klausbachtal forest

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in spite of the rain that now soaks the large snow heaps here in the valley, higher up in the mountains winter is still unbroken. a sunday morning, only some 100 m away from the main trail you feel completely alone when the mist swallows all sounds. that always helps me to get the right sense of scale after a busy week, partly in the city, surrounded by all high tech and acting out my high expectations and trying to meet those of others. here in the mountains is the place where i can re-connect and come down to my roots.

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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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instead of eating burgers

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my daughters were invited by a classmate for a birthday party in salzburg airport center's burger king, and i did prefer not to stay. hence the title (which is an adaption of moscow art trio's "instead of making children", a worthy recommendation for you jazz fans out there), and my mood then was comparable to today's when i did my tax declaration.

in spite of low light and a not so pleasant surrounding - at least i had managed to flee, but came out in the floodplain forest of river saalach, just next to the sewerage treatment plant - i cooled down (literally) and made the best out of it: pictures. and even if they are all but drop-dead-gorgeous, i had a fine hour just concentrating on seeing and creating.

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le dejeuner sur l'herbe, china style

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the world urban forum of the united nations in nanjing was also used by the chinese government as a platform for showcasing achievements in tourism and real estate development. one of the booths sported this forest of tree silhouettes which was consequentially used as a picnic arena for the local visitors.

the middle of the hall was filled with flower pots, scented osmanthus in this case, and only under close inspection it was - again - revealed that those were artificial plants. good optics, yet no substance.

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poppy flowers in a barley field

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getting up early to catch the first light was definitely the right thing to do today, as the sky became overcast before noon and stayed like this until the evening. i finally got over my feeling of inertia which quite often strucks me after my missions to sri lanka: so many contradicting emotions overwhelm me, compassion with the suffering people not the smallest, that it takes time afterwards to get up and go again, searching for harmony, beauty (not daring to use the word art). but when i was there i was just delving into that feeling of seeing, beeing there, experimenting, framing, that i completeley loosened up and this way really relaxed.

so it was really worth getting up early.

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winter glow

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catching changing light qualities from the same point of view seems to become an obsession - going through my files i discovered at least five shots from this scenery (see this).

Beeing a backlight fan i couldn't resist this glow which the raw file recorded in all its beauty

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Schönram bog, deeply frozen

i love this picture, but as the author i am allowed to be biased. i was told it does not contain a center of interest, and in the classic sense, this is true.

what i love in this picture is the shere abundance of colors, forms and structures. mute, like holding it's breath, but there and so manifold that it's almost unbelievable. creation provides, gives, cares...

to make it very clear: i am no evangelical or jehova's witness denying evolution. it's just that i can see both sides now and then.

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late snow

nobody wanted it anymore, but now it came: snow down to 300m above sealevel. so the hazel in our garden had her flowers suddenly covered in snow. it will not last long, but it was sufficient to wet us thoroughly on our way to kindergarden.

photographically it brought a nice occasion to see colorful things in a more graphical way, with some falling snow on top - probably only visible in original size.

processed with lightzone.

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