What’s a bicycle? It’s simply some lines. I’m not attached to bicycles more than to any other kind of object, it’s just that they have so useful lines

I don’t ride bicycles. No more. I did it ten, fifteen years ago, and then I decided it’s too dangerous. Well, you can let traffic regulations penalize you, keep to bicycle lanes that were obviously always an afterthought, can fight pedestrians and dogs, unable to overtake slow riders on those narrow lanes, always in danger of getting killed by careless car drivers anyway.

Or else you play the real game, ride fast, ride on car lanes, are part of the traffic. That’s what I used to do. This way the bike was an incomparably fast means of transport, winning effortlessly against cars or public transport, at least in a city. The problem is, using car lanes is forbidden now, at least where there are bike lanes. Sounds reasonable, would be reasonable, but only if the bike lanes were actually constructed for fast riding, allowing for overtaking, and wouldn’t constantly change sides for no reason, every time with a low priority semaphore.

But even if I had my way, it would still be dangerous. I stopped using the bike when I had an accident, about ten years ago. It was entirely my fault. I had stopped at a semaphore, second behind a small red car. I knew I had to be fast to get over the next few crossings without having to stop, thus when the car in front of me accelerated quickly, so did I. While switching gears I viewed down to the chain for only a split-second. I had had problems with the chain not changing gears properly some weeks before. Bad habit, I know. Just at that moment the car suddenly stopped, as sudden as its acceleration had been. The driver wanted to turn to the right into a garage. Oh dear. I’m not sure if I had been able to stop if I had not looked down. Maybe yes, maybe no. I was slightly too near in any case. As it was, I had no chance. I managed to slow down almost to a halt, but only almost, and the result were two dents from my handle bar on the car’s back door and a damaged helmet of mine.

Nothing bad did happen, I felt a little dizzy, the bike was OK, and I drove on to work. The problem is another one:

I know I made some mistakes, and the car driver behaved strangely, first starting like for a race, and then only two seconds later braking hard, but the problem is, this can happen anytime again. If I want to make sure that nothing like that can ever happen again, I have to drive in a way that would make me crazy. It’s no fun. I hate it.

Or else I don’t ride bicycles at all. That’s what I did since. But then, photographing and riding bicycles, that’s probably pretty incompatible anyway

By the way, this image is from January 26, and tomorrow I’ll go working again. The snow is not at all inappropriate. Most of today it was snowing lightly.

The Song of the Day is “Simply” from Sara Hickman’s 1989 album “Equal Scary People”. It’s not a really good match for the image, in fact it’s a lousy match. It’s a love song, but as a love song it is so beautiful, that I just had to have it here today.

Sara Hickman is great. I have two of her albums, both quite old now. I had not followed her career since, but when I looked today, I found that she has made quite some albums since, almost one per year – and almost nothing is available as digital downloads, many not even as CD any more.

Interestingly enough I found a beautiful, private live performance of this song on YouTube. Imagine, you’re invited by friends for Thanksgiving, by chance Sara Hickman is there as well, and she even sings a few songs for you. How much luck is that?

I’m back in Vienna, but I’m sick and at home. I’ve slept most of the day, and although I made a few images out of the window this morning, I’ll spare you the results.

These two images were both taken last week on the same day as “1237 – I’m Gonna Lock My Heart“. The first image is actually a failure. I probably should go back and try it again. The problem is, that I took two exposures with that walking man in the frame, one too early and the other, this one, too late. I’d have liked to have him a little bit more to the left, the scene less condensed, and then I would not have been forced to crop so much in from the left.

I’ve also played with some alternative crops, for instance a square that comes in even more from the left and that also cuts part of the scribble from the right, and although it is in some ways better, it does not satisfy me in the end. So this is a failure, but it is the kind of failure that interests me.

The Image of the Day was the other option from the same day, and I’m actually glad that I could finally use it. I would have forgotten it, but I really like the various strong lines in different directions, and the feeling of depth that they create.

Other than that, I’ve learned something. You know, here in the heart of Europe we have a political and social system that is very different from that in the US, and we tend to see the Republicans as evil, as being against freedom. Part of that is a fact that we’ve talked about often with Ted Byrne, namely that we associate completely different things with “left” and “right”, but especially with the political right. For me a Nazi is right, for him a Nazi fights for a system with tight governmental control, thus in his view Nazis are essentially left. Well, whatever. I guess in the meantime we have learned to appreciate each other’s positions.

But that’s something I had to think about, when I saw the recent TEDx talk by Lawrence Lessig. I really urge you to view this talk for three reasons:

First, I believe it carries an important message. I simply like what he says and I believe it’s true.

Second, it is enlightening on a completely different level, because it shreds some of my deeply ingrained prejudices. Unfortunately it also proves that politics are a damn complicated field. Well, and

Third, it is just an incredibly clever presentation. This man can really talk and this man really knows how to make a point. I heard it with interest and pleasure, hope you like it too.

The Song of the Day is one of my recent Sinatra acquisitions, the Johnny Burke / Jimmy Van Heusen composition “It Could Happen To You“. Hear it on YouTube.

Giving titles. Even (or because of) my habit of using song titles, it can be really hard.

Sometimes it takes me as long as working on the image. Here I had three of them to choose, none of them a clear winner.

In the end I decided for the one that gave me a Song of the Day. Actually I would have rather taken this one: a damaged bicycle with an infinitely twisted wheel, but really, among 34000 songs, there is exactly not a single one called “Infinity”.

Or the other one. I would have expected “Obscure” (at least that’s what I read: “Obskur”) to be a word that occurs at least once in 34000 song titles. Nothing.

Of course “Blue” was the cheap way out. 1557 songs, most of them Blues

The Song of the Day is “Perfect Blue Buildings” from the 1993 Counting Crows album “August and Everything After”. Hear it on YouTube.

Funny guy, huh? Somehow reminds me of Achmed the Dead Terrorist, but instead he is mounted under the saddle of a bicycle that I found yesterday

The Song of the Day is “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” from the 1969 Grateful Dead album “Live / Dead”. YouTube has a version from a concert 20 years later. Not bad either

Some time ago, I can’t remember what the actual image was, Flo commented on one of my tilted images, and what she said actually surprised me.

Basically when you tilt an image, you can tilt it in two directions, left and right. This particular image is tilted to the right. Now just imagine it were the opposite, imagine this image tilted to the left. The bicycle would somehow dangle awkwardly, wouldn’t it? Well, Flo’s insight was, that images look much better when the subject does not dangle. Big deal? Surprisingly yes, at least for me. I don’t calculate tilts. I tilt by instinct, and most of all I tilt to get those damn lines into corners. Now, when you look at it, this particular image, like so many others, has roughly an L-shape (inverted L, but anyway). The subject, the bicycle, is cradled into this L, the L holds it, keeps it from dangling. As a result, when we look at the image, everything feels stable and safe.

Take the same image, tilt it the other way, and suddenly the L does not hold the bicycle any more, the result is an awkward feeling of vertigo. This is not always bad, sometimes this feeling of vertigo may be exactly what we want the viewer to feel, but in general it is much more intrusive than its opposite and takes over the whole image. Thus, when you don’t explicitly want that, avoid it. How shall we call that, “Flo’s Law of the Cozy Tilt”?

I have searched my music library for the name “Florence”, and what I came up with is “You’ve Got The Love“, another song from Florence + The Machine’s exceptional 2009 debut album “Lungs”. Even if it does not match the image, can it be bad to hear more of some of the best music of 2009? YouTube has it for you.

This is some sort of … transporter, I guess. I have never seen anyone use it, it just stands there all the time, or at least whenever I am there.

As to the Song of the Day, “Eric The Half A Bee” from “Monty Python Sings”, well, let me put it this way: You are certainly allowed to not own or even not know this album, you are only not allowed to keep it that way

Great stuff from before the world suffocated in political correctness. Almost unthinkable that Monty Python ever existed. Just think of “Sit On My Face“, “Never Be Rude To An Arab“, “I Like Chinese“, the “Penis Song” or “Every Sperm Is Sacred“. But then, mindless jerks are already busy to censor free thinking away. Enjoy it as long as you can.

Oh, and, today France has chosen to establish Internet censorship. Child porn, what else? Their law is even worse than the ill-fated German one, that was successfully fought by the German public last fall. No judges, no public, no evaluation phase for the law, just a secret list. I suppose Sarkozy’s buddies from the content mafia will be pleased.

But then, let’s “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” and hear the Song of the Day on YouTube.

I hope you don’t grow tired of these bicycles. I certainly don’t. In fact, they have really become something like a trademark for me, though really, it is not just love, no, they are also everywhere.

A bike is really half a person. Yes, some of them seem to take on a part of the personality of their rider (maybe this gal?), but overall they have the same kind of personality that comic characters have. They can stand in impossible poses, they lean there, frozen in an expression, and what I like most, they consist of simple lines.

Really, the simple lines are what always brings me back to them. A circle, seen from the side, becomes an ellipsis, and by choosing your point of view, you can set it in relation with other circles, either the second wheel of the same bike or the wheels of another. Or the triangle of the frame. There are so many lines that you can point into corners, use to divide the image, compose in every sense. But then, I don’t know if the bicycles bore you, in the end they would certainly bore me, lines or not, were it not for their personality.

The Song of the Day is “Half A Person” from the 1987 The Smiths album “The World Won’t Listen”. Great album, great singer, mightily influential band, hardly available in the US. But then, they are Brits

Hear it on YouTube.

These are the images for Monday. Obviously I’m back in Vienna. Regarding posting blog entries, being late turns into a bad habit again. Sorry for that

The bicycle image was taken in the morning. We had light snowfall, and due to the cold, the snow would have stayed, but this time it was not even a centimeter.

I like the postures of the two bikes, I like the tight crop with the car approaching, and normally this would have been it for today, but then, in the evening, while I crossed a road, passing a man, a tramway train in the background, out of a whim I decided to take a shot from the hip and … what can I say? I liked it. It is not focused, it is not sharp, it is garbage in a way, but I still like it.

What you see here is a square crop from the bottom and a conversion to B&W. The noise has been added in Photoshop

The Song of the Day is “Ordinary People” from Conner Reeves’ 1997 album “Earthbound”. Never heard of the guy? Well, at the time it came out, I found the album by chance while being in a MediaMarkt store. I can’t remember why I decided to hear it or if I just bought it without hearing, for whatever reason. Fact is, that this album is not only excellent, it’s also strong evidence for the theory that being the most talented person sometimes is not enough for a big career. Hear the song on YouTube, and while you’re there, why don’t you also hear into “Something Beautiful” or “My Father’s Son“?

Done? And now please tell me that guy’s not good

Oh yes, I’m really, really tired. No catching up for today. On the other hand, I had already thought I wouldn’t have an image for yesterday, and now that I see this bike, I think it has turned out pretty well.

I was more or less forced to go B&W, because this image was taken under the worst of lights, you know, these impossible sodium vapor lights that look orange even at a color temperature of 2000 K.

The Song of the Day? Well, I don’t know, something in the pose of this bike made me think that “Prizefighter” from the 2009 Eels album “Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire” would not be entirely wrong. YouTube has the video.

I’m still trying funny things. Well, in a way I always do, but normally I make my images by composing through the viewfinder.

Not so in this image. I would have had to lay down on the ground. Basically I held the camera very low, at an angle to about everything, pressed the shutter and hoped for the best. Of course this is the monkey method, and of course the results of such things are rather random, but then maybe not.

This was actually the first take, so I was really lucky, and if I have anything like a style, you will probably recognize it. It may be the monkey method, but after all, I was the monkey

The Song of the Day is “Low Rider’s Blues” by Blind Willie McTell. I have it on disc 43 of “The Ultimate Jazz Archive”, but if you insist, you can also get it on a single CD, for example “The Best of Blind Willie McTell”. Hear it on YouTube.