This is just more of the same, but really, I like it 
Today I returned to the place with the cables and the dragonflies. They seem to love the heat, and they seem to be pretty unimpressed by photographers and big macro lenses.
I could have gone on for hours, but in the end there are only so many perspectives that you can use, and some of them are impossible for me without being able to fly myself.
It’s really interesting: macro photography is so much fun with this lens, it completely crosses my original plan of abusing it as a street lens. I’m stubborn though
The images were all taken with the Sigma 150/2.8 Macro and post-processing is about the same as in “1048 – A Clown With A Funny Nose“: local contrast enhancements of the sharp parts with Topaz Detail and Topaz Adjust, taking the presets that match best, Hue/Saturation layers in various blending modes to push saturation without burning out color channels, sometimes a vignette, basically that’s it.
The Song of the Day is “Same Old Thing” by The Streets. I have it on their 2002 album “Original Pirate Material”, an album that I got from Michael as a birthday present. Hear it on YouTube.
Sorry for the delay. I had some technical problems and it took me a while to get connected to the Internet again, yes, to even get my images off the memory card. Hmm … a digital camera without a card reader or a USB cable is pretty useless, but so is a film camera without a lab
Interestingly enough, using the Sigma 150/2.8 Macro I am much more prone to actually make macro images than with the 70/2.8. Must be the increased working distance. There were lots of dragonflies on a cable, baking in the sun, and I saw some people taking images with compact cameras, but when they came too much into the comfort zone of the insects, they normally flew away. No problem with the 150 though.
The Song of the Day is “Bravo Pour le Clown!” by Edith Piaf. I have it on a collection that is not available any more, but almost any collection will do, for example “The Voice of the Sparrow: The Very Best of Edith Piaf”. Hear it on YouTube.
As promised, here are two more images for today, like the birds of the last post taken with the Sigma 150/2.8 Macro.
The first shows a wasp struggling to get out of a spider’s net. Cruel things happen around us all the time, most of them going unnoticed. And even if, a wasp is dangerous, just look at the colors. Our compassion is only for the furry, cuddly animals with big eyes.
In case you’re interested: this ended 1:0 for the wasp. It finally got free.
The other image is more like what I was looking for in this early morning after a rainy evening. I set out so early, because I hoped to get scenes just like this: mountains shrouded by wind-torn mist.
Just like yesterday’s image (which actually also was from today), this is a rather brutal re-mapping of tones, certainly much more dramatic than it was in reality. While yesterday’s challenge was to isolate the birds, today I wanted a certain balance between the cliff in the foreground and the bright spot in the sky.
The Song of the Day is “Misty Mountain Hop“, originally from the 1971 album “Led Zeppelin IV”. I have it on the 4 CD collection “Led Zeppelin Remasters”. Hear it on YouTube.
I have not used a long lens in quite some time now, and the Sigma 70/2.8 Macro not since September 25, 2008. Wow, that’s half a year!
For me the joy of using such a lens comes from the endless variety of things that it allows me to see. I can go very near as in this flower macro (and these are really, really tiny flowers), semi-near as in the Image of the Day, or I can use the same lens to record a street scene. Completely different worlds, all in one lens.
In fact, going to work took me much longer today. I took many more images (OK, I threw many more away as well), and I had a hard time stopping being immersed in photography and instead go working.
I seriously consider using this as my SoFoBoMo lens, or if not shooting all images with this particular lens, at least adhering to that style of changing between different worlds. Two other lenses that work particularly well in that regard are the Sigma 50/1.4 and the Sigma 20/1.8, the former for its creamy bokeh wide open, and the latter for its macro capabilities. All three lenses are particularly well suited to dreaming the urban dream.
“Urban Dreams”. I have used that title for my exhibition last year, and I am extremely tempted to use “Urban Dreams II” as title of this year’s SoFoBoMo book. Does that sound good? Well, to me it sound so good that I’ve just committed to the title and created my book page on the SoFoBoMo site.
In a way that will be easy, because it leaves me great flexibility. Dreaming of the City! That can be everything, can it? On the other hand, it is challenging as well, because this is not the jumble of a daily photoblog, this is the linearity, the cohesion and the order of a book. In any case this is very different from last year’s project, images of one afternoon’s walk through the canyon “Tscheppaschlucht” in Carinthia.
Anyway, we can’t always do the same thing. Let’s see how it turns out this year.
As to the Song of the Day, it’s “If I Were A Bell” from “Guys and Dolls”. I have at least two versions of it, Ella’s is fantastic, but today we take Holly Cole on her 1992 album “Blame It on My Youth”. Thankfully her songs begin to appear on YouTube. Here is this one.
This is the third Image of the Day that I post today, I’m on the train to Vienna again and have finally caught up. Sunday. I did not do an awful lot besides working on images and writing blog entries.
I had wanted to go swiming once again, but when I finally could rouse myself to even consider going out, it was already 4pm, not really sunny any more, and it already began to get cooler. I decided to stay home.
Earlier that day, while having breakfast on the terrace, I had seen an interesting leaf, thus I mounted the Sigma 70/2.8 and tried four different arrangements of leaves, flowers and an apple. These are the two that I liked most.
The Song of the Day is “When The Leaves Come Falling Down” from Van Morrison’s 1999 album “Back on Top“. See him perform live on YouTube.
Schmetterling, farfalla, mariposa, papillon, butterfly, … It’s interesting, in different languages some things have completely different names, just as if these languages did not have common roots. Butterflies are one of them.
The Nikon 85/1.8 is not exactly a macro lens and these images are cropped, but at least it is sharp and focuses precisely. I saw the two butterflies this afternoon in a forest, on my way to the lake. It took me 40 images and some patience to come up with these.
The Song of the Day is the Johnny Mercer standard “Too Marvelous for Words“, this time sung, yes, sung indeed, by Oscar Peterson on his 1952 album “Romance (The Vocal Styling of Oscar Peterson)“. Very recommendable, sometimes hard to get, at the moment a tad expensive, even if you get it used. Of course there’s no video of Oscar singing, but I can recommend Ella instead
Do you know that feeling? That feeling when it is time for a new toy? Yesterday I have hinted at something and today’s image was made with a new Sigma 28/1.8. You know my images made with its wider sibling, the 20/1.8, and this one has the same amazing near-focusing capability.
Unfortunately not all was wine and roses. Wide open, at low light, I found it’s contrast severely lacking. I mean, I expected it, but not to this extend. In this regard the 20/1.8 fares better.
I originally bought this lens as a wide-but-not-so-wide street lens with macro capabilities. Being able to focus near, is one of the two things that I miss with my Sigma 30/1.4. The other thing is bokeh. What the 30/1.4 does to off-center out-of-focus point lights, can be more than harsh. On the other hand, contrast of the 30/1.4 is fantastic, even wide open. I may come back to the idea and get the Nikon 35/2.0 at some later time. This time I have traded the Sigma 28/1.8 in for a completely different lens
The Song of the Day is “Inbetweenies” by Ian Dury & The Blockheads. The compilation that I have is not readily available any more, I suggest you get “Reasons to Be Cheerful: The Very Best of Ian Dury & the Blockheads“. Hear a sound sample from some live concert on YouTube.
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.
As I said, this was a very short intermezzo in Carinthia. I took the train down on Monday afternoon, and today, Wednesday, I returned to Vienna early in the morning.
Of course I was swimming, albeit much too short. On my way to the lake, I took the first image, two blades of spelt (as I found out on Wikipedia), using the somewhat inelegant but extremely effective “machine gun” approach. Of the 11 surviving images, this was the one that I liked most. Talk about industrial image making
Technically I have converted the image in Capture NX, because I liked the original approach of the camera and would have had a hard time to mimic colors and contrast in Adobe Camera RAW. The only thing that I did in CS3 was sharpening.
The other two images are from the break between the two parts of the concert. The Clemencic Consort gave Carmina Burana, and it was just as great as I had expected. See this video for a sample. In the Gothic church of Maria Saal we had the slightly nicer environment though
I am quite sure that the Saint on the glass window holding the infant Christ is Joseph, thus the Song of the Day is “Joseph” from Georges Moustaki’s best known 1969 (what a year!!!) album “Le Meteque“. Hear it on YouTube.
Yesterday we had rain most of the time. I only went out on the terrace and made some macro images of leaves, but that was OK. I was busy anyway, and I wouldn’t have had time for hunting motives. The reason? See it this evening
The Song of the Day is “Near To You” by the great Nina Simone. I have it on a fantastic sampler called “The Tomato Collection“. Not the best thinkable quality overall, but what a collection of songs!
