It’s Sunday evening by now. I have whiled the day away and now I am in a hurry. As usual 
This images is from a short trip on Saturday afternoon. Saturday was warm and sunny, eating the snow away at enormous speed. The image is a composite of two exposures, one taken at f5.6, the other at f2.8.
The Song of the Day is “Sitting On A Barbed Wire Fence” by Bob Dylan. I have it on disc 2 of “The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased, 1961-1991″. Hear it on YouTube.
Another weekend is over, I’m on the train back to Vienna. Like on most Sundays I slept long, relaxed, and when I got out, it was already 4pm. I drove to a supermarket on the other side of Villach, located in a winter sports area, where shops are open even on Sunday afternoons, and when I returned and took a small detour through this village, the sun was almost gone.
This is again an HDR image, tonemapped with Photomatix Pro and then finished in Photoshop. This is actually the second version. The first was tonally OK, but much too garish. This is much more believable, I guess.
The Song of the Day is “Sunlight” from Pat Metheny’s 1992 album “Secret Story”. Hear it on YouTube.
You know this habit of mine, taking a song title, making it the title of the Image of the Day, making the song Song of the Day. Well, today is different and this is, because I got stuck in the middle.
I have a file with all my song titles. First I search this file for keywords that I feel match my image. When I have found something, I look if I can find a video, preferably on YouTube. I also check in my Index of the Songs of the Day if I have already used the song. If so, I may use it again or look further.
Today I had a very short time of about 40 minutes for photography. But still, I got into the mood quickly, and taking photos was an intense experience, almost meditative, out in nature, first on a small country road, then in a forest by the river. It was an experience of silence and joy.
Well, “silence” was one of the words that I looked for in my list of song titles, and when I found Shara Nelson’s album “What Silence Knows”, I immediately loved the idea. The problem is, that the title track was not available on YouTube. In fact, the only song from that album that’s on YouTube, is “One Goodbye In Ten”, and when I heard that, I knew I wanted it to be Song of the Day. It’s such an incredibly beautiful song, and if you don’t know the album, I can only recommend it heartily. Here’s the video.
This is a wayside shrine in a rural livin quarter on the outskirts of Villach. This one is for Bill. I boldly claimed that our trees here in Carinthia still have leaves in their most glorious colors, but it is wearing thin. Nevertheless, I searched and found some for you
Finding a Song of the Day is not so easy. It must match in title or some line in the lyrics, I must own it, I want it to be available on YouTube, and I want to link to the lyrics. The latter is normally the least problem.
The Song of the Day is “‘Tis Autumn” from the stellar 1976 album “Fitzgerald & Pass…Again”, but although the lyrics are seemingly on every lyrics site on the planet, it’s always the text of “Autumn in New York”, regardless of where you go. Sometimes I really wonder
Hear it on YouTube.
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.
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?
I made not a single image today. It does not feel good, believe me, I tell you.
Today, like the last few days, I spent most of my time working on my new web site. The plan is to keep the blog on Blogger (I really can’t complain in the least about them), but to migrate the images from SmugMug to my own site.
Why? Because I have been patient now for more than half a year, have endured the outages, have heard the excuses. I am fed up with them. I have no idea if I can make it better, i.e. create something that at least for me feels better, without making it feel much worse for you, but I have to try. Paul Lester would say “It’s a guy thing”
This image is from yesterday. Yesterday the weather was much better anyway.
The Song of the Day is “The Land Of Plenty” from Leonard Cohen’s 2001 album “Ten New Songs”, co-written by Sharon Robinson. Hear it on YouTube.
On Wednesday we made a trip to the mountains south-east of Kraków, the region between the Beskides and the Tatra. In a journal from 2001 I have read about the region, that legions of its inhabitants had gone to America, especially to Chicago and Toronto, but that most of them never had given up their houses.
Indeed you see innumerable of the typical wooden houses being uninhabited. In fact it’s pretty easy to see why: Although the region is beautiful, there is not much work available, almost no industry. My impression is though, that in the meantime tourism has become a substantial pillar of the region’s economy, with Zakopane being the #1 winter sports center in Poland.
Personally I was not particularly impressed though. I am afraid I am spoiled by our own mountains.
Other than that, let me bring forth one gripe that I have with Poland: It’s the habit of the Polish to burn things. We have called this trip jokingly an olfactory trip into the past. Let me explain.
Sometime in my youth it became forbidden to burn junk and plant remains on the fields or in your garden. Neither I nor my parents had ever done such a thing, but it was pretty common among farmers, and I can vaguely remember the protest against the law. It worked well though, and here in Poland I can experience what it means to the environment to not have such a law: It’s crazy, you see fires everywhere, everybody seems to burn some hay, leaves or whatever, and the air is constantly – and pretty unnecessarily – filled with smoke that hangs over the landscape like fog. That’s rather unfortunate, because the pollution by the heavy industry seems to be well under control.
By the way, the final image shows the name of a village. Language is another problem here in Poland, if for nobody else, then at least for me. Normally when I read a name in German, English, Italian, Spanish and to a degree French, I know how to pronounce it, and when I see it, I can more or less immediately recognize it. Not so here. Polish spelling is in a certain way elaborate that makes recognition pretty hard for me, and in some cases, like with this village’s name, it takes some pondering before I even have an idea of how to pronounce it
The Song of the Day is “Close To The Borderline” from Billy Joel’s 1980 album “Glass Houses”. Hear it on YouTube.
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
This is an old image. One from my archives, one from mid May last year. We had pouring rain today and I have not made a single image.
Sometimes when I already have an image of the Day and when I am tired, lazy or when I have no time, I put promising images that I can’t process on a TODO list.
This is one of these images, and I guess that I got a better result today than I could have got last year. One of the reasons is a micro-contrast adjustment made with Topaz Detail, and then I may have gained some experience since then. I ended up with an 18 layer job and an image that I am quite satisfied with.
The Song of the Day is “Remember The Time” from Michael Jackson’s 1991 album “Dangerous”. Hear it on YouTube.
