canyon beech

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a big advantage of the (pre-)alpine region i am dwelling in is the long duration of spring you can get by moving just a little bit. whilst the petals of the apple trees now lay in the street of my hometown, washed down by the rainfall of the last 3 days, just 10km to the south spring is still in its early stages. here in weißbach canyon the intensive green of a beech tree is still sensational as the other vegetation is still more in the pale and brown stadium.

and the rusty red of the lichens on the lime rock is just now extraordinary as there is not to much red to be found in the surroundings. in a week the scenery will have changed with blossoms and flowers everywhere.

for sofobomo, which has it's first day of the fuzzy month today, weißbach canyon is one of my options. the flow of water there is a continuous fascination, and if my other options don't work (or if i feel bold and want to make two books) i will surely come back there.

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horse's paradise

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spring time makes the spirits rise, and of course martin luther's proverbial apple tree as a symbol of undestroyable hope makes the apple tree and it's blossoms well suited for an allegorical image. this horse (you may remember it from this post) certainly has found a paradise garden.

so today i rode my bicycle to his pastures, optimistic to find the apple blossoms now open, and i did not come in vain.

a traditional orchard like this one is rare nowadays in our intensified agricultural production devices (it's not soil anymore, no, certainly not) and the owner probably would have converted it as well if he wouldn't now grow tourist accomodations with associated riding occasions instead of milk cows. for the latter's milk he would now get a price lower than even the basic cost per litre. this is the other side of progress.

in the mountains there is still abundant snow, especially on the north slopes, so the nights can become really cold - a permanent threat for all the blossoming trees. let's see how much of that fragile beauty is left when i come back after my two commuting days.

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monet hiding in my lens

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the quality of the viewfinder was *the+ critical argument for my first dslr - wearing glasses, a high eyepoint makes a big difference. but even the good finder of my current camera didn't show me recognizably what this shot would look like later on - the blurs of color, dabbed over the background like from an impressionist painter I did simply not see in the viewfinder. the bokeh of my tele zoom, focused at 450 mm-e on the background, created the most awesome stipples out of the cherry blossoms and some foreground leafs. and once more i was glad about my decision to *always* shoot raw: whilst the original showed a slight purple cast in the background, resulting from the low sun peering through dark clouds, bibble and especially the brenda plugin helped me to form an image that met my memory of the light situation. again - no saturation slider touched, no 'vibrance' added.

two days before i had tried the same scenery with the focus on the cherry blossoms. the result wasn't nearly as good as there was no clear separation between what's sharp and what should be unsharp, with a resulting not-really-sharp impression and lacking emphasize on what i meant to be singled out.

now i am content with the result.

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spring springs to life

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sorry, i simply had to use this pun now. the light at the moment is gorgeous, especially if the sky is scattered with clouds and the backlight is less pungent and more revealing. even the lens flaws (my not-often-enough-used tamron 11-18) and the raw conversion problems don't stop me to include the direct sun in the picture. f22 makes up for a nice star effect even without any criss-cross-filter - i do well remember the hype around those in the 80th of last century.

the animals enjoy the fresh pasture, too. this white stallion grazes at schleicherhof, subject of yesterday's post, and enjoys its charity. with probably 30 years (24 according to the horse trader, but popular wisdom here in germany recommends to never believe a horse trader) there is no work any more, maybe a bit posing for the kids and the tourists, not to forget the photographer.

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stalkin' the light

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i guess is what the landscapist might label it, but i can't help: this is part of bavarian pittoresque, like it or not. 10min by bike from my home, the farmers of "schleicherhof" accomodate guests and care for their fruit orchard and their horses. the farmhouse is situated at one of the most scenic points opposite the entrance of the valley to berchtesgaden, overlooking the meadows to grossgmain, a village already on the austrian side of the border.

only 2 steps left from the position where the lead shot was taken, the scenery to the right unfolds in front of the eye. probably this can be called 'kitschig', but at least i enjoyed the minutes up there, the talk with the farmer (well knowing the photogenic qualities of the orchard as well as the vista with the cross, "marterl" in local language), the smell of the blossoms the sounds of the bees within together with the warmth of the late afternoon sun. of course the cars from the valley could be heard, this is reality and not backdrop for a sentimental film.

a catkin and box bouquet like the one i showed in this post usually is put next to the cross in the living room or in the kitchen of the farmhouse, however big specimen of those (referring to probably pre-christian fertility rites) are traditionally put on the meadows for the easter week and later on may end up on the wall of the stable, like here.

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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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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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spring behind the curtains

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slowly slowly it seems to come. the air is still cold most of the time, but the sun already powerful. still the salvia plants have to remain in the house, but this way they make a nice, promising pattern.

today's second shot is the church of maria plain, next to salzburg. and while i like this powerful place very much, the shot itself is not satisfying, it leans to much to the illustrative side and i miss a bit of expression in it. well, the tripod i use did not deliver what i was expecting. time to change tripod?

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wild cherry trees

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rainy day, subdued light, so the Father's day was not a overly buoyant affair. still the walk with my nephew and his hour-long talk about the playstation and the possible hacks (oh how far away am i from a boy's hobbies - my toys are much more expensive at least) were some fun. he silently carried my tripod and never complained when i was stopping for a picture.
the different kinds of green and the white of the cherries make up for a great scenery. this image again did teach me that close framing helps to concentrate what i really want to show. i was negligent when shooting, so i had to to re-compose through cropping.

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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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spring in the city II

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yesterday was commuting day. spring in the city is so different and, at least for me, partially depressing when the songs of the birds mingle with the traffic noise. but optically it has it's merits, translating trees into patterns, creating trompe l'oeil like bird silhouettes, bending straight lines, mixing coating colors of the glass with the most wonderful blue of the sky (bavaria, you may know, is very proud of its skies)

and 'stary, stary night' is seen differently here in the city too. not inspiring in the romantic sense, but more so in the business, prestige, non-sustainability sense.

unfortunately. especially for my kids.

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chasing the biker

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as it is brighter now when i leave the office, more photogenic sceneries show up. waiting for the bus, large numbers of bikers, ringing their bells, chased the waiting passengers from the bike lane. across the street, the scenery was different - the biker graffiti seemed to get chased by the cars.

spring in the city has its own photogenic qualities. what i love most is the opposition of nature against man made structures. and, again, i have discovered my love for shallow depth of field. usually a bit difficult to aquire with an aps-c format dslr, the more than 20 year old minolta 3.5-4.5/70-210 zoom makes this possible at least at the long end.

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Now tell me, is this easter?

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it started to snow on good friday, but the climax was today: 20cm of fresh snow everywhere. ok, not that i would mourn the fate of the pollen that already caused me heavy allergic coryza, but still...

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anemonae and primroses

even before the last snowfall, anemonae and primroses came into blossom on the slope behind our house. so winter is gone now. definitely. we hope.

processed with bibble. both lightzone and bibble have their strengths, so it's good that I am not forced to decide, at least not for now.

processing of this pictures makes me more difficulties than I thought. ist it oversharpened now? otherwise I loose many details. so I will spend some more time with it.

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