I didn’t make any images on Saturday. This is an image of today, and another one of today will follow in the next post.

Yesterday I spent most of my time at the computer, creating a Windows XP virtual machine with one of my old XP licenses. A virtual machine (I use Sun’s VirtualBox) is a convenient thing to have. You can use it to execute programs of dubious origin, you can use it to safely surf, and whenever you have the feeling that the machine is compromised, infected by a virus or a trojan horse, you simply wipe it and restore it from an export.

I wanted to do that for a long time, now finally I have, but it is incredible how long it takes to install Windows. OK, I started with a pre-SP2 installation medium, installed SP2 from CD, and then SP3 and all patches up to now via Windows Update. And of course Windows always wants to chat with you in between. Talk of tedious.

In the end I only managed to drive to the lake, swim a little, and then the big rain came. It only lasted for a few hours, but the amount of rain was impressive

This image was taken on a short trip in the very morning. Obviously it’s a crop, not a stitched panorama

The Song of the Day is “Valley Of The Birds” from the much underrated 1997 Stranglers album “Written In Red”. See them live on YouTube.

Oh dear! This habit of using song titles, it’s killing me! I’ve just whiled four hours away because of all that associations that connect me with this song.

But first things first: Here’s another image from the gardens of castle Miramare. I simply forgot to use it two days ago.

Of all lenses that you could have on, while you encounter a seagull, sitting on a wall, of all those lenses, a wide-angle, even if moderate, is one of the most awkward. Imagine me with the Nikon 24/2.8, trying to silently approach this bird, and just as I get too near, just as it takes of, I manage to release the shutter. Well, it could have been worse: only minutes later I changed back to the Tokina 11-16

Actually I like the image. The tips of the wings already show some motion blur, but the moment is just right. With the Nikon 70-300 this could have been a really great image. But then, if I had tried to change lense, I most probably would have ended up with no image at all.

The Image of the Day shows part of the window of a long-since closed shop. The yellow frame and the blue paper attracted me, and it was only during post-processing, that I recognized the text. “Revolution”, “Love”, the guitars, that immediately triggered memories, and while my first impulse was “Revolution #9″ by John Lennon, I finally settled with Marc Bolan and “Children Of The Revolution“.

And then it happened. I searched for a video, found the classic performance with Elton John on piano and Ringo Starr on drums, another video with the album version, and then I began to follow links.

I couldn’t stop for almost four hours, and the trip took me all that impossible way from Marc Bolan via British glam rock band Sweet (my most favorite band when I was 10), to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Tom Waits.

Really, I love YouTube and the influence that this website has on our culture. It’s really a great place to find things, that with traditional distribution models would be impossible to come by. I’d say, from time to time, just do yourself the favor and listen to some music from your childhood. You deserve it.

Answering a comment to “931 – It Shouldn’t Happen To A Dream“, I promised to shed light on what I mean with my SoFoBoMo project “Urban Dreams“, i.e. what qualifies as an “Urban Dream” and what not.

April (project) and Ove (project) suggested that my rural landscapes did not completely miss the topic, because for us city dwellers, so may of our dreams revolve around the countryside.

That’s correct, and obviously one could build a project around this urban/rural juxtaposition, it is only that I won’t do that. It is not what I dream of. But if it’s not that, what is it then?

Frankly, I don’t know. At the moment I just work. This is the entry for Monday, May 4, after two far misses in Ljubljana and Salzburg, I have just started as I had originally planned, i.e. on my first day back to Vienna.

While I am writing this, it’s pre-dawn Wednesday, I am two days in, I have one or two more likely candidates from the first day, and the second day was equally rich. Thus I am confident.

What I do is very similar to what I normally do. I have taken a single lens, in this case the Nikon 70-300 VR, set the camera to Auto-ISO with a lowest shutter speed of 1/200s and maximum ISO of 3200, and such equipped I photograph without much worrying about quality.

Some of the images would have profited from lower ISOs, for instance the Image of the Day (which may also end up as the title image) was shot as ISO 1400, the flowers at ISO 2000, but that all does not matter. For all the images of today I have used DxO Optics Pro as a RAW converter, and it’s conversion quality is definitely good enough for the purpose.

The big advantage is, that I can work really quick. Some images will end up noisier than necessary, but I don’t have to care about camera shake. Sure, I have VR, but at an effective focal length of 450mm, even that is not enough to guarantee good results at, say, 1/100s. The other effect is, that at 1/200s I don’t have to worry about motion blur.

I may end up with another lens when the weather deteriorates (as forecast for today), but so far it was sunny and normally there was enough light to allow me this luxury.

As to the images themselves, well, I already see some possible threads emerging. Compositionally, the Image of the Day and luxus share the position of the main subject, the flower and luxus share a color but are on the other hand a juxtaposition of nature vs construct, romantic dream vs materialist greed, and the last two images juxtapose violence and peace.

It will go on like this for maybe two working weeks, i.e. about ten days of shooting in Vienna. I hope for an average of at least five images (which is perfectly possible) and that would bring me in safe territory. Should I have a problem getting enough images, I can always take a day off.

Well, that’s the plan. Let’s see how it works out.

The Song of the Day is “Dreams” from the 1993 Cranberries album “Everybody Else is Doing It So Why Can’t We?”. See a fantastic live performance from Paris 1999 on YouTube and make sure that HQ (high quality) is on. Enjoy!

April may be the cruellest month, but is it really necessary that every song about April is about rain?

Yes, I know, now that winter is over, we want our summer and we want it instantly, but, remember, it’s a dangerous thing to wish for the time to pass quickly

But really, while searching for a song, I noticed that rain seems to be the governing theme. Deep Purple’s masterpiece “April” is about gray skies that should be blue, and the song that I finally decided to use, “April After All” from the Anne Sofie von Otter / Elvis Costello collaboration “For The Stars”, tries to comfort us with the vision of a passing April leading into May and June.

It’s still a beautiful song. Hear for yourself on YouTube.

Anyway. This April definitely starts out fine. My firefighter work on that project is over, work gets enjoyable again, it’s warm and sunny, and the days are long again. Today I even managed to squeeze in a short deviation to the back waters of river Danube. What can I say? It was a pleasure

Out of a whim I decided to use the Nikon 24/2.8, and all color images were made using a polarizer. Makes a big difference in the Image of the Day and an even bigger difference with the swan.

The Image of the Day should really be this one, at least it is the only one that rises above the level of vacation snaps, but, you know, I really wanted to show off some different colors, some change of mood. Hope you enjoy it.

What’s your view of April? Actually, now that I think of it, this is incredibly dependent on location. On the southern hemisphere, April corresponds to our October, near the equator it may make not much difference (does it?) and in some of the hotter countries on the northern hemisphere it may be the most pleasurable time of the year. But, what do I know? Tell me about it: What does April mean for you?

I didn’t shoot any image yesterday. I guess this was the third time this year

This image is actually another remains from my expedition into the heart of Villach, and it was shot only 50 meters downstream from here.

I already had the image processed but did not post it, because I was not entirely satisfied. Last night I touched it again and … now I am.

The Song of the Day is Joe Zawinul’s “Birdland”, interpreted by Art of Brass Vienna on their 1999 album “Miles, Monk & More“.

After two weeks of having the Nikon D300, it is time again to spend some words on this camera. You know, every new gadget is interesting and it takes some time to get used to it, but two weeks, that’s enough for more than an impression.

Now once again: Was it worth it? My spontaneous answer on the first day was “yes”, and it won’t really surprise you that I stick to it. The D200 already was a camera with a lot of professional features, and the D300 beats it in almost every respect. Its autofocus is much better, especially in darkness, its image quality is higher, the automatic features just work and get it right more often, the fabulous monitor and the 100% viewfinder are a blessing. This is an almost perfect tool. It has its limitations as any tool, but when you know them, there are hardly any surprises.

I have not used all of the functions. I have tried Live View once, but witout looking into the manual (400 pages, I have not read it) it seemed confusing. I may be wrong, and as I don’t need it, I can hardly complain. Other than that, everything was just as on the D200. Some new arrangements in the menus, some good, some bad, but after a day or two you get used to it and have forgotten that it was ever different. In any case there are no major annoyances. For anyone coming from the D200, it is simply the same tool, only of higher quality.

The software situation is not perfect, but I have everything I need. At the moment Nikon bundles Capture NX, although sadly it has become very slow. I suppose it is something with the way the software handles picture styles, in any case Capture NX 1.3 is much slower than 1.2 was. For anyone not having a D300 or a D3, I would strongly suggest skipping 1.3 and waiting for Nikon to speed it up again.

Photoshop CS3 handles the D300 perfectly, and as Camera RAW is also a part of Photoshop Elements, I suppose it will work nicely as well. If you still have not upgraded from CS2, now is the time. Adobe plays nasty and won’t support new cameras in CS2.

As regards image databases, I use IMatch, and although it crashed upon indexing a directory with D300 files, it took 24 hours until Mario Westphal supplied a workaround, and since then I had not a single problem. Speak of excellent service!

PTLens is about lenses, not cameras and therefore does not care, Photomatix Pro 2.5.3 does not crash but produces garbage when I open NEF files, but normally I use it on bracketed JPEGs, therefore I don’t really care, and although I have no D300 profiles for Noise Ninja, I normally let it auto-profile the image anyway.

This image was made yesterday in the early afternoon. I had seen the first sun in a week, and I was glad. I didn’t make any particularly interesting images, so this funny bird may suffice. The JPEG out of the camera would have been OK, but I wanted to extract as much detail as possible. You’ll hardly be able to see it at this size, but there was quite some detail left to be squeezed out. I am especially fond of the texture in the feathers.

Nikon 18-200 at 200mm, f5.6 and 1/400s at ISO 200. Post-processing in Photoshop.

The Song of the Day is the “Funnybird Song” from the 1973 Carla Bley album “Tropic Appetites“, her second cooperation with Paul Haines after “Escalator over the Hill“.

I am not quitting. How could I? It’s simply that this image has something of going home. This is the combination of two exposures, one for the swans, one for the glow of the sky, minus two ducks that happened to be in awkward places.

I shot this on Klagenfurt’s promenade at the eastern shore of Wörthersee. It’s a nice place for sundown shots with reflections in the water, although it severely lacks foreground interest.

The Story of the Day is from the New York Times, reporting that emotions go high in Portugal about tomorrows referendum concerning abortion. It is very interesting and healthy to see what point of view the Roman Catholic Church takes in countries where they let them.