1802 – Love is The Seventh Wave

 Panasonic DMC-LX5  3 Responses »
Sep 252011
 

I always carry a second SD card with me. It’s a low-spec Kingston card that I initially bought for the LX5 and that I later replaced with a higher-spec (but on that camera not a bit faster) SanDisk card.

Well, today was beautiful and sunny, and although I managed to spend most of the day using the Google surfing the Internets, I still managed to drive down to the lake for swimming.

On my way I found a nice view, stopped the car and went out to make some pictures. Only then I found that I had left my card in the card reader. No problem, I thought, that’s why I always carry a second card and ,,,

I didn’t find it. I may have stowed it away in some pocket, I may have lost it, it made no difference, I couldn’t produce it and the images went untaken. Here’s something from Italy instead.

The Song of the Day is “Love is The Seventh Wave” from Sting’s 1985 album “The Dream Of The Blue Turtles”. Hear it on YouTube.

1791 – Happy Feet

 Panasonic DMC-LX5  2 Responses »
Sep 182011
 

More and more I find myself wondering about what to do with my D300. The DSLR is in Carinthia now, and during the last week I had again the option to use either this all-weather beast of a camera or the tiny Panasonic LX5. Well, you know what I did. I’ve hardly used a DSLR in half a year. It really makes me wonder :)

In addition to these happy feet I leave you with some sole e mare. Both images are probably a little more colorful than real life, but that’s how memories are, right?

The Song of the Day is “Happy Feet” from Paolo Conte’s stellar 1990 album “Parole d’Amore Scritte A Macchina”. If you don’t have a Conte album, this is the one you need. If you have one but not this one, well, you need it anyway :)

See a video on YouTube.

1784 – Birdland

 Panasonic DMC-LX5  3 Responses »
Sep 072011
 

I’m on a workshop in Rust, a picturesque small town at the shores of Neusiedlersee, a big shallow lake in the Austrian province of Burgenland, right on the border to Hungary. This is the morning view from my room. Lots of birds and pretty impressive if you ask me :)

The Song of the Day is “Birdland” from Patti Smith’s 1975 debut album “Horses”. Hear it on YouTube.

1759 – The Hissing Of Summer Lawns

 Panasonic DMC-LX5  4 Responses »
Aug 142011
 

Here’s an image made yesterday near our lake. Summer lawns are hard to photograph. You see them in their entirety and say, “Wow, how many flowers!”, but when you look at the pictures, you see some small, unimpressive, colored dots among all that green. It’s hard to get the feeling across.

In this case I’ve tried to go low and play with the pink flowers and a white diagonal to create some dynamics.

The Song of the Day is “The Hissing Of Summer Lawns“, the title song of Joni Mitchell’s 1975 album. Hear it on YouTube.

1752 – Pink

 Panasonic DMC-LX5  4 Responses »
Aug 072011
 

Today the weather forecast recommended to “enjoy the last rays of the sun”. I certainly did.

Pink? I have not that many songs with “pink” in their title. Some albums, yes, Pink Floyd, sure, but song titles? I have an ingenious version of the “Pink Panther Theme” though, interpreted by Bobby McFerrin. Hear it on YouTube.

1739 – River’s Invitation

 Panasonic DMC-LX5  1 Response »
Jul 252011
 

This should be an image taken Sunday, but it is not. We had pouring rain yesterday, snow down to 1800 meters, in other words, I did not feel like photographing. Well, actually I did. In the morning, when fetching breakfast from the local bakery, I made some images of puddles and raindrops on the windshield, but in the end there was nothing usable.

Instead here is another image taken on Saturday. It’s from the same bridge as “1731 – Dream River II“, only looking the other way, downstream.

While the last post featured a slightly enhanced image, this one was processed to look as natural as possible.

The Song of the Day is “River’s Invitation” from the 1969 album “Soul ’69″ by Aretha Franklin. Hear it on YouTube.

1738 – Walking Along With You

 Panasonic DMC-LX5  Comments Off
Jul 252011
 

I am already back in Vienna and this is an image taken on Saturday. At the moment I sit at home, having a day off, trying to reduce my backlog, using my new Internet connection.

I’ve upgraded? Hell no, I’ve downgraded :)

For the last years I have always used Internet via cable from one company, and mobile access from another company. The mobile contract was old and ripe for upgrading, and the cable contract had always been automatically upgraded to the fastest and most expensive option. Now I have downgraded to VDSL and get mobile with a better quality and data limits together from a single company, and all for 100€ less than before. Cool, huh?

No, not really cool. I was just an idiot to pay for so long for something that I don’t really use. Subjectively my new VDSL is every bit as fast as cable was before. The old cable contract had TV as well, this one does not, but that’s fine, I don’t ever see TV anyway. I’m glad when I get my images posted :D

The Song of the Day is “Walking Along With You” from the 1970 Incredible String Band album “U”. Hear it on YouTube.

1731 – Dream River II

 Panasonic DMC-LX5  5 Responses »
Jul 172011
 

You know this place. I was there in October 2009 for “1093 – Dream River“. In fact, I cross that bridge at least twice a week, and every few years I feel the urge to take a picture :)

This time it was not yet sundown, to the contrary, the sun stood blindingly bright and high in the sky. I exposed for the sky, and although in the original JPEG the ground was quite dark, the dynamic range of the LX5 is sufficient to allow brightening it up. What you see here is a fusion of two versions from the same RAW, one over, one underexposed, blended manually with a mask. I’ve color-corrected and saturated both versions separately, and though the result was tonally satisfying, it still fell apart. To tie earth and sky together again, I used a sun flower-colored layer in “Soft Light” blending mode and with low opacity.

I rarely use this technique, but having seen Roland Vögtli’s “Energy Vector” just minutes before, I still had the concept of coloring in my head :)

And really, it works fine. What was driven apart tonally, was fused together by a common color tint.

The usual white border does not go well with the idea of the sun being a solitary source of brilliant brightness. Of course I could have just skipped the border, but instead I have chosen a muted color that’s also in the water.

The Song of the Day is again “Dream River” from the 1998 Mavericks album “Trampoline”. Hear it on YouTube.

1724 – It’s Too Hot For Words

 Panasonic DMC-LX5  1 Response »
Jul 102011
 

I don’t know what the exact temperatures were, in any case they were beyond 30 degrees Celsius, and that’s enough for me.

After swimming for almost an hour (which did help, although not as much as one would believe), we went up into the mountains. There is a road that I didn’t know, leading to an inn at 1960 meters. This finally did the trick :)

Somehow the heat bogged me down and made me make a big number of completely irrelevant pictures. Here’s two of them. The image of the Day was made on the way up, the other is a view from at around 1700 meters. The view is towards Villach.

The Song of the Day is “It’s Too Hot For Words” by Billie Holiday. Hear it on YouTube.

1712 – Fast Train

 Panasonic DMC-LX5  Comments Off
Jun 272011
 

Some time ago, when I had complained about the many times that I had sat on the train, with the most wonderful landscape in the most enticing light outside, Flo asked me why I don’t simply take images from the train.

Well, I can’t remember what I answered, probably something stupid about reflections and dirty windows or who knows what. Fact is, that’s exactly what I did today.

I missed my train yesterday, and therefore I left Villach in the early morning. The taxi came at 5 am, the train left at 5:26 am, and at 9:50 I was already in Vienna behind my desk.

In winter this is absolutely boring, but now, with the sun already out when the train leaves, it’s really beautiful to just look out of the window, and it took not long until I began making images. Of course most of them are rubbish. You don’t have much control over the framing, because in order to avoid reflections, you have to hold the camera flat to the glass, but still, there are some that I like.

I suppose there’ll be more of that :)

The Song of the Day is The Van Morrison song “Fast Train“, sung by Solomon Burke on his 2002 album “Don’t Give Up on Me”. I’ve already used the song in “273 – Movin’ on a Fast Train“. Hear it on YouTube.

 Older Entries