1412 - The Long Way Home II

Nikon 18-200 VR 1 Response »
Aug 272010

I continue to stay very busy, trying to take photographs whenever I can, but today it’s from the archives again. This is a very old image, almost three years, and since then it has waited on my TODO list.

The Song of the Day is one more time “The Long Way Home“. I’ve used this song a long time ago, way back in “295 – The Long Way“. Then I had used it for an awful rendition of a very mediocre image, but this time the image is better and for a change it is not Tom Waits’ original from his “Orphans” album, no, today it is Norah Jones on her 2004 record “Feels Like Home”. And it’s not bad either. Very different, but not at all bad. YouTube has it.

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1317 - We Came Along This Road

Tokina 11-16/2.8 No Responses »
May 232010

It is sunday morning and this image is from Saturday afternoon. The day began mostly cloudy, but in the afternoon the clouds dispersed and we took a short trip to a nearby valley and then a detour along a mountain ridge. This is on the road winding up.

Contrasts seemed so harsh, that I took a bracketed burst of five images, but foliage of that amount is obviously the point where HDR programs can’t handle variation any more. Both Photomatix Pro and HDR Essentials failed miserably, and so I took two exposures, one underexposed, one overexposed, into Photoshop, let it align them, put the darker to the bottom and blended the lighter one into the shadows. Look at the image: the shadows are mostly static. Things that don’t move, or at least unnoticably so at that focal length. We are at 11 mm after all.

It worked immaculately. Even at 100% I can see no obvious ghosting. I fully expected it, but no. Of course the two exposures that I used are only two apart in the burst, but then, when leaves move, they move extremely fast.

Anyway. The Tokina 11-16/2.8 is definitely prone to ghosts when you shoot directly into the sun, but it really depends on the exact position of the sun in the frame. Here I had no problem at all.

The Song of the Day is “We Came Along This Road” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. It’s on their 2001 album “No More Shall We Part”. YouTube has at least a live version.

Posted by andreas at 9:31 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

1308 - Down The Road

Tokina 11-16/2.8 3 Responses »
May 142010

In little more than an hour I have to leave for the train. It’s Friday, yesterday was a public holiday in Austria (well, Catholicism is not ONLY about old men and young boys, you know) and I used the time to get a little outside of town. Here’s one of the few usable images. Processing went along a little of its own, and when I saw what I got out of Photoshop while experimenting, I liked and kept it.

The Song of the Day is “Down The Road” from Marcia Ball’s 2005 album “Live! Down The Road”. Finally we begin to see more of her on YouTube. Here is the song, audio could be less muffled and there is indeed a version with better video and clear sound available, only it is not the same song :)

Posted by andreas at 12:33 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1261 - Shine On Brightly

Nikon 50/1.8 No Responses »
Mar 282010

This is the first image of yesterday afternoon. It was a bright, sunny day and we drove around in Carinthia. The challenge: find streets you have never driven before. Sometimes I am glad we that don’t have to go to another continent to find the unknown. Ten kilometers can be more than enough. You just have to keep your eyes open :)

The Song of the Day is “Shine On Brightly” from the 1968 Procol Harum album of the same name.

I didn’t find the album as digital download on Amazon, but what I found to my surprise is, that there are some recent live albums. One of them, “Live At The Union Chapel”, has the song and that’s what I’ve linked to. And then of course there’s always YouTube :)

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1213 - This Moment

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 2 Responses »
Feb 072010

Today was a beautiful day, but for various reasons I couldn’t manage to get out photographing before 3pm, and it was clear that the sun was not going to last until sundown, that it would vanish in dense clouds very soon.

I know I didn’t have more than one chance, and I was already taking risk by trying a new road, one that I already have driven, but not with the intention to take photographs.

There were two reasons for it: When I set out, that was the direction that looked most promising, and the road would take me up to 1000 m above sea level, 500 m above Villach, to a height where probably all precipitation of the last two days would have been snow.

In the end I took two series of bracketed images, and one of them I processed as HDR. It was long before I reached the highest point of my route, but it was literally the last moment. Only minutes later the sun had gone, and it did never come out again today.

The Song of the Day is “This Moment” from the 1970 Incredible String Band album “I Looked Up”. See a live video on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 5:15 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

1142 - So Many Ways

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 11 Responses »
Nov 292009

These are images of yesterday, Saturday. I took my time writing this post, because the weather forecast for today was pretty bad, and that made me suspicious I could need one of those images for today. Thankfully I didn’t, thus you get two takes on the old classic of the way leading into the center of the image.

The image with the bridge is an HDR image made with Essential HDR, one of my two HDR programs, Photomatix Pro being the other one. With HDR Darkroom there is now a third contender, again boasting superior tone-mapping algorithms. I can’t comment on HDR Darkroom so far, I’ve just bought it minutes ago :)

Why does he need three HDR programs, you ask? Well, they are quite cheap, at least Photomatix Pro and Essential HDR have distinct strengths and one time I like the output of the one, and for the next image I prefer the other. It’s about choices.

Anyway. I have a license now, I can already say that the current version has a bug, it always wants to run as administrator on Vista (and according to the forums on Windows 7 as well). Other than that I have just tried tone-mapping a single RAW file and the output was – garish :)

The Song of the Day is “So Many Ways” from the 1986 James debut album “Stutter”. See the video on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 9:27 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1111 - I'm So Free

Sigma 28/1.8 6 Responses »
Oct 292009

That’s a pretty funny number, when you think of it :)

Today’s picture was taken, well, today!!! I’m back in the game. I already feel pretty well, and I have decided to take off for the rest of the week, to stay in Carinthia, relax, and be able to photograph again. Wow, that feels much better now!

As you can see from the file name, this image is an HDR, combined and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro, and then taken over to Photoshop. There I’ve used some combination of Topaz Detail, my neutral blur, my saturation layers, a cooling filter, levels and contrast adjustments, some of them localized via masks, much of that modified by blend-if sliders to work mostly on the highlights or on the shadows, in other words, this image was quite some work.

Does it look like it looked while I was there? Nope. It looks better :)

The Song of the Day is “I’m So Free” from Lou Reed’s 1972 album “Transformer”, one of the best albums ever made.

Uhhm … this is not lightly said. I mean it. Let’s put it like this: When asked for the 20 best albums of all times, I may produce different lists on different days, no question, but I can hardly imagine a day when “Transformer” would not be on my list. And that’s pretty remarkable.

Hear the song in very good quality on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 1:32 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1080 - September Song

Sigma 28/1.8 2 Responses »
Sep 272009



Funny that I have never used “September Song” as a title. It was an obvious title for this image, in fact so obvious, that I thought it must have been taken two years ago.

Of all versions that I know of this song, none is better than what Lou Reed recorded for the 1985 all-star collection “Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill”. I know, this record is not available any more, but if you happen to find a copy: get it. It’s so good. Hear for yourself on YouTube.

As for the image, I took it when I went swimming this afternoon. Maybe for the last time this year. Who knows?

Posted by andreas at 7:14 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1066 - No Place Like Home

Sigma 28/1.8 3 Responses »
Sep 152009



1066: Battle of Hastings. Uhhh … damn those associations :)

This is an image of Sunday. I took it in the early evening, just minutes before we arrived in Villach after 9.5 hours of driving. Most of the way from Kraków to the Slovak border it just did not rain, most of the way through Slovakia we had sunshine, but then in Austria we came into some of the worst rains that I’ve ever had to endure on a highway. Still, everything went well.

The Song of the Day is “No Place Like Home” from the 1992 4 Non Blondes album “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!”. They had one or two hits then, made this album and were never heard of. It’s not their best song, YouTube has it, but I suggest you hear into the biggest hit “What’s Up?” as well. Much better for my retarded taste :)

Posted by andreas at 6:37 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1058 - Dog Days Are Over

Nikon 18-200 VR 2 Responses »
Sep 052009



A very conventional photo with Nikon 18-200 VR and Lee ND grad filter for today. I took it on my way to the lake. I wanted to go swimming one more time. No idea what the weather in a week will be.

Btw, due to yesterday’s 20 hours downpour, the water level in the lake has risen by between 20 and 30cm to an all-year high. Pretty impressive. This has also cooled down the water to maybe 22 centigrades, which is very comfortable.

The rest of the day was shopping, packing for tomorrow’s trip to Kraków, Poland, and dining out with Michael, who visited us today.

I guess the next blog entry will be from Poland, at least if the hotel has WiFi as promised. If not, if you don’t hear from me for a week, then I am not dead, then I have a connection problem ;)

The Song of the Day is “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence + the Machine. The album “Lungs”, that I have linked to, won’t be out in the US before October 20. You can either wait or get the download. YouTube has a video, and here is the link to Amazon’s download version: Lungs

Posted by andreas at 11:29 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,
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