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.

Photozone.de has finally published a lab review of the Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC. It’s for the Canon version, but that should not make much of a difference. The review sparked off a thread in the Nikon forum of Photo.net, where the review was regarded as almost devastating. The original poster concluded with “If you value your photography, stay away from this lens!”

Well, regarding distortions at 17mm, yes, it distorts badly, and apart from the brick wall, this original shot, provided for you in all glory of its full size, is as bad as it may get. For the Image of the Day I have applied PTLens, but that could only remove part of the barrel distortion. I’ve removed some more with Photoshop’s Lens Distortion filter, cropped, and you see that what I’ve got is pretty perfectly rectangular. Just frame a little less accurate, leave room for correction. That’s for distortions.

The other thing is, that down in the Photo.net thread Eric Arnold tried to compromise:

essentially,it comes down to this: if you need corner sharpness but constant aperture isnt important, i.e. for landscapes, get the 16-85 VR.

if you need a fast constant aperture and want stabilization at the expense of losing some corner sharpness, get the 17-50 VC.

I think my answer is relevant, and I don’t want it to be buried in an off-site thread, so please allow me to quote it as well:

I think this is wrong. The reason to get the 16-85 VR can only be the extended range.

Yes, it is sharper in the corners at f3.5 than the Tamron at f2.8, so what? Would you take landscape images at f2.8 or f3.5? Most of the time I wouldn’t. And even if:

I’ve just tried the Tamron at f3.5, tried it with book shelfs (detail!), tried it with flash (it’s still night here), and I can see a subtle sharpness falloff, only in the extreme corners, and I can only see it because I look for it. Even at f3.5, you would have a hard time seeing it, and for the 16-85 VR this is still wide open.

No, I suppose with the 16-85 you would shoot normally at at least f5.6, and by that the Tamron is stellar across the range. We’re speaking of 50/1.8 sharpness here. And that’s only at 17mm. Think of 24mm: the 16-85 just begins at f4, from 35mm at f4.5, and by 50mm it is at f5. At none of these focal lengths and at starting aperture it is a match for the Tamron.

Now take it the other way: Imagine a situation where you do want to take a scenic image at f2.8, for instance because it is night. Let it be architecture, for instance in a city, or let it be within a cathedral. It’s quite a typical situation, and it’s quite typical for situations where you either have no tripod or may not be allowed to use it.

In such situations the shot is frequently repeatable, thus I may go down from my normal 1/15s (auto ISO lower speed limit) to 1/8s or even 1/4s. With VR I have a sharp image, it may take me two or three attempts though, especially standing without support and shooting portrait format. Even in low light I may get away with ISO 200.

With the 17-55/2.8 at twice the price I may be lucky to get the shot at 1/15s, but I suppose 1/30s will be more likely, especially in portrait format. We’re talking two to three stops, i.e. ISO 800-1600 here. Do you believe that the added corner sharpness of the 17-55/2.8 will still be there at these ISOs? And if were not talking extreme corners but center or off-center, for instance a typical “rule of thirds” composition? The Tamron will be much better than in the extreme corners. The Nikon may or may not still have a slight edge on the charts, but you would have a hard time seeing it, and, remember, that would be at the same ISO. But what with our fictual but not so unrealistic situation in the church or at night in the city? With an advantage of ISO 200 vs ISO 800-1600 across the frame and the main subject where main subjects typically are, don’t you believe that any theoretical sharpness advantage of the Nikon, even if it were there at that point in the frame, would be hopelessly buried in noise?

Now say you accept some added noise because you need depth of field. You go to f5.6. That’s two stops, we are at ISO 800 with the Tamron. We may need two or three attempts to hold the shot at 1/4s, but we would need the same with the Nikon at 1/15s or even 1/30s. Both lenses operate at maximum sharpness now. Under ideal light and in the lab, you may still be able to measure a slight sharpness advantage in the extreme corners for the Nikon. Our subject is not in the extreme corners though, and the light is low as it is. Where is the Nikon now? ISO 3200-6400, right? Forget about any theoretical advantage it may have. At that light it is severely hampered by sensor noise. ISO 800 vs ISO 3200-6400? This is an almost too easy win for the Tamron.

I may sound like being biased, I may even sound like being affiliated with Tamron, but that’s not the case. I just own this lens and have used it for three months in the darkest time of the year. Really, I wouldn’t so easily dismiss this lens

Here we are. The Image of the Day was taken at 1/15s and f2.8. The extreme corners of the original shot are about 10cm in front of the focal plane. They are mushy because they are clearly out of focus. If they were in focus, they might be still mushy but less mushy. That’s how bad it can get. Could be worse, huh?

And, given the example in the quote, had I taken my time, I could have gone down to 1/4s and ISO 200. With non-stabilized lenses you’d still hover at ISO 800 or maybe at ISO 1600, look at the noise and console yourself with the fact that it’s not the lens, it’s only the light that’s so bad

Oh yes, “Rahmen” means “frame” or “frames” in German. Thus the Song of the Day is “Framed” from The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s 1972 album “Framed”. See them in a fine live performance on YouTube.

Well, it’s been incredibly tedious these last few days to come up with anything usable at all – and it shows.

But then, what can I do? Sometimes it flows, sometimes it trickles, and these days it certainly trickles. It’s not even lack of inspiration, it’s more a lack of time, and then, the constantly grayish weather is not exactly helpful

The Song of the Day is “Behind Closed Doors” from Dolly Parton’s 1996 album “Treasures”. Hear it on YouTube.

Postmen in Austria use such yellow trolleys. You’ve already seen one of them in “655 – On A Lonely Avenue“. It’s one of the images that I put on Fine Art Photoblog.

Ahh, Fine Art Photoblog! I probably don’t advertise it often enough (in fact I almost never do), but in its almost two years it has developed into a nice reservoir of interesting photography. It’s become more quite lately, we all have our own blogs, jobs, lives, but I promise I’ll again contribute more often. In fact I did just yesterday. Why not head over and browse a little? You can even buy prints there

Uhh … yes, sorry for that What else? Nikon Rumors told it for weeks, in only some hours it will be official: the Nikon D3s is coming. What that is? Well, just a D3 with sensor cleaning, video (only 720p) and ISO 12800.

Wait a minute, didn’t the D3 already have ISO 25600??? Uhhh … yes, it did, but it’s highest nominal ISO was 6400. 25600 was Hi3, the highest “boost” value. Now with the D3s, ISO 12800 is nominal and the highest “boost” ISO value is … 102,400!!! Holy smoke

On the other hand, it’s not that much more. It’s just four stops better than my D300. On the other hand, four stops, wow! That’s pretty much! Imagine the difference between photographing at 1/4s and 1/30s! That’s normally the difference between to hold and not to hold. Or take 1/30s and 1/500s: that’s the difference between motion blur and freezing the action. Quite impressive.

Of course I won’t buy one. Can’t afford it. You would have to buy a damn lot of images over at Fine Art Photoblog to make that possible

I’ll tell you a secret: I’ll have a camera with that sensitivity, and I’ll tell you more: you will as well. We only won’t have it right now. We’ll have to wait maybe two years, maybe three, then we will have it in affordable cameras. It’s only that we will not value it, because at that time we will drool about a D4’s or D5’s ISO 409,600

The Song of the Day is “The Letter” from Joe Cocker’s unforgettable 1970 live album “Mad Dogs & Englishmen”. See a video on YouTube.

One more post for today, it is a short one, and that’s more than fitting. It is well past midnight now.

This is the door of one of those countless small shops that remain closed. Their size is not fitting for today’s commerce. Sometimes I think, that the American mind-set of tearing down the old and building the new, has its merits. After all, most of these shops will never find any commercial use, and at the same time they are unfit to house people. Here in the 7^th district, home of Vienna’s artisans, at least some of those shops have been converted into small galleries and other art outlets, but even a big city can accomodate only so many of them.

The Song of the Day is “The Closing Of The Doors” from Róisín Murphy’s 2005 album “Ruby Blue”, so far one of the more original achievements of this young century. Hear it on YouTube. And if you feel that sounds like Moloko, you’re right, it’s the very same voice

Do you know that feeling, that whatever you do, it comes out wrong? Today’s images (actually images of Thursday) are such a case.

We visited Kraków’s royal castle, the Wawel, saw the fantastic renaissance architecture of the castle’s big courtyard, saw the exhibitions, saw the cathedral, … and I made no single good image there.

OK, you are not allowed to take images inside castle or cathedral, but there was so much wonderful architecture there and … nothing. Not a single original image.

I am not sure what exactly causes this … block? No, it’s not a block, it’s maybe more that I feel these places have been photographed from every possible angle, there is not much chance to come up with anything original, at least not while on a short trip, certainly not within an hour or two. It’s a kind of resignation.

I don’t say that you can’t make good images there, but at least for me it would take more time and leisure than I can muster at such times. It would mean to go there, look, go away, sleep a night over it, come back, look again, and then I think I could find one or the other new and original view. Probably.

The other thing is, that on travels you are at the mercy of the weather and all kinds of external or self-imposed schedules. You make plans for visiting this and that, and when you get to the Wawel in brightest noon light and under a clear, blue sky, you have a pretty hard time to produce anything that does not look like the typical tourist picture. My image, the one of the cathedral, certainly does.

Being in such a place, you basically have the choice to hunt for moments when nobody stands between you and the monument (and the wider the lens, the less likely that will be), or to make images not about monuments, but about monuments and the people viewing these monuments. I mean, the way to go is pretty obvious: don’t avoid the people, use them. Make images of people and their interaction with monuments. Show them viewing, show them photographing.

Sometimes I try these things, but most often I do them when I am on home turf. Here, on vacation, more often than not I can’t help but act as a tourist myself. Plenty of room for improvement, I guess

All other images but one were taken in Kazimierz, the district formerly inhabited by a lively Jewish community, but of course that was before the Nazi barbarians made an end to it. Today you still feel a shadow of the past, and of course there are many Jewish tourists, but the Jewish infrastructure of today is only touristic.

The last image, this gentle landscape, is from outside of the city. We concluded the day with a short trip north, just to get some different views. I actually used one of my split neutral density filters to darken the sky, and although I managed to make the sky quite dramatic, I ended up cropping most of it away. Just like so often, a square made for better balance.

The Song of the Day is one more time “Past In Present” from Feist’s 2007 album “The Reminder”. Hear it on YouTube.

These are images of yesterday, our first day spent entirely in the center of Kraków. The Image of the Day features the cupola of the small church of sw. Wojciech (St. Adalbert), located in one corner of the vast central market square.

The chain looks gruesome, but it is no more than a simple chain, hanging in front on the Dominican Church. On the other hand, were the Dominicans not the order assigned with the duty of the Holy Inquisition? Maybe the chain is not so wrong after all.

The final image was taken when we sat in the patio of our hotel, drinking a glass of beer and enjoying the last rays of the sun.

For most of the images, and especially for the three shown here, I used the Sigma 28/1.8. A marvelous lens and clearly my current favorite as a “normal” lens.

I have made many, many more images, most of them much more characteristic of this city, but it’s the same old story: I tend to go into “documentation mode”.

Most images will help me remember the place. In fact, from many of my past journeys I remember almost nothing but the places where I have taken images, although those I remember well. Thus a yield of 3 out of 200 does not particularly worry me

The Song of the Day is “Thou Art Gone Up On High” from Handel’s “Messiah”. As always I recommend the 1990 recording conducted by Trevor Pinnock, though you can’t go wrong with John Eliot Gardiner or William Christie either. Hear it on YouTube.

I like those Topaz plugins. For this image I have used the original ISO 3200 image without noise reduction applied.

These old walls have so much texture, noise reduction would have made more harm than the noise itself. Instead I have emphasized the texture with “Interior Strong Detail”, a Topaz Detail preset, and thrown in some of Topaz Adjust’s “Spicify”. It does not look entirely natural anymore, but I suppose it gives quite a good feeling for the place.

The Song of the Day is “Steps Steps Down” by Barney Bigard. I have it on disc 32 of the “Ultimate Jazz Archive”, my trusty treasure chest of 168 CDs full of Jazz history. Hear it on YouTube.

It was all over the Blogosphere, you know that 10,000 hours rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, the rule that says that when you put 10,000 hours into something, you become a master at it.

Well, I guess I put at least two hours every day into taking photographs, processing them and blogging about it. Now figure: You’re listening to the words of a 20% photoblogging master! Isn’t that great

But really, when blogging, you eventually get used to any kind of jubilee. For instance I remember “50 – A Small Jubilee” and “100 – Lazy Afternoon“, oh my, how big those numbers seemed. And then “500 – The Half Of It, Dearie“. That was really respectable, and this is exactly how I felt. But then, there is nothing like a #1000. I don’t know why, but even a 10.000 will not feel that magic. In fact, I have waited for this moment for months, have thought about how it would feel and it feels … swell

A thousand images, that’s more than two and a half years. When I think about that time, I definitely see progress. It’s not that every image is a little bit better than its predecessor, it’s not even that all those images are good, fact is, many of them are lousy, but the pure effort to produce at least one single good image a day, whatever the result is, makes sure you make progress. And I did, I can see it.

It’s not that I have developed an obvious style though. I have even tried to resist that temptation, the temptation to search myself a niche and try to defend it. I don’t have to, I don’t do it for the money.

When you have followed this blog for a while, you have seen many, many different approaches to photography and digital image processing. You saw me use LAB color mode for months, you saw quite some HDR images, one of the recent fads was the use of amber gradient maps for B&W images, now the dernier cri is the use of Alien Skin Snap Art for post-processing. If you don’t like it, rest assured, it will go away like all the others did.

And still, those things don’t just vanish. They contribute to my experience. Actually that was one of my initial motivations to start blogging: to keep me working, to keep me motivated, to keep me experimenting, all while trying to slowly build up a body of work. And now, after 1000 images, it has long become a part of my life. I guess it would be hard to stop it, and I have certainly no intention to do so.

Can I recommend blogging and especially this kind of routine? Certainly, I can. It’s a chore, it eats your time like a hungry, hungry monster, but it sure is an experience that I won’t like to miss. It’s one of those things that force you to make progress, that send you on a journey into the unknown, it’s one of those things that – probably – may make you eventually know what it is that you want to do. I sure don’t know now, but – after all – I am still only a 20% master photoblogger

Well, enough of that, and now for something completely different: my SoFoBoMo book. Only today I learned of a blog entry that Amy Sakurai has written about my book. Mine was one of the three books that she had looked forward to in this year’s SoFoBoMo, and seemingly I did disappoint her. I don’t know exactly yet what her gripes are, and even if I knew, I could do nothing about it, because the book is done. I could change it, but I won’t. I have it printed on my shelf and that’s it.

Still, I guess I could share some thoughts about why this book is what it is. Amy mentioned the small size of the verticals. Well, the basic layout, normally one image per spread, with a lot of white space around the images, was dictated by two things:

First, I wanted to make sure that nothing essential gets cut away in the printed version. I had used InDesign templates that someone had made for Blurb book sizes, and though I basically trusted the source, I was anxious to come near the borders. Thus the big amount of white space. In the end it turned out that all my worries were mute, the dimensions of the template and the printed book matched perfectly, but how could I have been sure?

The second thing is, that this year I wanted to make a printed book. Having to choose between Blurb’s different book sizes, I chose what I like to hold in my hands. Yes, really, this size, 8″x10″ is a size of book that I have at home and that feels comfortable to hold, even for a longer time. See, I have another photobook with wonderful images by Magnum photographer Rene Burri. I absolutely adore his images, but … I can’t hold the book. It’s too darn big!

Same goes for a book by Henri Cartier Bresson. Wonderful book, incredible images, but I can’t hold it. My arms would immediately fall off, and because I can’t hold it, I don’t read it. Too bad, but that’s what it is.

OK, this explains the size and the format. Amy also mentioned “a subtle repetition of form, an unexpected sameness” of the images in my book. I’m not yet sure what exactly she means, I’ve asked and got no answer yet, but I guess it’s the repetitious use of horizontal compositions that consist of two halves, just like the title image. If so, well, that’s fully intentional. I strove for some visual coherence, a stylistic theme, that would hold the book together.

Actually this was a rather late decision. This kind of images was my first inspiration for the book, but while taking images, the focus changed to a more literal interpretation of the word “dreams”: Dreams of wealth, dreams of living with the luxury of balconies and roof terraces, material dreams if you will.

Those other images, those vertically split compositions, mostly of graffiti and stickers on sign posts, were introduced to contrast the material dreams. They represent the immaterial dreams of the underground of our urban society, and in the sequence of the book, they are meant as distanced, ironic comments. At least that’s what I think about it today.

While doing, I did not rationalize a concept for this book. In fact, this book was made wholly by instinct, and that’s another reason why I would not want to change it:

This book is the result and the document of a semi-conscious process, a process that I fully intended and that I found extremely pleasurable. It’s not that I refuse responsibility for it, to the contrary, but the process has finished and I would not like to change the documentar
y. Does that make any sense?

The Song of the Day, “A Thousand Beautiful Things” from Annie Lennox’ 2003 album “Bare”, was originally selected simply for the word “Thousand” in the title, but interestingly enough, its lyrics describe a conscious view on the world, that I find very familiar, a view that in a way grew in me through my photographing and blogging experience. YouTube has a live video.

Now that I think of it, Wednesday was not so bad. I had a bad hangover from the night before when I had met my friend Manfred. We had been in a Pizzeria, later in a bar in his hotel, and then I had the idea to go to my apartment, just “for a couple of songs”.

We haven’t done that in years and he predicted that we would play music till 3am. Impossible, as I would have to work and he was on his way to Innsbruck. No problem, I said. Just half an hour, three songs each. He conceded under that condition, and off we went to my place.

You know, it was just about time. When there are two people who love music and love to play music to each other, and when they have not done that in years, it’s inevitable.

He used his iPod, I played from my CD collection, one song an answer to the other, time and wine went by, and we merrily played the last song at about … 3am

“Urban Dreams“, my SoFoBoMo project this year, it feels really good. It’s what I did all those years, actually it’s what I did all my life.

I have no idea if I can convince anybody that there is a system or a method in this haphazard heap of images, but in a way they are a part of me, of the way that I see, of the way that I look.

You can’t see without looking, you know? I think for all kinds of visual art you need a certain openness, a certain way of looking at things, a way of looking without prejudice, a way of looking without immediately attaching agreed upon meaning. You have to look at the things, not at the symbols they have become in our mind.

This is not meant deprecatingly, there is nothing wrong with automatically attaching meaning, with categorizing, with sorting things onto our shelves before we even fully realize them, to the contrary. This is just what intelligence means, to be able to sort things out. This is the way we communicate. We do it by exchanging symbols. It’s the nature of language, the basis of knowledge.

It is only not a good way to be creative in an artistic sense. In order to do that, I have to step back, to strip the things of their normally pre-attached meanings, to not see them as the symbols they have become. I have to look at the raw materials. I have to put my hands in, I have to feel them running through my fingers, and only then can I put things together in a new way.

Readers of Mark “The Landscapist” Hobson’s blog may recognize the sentiment: it’s what Mark calls “plain seeing“. It shows in different ways, as “dense photography” in Mark’s work, a concept that I like to dabble in at times, and more often in my own work it’s about selection. Which ever way it turns up, it’s always about a very central question, namely what do we deem worthy of our attention?

Maybe this explains a little about today’s collection of images, if not you can always blame them to the influence of alcohol and wild music

Apropos music, when I looked up the word “busk”, I got “to make street music”, and that immediately triggered the association with Fanfare Cioc?rlia, a brass band from north-east Romania. I had the pleasure to see them last year, and after the official concert they simply concluded in the foyer, with all people dancing around them. It was magic, irresistible.

The Song of the Day is “Manea Cu Voca” from their 2000 album “Baro Biao: World Wide Wedding”. See a video on YouTube.

I have no idea what the lyrics mean, Romina over at “skinny dippin’ photography [a dream catcher society]” will certainly know. She’s from Bucharest, has a very nice photoblog, makes awesome photos, and I wish she would post much more often.