We’ve been to Palmanova yesterday. That’s a small town south of Udine, just where the highway coming from Austria, the A23, meets the highway A4, Trieste – Venice.
It was built from 1593 as an ideal city – which mostly meant ideally suited for war. It’s a gigantic fortress in the shape of a nine-pointed star, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi, and in the middel there is a completely oversized piazza, circular, with the cathedral on one side.
Palmanova is a nice place to visit, sit in the sun, sip a drink and watch people. At least that’s what we did 
The Song of the Day is once more “An Architect’s Dream” from Kate Bush’s 2005 album “Aerial”. I used the title a year ago for “950 – An Architect’s Dream“. Hear the Song on YouTube.
Did you know that yesterday was the “World Day of Sleep”, trying to boost awareness of insomnia?
Well, I learned only today, but somehow it matches this image well
The Song of the Day is “Nobody sleeps”, “Nessun Dorma” from Puccini’s last opera Turandot.
Of course the orthodox version is the one by Luciano Pavarotti. If any song at all, this was his signature. Basically you can take any of his recordings, but why not the one from the original Three Tenors concert? YouTube has it for you.
On the other hand, what I really wanted to show you, was Lester Bowie’s spectacular rendition on one of his last albums with the Brass Fantasy, “The Odyssey Of Funk & Popular Music”. This is pure genius! Unfortunately I can’t really demonstrate it. YouTube has nothing at all, there’s nothing on Deezer and Amazon won’t give us sound samples. There is a 30 seconds sample from the beginning on MP3Shake, one of the Russian music download sites, but you really would have to hear the whole almost seven minutes. You can get it on iTunes, or otherwise you’ll simply have to believe me
This is an image made Thursday morning. We had a beautiful sunrise, rain as I left home, then again some sun while I was on my way, rain later and in the evening … you get it.
It was one of the short moments of blinding sun. I wanted to take an image of something completely different, when in a second the sun was there and I saw people coming my way and the shadows that they cast. I made three images, this being the best.
Basically there was not much choice of composition. I had the 35/1.8 mounted, people and their shadows were moving, the sun could have been gone in an instant (actually it happened just like that), there was only one option: shoot regardless, and do everything else later in post-processing.
The Song of the Day is “Shadows and Light“, originally from Joni Mitchell’s 1975 album “The Hissing of Summer Lawns”. There is also a 1980 live double album of that name, where she performs together with Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays and The Persuasions. I didn’t know about that, but I’ve just ordered it from Amazon. YouTube has the very compelling version from that live concert.
Oh dear, six images shot today, two attempts at one subject (both came to nothing) and four in this place. Not much to choose from
Anyway. This is a place where I’ve tried my luck many times before. In fact, I like this place. It has a wild curve, there are people, so why shouldn’t there be thousands of opportunities?
Well, there never were. Normally, on my way to work, when I reach the place, I am already in a hurry. The other problem is, the traffic. It’s hard to take an image from this perspective, without getting crossing cars into the frame. This time I was lucky though. Just as I framed the shot, I saw the young man approaching. I made three shots of him and the second was pretty perfect. Not quite the perfection of HCB’s shot, but well, who would complain
Finding a Song of the Day took me some time, but “On the Streets I Ran” from Morrissey’s 2006 album “Ringleader of the Tormentors” is not such a bad match.
As I said this morning, not much has changed. We still have snowfall, it still does not amount to much, but at least the cold has put an end to the slush on the streets.
It’s hard to choose an Image of the Day today. Initially I was sure I would go with this one of a young man crossing the street, obviously feeling uncomfortable in this weather. From a compositional point of view one could argue that I have cropped a little too tight from the right side, but I actually like that for two reasons: First, being close against the frame makes him look even more uncomfortable, and second, his position strongly emphasizes the implied movement along his line of sight, a line that roughly meets with the tracks on the left edge of the frame.
The other candidate, a snowed-in pavilion in a park is interesting for mainly what it contains. I’m afraid you can’t really see it even at the size that you get when you click the thumbnail, but there are blankets on the benches inside the pavilion. It looks like homeless people have slept there, and that must be one of the more miserable places to sleep, especially when the snow comes horizontally at you.
I finally settled with an evening image, the bicycles. I was not even sure if I should process it. After all, I had the guy crossing the street, but then I did, and when I let the reins loose, I was pretty satisfied with what I got. Looks somewhat mysterious to me.
The Song of the Day is “Cold” from Annie Lennox’ 1992 solo debut “Diva”. See the video on YouTube. Now tell me that this does not begin with a reference to Vivaldi’s winter
We had five centimeters of liquid snow in the morning, then falling temperatures and ice in the evening. Seems like it’s going on, and I suppose I like the cold version better
I write this in the morning, and as I’m looking out of the window, I see it’s snowing again. Guess what you’ll see tomorrow
Unfortunately I am beginning to experience computer crashes again. I think the culprit may be my oldest hard drive, the one with my music collection. I have deactivated it for the moment and have to do without music. No problem, I have it all in Carinthia and at work, nothing is lost.
It’s bad timing though. I have planned to buy a 2TB disk as soon as it is available, but that seems to take some more weeks. Some shops here in Vienna list the new Western Digital 2TB “Green” disk as available from next week. We’ll see. Normally that only means “not now” and it may take some more weeks.
Anyway. I’ll wait, then change the 1TB image disk for the new 2TB, the 1TB becomes the music and spare disk, and the old 500GB disk gets replaced. At least that’s the plan. Now let’s hope that the crashes stop, or else the plan would need reconsideration
Music-wise I’d like to stay with Vivaldi’s “Winter”, but this time we look at the complete opposite to yesterday’s Nigel Kennedy: Herbert von Karajan and Anne Sophie Mutter. No, it’s not fashionable, no, it’s not on period instruments, but, boy does this recording sing! In a way it’s the technical culmination of the pre-”period instrument” age, and it’s certainly perfect. Hear “Winter” again on YouTube.
In retrospective, I can only sing praise to the weather in Carinthia!
It’s winter again here in Vienna. We had snow and strong wind all day, and when I went home from work, it was hard to shoot at all, with the flakes coming horizontally for me and my lens
Post-processing these images was challenging, and I’ve spent much too much time with them. As always, the challenge was, to get local contrast into the snow. Not particularly easy with the overall harsh global contrasts.
As for the Song of the Day, I was tempted to make this “What A Waste II”, but let’s try something different. Vivaldi. The “Allegro non molto” of his “Winter” concert, the last of the “Four Seasons”.
I love Vivaldi, I currently have twelve different recordings of the “Quattro Stagioni” (and I may well leave it at that), and the one for today, Nigel Kennedy’s interpretation, is one of the more unusual. In fact, it’s not really Vivaldi at all. It’s Kennedy. His ego dominates the recording completely,
but that is not necessarily a bad thing. In any case, the shrill harshness of his “Winter” perfectly complements our weather
See him perform on YouTube.
It simply had to happen. Today is the first day since November 21 that I have not shot a single image. Wet snow, a constant drizzle, fog below, clouds above, I don’t even feel bad about it
I spent a lot of time though, trying to get back into my bookmaking workflow, checking out Shutterfly (as recommended by Mark Hobson), trying to create a template, and so on and on and on. I guess you know how much time runs into those things, especially when you do them only once a year.
Basically this serves three purposes (“among my purposes are such diverse things as”): SoFoBoMo ’09 is nearing, by then I want to have the process worked out, and this time I won’t stop at the PDF, this time I want to hold a book. #2 is that Mark Hobson recently teased everyone to make a real book, and #3 is of course that Ted constantly buggers me to finally make that god-damn bicycle book
Speaking of Ted, this is another image from that morning in fall 2007, when we met to shoot the sunrise at Firenze’s Duomo.
The Song of the Day, “Sisters Of Mercy” by Leonard Cohen, is part of the soundtrack of Robert Altman’s 1971 movie “McCabe & Mrs. Miller”. I am not sure if it was written for the soundtrack or not, but Cohen’s music greatly contributes to the overall atmosphere of this masterpiece. See a video on YouTube.
Today weather was as unpleasant as it could be. Steady drizzles to heavy rains, eating away the new snow that has fallen during the week, but cold enough not to melt the old snow.
I was out there just once for the supermarket, made some images there and in front of the house, not overly inspired, and finally gave up. This is the kind of weather where you may be lucky and get a spectacular sky, but there is absolutely no chance in predicting anything.
If it happens, and if by chance you happen to be in the right place, a wonderful image may come together, although the time is very short, because these images were all shot at around what would have been sundown on a brighter day.
I suppose up on the mountain it must have been very beautiful, because there the precipitation certainly came down as snow, but I did not dare driving up the road.
The Image of the Day was shot down in the garage. There is a ramp leading up, and I took some shots of of the light coming in through the grated windows. This near-square is what survived.
The Song of the Day is “The Bunker” from Beirut’s spectacular 2006 album “Gulag Orkestar”. If youz don’t already have it, don’t forget to hear it on YouTube. It’s well worth your time. Sorry, no lyrics available.
