhall's glorious past: the karyatides of the entrance to one of the best hotels back in the ending 19th century. bad reichenhall was so famous in these days that even a bavarian king came there for 5 weeks. the spa offered healing of respiratory problems by inhalating brine dispersed by a 14m high and 200m long layer of twigs. the pumping machinery of that times is still partially functioning, and the excursion to those places is already planned.

from this past wealth only a fraction is there nowadays - tourists prefer to go abroad, and the rich clientel of the splendiferous hotel has sharply decreased in numbers. the beauty of some buildings and the scenery and landscape however has survived.

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property entails obligations

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in search of the remnants of the prosperous times of my hometown - we are going to celebrate 850th birthday as a town this year - i am consequently strolling through the older quarters here. the different balcony grids grabbed my attention. whilst most of the old-style attice windows have been replaced by the better insulated and easier-to-clean one pane windows, some of the old balconies have survived without many modifications.

even on one of the houses that have been completely gutted during renovation, they re-attached the completely renovated grids. protection by-law of the cultural heritage does really help here, and savvy architects manage to balance it's necessities with the functionality of the building. the only following injustice is that the owner bears the biggest part of the higher costs whilst the public enjoys the results. but this is covered up by our constitution, stating that 'property entails obligations'.

just wondering where this is brought into application in the current financial disaster. but i'm disgressing.

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"work and buy, pay taxes and die"

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folk wisdom has it - there is nothing to add.

found on a house near river saalach, next to the village of Schneizlreuth.

i am a bit insecure about the translation, the first word "schaff" could also be translated as 'create', but the rhythm and flow then is a bit off.

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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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rooftop spa

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when i started photography roughly 30 years back, lenses with a focal length of more than 300mm were regarded as professional tools only and priced like this. today aps-c digital slrs with their crop factor of 1.5 plus the development in the area of long telezooms offer the possibilities to use a 450mm-e lens (the mm-e were introduced by mike johnston here and i regard it as a sound concept, especially as it can take care of the different crop factors we have in the wild now: 1.3, 1.5, 1.6, 2...). count in optical stabilisation, and you have the ingredients for succesfull long-lens shots any pro would have licked her or his fingers up to the elbow only 20 years ago.

the really densely populated downtown of salzburg of course creates demand for some, and be it even the smallest, recreational space. down from mönchsberg, the hill where the castle is located, you have a magnificient view into a landscape of roofs, now and then interrupted by a small private spa. even a single sunlounger can qualify for this

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roof garden

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a colorful island in all the matt roofs was this small garden with the forsythia in full blossom. spending a morning or evening hour up here for sure is exhilarating when you have to live and work the whole day confined in a building.

happy easter to all of you, and colorful months like those tulips i found in the market.

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salzburg fata morgana

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the light in salzburg was great this morning and the vision almost unreal. walking too long over mönchsberg for sure caused sore feet....

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sign boards in laufen

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laufen at the salzach river tries hard to keep history vivid, the shown signboards are just a small excerpt of these efforts.the encroachment of public space with the various monstrosities that you find in bad reichenhall and many other places does not take place here.

of course, the wish to make business here as everywhere brings along the usual so-so display windows, and houseowners with only average feeling for adequate material did just shove in the most ugly anodised window frames, but the overall feeling of a historic city, especially on the main square, is still present.

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safety attendant waiting

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in the countryside, the volunteer fire brigade is on duty at many official events, too. last weekend, two cities at both sides of the german-austrian border, laufen and oberndorf, arranged their two cities course for runners of all age groups over a track of 6km, and the volunteer fire brigade was responsible for the safety.

more interesting than the runners, crossing the bridge over river saalach salzach connecting the two cities, was that volunteer firefighter in the lead shot, waiting for the runners to come and pass by.

update: i stand corrected - johannes huss informed me about a geographical mistake. it's the river salzach, not saalach, which separates laufen and oberndorf.

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heating to remove from the resin

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shop windows can tell a lot about the owner. in the case of this jeweller, i often saw pieces a bit off the mainstream of a sanitarium's offerings. it turned out the owner still works as a goldsmith, immediately behind the shop windows. my question to come and take some pictures was answered positively.

when i arrived, he was just finishing a small golden pendant and setting the stone, so i had enough food for my lens. trying to avoid flashlight 'cause i never get that really right, i was glad to have iso 2000 available. together with in-camera-stabilisation and an old f2.8 lens it was more than sufficient.

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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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karlspark tree

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there are shots that belong together (like my moon diptych, but also the landscapist does it, and carl weese recently published shots of a yellow suv/green wall that could be seen as belonging together), and so it's just consistent to frame them together.

trees have been and are a favourite subject of mine, maybe inherited from my father, who knows a lot of them by figure, without having to look at leaves or fruits, and it is astonishing that i still haven't set up a separate keyword or collection for them. well - time to go through the archives again. but now it's time for backup of the latter.

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waiting for the spectacle

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it seems that i start to enjoy turning down saturation more and more. the weather was grey, daytime was busy, no fresh shots but still some old ones deserving to be evaluated and worked upon. in my eyes it's not a disadvantage of shooting raw that i have to re-judge my images again when deciding which one to convert and edit, it's a bit like old-fashioned black and white darkroom work: it made and makes no sense to mechanically convert/develop because the results were and are average at best.

additionally to toning down saturation i found that adding a bit of vignetting is good for some images. even if it's only a small, barely visible amount, it seems to center the view quite a bit. it is a bit a contradiction to my own infuriation about the vignetting my standard lens adds now and then, but the latter is beyond my control and not predictable for me, and probably that is what annoys me so much.

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sludge or: winter wants to stay

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the sludge in our driveway became the material for some experimenting with the saturation level: how much of color saturation can you remove and it still remains a color picture, giving a different expression than a real conversion to black and white. it was astonishing how far i could go.

but winter does not want to go. in spite fo the kids' easter decoration, the garden is still covered under 2" of wet snow. at least the stamina of the hazels are, too, according to the bavarian saying: there is rarely a damage without some kind of profit going along...

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vamping up tradition

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rainlight saving time started today. 'dis is a well thought out marketing idea of some leasure outfits lobbyists, nothing else. as bavaria is really strong in traditions, we had our easter egg fountain this year again, with more than 4000 hand-painted eggs. closer inspection leaded to the conclusion, that guinness beer now got incorporated into our cultural heritages, along with more halloween style eggs.

anyhow, nobody will ever be able to suggest that we are anti-modernist.

the original items sold at that occasion are those catkin-and-box bouquets, directly connected to the fertileness-roots of all easter traditions. these usually got blessed in church at palm sunday and later on found their place next to the crucifix in the living room of the houses.

but i also found a nice runner-up for my personal 'ugliest thing in hometown' collection, 2nd row at least.

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hometown monstrosities in color

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taking up carl weese's question and implicit suggestion to present in color what gets it's ugliness through color.
and note to self: stick with either portrait or landscape if you want to make it a series. a lesson i should have already learned from my krk images...

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