What’s a bicycle? It’s simply some lines. I’m not attached to bicycles more than to any other kind of object, it’s just that they have so useful lines

I don’t ride bicycles. No more. I did it ten, fifteen years ago, and then I decided it’s too dangerous. Well, you can let traffic regulations penalize you, keep to bicycle lanes that were obviously always an afterthought, can fight pedestrians and dogs, unable to overtake slow riders on those narrow lanes, always in danger of getting killed by careless car drivers anyway.

Or else you play the real game, ride fast, ride on car lanes, are part of the traffic. That’s what I used to do. This way the bike was an incomparably fast means of transport, winning effortlessly against cars or public transport, at least in a city. The problem is, using car lanes is forbidden now, at least where there are bike lanes. Sounds reasonable, would be reasonable, but only if the bike lanes were actually constructed for fast riding, allowing for overtaking, and wouldn’t constantly change sides for no reason, every time with a low priority semaphore.

But even if I had my way, it would still be dangerous. I stopped using the bike when I had an accident, about ten years ago. It was entirely my fault. I had stopped at a semaphore, second behind a small red car. I knew I had to be fast to get over the next few crossings without having to stop, thus when the car in front of me accelerated quickly, so did I. While switching gears I viewed down to the chain for only a split-second. I had had problems with the chain not changing gears properly some weeks before. Bad habit, I know. Just at that moment the car suddenly stopped, as sudden as its acceleration had been. The driver wanted to turn to the right into a garage. Oh dear. I’m not sure if I had been able to stop if I had not looked down. Maybe yes, maybe no. I was slightly too near in any case. As it was, I had no chance. I managed to slow down almost to a halt, but only almost, and the result were two dents from my handle bar on the car’s back door and a damaged helmet of mine.

Nothing bad did happen, I felt a little dizzy, the bike was OK, and I drove on to work. The problem is another one:

I know I made some mistakes, and the car driver behaved strangely, first starting like for a race, and then only two seconds later braking hard, but the problem is, this can happen anytime again. If I want to make sure that nothing like that can ever happen again, I have to drive in a way that would make me crazy. It’s no fun. I hate it.

Or else I don’t ride bicycles at all. That’s what I did since. But then, photographing and riding bicycles, that’s probably pretty incompatible anyway

By the way, this image is from January 26, and tomorrow I’ll go working again. The snow is not at all inappropriate. Most of today it was snowing lightly.

The Song of the Day is “Simply” from Sara Hickman’s 1989 album “Equal Scary People”. It’s not a really good match for the image, in fact it’s a lousy match. It’s a love song, but as a love song it is so beautiful, that I just had to have it here today.

Sara Hickman is great. I have two of her albums, both quite old now. I had not followed her career since, but when I looked today, I found that she has made quite some albums since, almost one per year – and almost nothing is available as digital downloads, many not even as CD any more.

Interestingly enough I found a beautiful, private live performance of this song on YouTube. Imagine, you’re invited by friends for Thanksgiving, by chance Sara Hickman is there as well, and she even sings a few songs for you. How much luck is that?

I’m still at home – and I can’t even begin to tell you how fed up I am. I have made no single image since when? Sunday?? But anyway, I’ll stay home tomorrow, and on Friday I’m back to work and then in the evening back to Carinthia.

Speaking of Carinthia, this is an image that I took more than a month ago on Mount Dobratsch. I didn’t use it, because I had more than enough images for “1210 – Solid Rock“, but today I am thankful for it. It’s also fitting in a way, because while the sun shines in Vienna, there was snowfall in Carinthia during the whole day, and it is predicted to go on until tomorrow. The weekend may see some sunshine as well. We’ll see. Let’s hope I’m fit for photography

This wooden sign is by the side of the road, almost at its end, at a height of about 1700 meters. I really liked the texture in the snow. What you see here is the result of a series of experiments, directed at conserving the highlight detail and the general feeling of depth, and at the same time showing a kind of blinding brightness. Thus I had to be careful: too much local contrast would have pushed the whole image into a medium gray, and that’s far from what I experienced while I was there. All in all I think the result is OK.

The Song of the Day is “Alone” from the 1996 Beautiful South album “Blue Is The Colour”. Hear it on YouTube. Not exactly related to the image, but a great song like almost all of Paul Heaton’s

This may seem like another “so-what” image, and in a certain way it is. Actually it is not a real image – meaning an image that I’m proud of – at all. It’s a memory, and to be precise, it’s a future memory.

This is of course the morning view from my study in Carinthia again. It’s not particularly interesting, just a morning, and during the last 17 months (so long have we been in Villach … so long), I have shown you many versions of this view, some of them maybe even good.

This is all going to fade away. Nothing will remain but a sweet memory.

See the red and white ribbons? They are all over the place, marking the outlines of furture buildings. So far they are nothing but a nuisance, making a lot of noise when the wind rushes in, but I suppose it’s only a matter of weeks until the bulldozers come.

It fills me with a certain nostalgia to know that this place will never again be what I have learned to love. But then: that’s life

The Song of the Day is “Sweet Memory” from the 2008 Melody Gardot debut album “Worrisome Heart”. See a live video on YouTube.

Here’s one more of yesterday’s images. I was too lazy to go out today. Sorry

This is an abandoned house not far from Klagenfurt, located in a wonderful spot, obviously belonging to an estate not far away, a solitary house, abandoned and closed, with an “Entrance forbidden” sign on the door, of use for no one.

The Song of the Day is the Beatles song “For No One“, sung by Anne Sofie von Otter on her collabration with Elvis Costello, the 2001 release “For the Stars”. Hear it on YouTube.

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.

Yesterday was actually a beautiful day, but I felt uninspired and tired. We drove around a little, I made some pictures, but nothing that I’d normally post.

So what? Instead of taking one from the archives, I decided to post one of these “been there, this is how it looks” images. Castle Rain near Klagenfurt in winter. That’s how it looks. Maybe it looks even exotic to some of you

The Song of the Day is “Instead” from the 2009 Madeleine Peyroux album “Bare Bones”. Here’s a live performance.

This is some sort of … transporter, I guess. I have never seen anyone use it, it just stands there all the time, or at least whenever I am there.

As to the Song of the Day, “Eric The Half A Bee” from “Monty Python Sings”, well, let me put it this way: You are certainly allowed to not own or even not know this album, you are only not allowed to keep it that way

Great stuff from before the world suffocated in political correctness. Almost unthinkable that Monty Python ever existed. Just think of “Sit On My Face“, “Never Be Rude To An Arab“, “I Like Chinese“, the “Penis Song” or “Every Sperm Is Sacred“. But then, mindless jerks are already busy to censor free thinking away. Enjoy it as long as you can.

Oh, and, today France has chosen to establish Internet censorship. Child porn, what else? Their law is even worse than the ill-fated German one, that was successfully fought by the German public last fall. No judges, no public, no evaluation phase for the law, just a secret list. I suppose Sarkozy’s buddies from the content mafia will be pleased.

But then, let’s “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” and hear the Song of the Day on YouTube.

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.

Photography has always been expected to say something about reality.

So, you want reality? I give you some reality. That’s how it looked here today. All day. Really

The Song of the Day is “Real Life Hits” from the 1981 Carla Bley album “Live!”. See a video on YouTube.