Kraków, Poland, just as promised. My Internet connection is great, the only problem is, that I forgot my computer mouse. Editing images with a touchpad is, well, interesting. I’ll get one tomorrow

We drove all day, everything went well, but we arrived when it was already dark. I was tired from the road and only went out for half an hour to make some images.

These bronze soldiers stand on the small square just in front of our hotel. I have no idea who they were. There is an inscription at the bottom of the monument, but of course it’s Polish. I’ll ask at the reception tomorrow.

The Song of the Day is “Celluloid Heroes” by The Kinks. I have it on disc two of “The Ultimate Collection”. See a live video on YouTube.

I read an article about jazz today, about the festival in Saalfelden, Austria, and about how jazz is completely accepted as art. You can’t provoke a scandal with jazz anymore. This made me think. Do we need scandals?

The history of the visual arts is a continuous progress towards ever more perfection, and it reached its high point during Renaissance. There was no way to get more realistic, no way to get more detailed, and from then on, it went the other way: towards abstraction. You see it begin in Titian’s colors, how he mixed red and green, you see it much stronger in Tintoretto, Rubens used a rougher brush with longer strokes, El Greco and the late Goya pointed up to our times, impressionism re-invented color, expressionism warped it, and with Kandinsky and Mondrian that second progression finally came to an end.

There was always a tendency to mix art and scandal, because scandal sells almost as good as sex, but the art of the 20^th century was especially characterized by the tendency to shock the viewer and that is very much due to the fact that art had to search for a new orientation. The gesamtkunstwerk was born.

I understand all that and I understand how necessary this was in many cases, but there is also the question of what becomes of a piece of art, when the performance is over, the shock has worn off. Is it still art? Does it keep its value? Can it persist in spite of being isolated from the original context?

This weekend I have got my copy of “The $12 Million Stuffed Shark” by Don Thompson. I have not read it yet and won’t do so during the next weeks, but I guess this book will answer some of my questions, at least from the point of view of economics.

For me the most important point is, that we live in a post-modern world. Of course this is old news, but it is essential to realize, that this gives us enormous freedom. The river has come to an end, there is no more need to swim with or against the current, there is no current any more, we are floating in an endless sea of possibilities. This is scary but liberating.

It is possible to take up pieces from older times, it is possible to combine, it is possible to simply do what you feel you need to do, regardless of trends and fashions. There is nothing to win by trying to swim with a current when there is no current at all. You can as well be you and be happy with it. In an age of ubiquitous and instantaneous communication you may not get rich, but you will find your audience.

The Image of the Day is one more bicycle for the book, and the frogs were hanging outside of a shop. A sad and a happy image, that’s it for today.

The Song of the Day is “Sad Song” from Lou Reed’s 1973 album “Berlin”. What a wonderful song. Hear it on YouTube.

Mark “The Landscapist” Hobson did it again. He wrote one of his usual rants against what he calls the “pretty-picture crowd”, and as so often, I mostly agree.

He argues with the two Japanese concepts of “hade” and “shibui“. Both mean a form of beauty, “jimi” being a third one, with shibui being roughly the ideal middle between flashy, gaudy hade and dull jimi.

From “The pursuit of comparative aesthetics” by Mazhar Hussain and Robert Wilkinson we learn that

Restraint is one of the ingredients in shibui. Shibui art objects are unobtrusive, unostentatious and modest with understatement as a characteristic style. An underlying notion is, that the less powerful object will probably be the more artistically effective.

For Mark, the full saturation mindset of the “pretty-picture crowd” is of course hade, and he insists that hade, while not intrinsically wrong, is only endurable against a backdrop of shibui. So far, so good, and I agree, but it may be worth looking deeper.

First it is worth to notice, that hade and shibui are not necessarily connected to certain levels of saturation. Mark oversimplifies. Vincent van Gogh’s pictures probably have more characteristics of shibui than of hade, but when you see them hanging on a wall, you are almost blinded by the saturated colors.

Furthermore we can’t reduce hade and shibui to purely aesthetic categories, they are as much defined as behavioral concepts, as lifestyles, which probably best explains the attributed relative values, and as I understand Mark’s attitude, his gripes seem to be more with behavior and intent than with measurable physical qualities like (over-)saturation.

I guess what we artistically pursue, hade or shibui, it all boils down to why we do it. It’s not even a matter of being a leader or a follower, we all are always both of it to a certain extent. No, it’s a matter of why we pursue art. Do we do it essentially for ourself, meaning: are we free, or do we do it to impress, meaning: are we dependent upon positive feedback, do we strive for admiration?

The more we depend on others, the more we will compromise, the more we will try to please, and pleasing in a Koyaanisqatsi world always and at first means getting seen at all, something that hade perfectly accomplishes.

But even if it is shibui that we pursue, we must ask ourselves why we do it. Is it for us or is it to impress, because there can also be vanity in modesty. Less obtrusive, but only to a degree, and it does not even cater to a different crowd, only to a smaller one

I think another aspect of the same thing is, that we should realize we have time, how much time we have, and that it is OK to take time. When I begin to express myself in any creative way, I have all my life to fool around, to try things, to change, both myself and how I work, and I have the freedom to allow myself to do that.

I don’t mean to pray isolation here, that would seem quite ridiculous for a blogger, but I do pray being a little more relaxed. It’s OK when I don’t get raving comments on every photo, and it’s OK when some of my blog posts are met with indifference or are simply ignored.

Relax. Whatever the crowd does: keep doing what you do if you like it and feel compelled to do so.

I also don’t mean to play down the value of feedback, positive or negative. Feedback is OK and it is important as a means to determine where we are in relation to others. It only does not nourish us. What nourishes us, what gives our efforts substance, what gives us freedom, is to stand deeply rooted in our own experience and our own judgment. Other people can help us find out where we are, but it is up to us to know where we want to go.

Having said all that, I notice that my latest images were far from being public successes on SmugMug. Still, they indicate a turn from the playful experiments with Snap Art to an exploration that centers more around content and ambivalence, and this is exactly what I chose as my current side-project. At the moment I like it and feel compelled to do so

The Song of the Day is “Seen And Not Seen” from the 1980 Talking Heads album “Remain in Light”. Hear it on YouTube.

Every once in a while there is a scandal about the appropriation of images. We had two lately, the affair about the original image that was used by Shepard Fairey for the famous Obama “HOPE” icon, and Richard Prince being sued, but of course this comes up every once in a while.

Now, the question really is, when is using art in arts simply appropriation and plagiarism, and when does it produce a work that stands for its own? Is this something to be avoided? And if so, is it just to play safe, or do you feel a deeper moral obligation? Or is art just another subject of art?

Well, I don’t know if Rembrandt had objected against my use of a poster for his exhibition, but I guess I would not object against finding one of my images in a Rembrandt painting

Both of today’s images were shot with my new Nikon AF-S 35/1.8G. This is a fine lens and I may write more of a review-type post this weekend, but to wrap it up in one statement I might say: If you are a Nikon DX format shooter, get this lens!

Both of today’s images? Well, yes, the Rembrandt poster with the traffic in the background, and the image of the trees that I have overlaid

The Song of the Day is “This Sad Burlesque” from the 1993 Elvis Costello / Brodsky Quartet collaboration “The Juliet Letters”. I have no more samples than what Amazon provides (click the ad), but YouTube has a live performance of another piece from the album. This is one classic album not to be missed. Highly recommended!

Hi everybody. I’m sitting on the train right now, have some images of yesterday processed and already uploaded, an Image of the Day selected, a title found, and only some text to write. Here we go:

Snow in a city, oh my, what a mess this is. Let’s talk about this image first. Like all the others it has been shot with the Sigma 20/1.8, my favorite lens at the moment. Basically what I saw and what caused me take the image, were two signposts, none of them vertical, leaning in different directions. I’ve accented this by pointing the lens down, and with a wide-angle, this strongly distorts the angles. Of course the size difference between the two posts is exaggerated as well, but there were enough other oblique lines to make up for it.


The second image is much more interesting and at the same time slightly borderline. I don’t know how you think about it, but I believe it is a stunning image. The only problem is, it is not wholly mine. Below you see the original poster.

The 20/1.8 focuses very near, practically to within an inch of the front element. That’s what I have used here, and I have used the curvature of the advertising pillar to create the illusion of a real face. Additionally the distortion of the wide-angle has added something like a smirk that clearly is not in the original image.

Actually I like this image so much, that I would certainly have made it the Image of the Day, if there had not been these nagging questions.

I definitely had the right to make the image, no doubt about it. I suppose I could even sell it, because although it is obviously derived, there is a substantial artistic contribution by me. I really use this image as a subject, just like I do with other things on the street, architecture, people, whatever. It’s simply one element that I use in a composition of mine. Still …

I’m very interested in the legal situation in different countries. But even more so, I am interested in your view of the, well, let’s call it moral situation. If this were your image, would you call it Your image? Is this appropriation? What do you think?

The last image of yesterday was shot on the playground that we saw the last time in “822 – Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself“.

The Song of the Day, “Ragged & Dirty“, is an old blues that Bob Dylan performed on his 1993 album “World Gone Wrong”. This is from an interesting period when on stage he performed his own songs, but on two albums of that time he played other people’s blues music. And very well he did

YouTube has a different version. Admittedly it’s not Dylan, but it’s actually quite good and not far away stylistically.

Funny. Now that I think of it, I have said no word about the Image of the Day. Uhhh … well … it’s a … a cart. Yeah, really

I don’t have anything decent of yesterday, only some shots that I made shortly after midnight, when we had finished hanging the images for the show that begins this evening. After 18 hours of framing, driving from home to Villach, back home and with the images again to Villach, after all the hassle of trying to make sense of different images, matte colors, room colors and sizes, I was so tired that, finally at home, I didn’t even manage to write this. Ted, I know how you felt

This is the room that has the most images, some on the wall you see, some along the windows. The furniture will be removed until the evening. The other rooms are smaller and on one wall we will project a slideshow of other images that are not part of the show. The show begins at 7:30pm and I have no idea when I’ll come home. I’ll try to provide better images from the actual event

The Song of the Day is “Fullhouse” from Kate Bush’s 1978 album “Lionheart“. Here a sound sample on Amazon.de.

Let’s play a game, shall we?

Before you read any further: please take some time to look at this image. Try to come to a conclusion about what it means to you, how it makes you feel, and finally whether you like it or not.

Ready?

NOW.

Done? OK. Now, when you think of your own images: do you take them or do you make them?

Most of mine are made, and this doubly so. When I left work in Vienna and headed for the train, I was lucky, it just did not rain, but as it had poured down only minutes before, the camera was safely packed away anyway. Finally on railway station territory, down in the tunnel below the platforms, the tunnel where I had shot He’s Right But He Can’t Spell and When Lights Are Low, I found myself without an image again. This is pretty much the last chance to photograph, next comes the train, and there I wanted to already post-process and write the text.

I took the camera out and began shooting along the tiled walls, using the Nikon 18-200 at 200mm and insanely low shutter speeds. The image that I finally used, was shot at f8 and 1/4s. Using a tripod, I could certainly have achieved much more sharpness, but as I planned most of the image widely out of focus, the small strip of near sharpness absolutely suffices. This is not about sharpness.

Actually, while shooting, I had no idea what this would be about at all. I just wanted to have some material to work on later. Had it proved unworkable, I would have thrown the images away and shot something else upon arrival in Carinthia.

In this case it was near. I had a bunch of images, some straight, some with an angle, some with the focus in front, some at the back, but they all were more or less uniformly red with a bit black and white. There was no depth and no flow.

Then I remembered what I had done to an image of rotten tomatoes some years before. I had applied a radical change in hue, making reds blue, and with a mask I had restricted the change to part of the image. Having four hours on the train before me, without much chance to get better material, I decided to try it. I shifted the image to blue, applied a soft, curved mask restricting the change mostly to the background, darkened the blue part, shifted part of the blue further into cyan, lightened the cyan spot slightly, producing a glow, and finally used a vignetting layer. At least that’s what was important, the rest were cosmetics. You see, this image was entirely made. Not often do I go that far, but if need be, I have no inhibition either.

Let’s get over to part two of our game. Think again: now that you know what I have done, do you think different of this image? Have your feelings about it changed? Is it less art now? Or more? And if so, why? Do you feel that this is not photography any more? Do you feel manipulated? And if so, why do you think that photographs ever don’t manipulate?

Have you ever felt that hotel rooms did not live up to the images in the catalog? That the swimming pool was much smaller? You were cheated by the wide-angle lens. Does this make the wide-angle an illegitimate lens? And if not so, why not?

If it is not the means of production, is it then the time of using them? Is the wide-angle OK because I use it in the instant of taking the image? Are the color shifts not OK because I do it later, in post-processing? If so, why does it make a difference, when both results in you being manipulated? And what about the fact that you only know about what I’ve done, because I have chosen to be completely open about it? If I didn’t have done so, would not knowing have been better? After all, this image is nothing that couldn’t have been taken in camera, assuming the right light.

I am in a very fortunate position here. I say that this is my art and that is the way it is made. I don’t claim it to be entirely photographic or belonging to a certain school or into a certain tradition. It is only an expression of what I dreamed up in an hour on the train, when I had a bunch of boring images and tried to look through them, into a world of mystery and depth. Can you attack me on that ground? And if so, how? Show me. I won’t move.

The Song of the Day is “Until The Real Thing Comes Along” from Mary Coughlan’s 2000 album “Mary Coughlan Sings Billie Holiday“.

Austria is a catholic land and today we had a public holiday. I used it for a trip to Burgenland, where in the quarry of Sankt Margarethen, one of the biggest and oldest in Europe, every summer an opera festival takes place. This year they show Verdi’s “Nabucco“, yesterday evening I saw it, and I was utterly impressed. It’s a fantastic production and more than worth seeing.

But that’s not the only thing to see in Sankt Margarethen. The quarry is used by sculptors and their works are liberally scattered all over the place. This is one of those sculptures on a hill a little east of the quarry and overlooking Burgenland’s big lake Neusiedler See.

Nick Cave has given us four Songs of the Day so far, and today we have another one: “Rock Of Gibraltar“, a love song with a twist, from his 2003 album “Nocturama“.

We have been here. This is the church of Maria Saal, and you’ve seen it in “29 – At the Church“.

This time we were there for a concert. Again the Trigonale festival, and today The Hilliard Ensemble sang Guillaume De Machaut’s “Messe de Notre Dame“, one of the best known masterpieces of the 14^th century Ars Nova, a music style that readily used the new possibilities of musical notation. For the first time it was possible to write down rhythm. At the same time this is the earliest surviving example of a full mass where we know the composer.

Hearing Ars Nova may be an interesting experience for the uninitiated, because this is not about musical harmony. It’s serial music and similar techniques can be found 600 years later in our Minimal Music, e.g. in the works of Steve Reich and Terry Riley.

As this mass is too short to fill a whole concert evening, they interspersed the parts with motets also by Machaut. For sound samples see here, but neither the samples of the mass nor those of the motets can give a real impression of this music. 14^th century composers simply did not yet see the need to show off within the first 30 seconds

Thank Goodness, in contrast to the 1993 record that I’ve linked to, they have changed their Latin from French style to German/English style. I really can’t stand French style Latin. It always sounds like a bad parody on homosexuals.

You expected a Song of the Day? Well, take any track of these two CDs, and why not the Gloria?

Opatija, Abbazia, the Croatian and the Italian name both mean “abbey”, and an abbey there was, before this became the most glamorous sea bath of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The structure in the background, the Juraj Šporer pavilion, was originally a café and now serves as an art pavilion.

On Saturday I’ve been there, only three hours from home but indeed for the first time in my life. I can tell you, communism is gone as if it never had been there, and it’s glamorous again.

Opatija is a paradise for photographers. Of course this image was shot with the Sigma 10-20 at 10mm, f11, 1/60s, with a polarizer.

“To Me You Are A Work Of Art” by Morrissey is the Song of the Day. “Ringleader Of The Tormentors” may not be his best solo album, but this song is undeniably great. Hmm … Morrissey … you either love or hate him. Guess on which side I am