Really, it does. It’s more or less the same image as in “1182 – Where Do The Children Play II“. The point of view is not exactly the same, for once because I couldn’t remember exactly, but more important, I had to avoid some bright lights that would have been at the edge of the frame. It’s a different game when the lights come up.
Other than that, I was there 48 minutes later than last time, and it makes quite a difference.
The Song of the Day is “Such A Little Thing Makes Such A Big Difference” from Morrissey’s 1990 album “Bona Drag”. See a 2005 live performance on YouTube.
Thursday. There is some snow in Vienna and during the weekend we’re supposed to get much, much more. The weather forecast predicts 40cm 
This is a playground in a park, just a few steps from where I work. Yesterday I left early and just got a hint of sunshine.
The Song of the Day is once more Cat Stevens’ “Where Do The Children Play“, but this time from Dolly Parton’s 2005 album “Those Were the Days”. Hear it on YouTube.
After the cold at the weekend, this is quite a contrast. This is probably not the right title. “It Could As Well Be Spring” would be better, but I only have it in versions that I can’t find on YouTube
It’s dark now, Christmas Eve, I am slowly making my way to Charinthia, or rather the train is, and I just want to thank you for the support through all these years. I wish you peace, joy and some easy days. I know it won’t happen for everyone, there will be grief and sorrow in the world, but at least I may wish for it.
The Song of the Day is “Some Other Spring” by Billie Holiday. You find it on every other collection of her songs, and of course it’s on YouTube.
After the rather lengthy third part of the review of my new Tamron SP AF 17-50mm 2.8 XR Di II VC LD Asp IF lens, let me finish the day with a much shorter post.
I made this image in the morning on my way to work. It was mostly dry, with only a tiny hint of the slightest drizzle. The image shows a little more noise than I’d like to see, because I had forgotten to reset the -0.7EV that I had dialed in yesterday evening. It’s not too bad though, even though I have raised noise in the dark fence by applying a little Topaz Detail to it in Screen mode. I am glad anyway, that I have made the image, because in the afternoon the slight drizzle has changed to solid rain.
By the way, concerning this lens, I am pretty through with those aspects that interested me most. If there is anything more that you want to know, simply leave me a comment, I’ll try to look into your questions.
The Song of the Day is “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” from the 1962 Quincy Jones production “Nana Mouskouri in New York”. This is a stellar album and it came as an absolute surprise to me. Hear her on YouTube.
I guess you knew it after you read the last post. Some questions can’t be decided theoretically, you simply have to act. I did, and now I have a Tamron SP AF 17-50mm 2.8 XR Di II VC LD Asp IF.
Impressive name, huh? Well, I’m just as impressed with the actual lens. I have titled this post “Toys”, but in reality this is no toy at all. I had always thought of Tamron as a cheap, low quality brand of lightweight, plasticky lenses, but this beast is big, heavy, and it feels entirely solid.
The Image of the Day was of course not made with the Tamron. I took it in the morning with the Sigma 70/2.8, but the other two were made with the Tamron. Today was a gloomy, dark day. I took the playground image at noon, just after I had left the shop. It’s the original JPEG as it came from the camera. The image was taken at 50mm, f6.3, ISO 200 and 1/8s. Yes, that’s right, 1/8s! Just look at the pink lady between the bush and the tree. She was not running
One thing is for sure, I can’t hold 1/8s at that focal length all of the time. I suppose the rate will be at or even below 50%, but that is no slouch either. At 17mm I would never have a problem at that speed. I think that’s quite impressive and just what I need in winter nights.
Why the decision for this lens and not for the Nikon 16-85 VR? Well, as I said yesterday, I really would have needed such a mid-range zoom in Udine, or in general, I need it when I am on a trip. On such occasions I invariably see things that I don’t have the chance to return to the next day. I have to take the image on the spot, or else I won’t take it at all. That means either compromising (like I did in Udine) or constantly changing lenses.
That alone does not explain my decision, but analyzing Udine, I realized that it had been not by chance that I had settled with the Sigma 28/1.8 and not with the equally available Nikon 50/1.8 or 70-300 VR. Both would have been perfectly possible, but on such trips, especially in cities, I tend to go rather wide than long. 28 was a compromise and I never wanted it to be longer, in doubt I would have liked it to be wider.
I wouldn’t have minded the bigger focal range of the Nikon, but the range of the Tamron seems to be what I need by far the most. On the other hand, while both lenses are stabilized, the Tamron is a whole lot faster. Not so much at 17mm, but at 50mm it’s two full stops.
So much for rationalizing my decision. The second image with the Tammy was made on the moving escalator. It’s been taken at 1/15s, the shutter speed that I have settled with as a lower limit before I let Auto ISO kick in. It was taken at f2.8, ISO 800, and I have used PTLens to correct the distortions, used Topaz Detail to add some local contrast to the in-focus areas, Noise Ninja to control the noise that Topaz Detail had left, added a silver toning, a levels adjustment, cropped the image slightly from both sides, and finally I added some noise
The Song of the Day is “Toys” from the 1983 XTC album “Mummer”. Hear it on YouTube.
It’s still summer, so let’s celebrate it while it lasts.
This image was taken yesterday when I left the baths. It’s almost two months past summer solstice and it shows, but it’s hot again in Vienna and it seems to last for some more days, hopefully even weeks.
Do you ever take pictures directly into the sun? I’ve read that it may blind you, it may destroy your sensor and all sorts of things. Well, I still can see, my camera still takes pictures and I love it
The Song of the Day is “Blinding” from Florence + The Machine’s 2009 debut album “Lungs”. Hear the album version and a live version on YouTube.
Yesterday it was extremely hot in Vienna and I went swimming. It turned out to be an excellent idea, because today weather was rainy and at least in Vienna it’s supposed to stay that way. At the moment I am on the train to Carinthia, there it’s still sunny, with at least some chances for a sunny weekend. If not, we could always make a trip to Italy.
This week I recognized that I had ripped no more than 50% of “The Ultimate Jazz Archive” so far, and so I added another 20 CDs, thus I have 104 of 168 discs done now.
The Song of the Day, “Sunset” by jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt, is on one of them, it’s from disc 99.
You may probably prefer to buy a single CD instead of 168 (though you miss the bargain of your life). If so, “Sonny Stitt/Bud Powell/J.J. Johnson” is for you. It has exactly the same version of the song and Deezer has the whole album for you to hear.
It’s Sunday evening, I’m on the train to Vienna, and here are the images from our second day in Italy.
After breakfast I went swimming, and at 10am we left the hotel for castle Miramare. Maximilian had a strong interest in botany, and the castle gardens are lush evidence of his passion.
The castle itself has an interesting ground plan. These two images actually show the same building. In one it looks like a sturdy tower, almost like a cube, while in the other you see the long front that faces the harbor.
Originally all ways in the park seem to have been paved in this typical Italian way with small stones, but today most ways are bituminized.
There are loads of tourists, but the area is so big, that they blend in, and you have hardly a problem getting images without them. Apart from that, the whole park is a paradise for cats, thus you better have some cat cookies with you. Of course we had 
The last image looks back from the park, over the harbor of Grignano, to the shore where just right from the middle, you can see the tower in front of our hotel, the tower with the lift down to the beach, the tower from where I took yesterday’s images.
It was extremely hot (well, at least that was my view) and after our visit to the park of Miramare, we simply drove home. In Carinthia I went swimming one more time, and we finally concluded the day on our balcony, sipping delightfully cool Prosecco
The Song of the Day is “In The Garden” from Bob Dylan’s 1980 album “Saved”. Hear it on YouTube.
EDIT: After much consideration, I have just replaced the Image of the Day with a slightly warmer version.
This trip to Italy was a test. The idea was, to find out if it’s viable to drive down to the sea, spend a day swimming, stay a night at a hotel, and return the next day, just in time for me to probably catch the train to Vienna. Thus, although we did it on a long weekend this time, we wanted to find out if it can be done on a normal weekend. The result is a resounding YES!
We stayed at the Hotel Riviera & Maximilian’s in Grignano, just north of castle Miramare, the sea residence of the ill-fated later Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico. See the hotel on the map.
The road along the coast runs high above the sea. From street level you see no more than the top of a medium sized early 20th century building, but below there are gardens, parking areas and, built into the steeply falling terrain, the actual hotel wings.
There are two ways to get down to the beach, maybe 50 meters below. The first is a tower with a lift, standing freely, connected with the hotel by a bridge.
The other one is a long flight of stairs, winding down to the base of the tower. The Image of the Day and the next image, as well as the sundown, were taken at the bridge and from the tower, the others on the stairs and down at the bottom.
I mostly used the Tokina 11-16 on this trip, and really, this is where it works very well. Of course it has quite substantial barrel distortion at 11mm, but PTLens got rid of that easily.You’ll see more of it tomorrow, when I’ll try to wrap it up with some images taken at Miramare.
The Song of the Day is “Un’altra vita” by the great Italian composer and songwriter Franco Battiato. I first heard it in the version on Alice’s 1985 album “Gioielli Rubati”, but here it is from the master himself. Hear it on YouTube.
I have linked to an obscenely priced three CD “Platinum Collection”, because the collection that I have seems to be unavailable.
Answering a comment to “931 – It Shouldn’t Happen To A Dream“, I promised to shed light on what I mean with my SoFoBoMo project “Urban Dreams“, i.e. what qualifies as an “Urban Dream” and what not.
April (project) and Ove (project) suggested that my rural landscapes did not completely miss the topic, because for us city dwellers, so may of our dreams revolve around the countryside.
That’s correct, and obviously one could build a project around this urban/rural juxtaposition, it is only that I won’t do that. It is not what I dream of. But if it’s not that, what is it then?
Frankly, I don’t know. At the moment I just work. This is the entry for Monday, May 4, after two far misses in Ljubljana and Salzburg, I have just started as I had originally planned, i.e. on my first day back to Vienna.
While I am writing this, it’s pre-dawn Wednesday, I am two days in, I have one or two more likely candidates from the first day, and the second day was equally rich. Thus I am confident.
What I do is very similar to what I normally do. I have taken a single lens, in this case the Nikon 70-300 VR, set the camera to Auto-ISO with a lowest shutter speed of 1/200s and maximum ISO of 3200, and such equipped I photograph without much worrying about quality.
Some of the images would have profited from lower ISOs, for instance the Image of the Day (which may also end up as the title image) was shot as ISO 1400, the flowers at ISO 2000, but that all does not matter. For all the images of today I have used DxO Optics Pro as a RAW converter, and it’s conversion quality is definitely good enough for the purpose.
The big advantage is, that I can work really quick. Some images will end up noisier than necessary, but I don’t have to care about camera shake. Sure, I have VR, but at an effective focal length of 450mm, even that is not enough to guarantee good results at, say, 1/100s. The other effect is, that at 1/200s I don’t have to worry about motion blur.
I may end up with another lens when the weather deteriorates (as forecast for today), but so far it was sunny and normally there was enough light to allow me this luxury.
As to the images themselves, well, I already see some possible threads emerging. Compositionally, the Image of the Day and luxus share the position of the main subject, the flower and luxus share a color but are on the other hand a juxtaposition of nature vs construct, romantic dream vs materialist greed, and the last two images juxtapose violence and peace.
It will go on like this for maybe two working weeks, i.e. about ten days of shooting in Vienna. I hope for an average of at least five images (which is perfectly possible) and that would bring me in safe territory. Should I have a problem getting enough images, I can always take a day off.
Well, that’s the plan. Let’s see how it works out.
The Song of the Day is “Dreams” from the 1993 Cranberries album “Everybody Else is Doing It So Why Can’t We?”. See a fantastic live performance from Paris 1999 on YouTube and make sure that HQ (high quality) is on. Enjoy!
