I’m still at home – and I can’t even begin to tell you how fed up I am. I have made no single image since when? Sunday?? But anyway, I’ll stay home tomorrow, and on Friday I’m back to work and then in the evening back to Carinthia.

Speaking of Carinthia, this is an image that I took more than a month ago on Mount Dobratsch. I didn’t use it, because I had more than enough images for “1210 – Solid Rock“, but today I am thankful for it. It’s also fitting in a way, because while the sun shines in Vienna, there was snowfall in Carinthia during the whole day, and it is predicted to go on until tomorrow. The weekend may see some sunshine as well. We’ll see. Let’s hope I’m fit for photography

This wooden sign is by the side of the road, almost at its end, at a height of about 1700 meters. I really liked the texture in the snow. What you see here is the result of a series of experiments, directed at conserving the highlight detail and the general feeling of depth, and at the same time showing a kind of blinding brightness. Thus I had to be careful: too much local contrast would have pushed the whole image into a medium gray, and that’s far from what I experienced while I was there. All in all I think the result is OK.

The Song of the Day is “Alone” from the 1996 Beautiful South album “Blue Is The Colour”. Hear it on YouTube. Not exactly related to the image, but a great song like almost all of Paul Heaton’s

This may seem like another “so-what” image, and in a certain way it is. Actually it is not a real image – meaning an image that I’m proud of – at all. It’s a memory, and to be precise, it’s a future memory.

This is of course the morning view from my study in Carinthia again. It’s not particularly interesting, just a morning, and during the last 17 months (so long have we been in Villach … so long), I have shown you many versions of this view, some of them maybe even good.

This is all going to fade away. Nothing will remain but a sweet memory.

See the red and white ribbons? They are all over the place, marking the outlines of furture buildings. So far they are nothing but a nuisance, making a lot of noise when the wind rushes in, but I suppose it’s only a matter of weeks until the bulldozers come.

It fills me with a certain nostalgia to know that this place will never again be what I have learned to love. But then: that’s life

The Song of the Day is “Sweet Memory” from the 2008 Melody Gardot debut album “Worrisome Heart”. See a live video on YouTube.

Here’s one more of yesterday’s images. I was too lazy to go out today. Sorry

This is an abandoned house not far from Klagenfurt, located in a wonderful spot, obviously belonging to an estate not far away, a solitary house, abandoned and closed, with an “Entrance forbidden” sign on the door, of use for no one.

The Song of the Day is the Beatles song “For No One“, sung by Anne Sofie von Otter on her collabration with Elvis Costello, the 2001 release “For the Stars”. Hear it on YouTube.

It’s Sunday evening by now. I have whiled the day away and now I am in a hurry. As usual

This images is from a short trip on Saturday afternoon. Saturday was warm and sunny, eating the snow away at enormous speed. The image is a composite of two exposures, one taken at f5.6, the other at f2.8.

The Song of the Day is “Sitting On A Barbed Wire Fence” by Bob Dylan. I have it on disc 2 of “The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased, 1961-1991″. Hear it on YouTube.

Another weekend is over, I’m on the train back to Vienna. Like on most Sundays I slept long, relaxed, and when I got out, it was already 4pm. I drove to a supermarket on the other side of Villach, located in a winter sports area, where shops are open even on Sunday afternoons, and when I returned and took a small detour through this village, the sun was almost gone.

This is again an HDR image, tonemapped with Photomatix Pro and then finished in Photoshop. This is actually the second version. The first was tonally OK, but much too garish. This is much more believable, I guess.

The Song of the Day is “Sunlight” from Pat Metheny’s 1992 album “Secret Story”. Hear it on YouTube.

Yesterday was actually a beautiful day, but I felt uninspired and tired. We drove around a little, I made some pictures, but nothing that I’d normally post.

So what? Instead of taking one from the archives, I decided to post one of these “been there, this is how it looks” images. Castle Rain near Klagenfurt in winter. That’s how it looks. Maybe it looks even exotic to some of you

The Song of the Day is “Instead” from the 2009 Madeleine Peyroux album “Bare Bones”. Here’s a live performance.

Today was a beautiful day, but for various reasons I couldn’t manage to get out photographing before 3pm, and it was clear that the sun was not going to last until sundown, that it would vanish in dense clouds very soon.

I know I didn’t have more than one chance, and I was already taking risk by trying a new road, one that I already have driven, but not with the intention to take photographs.

There were two reasons for it: When I set out, that was the direction that looked most promising, and the road would take me up to 1000 m above sea level, 500 m above Villach, to a height where probably all precipitation of the last two days would have been snow.

In the end I took two series of bracketed images, and one of them I processed as HDR. It was long before I reached the highest point of my route, but it was literally the last moment. Only minutes later the sun had gone, and it did never come out again today.

The Song of the Day is “This Moment” from the 1970 Incredible String Band album “I Looked Up”. See a live video on YouTube.

Photography has always been expected to say something about reality.

So, you want reality? I give you some reality. That’s how it looked here today. All day. Really

The Song of the Day is “Real Life Hits” from the 1981 Carla Bley album “Live!”. See a video on YouTube.

Behold! You look at one of the three images that I made yesterday, Friday. The day was supposed to bring snow, but instead it hung in limbo.

Imagine a day of snowfall, just without snow. Or try it this way: Imagine the moment just before snow begins to fall, only stretched out endlessly, filling a whole day.

The Song of the Day is “What Power Art Thou“, the song of the Cold genius from Henry Purcell’s “King Arthur”, made popular in 1981 by Klaus Nomi.

Looking it up on YouTube let me dicover some more interesting versions. How about this powerful rendition by Matteo, or maybe Harnoncourt’s production from the Salzburg Festival, hilarious (I was there, I’ve seen it and I have the DVD), but, judging from the comments at Amazon, obviously not so popular with the English crowd. Of course, for the purists I can always recommend John Eliot Gardiner. Enjoy.

It took me a time to figure out whether I have an image for Friday, or if I need one of these two for the next post. Turned out I have one, here’s both Thursday images in one post

I have already shown images of that place, some even from the same vantage point, it’s of course Mount Dobratsch again, the mountain that broke apart, because it couldn’t stand seeing people die, then in 1348, the year of the great plague.

I like both of these images. The choice is only because I had to choose. The one with the sun in the frame is an HDR again, again of the more subtle kind. The Image of the Day is of course from a single exposure.

I haven’t been up there for very long, and in fact when I reached the upper end of the street, 450 meters below the summit, the sky was already veiled.

And the rest of the day? Installing software, what else? That’s why I am in Carinthia after all

The Song of the Day is “Solid Rock” from the 1981 Dire Straits album “Making Movies”. The Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler, obviously their label tries to get all their music off YouTube (how stunningly clever!), but I have still found at least some live versions. Here’s one from 1992.