Yesterday it rained most of the time. I used a short pause in the afternoon to make some forest images.

I’d have more but, you know, it’s forest

I used a very expensive B&W polarizer, and as always it turned out to be a lot of work in Photoshop to get it looking like I wanted it to. I think it was worth the effort though.

I am pretty proud of the second image as well. It’s the 35/1.8 at f6.3 and 1/15s, handheld, and it is tack sharp.

I used this song once, almost a year ago, but when it makes sense, why not make use of the powerful force of repetition

The Song of the Day is one again “All The World Is Green” from Tom Waits’ 2002 album “Blood Money“. See him perform live on YouTube. The video is the same as last year, only the link had stopped working, “due to terms of use violation”. Let’s hope they get tired of stupidly removing videos that sell their products. Well, at least this one has the complete interview with Letterman

As I said in the last post, I am in Carinthia for a week. No traveling, no “real” vacations, just relaxing. It’s Sunday evening by now. It did take me some time to digest yesterday’s short trip to Slovenia.

But before we get to Slovenia’s beautiful landscape, let’s first push one thing out of our way: So far we had no dandelion shot this year, the dandelion season is short, here is this year’s attempt

This is the meadow in front of our house in Villach. We’ll get back to that in a week or two, when it will be a sea of white, feathery balls.

Yesterday we left Villach relatively late, at 4pm, but on the highway and through a long tunnel of more than 6km, the trip to Slovenia takes no more than 15 minutes.

Our target was the nearest town, Jesenice, a particularly ugly town that formerly was a center of Austrian k&k weapon industry. I guess it stayed on that track through Slovenia’s time in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, then the Socialist People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, but at the time of Slovenia’s independence, the high days of heavy industry were past. Today Jesenice is a town that visibly struggles to keep with the pace of the rest of the country.

The idea was, to leave the highway at Hrušica, drive all the way through Jesenice, then at Slovenski Javornik to take a small road left and up the mountains, all the way up to Javorniški Rovt, and then to take an even smaller road high up, to the west, to Planina pod Golico, and from there down to Jesenice. Google Maps does not show this connecting road, our street map does, but we finally found out that although the road seems to exist, it is to be used “at one’s own risk”, and that is not to be taken lightly in Slovenia, as we had to find out in March.

Even the road up to that intimidating sign had been extremely steep and narrow, thus we decided to let it be. The images so far were all made on the way up or on the highest point, just before we turned around. Pretty nice panorama, huh?

The only problem is, that winter is long and hard there, and that even the nearest town is half an hour of steep mountain roads away, and even then, it’s not a beautiful modern city, it’s shabby, old Jesenice

Well, that’s not fair. Sure, this is not a marvel of modern architecture (or any architecture), but it is a place where people live, a place that enabled people to live decent lives, so, sorry, I shouldn’t make jokes about it.

Apart from its remains of heavy industry, the area is surprisingly rural and in fact very beautiful. This idyllic spring scene was shot somewhere between Koroška Bela and Moste, while we drove down to the small town of Radovljica.

We ended up with only a short look on that walled old town, deciding that it deserves more than a fleeting look. We’ll be back to it maybe this week if weather permits, but in any case soon.

The last image is across the plain from Radovljica north. I pretty liked the clouds and the light.

All of these image were shot with three lenses: the Nikon 70-300 VR, the Nikon DX 35/1.8, and finally the wide angles with the Nikon DX 10.5/2.8 fisheye, the latter post-processed with the “Fisheye-Hemi™” plugin.

Well, I don’t really know what I thought, when I packed a bag of primes for this week, even omitting the 24/2.8, leaving the 35/1.8 the widest lens apart from the fish, but at least the fish does a very decent job.

The Song of the Day, “The Water Song“, is from the 1968 Incredible String Band album “The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter”. This was the first ISB album that I ever bought, then on vinyl, and since then I have acquired about all of their albums. Still, “The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter” will always be something special.

For a long time, ISB songs were not to be found on YouTube, but recently even this album has become available. Hear “The Water Song” on YouTube.

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!!

Monday morning we were invited by friends in Klagenfurt. Andreas Frei is the owner of Freiaudio, the leading recording studio in Carinthia, a good friend and by chance also owner of a Nikon D80 and a Tokina 16-50/2.8.

What shall I say, we’ve swapped lenses for a week, at the moment I use his Tokina and he uses my Nikon 18-200 VR.

A local store in Vienna has one of those lenses for sale at half the price. People don’t seem to get it, they most likely only see the normal price and not the sign announcing the rebate, thus it’s still in that shop’s window and teases me.

I have pondered for some time if I should buy it, and I guess it is a good idea to simply try one of them for a week. As far as I can say at the moment, the image quality is excellent from f4 upward and quite good at f2.8. I’m tempted

The Song of the Day is “That’s The Way It Goes” from the 1983 Manhattan Transfer album “Bop Doo-Wopp”. See them live on YouTube.

OK, OK, “911 – Spring Is Here” was probably really a tad … hmmm … lacking in the color department. Art is no democracy, but the wise artist heeds the voice of the public, even more so, when it’s really ONE voice. “Post-apocalyptic“! Guys, you really know how to motivate me. Hope you don’t mind when I choose to still pursue that way

Slovenia advertises with the slogan “The Sunny Side of the Alps”, and they are quite right. From Carinthia it’s only once over a mountain range (actually through a tunnel nowadays), and from Villach it takes me no more than about 15 minutes to reach the country, but at least in Spring and Summer, the climate is slightly warmer, the vegetation at least a week ahead.

On Sunday afternoon we took a short trip down to Slovenia, and to be precise, along the river Sava from Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana east to the small town of Litja.

There are roads on both sides of the Sava. We took the smaller ones, those that are so small and have so little traffic, that we once saw people playing Badminton in the middle of the road.

I used two lenses on this trip, the Nikon 18-200 VR and the Nikon 10.5/2.8 fisheye, but all images shown here were made with the fish and “Fisheye-Hemi™“. It’s simply more fun.

All of today’s images began as color images, then I have applied my now already familiar B&W process, and finally used a mask to reveal most but not all of the original color. It is very similar to yesterday’s process that did not tickle your fancy, only more subtle

The Song of the Day, “Down By The River”, is once again from “The Hudson Branch EP” by The Hudson Branch, a music group based in Crystal Lake, Illinois. Three of their six members are Bienerts, and although I came to know Corey Bienert as a photographer, he and his band make very good music as well. Head over to their site and download some of their music. So far it’s for free. See the video on YouTube.

It’s just about time to give a new meaning to 911, ain’t it? It has haunted us for almost eight years now. It has been abused to introduce the worst backlash against freedom of expression that our western civilization in the so-called free countries had to endure since the totalitarian downfall in the 1920/30s.

Censorship, the wet dream of every totalitarian mind, has returned as a concept openly pursued by our governments. Don’t let them have it!

Sorry, seeing the number of today’s (well, actually yesterday’s) entry has put me in agitation mode again. Still, it’s something to consider. Freedom is either a collective experience or it is not at all. Let’s get back to normal, can we?

Other than agitating, today I want to begin with two forgotten images from Friday. The first is the morning view out of my window in Vienna.

There is so much contrast, it is impossible to capture the feeling in any normal image … and still, I experience that feeling every sunny spring morning. Here I have used a very flat conversion from RAW and then applied some Hue/Saturation layers in various blending modes, “Screen” being among them in the darker parts. You can get to the same result via Lab mode color steepening, this is just the way I do it now. I guess it looks quite OK, at least my feeling is there.

The second is actually a variation on “602 – The Day That Jackie Jumped The Jail“. It’s the same place, the same escalator, there is still a construction site, I used the same lens, only this time I am maybe a meter above the position last time, and this time I have used Fisheye-Hemi™ for distortion correction. The other image was more evocative, at least for me, but I like this enough that I had to show you.

All of today’s images were shot with the Nikon 10.5/2.8 fisheye, all were treated with Fisheye-Hemi. Actually I love the way this plugin works. You have to work with some restrictions, most important the fact that the plugin does not honor the EXIF image orientation information and always corrects for landscape format, but all of photography is governed by restrictions, lens choice is a restriction, so get over that. Think of it as a software that turns your fisheye into a landscape lens.

And an ultra-ultra-wide at that. Remember: verticals will be corrected and will behave just like with any ultra-wide. When you point the lens up- or downward, they will show strong perspective distortion. Horizontals will not be corrected at all.

If you use the fisheye in the most tame way, keeping the horizon in the middle, as I did in the last image, it is just a very, very wide lens.

The Song of the Day is “Spring Is Here” by Nina Simone. It’s funny that I have never used that song. If you look at the lyrics, it’s the opposite of what I actually feel, but the song is really beautiful. I have it on “The Tomato Collection”, a collection that, according to Amazon, is discontinued by the publisher, but that you can still get via Amazon marketplace, or if you are open to digital downloads, directly from Amazon. Deezer has the whole double album for you to enjoy.

Shooting with the fish and using Fisheye-Hemi™ for distortion correction is a hit and miss affair. It’s not very easy to pre-visualize what you will get. I have a general feeling for it now, but there are still many times when I am surprised by the outcome. Verticals and wild tilts don’t seem to work well. This plugin is definitely made for horizontals or near-horizontals.

Other than that, it’s a bad idea to use this lens with bright, overcast skies. Suddenly you’ve got enormous contrast everywhere and lose all colors and details in the shadows. On the other hand. if you overexpose, you lose fine details at highlight edges, so if it tickles you to use the fish on such a day: just don’t do it.

I did, and the net result was meager. This is the only survivor. I went down to that particular bus stop because that tree is in full blossom now and I missed it last year. Unfortunately B&W was a necessity here for the aforementioned reasons. Damn it

The Song of the Day is “Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?” from Bruce Springsteen’s 1973 album “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.”. Hear it on YouTube.

April may be the cruellest month, but is it really necessary that every song about April is about rain?

Yes, I know, now that winter is over, we want our summer and we want it instantly, but, remember, it’s a dangerous thing to wish for the time to pass quickly

But really, while searching for a song, I noticed that rain seems to be the governing theme. Deep Purple’s masterpiece “April” is about gray skies that should be blue, and the song that I finally decided to use, “April After All” from the Anne Sofie von Otter / Elvis Costello collaboration “For The Stars”, tries to comfort us with the vision of a passing April leading into May and June.

It’s still a beautiful song. Hear for yourself on YouTube.

Anyway. This April definitely starts out fine. My firefighter work on that project is over, work gets enjoyable again, it’s warm and sunny, and the days are long again. Today I even managed to squeeze in a short deviation to the back waters of river Danube. What can I say? It was a pleasure

Out of a whim I decided to use the Nikon 24/2.8, and all color images were made using a polarizer. Makes a big difference in the Image of the Day and an even bigger difference with the swan.

The Image of the Day should really be this one, at least it is the only one that rises above the level of vacation snaps, but, you know, I really wanted to show off some different colors, some change of mood. Hope you enjoy it.

What’s your view of April? Actually, now that I think of it, this is incredibly dependent on location. On the southern hemisphere, April corresponds to our October, near the equator it may make not much difference (does it?) and in some of the hotter countries on the northern hemisphere it may be the most pleasurable time of the year. But, what do I know? Tell me about it: What does April mean for you?

Here we go again. These two images are from yesterday, Saturday, early afternoon. It was a bright, sunny day, I had some business in Klagenfurt, and on my way back to Villach, I passed the highway for some good old country roads.

I had not yet given up on the fisheye, but my hopes for a usable image were low. You know, the fisheye does not particularly lend itself to landscape photography … or so did I think.

Both of these images were shot with the fish, both were converted in DxO Optics Pro, but without the default rectilinear mapping, and then they were run through Fisheye-Hemi™ again. All the other treatment is the same as in the last shots (yes, I’ll be back to color again, don’t worry), but the spectacular thing is really how Fisheye-Hemi turns the fish into a perfectly usable general-purpose landscape lens. Sure, it’s wide, in fact it’s ultra-wide, but that’s the whole point of it, right?

Just look at the trees! They’re straight. That’s what we expect. The landscape, the horizontal lines, they still bend, but that’s completely unimportant especially in a landscape. Nobody could tell how those lines are in reality anyway. All that counts is, that familiar things look familiar, and here that’s what the trees look like.

Sorry for bothering you with that plugin for the second time, but I’m simply thrilled. It’s like having bought a new lens

It’s another second time for the Song of the Day. Again it’s “‘Til A Spring Wind Blows Again” from Clarence Bucaro’s new album “‘Til Spring”. We had such warm spring winds yesterday, I could not help but being reminded of this song.

The album is finally out now and you may really like it. Check for extensive samples on Clarence’s own page.

I had only half an hour for shooting today, thus I took the car, drove slowly along until I found a meadow with a nice mix of flowers, and there I took some images of bees and another variation on the theme of photographing through some kind of blurry foreground.

I love this image because the view through the grass and the near flowers on a group of flowers in some distance produces a totality that, even though it does not reflect what we see through our eyes, nevertheless reflects my feeling that flowers are everywhere at the moment. It is an immersing view.

No news on SoFoBoMo. I’m in for some real stress this week

The Song of the Day is “Thru And Thru” from the 1994 Rolling Stones album “Voodoo Lounge“. See them live on YouTube.