burning thumsee

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the regular "der thumsee brennt" (burning lake thumsee) open air concert of the philharmonic orchestra met mixed weather yesterday. the concert itself had to be interrupted several times due to drizzling rain, but the fireworks went off into almost clear sky.

i had a vantage position a bit outside of the festival itself and so i could capture some foreground with the fireworks. shooting raw + jpeg this time, i was astonished about the a700's jpeg quality straight out-of-camera, but ended up again with hand-tweaked (or should i say lightzone-tweaked) pictures from the raw.

the workflow with lightzone is just so convincing: dodging, burning, masking, intensifying - these are all old darkroom techniques, achievable through a very logical interface. not that lightzone doesn't have its quirks - printing is a bit better than broken, it's a memory and processor hog (for that reason alone i wouldn't want a 24mpix camera) and the worst thing is the invisible support on the website together with the incomprehensive documentation. but it still has the for me most logical approach in developing raw files, and the results speak for themselves.

this photo on flickr.

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molten in leaf

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the sunlight had selectively warmed this leaf so it sunk into the ice over the days. the low evening light then created this almost surreal look with the dark black borders.

it was the first time that one of my twin daughters, now six years old, came with me shooting. fortunately she did not get bored, but i had to explain several times that during exposure she was not allowed to move in order to avoid vibrations in the cassata-style soil.

this photo on flickr.

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water world

strange world far away from us - quiet, graphical in this picture, and with no proper means of communicating with us humans.

lightzone for linux again, to pimp that raw file with only a small contrast range due to the nature of the light. Great software, poor company.

this photo on flickr.

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solitary reed, b&w

i start getting the taste for b&w again - positve feedback helps. and it makes no sense comparing the b&w version with the color original, because each has merits of its own. and they require different treatment, as i have seen with with the picture above.

Whilst the original needed no extra treatment for the lower left corner, in b&w this region was too bright for me. Thanks to lightzone for linux (hey guys, wake up - we are waiting), this was not a big issue. Their region tools work well and are extremely flexible

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.