2424 – Muddy Waters

 Panasonic Leica DG SUMMILUX 25/1.4 ASPH  1 Response »
Jun 062013
 

Why do I make such an image, you ask? This image is not beautiful, you say?

Yes, yes, you’re right, it ain’t, still I do. It’s not that I don’t have enough “beautiful” material to draw from, it’s more that I sometimes feel an urge to show things “as they are”, another fallacy, but one that’s widely accepted among photographers.

Of course it did look like that and it didn’t at all. This image is restriction of an unbounded reality to the narrow bounds of a square, and it reduces a complex reality to a “yin-and-yang-ness” that the whole situation clearly didn’t have. And then, what is a “whole situation” anyway?

The Song of the Day is “Muddy Waters” from the 1992 Vaya Con Dios album “Time Flies”. Hear it on YouTube.

2423 – Wet With Rain

 Panasonic Leica DG SUMMILUX 25/1.4 ASPH  Comments Off
Jun 052013
 

Central Europe is pretty much drowning in rain at the moment, with flooding and enormous damage along the big rivers. Eleven years ago we had a “once-in-a-century” flood, and this time it’s worse.

Neither Villach (or any part of Carinthia) nor Vienna have been struck. In Villach it is due to a less vulnerable geography (although we had serious flooding in 1966) and in Vienna it is due to ingenious artificial protection, realized by the Social Democratic government in the 1970s, against grim resistance of the Conservative party. Well, sometimes socialism just works :)

This image has been taken in front of our old office building. It may well be one of the last images that I ever take at that place. Today I had my last working day in that building, next week I have taken off, and when I get back to work, it will already be on the other side :D

The Song of the Day is the beautiful “The Perfumed Forest Wet With Rain” from Abdullah Ibrahim’s “Africa – Tears and Laughter”. Hear it on YouTube.

2357 – Easter Theatre III

 Panasonic Leica DG SUMMILUX 25/1.4 ASPH  Comments Off
Apr 012013
 

For Easter we had planned to have dinner in a restaurant about 1000 meters above sea level. Well, we didn’t. Although down here in Villach the snow gave way to rain, up there it must have snowed all through Sunday.

This depressing image was taken through the car’s windshield when I brought aluminium cans to the recycling container.

The Song of the Day is still “Easter Theatre” from the 1999 XTC album “Apple Venus Volume 1″. We’ve already had it in “1238 – Easter Theatre” and in the last post. Hear it on YouTube.

2242 – I Got Stripes II

 Panasonic Leica DG SUMMILUX 25/1.4 ASPH  3 Responses »
Dec 062012
 

Using digital cameras didn’t make me a B&W person either. In reality digital cameras are color devices. Well, the Leica M Monochrom is not and some CCTV cameras are not, but whatever we normally buy is meant to take color images.

Of course we can convert to B&W, many of us do, I frequently did in the past (or probably not that frequently), but there is some element of randomness in it. Starting with a RAW file you can simulate any kind of filter, any kind of development, and what you get is very much a function of your mood at the time you do the conversion, in fact much more than that at the time you took the image.

When I used digital SLRs I never saw B&W. Granted, the same is true for HCB and his Leica, but at least for me it makes much of a difference how I see the image while I frame it.

And here we are. Electronic viewfinders make the big, crucial difference. Suddenly I see in B&W, frame in B&W, suddenly I deeply enjoy making B&W images, and now the difference is, that I don’t only enjoy processing color images to B&W, but instead enjoy taking them as B&W.

Today’s image is another one taken Wednesday in Vienna.

The Song of the Day is again “I Got Stripes” from Johnny Cash’ “At Folsom Prison” album. Hear it on YouTube.

2212 – Walking In The Park II

 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75 mm f/1.8  2 Responses »
Nov 072012
 

Although I’ve made a few images on Tuesady, none proved to be really usable. I may try to take one of them again next week though.

Instead I show you one more image from my walk in a rainy styrian park ten days ago. I have a few more, but I guess you’ve already seen the best.

The Song of the Day is one more time “Walking In The Park” from the 1971 Colosseum album “Live”. Hear it on YouTube.

2202 – Walking In The Park I

 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75 mm f/1.8  2 Responses »
Oct 282012
 

Yesterday I had a walk through a park in Styria, the neighboring province. The weekend had been predicted to be rainy, and so it was, although while I walked, there were only a few drops from the trees.

I walked a short round and only for slightly more than an hour, but you know how it is in autumn, there are so many details, so many fallen leaves in wild colors, lying in an infinite number of arrangements, you only have to get close and you can take images forever.

In the end I came away with twelve keepers, and although it would be the bold way and good sportsmanship to use all of them in a single blog post, I won’t do it.

I really like some of those images, at least three or four would make for good Images of the Day, and using them all together feels more like burning them.

Thus the idea is to make more than one post out of the series, and today I show you three examples for the creamy bokeh that you can achieve with the Olympus 75/1.8. This is about as creamy as it gets, in quality as well as in blurriness.

The Image of the Day was taken at f3.2, the blue berries (not completely in focus due to my fault) at f2.2 and the leaves at f2.0. All three images have been taken at or near the minimum focus distance.

To get more blur on MFT, there is only one option, namely to use a macro lens and get even closer.

Stabilization works really well with that lens. If I let the camera choose, it wants to use a minimum shutter speed of 1/160s, that being the conventional speed of one over the effective focal length. Choosing the shutter speed myself, I get away with 1/30s easily, slower if I am willing to risk having to repeat the shot.

The Song of the Day is “Walking In The Park” from the 1971 Colosseum album “Live”. Hear it on YouTube.

2146 – One Way Or Another

 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45 mm f/1.8  Comments Off
Sep 022012
 

I took this image today shortly before noon. I should probably have waited. It’s mid-afternoon now, the rain has stopped and a timid sun comes out. Oh, wait, it’s gone again, so maybe this image is OK :)

I’ve omitted the white border because I have used it as a wallpaper. As always, the full size of the image is on Flickr.

The Song of the Day is “One Way Or Another” from the 1978 Blondie album “Parallel Lines”. Music from my youth, more powerful than I had remembered. Hear it on YouTube.

2145 – Sleeping In An Ocean Of Tears

 Olympus M.Zuiko 17mm f/2.8 Pancake  2 Responses »
Sep 022012
 

Here’s an old image taken last December. It accurately reflects yesterday’s weather though :)

The Song of the Day is “Sleeping In An Ocean Of Tears” by Robert “Billy” Brooks and Piney Brown (voc) with the King Kolax Orchestra. Good music, don’t forget to hear it on YouTube.

2144 – Drop Down Low

 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45 mm f/1.8  4 Responses »
Aug 312012
 

Heavy rain had been predicted, heavy rain fell.

Basically it rained all day. I didn’t even bother to go out. The two images were taken at and from our terrace.

Btw, I have bought a new device, a Network Attached Storage system (NAS) with four hard drive bays. I have installed 4 drives with 2 TB each, configured in RAID 5, thus it gives me about 5.5 TB effectively. That’s more than I need for a long time.

At the moment I am not sure how I’m gonna use the device. The first plan was to make a backup of my two image drives, slightly more than 2 TB. And here I encountered a problem.

It was slow. Damn slow. 10 MB/s slow. Pretty exactly 10 MB/s.

I knew that the NAS was not fast, but the 10 MB/s strongly pointed at my network. And really: the LAN switch in my ADSL modem / router is only 100 Mbit/s, which gives you a net speed of pretty exactly 10 MB/s, protocol overhead included. Ouch!

I didn’t want to replace the provider-supplied modem and bother with Internet connection settings, thus I just deactivated WiFi, placed a Netgear WiFi Gigabit router behind, and now data rates are at 30-40 MB/s.

Still not fast, but excatly what I paid for. This will cut the time for a full backup from 47 hours down to about 15 hours. Pretty OK, given that all other backups will be incremental.

So far I can recommend both devices highly.

The Song of the Day is “Drop Down Low” from the 2003 De-Phazz album “Plastic Love Memory”. Hear it on YouTube.

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