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
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.
And here’s the last of the three catch-up posts of today. Again the image was taken on mount Dobratsch, the mountain that broke apart in 1348’s catastrophic earth quake. That quake and the begin of the black plague in Europe, all in one year, you can’t really blame people for their superstition
The Song of the Day is one last time “It’s Easy To Blame The Weather” by Billie Holiday. I have it on a 10 CD collection that isn’t available via Amazon, thus I link to “The Quintessential Billie Holiday, Vol.7: 1938-1939″. Hear it on YouTube.
Here we are, one more image of today’s bunch, this one is for Saturday, although, as I’ve explained in the last post, it was taken today.
The Song of the Day is still “It’s Easy To Blame The Weather” by Billie Holiday. I have it on a 10 CD collection that isn’t available via Amazon, thus I link to “The Quintessential Billie Holiday, Vol.7: 1938-1939″. Hear it on YouTube.
It’s easy to blame the weather. It had been cruelly dull, but to be honest, the reason why you haven’t seen anything since Thursday is much more trivial: I was completely uninspired and uninterested in this world. I spent all my time in Morrowind
Morrowind, for all of you who don’t play computer games, Morrowind is a computer role playing game, and in fact it is one of the best RPGs of all times. I’ve played it seven years ago when it was new, I’ve started over some weeks ago, and at the moment I am again in a phase where I’ve technically beaten the game.
It’s always the same in Morrowind and in its successor, Oblivion: I can’t resist the temptation to use Alchemy. You know, walking around, collecting flowers and brewing potions. It’s really the most powerful skill in these games. Once you are advanced in Alchemy, you can boost your stats to insane levels, making it possible to create powerfully enchanted armor and weapons. I really had intended to resist the temptation, to just play a humble wizard, but then I got drawn in again. Well, I’ve become pretty good over the weekend. Not yet god-like, but I’m getting along
It’s Sunday night now, I’m on the train to Vienna, and I intend to cheat, at least according to my rules. You’ll get three posts with a total of four images, one for Friday, one for Saturday and one for today, but all images were taken today. On Friday I was too much in a hurry, I didn’t manage to make a usable image, and on Saturday I took no single image at all. Morrowind.
Today was sunny and I forced myself to go out, drive up mount Dobratsch, and indeed I came back with enough usable material to bridge the gap. Hope you don’t mind.
The Song of the Day is “It’s Easy To Blame The Weather” by Billie Holiday. I have it on a 10 CD collection that isn’t available via Amazon, thus I link to “The Quintessential Billie Holiday, Vol.7: 1938-1939″. Hear it on YouTube.
One of the nice things in winter, don’t laugh, it’s that the days are so short. Even a lazy sloth as I can see a sunrise.
Here we are with Sunday’s images. It’s late, I won’t make a second post with today’s, I’ll try to catch up tomorrow.
This weekend we made the second attempt at Michael’s migration from Salzburg to Vienna, and this time we succeeded. Weather was with us. You may remember, the first attempt two weeks ago was thwarted by heavy snowfall.
Again I fetched the car, a Fiat Ducato Mark 3, on Saturday, left it over night in Villach, and at 7am I was already on the highway north, towards Salzburg. I had to cross the mountains, that’s where I made two short stops, not necessarily in the best places, just where it was possible, took some images in bitter cold, and then drove on.
I really wish I could have stopped wherever I wanted. I saw some absolutely breathtaking vistas, the snowy castle of Werfen in front of the most majestic snow-capped mountains, some winter dreams of magnificent beauty, but alas most of the time I was speeding along at 130 kmph with no chance to stop.
You have to take my word and the few images I was able to capture. I wildly enjoyed driving across the mountain range of the Alps, seeing all that beauty and even being able to snap a few pictures.
The actual migration took us till the evening, and there’s still a lot to do in Michael’s new apartment. Tomorrow night we’ll re-assemble his furniture, but most of the grunt work is done. Now, when I think of it, maybe I won’t be able to catch up tomorrow
The Song of the Day is the hauntingly beautiful “Alone With The Moon” from the 1998 Tiger Lillies album “The Brothel to the Cemetery”. Hear it on YouTube.
Alien Skin Snap Art painting effects in B&W??? What the Duck did I think?
Well, surprisingly this is the only variant of that image that would even remotely work.
It’s an image taken from the balcony of our apartment in Villach. Although the day was beautiful and it would have been the last chance to go swimming, I could not afford the time. If you’ve been here yesterday, you may see quite some changes to the sidebar. I have converted most of my categories to tags, there is a tag cloud, the blogroll is back again, and these are only the changes that are visible.
The Song of the Day is “Foot Of The Mountain” from Paul Weller’s 1994 live album “Live Wood”. See a video on YouTube.
Swimming in the morning, in a quiet lake, that’s still warm enough, driving a dramatic mountain road to heights of over 2000 meters in the afternoon, Carinthia is a stunningly beautiful and surprisingly diverse country.
You could tell from these pictures and the many that you’ve seen over the course of the last almost three years. This stunning beauty is marred by the presence of ghosts though.
The Carinthians are a fearful people. The ghost that haunts them most, is the danger of immediate annexation by communist Yugoslavia. Their fear is still awake, more than 60 years since the victorious partisans in Yugoslavia last tried to wrestle parts of Carinthia away from Austria, and in fact 20 years after the end of communism in Yugoslavia and in fact the end of Yugoslavia itself. Spooky, those ghosts, huh?
It all began much further in the past. After the slavic invasion, Carantania was what could be called the first Slovenian state. It emerged in the middle of 7th century and lasted for almost 200 years. Since then, the largest part of what is now Carinthia, was always populated by slavic-speaking people. Christianization of Carinthia was directed from Bavaria though, and soon the ruling class was german speaking as well.
That’s how it ever was until the end of the 18th century. The 19th century brought the same kind of industrialization, mobility of workers and rise of the urban middle classes as everywhere else, and in that process, the Slovene language was increasingly seen as the language of the peasants, and either through active suppression or through economic forces began to wane everywhere but in the rural areas.
After the end of World War I, Carinthia was the place of continuing civil war between a slovenian nationalist faction that proposed incorporation of the southern part of Carinthia into the new Yugoslav Kingdom, and the now german speaking majority. After two years, an internationally controlled referendum decided that a unified Carinthia would continue to be part of Austria.
From then on the Austrian/German nationalist faction in Carinthia continued to play an important role as the guardians of Carinthia’s unity. With nationalism being such a defining part of carinthian history, it is no wonder that this same faction became involved in National Socialism almost from the beginning, and during the six years of Nazi reign, the slovenian population was a target of ethnic cleansing.
With the downfall of the Nazi Empire the leading class in Carinthia should have been disqualified, but surprisingly this was not the case. Now communist Yugoslavia tried one more time to incorporate southern Carinthia, and this was no more than a short episode, ended by Allied occupation, but still the danger was felt again. Carinthia rallied around nationalist leaders and protected war criminals. The ghosts of 1918 were stronger than any revulsion against Nazi crimes.
After World War II Carinthia was ruled by the Social Democratic Party, and many former Nazi members simply changed membership books. In the 1970s Carinthia was in the headlines when the government tried to install constitutionally guaranteed bilingual signs at the borders of towns and parishes. You find those bi- and even trilingual signs all over Europe. It’s no problem in Italy, Switzerland, France or elsewhere, but in Carinthia it caused unprecedented riots and the signs were forcefully removed. The ghosts were back.
Since then there have been countless trials by the government to come to a peaceful resolution. To no avail. The rise of Upper-Austrian Jörg Haider to Carinthia’s political leader was possible to a big part because he instrumented nationalist feelings and hate against Slovenia. A solution would have been against his interests and those of his party. Now, even after Haider’s death, his party rules supreme and it looks as if this could go on and on.
Stupid, huh? Modern Slovenia is part of the European Union, all borders have fallen, there is no cause for conflict any more, and still the ghosts haunt us. I wonder how long this can go on.
The Song of the Day is “Ghost Of Yesterday” by Billie Holiday. I have it on a 10 CD collection that I bought for 10€. It’s not available elsewhere, thus I suggest the collection “Canciones” that I’ve linked to. Hear the Song on YouTube.
On Wednesday we made a trip to the mountains south-east of Kraków, the region between the Beskides and the Tatra. In a journal from 2001 I have read about the region, that legions of its inhabitants had gone to America, especially to Chicago and Toronto, but that most of them never had given up their houses.
Indeed you see innumerable of the typical wooden houses being uninhabited. In fact it’s pretty easy to see why: Although the region is beautiful, there is not much work available, almost no industry. My impression is though, that in the meantime tourism has become a substantial pillar of the region’s economy, with Zakopane being the #1 winter sports center in Poland.
Personally I was not particularly impressed though. I am afraid I am spoiled by our own mountains.
Other than that, let me bring forth one gripe that I have with Poland: It’s the habit of the Polish to burn things. We have called this trip jokingly an olfactory trip into the past. Let me explain.
Sometime in my youth it became forbidden to burn junk and plant remains on the fields or in your garden. Neither I nor my parents had ever done such a thing, but it was pretty common among farmers, and I can vaguely remember the protest against the law. It worked well though, and here in Poland I can experience what it means to the environment to not have such a law: It’s crazy, you see fires everywhere, everybody seems to burn some hay, leaves or whatever, and the air is constantly – and pretty unnecessarily – filled with smoke that hangs over the landscape like fog. That’s rather unfortunate, because the pollution by the heavy industry seems to be well under control.
By the way, the final image shows the name of a village. Language is another problem here in Poland, if for nobody else, then at least for me. Normally when I read a name in German, English, Italian, Spanish and to a degree French, I know how to pronounce it, and when I see it, I can more or less immediately recognize it. Not so here. Polish spelling is in a certain way elaborate that makes recognition pretty hard for me, and in some cases, like with this village’s name, it takes some pondering before I even have an idea of how to pronounce it
The Song of the Day is “Close To The Borderline” from Billy Joel’s 1980 album “Glass Houses”. 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.
