1414 - Tempos Modernos

Nikon 50/1.2 2 Responses »
Aug 292010

Instead of a proper Saturday image, here’s one more from my walk through Villach on Friday. Saturday we had rain most of the day and I spare you that.

I’ve already given you a view of this church the day I came back from Liguria, and here is another one, with the spire peeking out between Villach’s Congress Center and the new Holiday Inn hotel.

And while we are contemplating this clash of modern and old architecture, let me ask you a question. Do you own an e-book reader? And if so, is it a Kindle or something else?

I ask, because I felt the strong impulse today to buy a new Amazon Kindle. At the moment I read Vikram Chandra’s monumental Mumbai epos “Sacred Games”, an outstanding novel that is full of Indian slang and that assumes quite some understanding of Indo-Pakistani history on the side of the reader. As someone who has largely ignored India and its history in the past (don’t know why, it’s just how it is), I found it incredibly helpful to look things up in Wikipedia, but of course I don’t sit in front of a computer all the time, and certainly not when I read books.

Well, Amazon’s new Kindle 3G could be the solution to that. It has WiFi and 3G connectivity, some kind of easy link to Wikipedia (select a word and press a button, or something like that), and it even has a full-fledged browser. Sure, it’s not as good for browsing the colorful, glossy web as an Apple iPad, but its screen is much better suited to reading everywhere, even in sunlight, and its battery life is much, much longer.

On one side there is my disgust for Digital Restriction Management, but on the other side I really like the idea of the Kindle. It may have the potential to be much more than just a device for reading books. Reading a book like “Sacred Games” on this device may open up a new level of understanding, just because cross-referencing and looking up of background information is so much more convenient than with a physical book and separate computers, I am sure I would do it much more often, at least if it worked well enough. So, then: does it? Is it really convenient to look something up? Do you use that feature? What’s your overall impression?

So far I have not ordered and my initial enthusiasm has cooled off a little, because a quick lookup of the last about 30 books I’ve read showed most of them not available in Kindle format so far. I have read William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” trilogy, and of the three books only the first two are available. A bit anti-climactic is you ask me :)

I’ve read all books in Orson Scott Card’s “Ender” universe and his “Homecoming Saga”. None of these 17 or 18 books are available. Steinbeck of course seems available and complete, but there is no Tom Sharpe and no David Lodge. OK, they’re british :)

There are some books by A. S. Byatt, but “Possession” is missing. They have Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight Children” (that I’m going to read soon), but not the “Satanic Verses”. Heinlein’s “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”? Nope. Almost nothing by Ursula K. LeGuin. Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee? Almost nothing.

Overall it seems to me, that we’re not yet there. As much as I’d like the comfort of using such a crossover device, at the moment it would not be of much use to me. But then, maybe what I want is simply an iPad or something like that, some small computer that can be dragged around along with a physical book. Actually I have no idea, do you???

The Song of the Day is “Tempos Modernos” from Marisa Monte’s album “Barulhinho Bom”. I have the album under the title “A Great Noise”, and the cover of my version is slightly censored :)

Hear the song on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 10:33 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

1410 - Flow

Nikon 50/1.2 No Responses »
Aug 252010

Being without my 17-50/2.8 is extremely inconvenient at times. I have really begun to rely on this ability to adapt to different crops of the scene. Of course it was similar with the 18-200, but as a lens that was much more of a compromise.

The Tamron 17-50/2.8 is not, at least not that much. At f2.8 it is already reasonably sharp, and that is not so much slower than most primes. Consequently I miss it a lot.

In everyday situations I rely most on the Sigma 28/1.8 these days. At effective 42 mm it is slightly wider than normal, it is sharp, fast if I need it, and walking a few steps forward or back does not hurt. Still, at the moment I feel constricted.

Feeling so yesterday, I thought, hey, why not go a little further that road, use something exotic, and so I did. It made this image in yesterday’s early evening, using my Nikon 50/1.2. Fixed focal length, manual focus.

Wow, I really should do that more often. It somehow frees you. You set an aperture, for instance f4, and off you go. Not much worry, you just let go with the flow. I probably wouldn’t want to travel like that, but whenever I shoot that style, I enjoy it wildly. I only forget too easily about it :)

The Song of the Day is “Flow” from the 2000 Sade album “Lovers Rock”. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 9:36 am Tagged with: , , ,

1388 - The Longing

Sigma 28/1.8 2 Responses »
Aug 022010

Summer is not over yet, but it’s grown old – and if you look closely, carefully, you can already see it dying. It’s the way things are, it’s the way we are, it’s the way things go, and eventually we’ll go like that.

And there’s a longing to hold on to it, hold on to whom we love, and cannot let go, and eventually must let go – or be gone.

You expected Cohen, did you? Nope. The Song of the Day is “The Longing” from the 2009 Eels album “Hombre Lobo”. YouTube has a version obviously recorded in some radio station’s studio.

Posted by andreas at 11:27 pm Tagged with: , , , , , ,

1356 – Green River

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC No Responses »
Jul 022010

It’s Friday, the second of July, shortly before midnight. This is my fifth post today, I am catching up, being already at Wednesday, a day when I shot … nothing :)

This is another image from Sunday, June 20, taken in Castagnelo. Here is the map, zoom all the way in and you can even see the church. Isn’t Google Maps amazing?

The Song of the Day is “Green River” from the 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival album of the same name. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 11:32 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

1353 - Here, There And Everywhere

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 2 Responses »
Jul 022010

I don’t know if I have enough material for the SoFoBoMo 2010 book that Ted Byrne asked me to make. Sure, I have a lot of images, and when, back home, I go through Villach, as I did last Sunday, when that image was taken, I see those juxtapositions of old and new, those layers, those sediments, here as well. They are everywhere, and maybe in Italy they are a little more obvious than elsewhere. But then, it won’t do to begin mixing things up. It’s either all Italy for the book, or there will be no book at all.

I knew I would be struggling, and I do. But at least I may catch up with my blog posts a little faster now :)

The Song of the Day is “Here, There And Everywhere” from the Beatles album “Revolver”. On Amazon it’s still only available as CD, thus I link to plastic. YouTube has it as well.

Posted by andreas at 6:34 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

1338 - Pieces Of A Past Life I

Sigma 8-16 2 Responses »
Jun 142010

Actually, when I think of it, I have no idea why we got our Dylan tickets for the show in Linz. Linz is about four hours by car from Villach, and yesterday was a hellishly hot day. We could as well have seen today’s show in Ljubljana, Slovenia, only about an hour from here.

Anyway, it was good as expected, he finished with a beautiful – and strange for me – “Forever Young”. Incredible how this man constantly re-invents himself.

We left for Linz early, intending to take the shortest way to Leoben, and then slow roads up to Eisenerz. Eisenerz is a small mining town north of “Erzberg”, a mountain that is so rich of iron ore, that it was viable for surface mining.

The population of Eisenerz peaked out at 12.679 in 1956, and was down to 5.566 in 2007. As a result, you see lots of empty places, houses that speak of former wealth, and although nothing is ruined, although you see restauration efforts here and there, the whole place is hauntingly empty.

This image was taken on the outskirts. I’ll post one more image from the center in the next entry. Somehow black and white with a bit of color toning seemed appropriate to me. The technique is one that I developed last year. Basically I use a strongly blurred layer (radius 50 pixels), add a mask, and then use a big, soft brush to selectively reveal the unblurred image. Finally I set opacity of that blur layer to abount 70%. I like that process, because by painting on the mask, I can very directly set accents and influence how the eye moves. Sometimes I may add a vignette (not here), most of the time I add toning (subtle like here or deft as I used to do last year), and most of the time I add noise.

The Song of the Day, “Pieces Of A Past Life”, is by a band called “The Postmen” from Geneva, Switzerland. Hear them on Jamendo.

Posted by andreas at 2:36 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

1287 - River, Stay 'Way From My Door

Sigma 150/2.8 Macro No Responses »
Apr 232010

Vienna didn’t treat her rivers nicely. The big one, Danube, got mostly ignored, the other, smaller ones, built over and condemned to the underground.

This one, “Wienfluss” or “Vienna River”, is something in the middle. It runs mostly in the open, albeit down in a deep bed that looks completely over-sized for such a creek. It’s for a reason though: I can remember one period of heavy rain, maybe 20 years ago, when this deep, broad bed was almost full of a wild river that had swollen to a thousandfold volume.

It’s only were the river touches the center of the city, it was built over, and it is here in “Stadtpark”, where I have taken this image, that it emerges again, dramatically supported by the architecture of Vienna’s chief architect of the time, the great Otto Wagner.

The Song of the Day is “River, Stay ‘Way From My Door“. I have it in three versions, Frank Sinatra, Ethel Waters, and finally The Boswell Sisters, and the sisters flat out win. The Dorseys on clarinet and trombone are at least partly to blame :)

Hear it on YouTube. Great version, make sure to hear it through.

Posted by andreas at 7:06 am Tagged with: , , , , , ,

1206 - River

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 5 Responses »
Jan 312010

OK, here’s the second post of today’s series. After the plain modesty of the last post, here’s some pompous HDR for a change.

In fact, this image is not without some serious imperfections. I had made the seven bracketed images in high-speed continuous mode, meaning in only a fraction more than a second, but if you look at 100% (which I won’t let you), you see that Photomatix Pro can’t eliminate the subtle displacements of the twigs’ reflections in the water. The program has a box that you can check, and it’s supposed to be able to cope with water, but in fact it can’t. It’s easy to understand why, because the problem is insolvable in general. There may be cases where it works, but in general it does not.

Anyway, I’d say for web presentation it’s good enough, in fact it is good enough when viewed on screen at 50%, so I prefer to ignore the fact. Still, it’s important to know that you still can’t really depend on such algorithms. They invariably let you down at times.

The Song of the Day is “River” from Natalie Merchant’s 1995 album “Tigerlily”. Funny, I always thought that gal sounded like the singer of the 10000 Maniacs :D

Hear the song on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 10:23 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

1205 - Winterwood

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC No Responses »
Jan 312010

This and the image of the next post (that I’ll write in a few minutes) were both taken today, Sunday, on a short walk down along the river. I have made a few images on Saturday, but that was such an exceptionally dreary day, with fog, high clouds and then in the afternoon snowfall, that I really beg you to excuse me: I can’t possibly find a single usable image from Saturday.

I could have driven up the mountain for some spectacular images, but sometimes it is just fine to take a short walk in the neighborhood and look out for the more silent beauties. I like this way along river Gail, just before it joins river Drau. The fallen trees give you all sorts of interesting angles. I could probably have fiddled with local contrast in the foreground snow, but instead I chose to simply upload the JPEG from the camera. I guess there’s nothing really wrong with it.

The Song of the Day is “Winterwood” from Don McLean’s 1972 release “American Pie”. Hear it on YouTube. Sort of fits my mood today :)

Posted by andreas at 10:02 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

1170 - By The Rivers Dark

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 6 Responses »
Dec 272009

I’m neither creative nor productive at the moment. I’m not even polite. The unread blog posts pile in Google Reader, and where I read, I hardly comment. I have not much time. I play Morrowind again. It’s old, it does not have the latest effects, but it is still one of the best and most addictive Fantasy Role Playing Games of all times.

The Image of the Day was taken yesterday evening in Villach. I’m pretty sure I would have liked it better with less of a tilt, with much more above the left corner included (imagine the dark trees in the background straight), but I would have had to include lots of bright, white streetlights along the upper edge, and that would have ruined more than helped. Well, you can’t always get what you want :)

The Song of the Day is “By The Rivers Dark” from Leonard Cohen’s 2001 album “Ten New Songs”. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 12:39 pm Tagged with: , , , , , ,
Older Entries
© 2010 Andreas Manessinger Suffusion WordPress theme by Sayontan Sinha