1403 - It's A Fire

Sigma 28/1.8 4 Responses »
Aug 172010

Oh dear, a sunrise! How could I?

But then, why not? Sure, it’s a cliché, with probably only sundowns being worse, but it has happened, it did impress me, and I have the feeling that the image is quite a good representation of what I saw.

If sunrises totally disgust you, I can offer you a look though one of the etched windows in our stairwell here in Vienna. It’s likely the better image, but, damn, that sunrise was really great :)

The Song of the Day is “It’s A Fire” from the 1994 Portishead album “Dummy”. Nice song. Head over to YouTube for it.

Posted by andreas at 9:46 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1331 - I Want To Be Straight II

Sigma 8-16 No Responses »
Jun 062010

Here’s a quick part three of my ongoing review of the new Sigma 8-16mm F4.5-5.6 DC HSM Ultra-Wide Zoom Lens for Nikon. This is about two things, distortions and flares.

As you see, both of today’s images have the sun inside of the frame. Both images have been post-processed, but in both I have left the flares and ghosts in. That’s pretty much as bad as it gets – and it is not bad at all.

I have tried to clone out the reflection of the aperture blades in the Image of the Day, but in the end I decided, that with all that symmetry, I actually liked the slightly surreal effect.

This is a lens that you can use to photograph even tall buildings without having to tip the lens upward, thus without converging vertical lines. This is something I frequently don’t care about, to the contrary, I use those lines, but in classic architectural photography, people use expensive shift lenses to get the effect.

PTLens already supports this lens, and although the barrel distortions are pretty much nil above 10 mm, at 8 mm they are pronounced enough to make an image like the Image of the Day look bad. I strongly suppose that the latest version of Adobe Camera RAW also supports it or will support it soon.

Sharpness of this lens is excellent, and chromatic aberrations are extremely well controlled. All that makes it a fantastic choice for architectural photography.

The Song of the Day is “I Want To Be Straight” by Ian Dury and The Blockheads. I have it on a collection that’s not available any more, thus I suggest you get “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll – The Essential Collection”. Hear the song on YouTube. I have already used this song in “159 – The Prospect“, thus the numeral in the title :)

Posted by andreas at 4:21 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

1269 - Another Morning

Nikon 18-200 VR No Responses »
Apr 052010

This is just another morning as seen out of my study. I took it yesterday while working on a post for my programming blog. This pretty much occupies me at the moment. The new post is “5 – Patterns And Languages“. It is both an opinion piece and a declaration of intent.

The other post I’m working on is not up yet, it will be “6 – An Eclipse / GlassFish / Java EE 6 Cookbook”. I’m writing this to provide a smooth entry into Java EE 6 programming with Eclipse, something that I think a lot of people are searching for. Nothing fancy, just basic things that you otherwise still have to guess and find out the hard way. Of course this is intended to draw traffic to my new blog, and I guess it will do, just as tutorials always do.

Other than that, Michael is here, at the moment still sleeping on the sofa, while I finish yesterday’s post, wondering about what to photograph on this cool, cloudy day, all the while carrying on with the tutorial post. I’m pretty busy, but being so and wanting to be so is a pleasure :)

The image is an HDR taken with the Nikon 18-200 VR, processed with Photomatix Pro.

The Song of the Day is “The Morning: Another Morning” from the classic 1967 Moody Blues album “Days Of Future Passed”. I have no idea why I have not used this song before, hut I have not. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 8:51 am Tagged with: , , , , ,

1241 - Sweet Memory

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 1 Response »
Mar 072010

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.

Posted by andreas at 6:50 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

1178 - Alone With The Moon

Nikon 70-300 VR, Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 2 Responses »
Jan 052010

One of the nice things in winter, don’t laugh, it’s that the days are so short. Even a lazy sloth as I can see a sunrise.

Here we are with Sunday’s images. It’s late, I won’t make a second post with today’s, I’ll try to catch up tomorrow.

This weekend we made the second attempt at Michael‘s migration from Salzburg to Vienna, and this time we succeeded. Weather was with us. You may remember, the first attempt two weeks ago was thwarted by heavy snowfall.

Again I fetched the car, a Fiat Ducato Mark 3, on Saturday, left it over night in Villach, and at 7am I was already on the highway north, towards Salzburg. I had to cross the mountains, that’s where I made two short stops, not necessarily in the best places, just where it was possible, took some images in bitter cold, and then drove on.

I really wish I could have stopped wherever I wanted. I saw some absolutely breathtaking vistas, the snowy castle of Werfen in front of the most majestic snow-capped mountains, some winter dreams of magnificent beauty, but alas most of the time I was speeding along at 130 kmph with no chance to stop.

You have to take my word and the few images I was able to capture. I wildly enjoyed driving across the mountain range of the Alps, seeing all that beauty and even being able to snap a few pictures.

The actual migration took us till the evening, and there’s still a lot to do in Michael’s new apartment. Tomorrow night we’ll re-assemble his furniture, but most of the grunt work is done. Now, when I think of it, maybe I won’t be able to catch up tomorrow :)

The Song of the Day is the hauntingly beautiful “Alone With The Moon” from the 1998 Tiger Lillies album “The Brothel to the Cemetery”. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 1:43 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1043 - Blues Before Sunrise

Nikon 70-300 VR, Sigma 28/1.8 5 Responses »
Aug 212009



It’s not very long since the last post. I had risen extraordinarily early, spent hours writing my post and hearing the Leningrad Cowboys. All the while the sky grew lighter.

I changed back to the Sigma 28/1.8 to capture the sky gradient. It’s not a particularly good composition or such, it’s just a sky at the time when clear skies are most beautiful.

Later, when I went to work, I used the Nikon 70-300 again. This bicycle is a good old fried, the last time we had it, was in “831 – Just One Of Those Things“, and that was already the second time, but a good actor can be employed more than once :)

The Song of the Day is “Blues Before Sunrise” from the 1997 John Lee Hooker album “Don’t Look Back”. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 3:21 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

996 - One Of These Mornings

Nikon 70-300 VR 7 Responses »
Jul 052009



OK, this is the last post for today, promised :)

Yesterday I went to bed very early, exhausted from editing all those Vajont pictures, with only the first post written and no end in sight.

This morning I woke up early, in fact it was still night, but I was awake, and so I sat down in my study, and while I worked on the images for “995 – Dies iræ!“, I had the camera on the tripod, the Nikon 70-300 VR mounted, mirror lock-up dialed in and a cable release attached, and in that way I casually took photos every once in a while. This is one of them, again with liberal amounts of processing applied :)

The Song of the Day is “One Of These Mornings” from the 2002 Moby album “18″. Hear the song on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 9:19 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

993 - One Of These Mornings - You Gonna Rise Up Singing

Tokina 11-16/2.8 3 Responses »
Jul 032009



Yesterday was not my most productive day. When I got out in the afternoon, it was not much more than driving to the lake for some swimming, and to a restaurant because I was hungry.

Anyway. I still had a bracketed image of the sunrise, thus I was not too worried. The view is, as so often, from my study, and processing-wise this image was rather complicated. I used two differently mapped images from Photomatix, lots of adjustments in Photoshop, some Snap Art and a little blur to top. Oh well, I like it :)

The Song of the Day is still Gershwin. I didn’t want to use the title “Summertime”, maybe we get a little more high summer this year, but the lines are of course from “Summertime“. The version, that we hear today, is not even sung, and it’s one of the more unusual recordings of this song. It’s from the 1968 Ten Years After live album “Undead”. There is even a video, albeit of very bad quality, on YouTube, but in fact it’s so bad, I’d really urge you to go to Deezer for the album.

Posted by andreas at 9:11 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

959 - The Sun

Nikon 70-300 VR No Responses »
May 312009



One more week, one more sunrise in Vienna. This was Friday morning. I didn’t shoot much more that day, it was a travel day as usual, although I saw a breathtaking sunset when arriving in Carinthia, confined to the train and helpless as usual :)

Regarding “Urban Dreams”, I think this is definitely a SoFoBoMo candidate. I may use this or last week’s image, probably even both.

The Song of the Day is “The Sun” by the young Austrian singer Anja Plaschg, aka Soap & Skin, to be heard on her March 2009 debut album “Lovetune for Vacuum”. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 12:06 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

951 - When the Sun Comes Out II

Nikon 70-300 VR 2 Responses »
May 212009



I’ve promised you a sunrise, well, that’s a sunrise :)

This V shape is the lowest piece of horizon that I see from my living room window, and twice a year, most probably for one day only, the sun rises exactly there.

It was purely by accident. The sky began to be colored nicely. I took the 70-300, pulled all the way to 300mm, and took some shots of the three trees on the roof garden at the other side of the block. I have done this more than once, but none of the images has ever been particularly good. Neither have these, but as it grew brighter, I watched the spot every once in a while. The next couple of shots was better, having a nicely textured sky, and then …

… and then the sun came out. I made three exposures in short sequence, the whole thing lasted not even a minute. This is the best of the three, with the sun just in the right position.

Today is a public holiday in Austria. I was on a trip out in the country, I made some 70 images, but I haven’t been very inspired, and I actually enjoyed snapping away, relaxed, well knowing that the Image of the Day was already taken, processed and uploaded.

None of the country images could be SoFoBoMo stuff anyway, and after my morning image, everything else would only have been a bonus, thus I leave it at that.

The Song of the Day is the Harold Arlen song “When the Sun Comes Out“. I love the Ella Fitzgerald version from the “Songbook” series, I adore Barbra Streisand’s artistry, but today it is the voice and the soul of Judy Garland. See her on YouTube.

EDIT: Oops! I just found out that I have used this title and this song in Judy Garland’s version already once in 384 – When The Sun Comes Out. Well, tastes rarely change :)

Posted by andreas at 9:13 pm Tagged with: , , , , , ,
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