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.

Crisis? What crisis? Or do I have one? Fact is, that this lens does not inspire me at all. Not on normal, bright early summer days.

I can really blame it on the long minimum focusing distance. While I can do magic things with the Sigma 20/1.8, a much longer lens, everything that I do with this Tokina 11-16/2.8 comes out boring. It’s not that I want to sell it, but I wouldn’t recommend it either. At least not to someone who shares my lust for exotic lenses

Again: this is a good lens. In fact it’s a marvelous lens. It is only that it currently bores me to death.

At the moment I am on the train to Carinthia, tomorrow I’ll have to work a little in the apartment, but then I’ll be on a short two-day trip to Italy. I will stay for a night in a hotel by the sea. Let’s have a look at how the Tokina performs in a more traditional landscape environment. We’ll see.

Oh, by the way, I’m writing this on the new laptop and it’s positively a pleasure. And the probably coolest effect is: I’m finally down to a single backpack, my trusty Lowepro Rover Plus AW. It’s pretty full, and when it’s full, it’s heavy, even with the new Vaio, but on the other hand, I am carrying a DSLR with five lenses, a laptop with power supply, a wash bag, a book and an umbrella. This may have some weight

In any case, not having to carry a separate laptop bag any more, that’s fantastic!

The Song of the Day is “The Last Time” from the 1986 Eurythmics album “Revenge”. See a live video on YouTube.

Well, that’s not really suburbia, at least has not been for 150 years now

This is in Vienna’s 8^th district, very near from where I work, very near to the heart of the city.

Are these dreams? Does any of these images qualify? Actually I don’t know. I am struggling with “Urban Dreams“, my SoFoBoMo book. No, it’s worse, I am struggling with the very basics: How do I get a sequence out of a bunch of images?

I have played around with grouping in Adobe Bridge and with manual “Lighttable” sort in IMatch, my image database, but that will only take you so far.

I guess my problem is not grouping. After all, when I have found groups, what am I supposed to do? Sequence inside of the groups and then string the groups together?

Apart from the obvious problem, that the applied categories are not sharp, have overlaps, it sounds rather boring to me, a little bit like pointing with fingers, and it gives up on possible dramatic effects, on implied stories. It’s not what I’m going to do. But then, what else?

At the moment I have 85 images processed and published since May 4, the day that I began shooting with the project “Urban Dreams” in mind. Some more sleep unprocessed and I could pull them out if I need more of a certain kind. I will make some more in the remaining 12 days, today included, although three of those days will be spent in Carinthia, thus we’re down to 9. If I happen to come up with good candidates, I really plan to make changes until the last possible moment. That makes for at least about 100 images.

My next step will be to simply begin a book. I will use the measurements that Blurbs specifies for their 8×10 inch landscape book. This is not very big, in fact it’s rather small, but I just held a book with polaroids by Manual Alvarez Bravo in my hands, and I found it to be very comfortable to hold.

I will begin by selecting safe candidates that must go into the book. Then I will try to surround them with what feels good, makes sense, tells a story, juxtaposes them, whatever. Finally I’ll try to bring those strings into a sequence. We’ll see how far I get with that

If you wonder, today’s title is a line from the Sex Pistols song “Satellite“. I really like the version from their 1996 reunion tour “Filthy Lucre”, but your taste may be different. YouTube has a video of the original.

I promised you more of yesterday’s images, and here is a whole bunch of them:

Well, sometimes I think I should simply break the rules and call it SoFoBoMo, regardless of date. All these images, yesterday’s and today’s were shot with the Sigma 70/2.8, a stellar lens if there ever was one. This will be my SoFoBoMo lens. This is the lens that makes all the difference, the lens that is still wide enough for everyday use, and at the same time long enough to give me a very selective view on the world.

Actually I can’t really tell what it is that makes this lens so special. There must be something similar to the way we see. It is often said that this is true for the 50mm lens on FX format cameras, something between 30 and 35mm on DX. In a way that may be correct, but at least for me there is a way of seeing, that is much more restricted, confined to a smaller aspect of reality.

Let me try to put this differently: it’s not about the way we see, i.e. not about physics, it is about the way we focus our attention.

Maybe that’s it. This lens is just wide enough to cover most of the targets of my attention, and then it is a macro as well, giving me one more dimension to dive into, and that covers the cases when the ordinary views are just that: ordinary.

For no particular resaon, the Song of the Day is “Baby I’m A Fool” from Melody Gardot’s new album “My One and Only Thrill”. Amazon.co.uk has sent it yesterday, I should receive it tomorrow. Just hear the song at YouTube and you’ll know why I make a fuzz about this. I absolutely LOVE it!!

Just before I got this incredibly light, wonderfully cheap and fantastically performing Nikon 35/1.8, just before I got it – some of you may remember – I made some experiments with the fisheye and a Photoshop plugin called Fisheye-Hemi™.

Well, I’ve returned to this.

Actually I love both of today’s images. I have struggled, I have torn my hair (there’s some left, but still …), I have kept thinking and wondering, and in the end the Song of the Day has made the Image – the distinct morning atmosphere won over the semi-B&W. In the end they are both artificial, they are both made and not taken, it is only that with the bicycle image it is more obvious.

These images were shot in the morning. I leave home early now, it’s just too beautiful to have time to spend photographing and still be early at work.

Searching for a Song of the Day I tried some Leonard Cohen songs. I don’t know why, the titles did not fit, but when at the beginning of “Anthem” I heard him say “The birds they sang at the break of day“, I knew this would be it.

Yes, this is pathos, yes, this is sentimental, but Dear is this beautiful! I have several versions of this song. Today we will stick to what Leonard Cohen currently does in his concerts. You can hear it on the new double CD “Live in London”, and the video that I’d like to show you, is from the end of his concert at Eastnor Castle, Herefordshire, England. Enjoy.

It was about time to post this entry. A month ago I got an email from a young man from New York City that read

Hi Andreas, somebody sent me a link to your photo blog awhile back and I just wanted to let you know that I enjoy it almost daily from New York. Your pictures are wonderful and that countryside there is stunning! I would like to share my new record with you as thanks for sharing your photos with me, if you leave an address. Thanks Andreas, Clarence Bucaro

Well, how often do I get fan mail from someone I own records of? I was pretty overwhelmed, checked the mail again, but no, it seemed authentic.

Reply with my address, that’s what I did, and really, a week later a package from New York arrived with Clarence’s new record “‘Til Spring”, due to be available from March 3, 2009. Now you see why it was about time for this entry

It’s a pretty fantastic record, and that’s not only due to the music, it’s most of all due to Clarence’s warm voice, a voice that catches you and makes you want to hear more. The New York Times describes his music as “warm songs that hark back to late seventies Van Morrison“. Not at all bad, is it? And when I hear to it, there is always something very like Dylan’s mid-seventies “Desire”, and that’s not bad either

You can hear long excerpts from his new album right on Clarence’s site and you can pre-order the album at Amazon.com. Now tell me: can this guy sing? I really look forward to more of his music and to where he will develop.

It took me some time to come up with an image that I could honestly match with these songs. I mean, this guy’s so damn’ positive, I needed something beautiful and warm, not the slush and the rain and the gloom of the last weeks.

When I went back home on Wednesday evening, I went a way that I rarely take now, through a passage between Lerchenfelder Straße and Neustiftgasse. This passage was renovated a few years ago, with a café, an art gallery and a restaurant on each side, but it has never lost its southern charm. In fact, it always reminds me of Italy, and that’s another good reason to post the image here, because when I asked Clarence about the origins of his name, he told me his grandparents were from Sicily, Italy. Clarence, this one’s for you.

Technically, this is an image shot with the Nikon 24/2.8 at ISO 3200, f4 and 1/2s. Handheld. I used DxO as a RAW converter and put 21 Photoshop layers atop, mostly to re-distribute tones and to make it glow