Sorry for the irregular posting intervals. At the moment I am pondering a major overhaul of this blog, and most of my time goes into reading web reviews of web hosting services, comparing hosting plans, etc.
Anyway. Yesterday was supposed to be a mostly rainy day and it actually turned out to be not. There were high clouds towering on all horizons, but most of the day it was warm and sunny in central Carinthia. I was even swimming.
The Song of the Day is “Under A Stormy Sky” from Daniel Lanois’ first album, the 1989 release “Acadie”.
To my great surprise YouTube has multiple videos, for instance a live performance, another that’s part of a documentary, where Daniel explains what this song is about, and finally another documentary about the Canadian “Mariposa” festival, where he performs the song in a manner very similar to the album version. Pretty nice coverage 
It’s late, much too late to say many words. I’m in Vienna again and tired now, and by the way, did I mention it’s late?
I took this image in the maybe two minutes that I had for photography today. It’s a combination of two exposures, one at f5.6 for some depth, and one at f2.8 for the soft background.
The Song of the Day is “Sunday” from the 1992 Cranberries album “Everybody Else is Doing It So Why Can’t We?”. See a live video on YouTube.
After a busy weekend in Carinthia I now sit on the train back to Vienna. It’s extremely uncomfortable, impossible to sleep, so, what better could I do but blogging
The announced end of summer really hit on Saturday, temperatures fell by 15 centigrades in one day, but I still went swimming – in the rain. It was nice, the water was still warm, and it was much needed after a day of sweat-inducing work (have you ever packed some three or four thousand books and transported them?), and I’ll try it again next weekend, that’s for sure. No way I could give up so early
This image was shot from out of the car using the Nikon 85/1.8 at f1.8 with a polarizer. You can’t see the rain, because the focal plane is so far away, but it was enough to keep me from getting out.
The Song of the Day is “Early Autumn“. I have it on Ella Fitzgerald’s “Johnny Mercer Songbook“, but the only vocal version that I’ve found on YouTube is by Jo Stafford. Slightly different stuff.
These are images from Saturday. In the morning I had a portrait session, and late in the afternoon, when I drove to the lake, I used the 70-300 to dive into another world.
This is not a long trip, only 20 minutes by car, and I guess over the years I have taken photographs all along the way, but our world really is fractal. Regardless of how close you have looked, there is always something closer.
Take those fields. They look unspectacular when you drive by, but when you lie on your belly, when you put your camera into manual focus mode, zoom out to 300 mm and slowly change focus from far to very near, when you do that, you see a constantly changing world. 
Even when you don’t move at all, at every distance there is something completely different, and you disclose it by moving a thin focal plane from near to far, from far to near.
But that’s not all. In the Image of the Day I have shot into the light, and that produces all those gorgeous rim lights. Or what about peeking over a light blue car door?
In the last image I am back to the macroscopic, ending up seeing the landscape as an abstract composition of triangles.
For almost a day I have searched for a title and a Song of the Day, but nothing would fit. I finally gave up and so I ask you: What is it, the proper Song of the Day?
Edit: OK, “redskiesatnight” contributed the solution. The Song of the Day is “Fields of Gold” by Sting, but I felt compelled to add a touch of my own. I’ll propose the version by Sting together with Corsica’s “I Muvrini”, available on their 2005 album “A Strada“. See the video on YouTube. I’ve been three times on Corsica, and this island, not much bigger than Carinthia, not more then eight hours away from here, this island is paradise, or to say it in their toungue, “U Paradisu”. Corsu, sempre Corsu!
This is the image for yesterday, July 5th, and quite exactly a year ago, on July 7th, 2007 I had another image titled “266 – Summertime“. I love this season, and yesterday, while on my way to the lake, I tried to find out what exactly characterizes our landscape these days.
The three images of yesterday represent such a thing: harvested fields baking in the hot sun. They were taken at the same time in the same place, but looking in slightly different directions. As a result, neither the contrast between sky and earth was the same nor the colors. And that’s one of the things that I have learned while working on my SoFoBoMo book: A series of images from a certain time and a certain place just does not make it, unless you take your time to match colors and light. It’s a well known phenomenon, that strongly contrasting images easily make a good match, whereas largely similar but in subtle ways different images fight each other.
So, “Summertime” is the Song of the Day, but what version? Yesteryear we had Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, this year it’s Helen Merrill. I have two different recordings of this Gershwin tune by Helen Merrill, one of them, the one that I like better, on a compilation called “Blossom of Stars“, that currently only seems available used and from £45 upwards. Ouch! I suggest that, before shell out the money, you sample the wares around here.
Normally when I’m late, not the quality of my internet connection is to blame. This time it is. We have ADSL in Carinthia (yes, I’m still here, I’ll be for the whole week), and when it works it is quite OK. Nothing compared to my cable connection in Vienna, but acceptable. When it works, that is. Only rarely do I have a problem to get a connection at all, but connections seem to terminate at random. There is not much to do either, as it is the quality of the cables up to our house.
Yesterday I had four images to upload to SumgMug, 24MB, with our ADSL upload that takes quite some time, and every time I tried, the connection broke down before the first image was up. Oh well, I finally managed it this morning, and here we are.
I shot this image yesterday afternoon, using the Nikon 18-200 VR, my favorite drive-around lens, shooting at 200mm, f8 and 1/40s hand held. F13 would probably have been more appropriate, but that would have meant either higher ISO or the tripod. Parking in the middle of the road, I decided against the tripod.
The Song of the Day is “Song For The Earth” from Giora Feidman’s 1992 album “The Dance of Joy“.
