1400 - Cut My Hair

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Aug 152010

This is Tonto, our poor little cat. When we went to Villach, we had to leave him behind. Well, regardless of how much you love a cat, you can’t take him from a house with garden and a forest behind, to an apartment in a city. Not after 13 years.

Well, he’s 15 years now, and a month ago his hair was so matted, that he had been given a close shave. Even after a month he still looks much like a poodle. We were there because we had to bring him to the doctor for a vaccination refreshment.

The Song of the Day is “Cut My Hair” by The Who and from the soundtrack to Quadrophenia. YouTube has it.

Posted by andreas at 5:51 pm Tagged with: , , , ,

1399 - Train Fare Home Blues

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Aug 152010

Here’s a Friday image. Friday 13th it was, but nothing bad has happened :)

I was more concerned with programming than with photography, it shows, but I can’t help it. It’s just the way it is. Still, it’s better than Saturday and Sunday, because I have no image for them at all :D

The Song of the Day is “Train Fare Home” by Muddy Waters. It’s on many collections, “His Best 1947 To 1956″ is one of them, and YouTube has the song as well.

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1398 - Scenes From An Italian Restaurant II

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Aug 152010

Without necessity but nevertheless: again I’m hopelessly behind with this blog. This is the image for Thursday, taken in the morning.

The Song of the Day is “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” from Billy Joel’s 1977 album “The Stranger”. Hear it on YouTube. I have used this song (but not the image title) once two years ago, thus the numeral.

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1378 - You Gotta Move

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Jul 232010

I’m still on the train, it’s still late Friday afternoon, I have just crossed the border to Carinthia. It’s raining, but towards Villach the sky is already blue again. Still, we seem to get some cooler weather now. In a way it’s welcome, but then, I love summer and I know I will hate seeing it end :)

Wow, it’s beautiful outside. You know how that looks, with dark clouds above you and the sun almost coming out near the horizon, with a very bright fringe on the clouds and a warm, indirect light coming from the west. Tolkienesque :)

This is really a snapshot. I saw the biker coming from the corner of my eye, I raised the camera, all within a split-second, no time to compose, no time to change any settings, but actually I like the result, or let’s say, for a Friday it’s OK.

The Song of the Day is “You Gotta Move” from the 1971 Rolling Stones album “Sticky Fingers”. Hear it on YouTube.

Oh, and the light is totally unreal outside. No chance to take images though :D

Posted by andreas at 8:29 pm Tagged with: , , , , , ,

1377 - Door Peep

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Jul 232010

I’m on the train to Carinthia, it’s Friday afternoon, these are the images for yesterday, and these are also the images that I meant, when I commented on Markus Spring’s blog. For his NotSoFoBoMo book (just as I, he failed the deadline this year), he had taken images in Budapest, Hungary, and a good part of them were doors.

I found it really funny when I saw his book on a day, when coincidentally I myself had photographed almost nothing but doors.

Here are only two of my images. I had many more of the same, nothing really outstanding, so I spare you the rest. Nevertheless, it made me chuckle :)

The Song of the Day is “Door Peep” from Sinéad O’Connor’s 2005 reggae music cover album “Throw Down Your Arms”. I have used it ages ago in “392 – Door Peep Shall Not Enter“, here it is one more time, this time with a music sample on YouTube.

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1376 - Peace Of Mind

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Jul 232010

This image calms me, and – honestly – I need it. I had a rather hard two days. I’m teaching the technology that I wrote my recent programming tutorial about, Eclipse / GlassFish / Java EE 6, and whenever I do that, teaching something that I’ve already written about, I find that the the two kinds of knowledge transfer require slightly different orders of presentation, especially with small groups and an arrangement, where you accept questions at any time. Not that anything went wrong, to the contrary, but it is very stressful, accordingly I am behind with my posts as well.

This is the post for Wednesday, actually made that day, and this is not what I wrote about in a comment to Markus Spring’s “Not a SoFoBoMo” success post. Here we have a house entrance as well, but in that case it was the only one that day. The multiply entrances post will be the next one.

As I said, I find this image calming. I have no idea who the guy with the flute is, there is a woman in the same style over the next door. Greek or Roman mythology I suppose, and I am notoriously bad at both.

Anyway. What this image induces in me is some “Piece Of Mind“, and that is also the Song of the Day. You hear it on B. B. King’s 2000 album “Makin’ Love Is Good For You” (which is certainly true), or else in a wonderful live performance on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 5:04 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

1375 - Our Favourite Shop

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Jul 222010

Tuesday. For months now I have watched the new Sigmas, especially the new 17-50/2.8 OS HSM, and Tuesday afternoon it suddenly became available. Just as I had done with the Sigma 8-16, I stopped working, went to the bank, fetched the 666€ (no joke, the number of the Beast!), and then … started thinking.

I didn’t buy it. Not yet. I may, when it turns out that the Tamron, currently sent in for repair, turns unreliable again. But now? Sure, from the review at Photozone.de (for the Canon version) it looks as if it were even better than the Tamron, but then, when the Tammy works at all, it is absolutely excellent. So what?

Btw, I am unfair. The Tamron has been used in 189 posts since November, a second to only the Nikon 18-200 VR with 220 in almost four years. Thus, not only has the Tamron brought me through a long and dark winter like no lens before, it also has been by far my most used lens since I bought it.

Of the 12791 exposures that I made between November 6, when I bought it, and July 12, when I last used it, I’d estimate at least 8000 were made with the Tamron 17-50/2.8. I have lenses that are in perfect shape but have been use by far less. Who knows?

These images were made with the Sigma 50/1.4, a lens that I have not used in a long time and that is just a pleasure to use. Not only does the focal length feel so natural, but it’s the magic of its creamy bokeh that I like so much. Look at the bicycle or the “balls of steel”: absolutely sharp where necessary, dreamy creaminess in the background. As I said, I may come back to the Sigma 17-50/2.8, but at the moment it is probably time to use some of the lenses that I already have :)

The Song of the Day is “Our Favourite Shop” from the 1985 album Style Council album of the same name. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 7:26 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1281 - Cars Hiss By My Window

Sigma 50/1.4 1 Response »
Apr 162010

The Sigma is a cream machine. I say it all the time: this is the best 50/1.4 you can get for Nikon cameras. Small wonder, it’s big, heavy and more expensive than the Nikon 50/1.4G.

This is an image, straight from the camera, taken this morning in one of those few old-fashioned tramway trains on Vienna’s line #5. Normally you can’t open windows, here you still can :)

The Song of the Day is “Cars Hiss By My Window” (quite literally :) ) from the 1971 Doors classic “L.A. Woman”. YouTube has it.

Posted by andreas at 5:18 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

1280 - To Be Caught In The Rain

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Apr 162010

The rain lasted all through Thursday. I had decided that the Sigma 70/2.8 was not the ideal lens for that gloom, thus I switched to the Sigma 50/1.4.

Of course 50 is not so much different from 70, I use this lens at a minimum of 1/60s, but 1.4 makes a big difference. Two full stops. You only have to use it wide open, or else you won’t profit at all.

In the end I took my images at daylight, and that gave me the option to use f4, a more suitable choice, because I needed at least some depth of field.

The Song of the Day is “Isn’t This A Lovely Day (To Be Caught In The Rain)“, written by Irving Berlin. I have the version on Ella Fitzgerald’s “Irving Berlin Songbook”, but looking on YouTube I only found another one by Ella and Louis. Well, “only” is probably a little bit too harsh :)

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1105 - Night Ride Home

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Oct 222009

This morning I made some images that could probably have been usable, but then, in the afternoon, on my way back home, in the middle of a slight drizzle, I got pleasantly surprised by an enormous sunset.

It didn’t last longer than maybe 5 minutes, and all the while I made image after image, constantly hampered by the traffic. Finally I decided on this one, embracing the traffic instead of trying to avoid it.

Btw, you may have found my blog to be unreachable today and part of yesterday, and that’s because it was every once in a while. JustHost, my hosting company, had some trouble with my machine. It must have affected quite a lot of people, at least that’s what my stats say. I’m sorry for that, I hope it’s a singular event. If not, well, I’m really not inclined to pay more for something that I’ve bought anyway and that should simply work. But let’s see how it goes on.

It’s far from being the fourth of July, but the Song of the Day still is “Night Ride Home” from Joni Mitchell’s 1991 album of the same name. Great album, great song, hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 11:48 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,
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