Without necessity but nevertheless: again I’m hopelessly behind with this blog. This is the image for Thursday, taken in the morning.
The Song of the Day is “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” from Billy Joel’s 1977 album “The Stranger”. Hear it on YouTube. I have used this song (but not the image title) once two years ago, thus the numeral.
I’m on the train to Vienna now. Well, theoretically at least. Practically I am on the train, but it won’t move. There is some major damage on the station, water and electronics, I hear, thus we will be taken from Villach to Klagenfurt by bus, and then on to Vienna by train.
Time does as only time can: it passes …
Wrong, it’s not Klagenfurt, it’s Pörtschach, about in the middle between Villach and Klagenfurt. I’m already on the train and the train so far does … nothing. No, just now I’ve heard we are about to depart … shortly.
Anyway. Yesterday was so hot, I was swimming, shopping for the weekend, and I had no desire to even try to take an image.
This is an image from June 20. The sky was mostly cloudy, we had some rain, and we used the time for a trip up to the mountains.
The “Locanda del Ghibellino” obviously takes its name from the form of the battlements. It’s the characteristic form of the swallow tail, commonly associated with the Ghibellines, one of the two factions that struggled for domination in medieval Italy.
At one time it had been a matter of allegiance to either the Emperor (Ghibellines) or the Pope (Guelphs), but later it lost all meaning, and when you were out for strife, you just had to choose a side, no matter which one, as long as your opponent was on the other side.
A Locanda is a roadhouse, and thus the Song of the Day is “Roadhouse Blues” from the 1970 Doors album “Morrison Hotel”. Hear it on YouTube.
And in case you worry: don’t. In the meantime the train is on its way to Vienna. It is 50 minutes late, in Vienna I will need a taxi, but it does move 
The second post for today. The image is from yesterday morning, we’d had rain in the night and bright sunshine in the morning.
During the months of July and August so many people in this city are on vacation, that the number of cars is drastically reduced, and for that reasons, the restaurants are allowed to place tables to the side of the street in front of them. Two months of diminished traffic and people sitting outside. These tables belong to an Italian pizzeria, as opposed to an Egyptian, Croatian or Iraqi pizzeria. They all serve pizza, they all serve pasta, but those guys are genuinely from southern Italy and they know how to spell their food 
The Song of the Day is “Just Like The Rain” from Richard Hawley’s 2005 album “Coles Corner”. Hear it on YouTube. Normally I would present you an ad linking to the album on Amazon, but today Amazon seems to have a problem, thus you are spared the ad
Saturday we left. I did not take any images. The car was full, my camera bag safely stowed in the back, and the return home were six hours on the highway, thus I wouldn’t have been able to take images anyway.
All images presented here were taken on Sunday afternoon, shortly before we had dinner, not in the restaurant depicted, there we had been the day before.
Anna Maria, a friend of Michael’s from Milano, had asked him why we had exactly picked Sestri Levante for our vacation. Well, you have to pick some place, do you? Now, looking back, I can say that the choice was excellent, and I can say it with much confidence.
It is our way of traveling, to visit sights, and Sestri Levante being in the middle of the Riviera Levante, the part of the Riviera east of Genova, was an ideal place. It has a highway exit and a train station (Michael arrived from Milano by train), but contrary to many other towns and villages on the Riviera, neither highway nor railway are obtrusive.
While Camogli was much more beautiful, it was much easier to get out of Sestri, and that’s not a bad thing when you do it daily. The beach was directly in front of the hotel, thus I could swim in the morning and before dinner, so, all in all I’d say Sestri Levante was a fine place for people with our interests.
The Song of the Day is “I’m Going Back Home” by Nina Simone. I have it on a four CD collection “Four Women: The Complete Nina Simone On Philips”. Hear it on YouTube.
Back to the Tammy. Hmm … it’s like it always is when I switch lenses. It’s irritating. Nothing looks as it used to, especially after a 150/2.8. The wonderful thing with this Tamron lens though is, that you have so many options. At 50 mm and focused near it is almost a macro lens, at 17 mm it is pretty wide, with its stabilization it works wonders in low light, it is sharp, has a satisfying bokeh, really, I see no major weakness.
I’ve experimented a lot today, there’s not much that I deem worthy, but I certainly like the whimsical effect of the distortions in this image. B&W seemed just right for it.
The Song of the Day is “Bring My Family Back” from the 1999 Faithless album “Sunday 8pm”. Oh dear, this is real good music. Guess I need more of them
YouTube has many versions of the song, I guess this is the album version.
Sorry, it took me ages again, but here it is, the image for Wednesday. I found this on the outside wall of a not-so-posh Indian restaurant in Vienna.
As to the Song of the Day, I can offer you “In India” from Carla Bley’s 1974 second collaboration with Paul Haines, “Tropic Appetites”. Seemingly I am fortunate to own the CD, because at the Amazon marketplace it is sold at $183 new and from $126 used. Amazon has it as MP3 downloads as well though, for just the usual price. Economy never stops to amaze me
Hear it on YouTube.
One more image for today. Yesterday I felt slightly restricted by the Sigma 150/2.8 Macro. There were several moments when I missed images because I was always far too near and going so far back was not an option.
The problem with going back, even when there is space, is that the longer your lens, the more obstacles fit between you and your subject. In any case, I wanted something shorter for today. The morning was rather gloomy (it did get better though during the day), thus 1/200s, as I use with the Sigma 150mm lens, did not feel promising anyway. I really hate getting into high ISOs at daylight and even at f2.8.
Following that impulse, I decided to use the Sigma 50/1.4, one lens that I have not used in a long time. With it I took this image of a small copy of a greek sculpture. I found it in the window of a greek restaurant.
The Song of the Day is “Big Boy Blue” by Ella Fitzgerald. I have it on a 10 CD collection that I’ve got for 10€, but as that is not available elsewhere, I link to “The Platinum Collection”. Hear it on YouTube.
Do you know that feeling, that whatever you do, it comes out wrong? Today’s images (actually images of Thursday) are such a case.
We visited Kraków‘s royal castle, the Wawel, saw the fantastic renaissance architecture of the castle’s big courtyard, saw the exhibitions, saw the cathedral, … and I made no single good image there.
OK, you are not allowed to take images inside castle or cathedral, but there was so much wonderful architecture there and … nothing. Not a single original image.
I am not sure what exactly causes this … block? No, it’s not a block, it’s maybe more that I feel these places have been photographed from every possible angle, there is not much chance to come up with anything original, at least not while on a short trip, certainly not within an hour or two. It’s a kind of resignation.
I don’t say that you can’t make good images there, but at least for me it would take more time and leisure than I can muster at such times. It would mean to go there, look, go away, sleep a night over it, come back, look again, and then I think I could find one or the other new and original view. Probably.
The other thing is, that on travels you are at the mercy of the weather and all kinds of external or self-imposed schedules. You make plans for visiting this and that, and when you get to the Wawel in brightest noon light and under a clear, blue sky, you have a pretty hard time to produce anything that does not look like the typical tourist picture. My image, the one of the cathedral, certainly does.
Being in such a place, you basically have the choice to hunt for moments when nobody stands between you and the monument (and the wider the lens, the less likely that will be), or to make images not about monuments, but about monuments and the people viewing these monuments. I mean, the way to go is pretty obvious: don’t avoid the people, use them. Make images of people and their interaction with monuments. Show them viewing, show them photographing.
Sometimes I try these things, but most often I do them when I am on home turf. Here, on vacation, more often than not I can’t help but act as a tourist myself. Plenty of room for improvement, I guess
All other images but one were taken in Kazimierz, the district formerly inhabited by a lively Jewish community, but of course that was before the Nazi barbarians made an end to it. Today you still feel a shadow of the past, and of course there are many Jewish tourists, but the Jewish infrastructure of today is only touristic.
The last image, this gentle landscape, is from outside of the city. We concluded the day with a short trip north, just to get some different views. I actually used one of my split neutral density filters to darken the sky, and although I managed to make the sky quite dramatic, I ended up cropping most of it away. Just like so often, a square made for better balance.
The Song of the Day is one more time “Past In Present” from Feist’s 2007 album “The Reminder”. Hear it on YouTube.
These are images of yesterday, our first day spent entirely in the center of Kraków. The Image of the Day features the cupola of the small church of sw. Wojciech (St. Adalbert), located in one corner of the vast central market square.
The chain looks gruesome, but it is no more than a simple chain, hanging in front on the Dominican Church. On the other hand, were the Dominicans not the order assigned with the duty of the Holy Inquisition? Maybe the chain is not so wrong after all.
The final image was taken when we sat in the patio of our hotel, drinking a glass of beer and enjoying the last rays of the sun.
For most of the images, and especially for the three shown here, I used the Sigma 28/1.8. A marvelous lens and clearly my current favorite as a “normal” lens.
I have made many, many more images, most of them much more characteristic of this city, but it’s the same old story: I tend to go into “documentation mode”.
Most images will help me remember the place. In fact, from many of my past journeys I remember almost nothing but the places where I have taken images, although those I remember well. Thus a yield of 3 out of 200 does not particularly worry me
The Song of the Day is “Thou Art Gone Up On High” from Handel’s “Messiah”. As always I recommend the 1990 recording conducted by Trevor Pinnock, though you can’t go wrong with John Eliot Gardiner or William Christie either. Hear it on YouTube.
I haven’t been too well these last two days. I had a little bit of fever and my digestive system was … out of order.
I can’t know for sure, but I blame it to the steak tartare that I had for a starter Saturday evening. It was a pretty respectable restaurant, but it’s summer, and … well, as I said, I can’t say for sure, thus I won’t drop any names, but on the other hand, I won’t give them a second chance either 
Most of Sunday I spent copying image data from the old 1 TB hard disk to the new 2 TB one. The computer here in Carinthia must still run Windows XP, because we need a certain accounting program to run on it.
That “operating system” seemingly has some severe problems copying from a big drive that’s more than 99% full. It’s true: the problem was reading. After copying some 50 GB of data, it suddenly became extremely slow, to the point where it would have taken days to finish the copy job, and the only way to make it fast again, was to reboot the computer. Copy, stop, reboot, repeat. Have a nice day!
Yeah, that’s how I spent my Sunday, and when it was finally done, I went out to make some images. That’s where I recognized that I must have fever. I returned after only half an hour, but at least I discovered a Mexican restaurant, that I had not known about, and that’s only minutes away from home. That’s what became Image of the Day.
The Song of the Day is the “Cantina Theme” from Bob Dylan’s soundtrack to the 1973 Sam Peckinpah classic “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid”. YouTube has it for you.
