Behold! You look at one of the three images that I made yesterday, Friday. The day was supposed to bring snow, but instead it hung in limbo.
Imagine a day of snowfall, just without snow. Or try it this way: Imagine the moment just before snow begins to fall, only stretched out endlessly, filling a whole day.
The Song of the Day is “What Power Art Thou“, the song of the Cold genius from Henry Purcell’s “King Arthur”, made popular in 1981 by Klaus Nomi.
Looking it up on YouTube let me dicover some more interesting versions. How about this powerful rendition by Matteo, or maybe Harnoncourt’s production from the Salzburg Festival, hilarious (I was there, I’ve seen it and I have the DVD), but, judging from the comments at Amazon, obviously not so popular with the English crowd. Of course, for the purists I can always recommend John Eliot Gardiner. Enjoy.
Sundays, you know? This lazy feeling, and then on a day like this. According to the web cam on mount Dobratsch, even above the dense fog cover, it was cloudy and the light was flat. No reason to drive up the mountain, instead I have squeezed one more image out of yesterday’s collection.
The result is maybe not too bad, I have even made it another wallpaper in my small collection of downloadable wallpapers. The problem is, most of my images are composed for exactly the format that they are published in. In this case, with the trees that are cut off anyway, it was possible to produce wallpapers in the most common sizes, without really changing the character of the image.
They are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License, so feel free to use and share them.
It’s interesting: the wallpapers are the most popular content on this blog. Of course I have expected them to be popular, but the extent took me by surprise 
The Song of the Day is one more time “Postcards From Italy” from the fantastic 2006 Beirut album “Gulag Orkestar”. See the video on YouTube. It’s a somehow melancholic song and I like it greatly.
It’s more or less the same park, it’s the same kind of lantern, it’s only near now.
Why I took the image? Hmm … in a way I like the lace of the tree in the background. Other than that, it’s the usual old game: take some simple forms and arrange them in the frame. Here I think the angle and the asymmetry work together and build up the tension that makes the image. At least for me that is
If you’ve got some time to burn, why not read an article by Ken Rockwell? The interesting part is that bit about punchlines and double punchlines. Not new, but always good to remember.
The Song of the Day is “Yesterday Is Here” from Tom Waits’ 1987 landmark album “Frank’s Wild Years”. Hear it on YouTube, and while you’re there, you should probably hear Cat Power’s cover version as well 
Here in Carinthia it’s colder than in Vienna, and in the morning – when this image was made – there was still some snow left.
This is a place across the field from our house where Christmas trees were sold, and only one seems to be left. Good job
In the meantime the snow is all pretty gone, not because of warm weather like in Vienna, no, it’s because we had heavy rain all through the day. No weather to go out, and indeed I didn’t
The Song of the Day is “There’s No Lights On The Christmas Tree Mother, They’re Burning Big Louie Tonight” from the Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s 1972 album “Framed”. See a very intense live performance from the Marquee on YouTube. Sound quality is meh, but that can’t take away from such greatness
After the cold at the weekend, this is quite a contrast. This is probably not the right title. “It Could As Well Be Spring” would be better, but I only have it in versions that I can’t find on YouTube
It’s dark now, Christmas Eve, I am slowly making my way to Charinthia, or rather the train is, and I just want to thank you for the support through all these years. I wish you peace, joy and some easy days. I know it won’t happen for everyone, there will be grief and sorrow in the world, but at least I may wish for it.
The Song of the Day is “Some Other Spring” by Billie Holiday. You find it on every other collection of her songs, and of course it’s on YouTube.
You know this habit of mine, taking a song title, making it the title of the Image of the Day, making the song Song of the Day. Well, today is different and this is, because I got stuck in the middle.
I have a file with all my song titles. First I search this file for keywords that I feel match my image. When I have found something, I look if I can find a video, preferably on YouTube. I also check in my Index of the Songs of the Day if I have already used the song. If so, I may use it again or look further.
Today I had a very short time of about 40 minutes for photography. But still, I got into the mood quickly, and taking photos was an intense experience, almost meditative, out in nature, first on a small country road, then in a forest by the river. It was an experience of silence and joy.
Well, “silence” was one of the words that I looked for in my list of song titles, and when I found Shara Nelson’s album “What Silence Knows”, I immediately loved the idea. The problem is, that the title track was not available on YouTube. In fact, the only song from that album that’s on YouTube, is “One Goodbye In Ten”, and when I heard that, I knew I wanted it to be Song of the Day. It’s such an incredibly beautiful song, and if you don’t know the album, I can only recommend it heartily. Here’s the video.
Oh dear, even when the sun is out (as you see it was yesterday morning), its light comes in so flat an angle that you better live high above to see it at all.
Remember yesterday’s question about image composites? Well, obviously the real question is, what is photography – if photography is what I make at all. But it is not a game of names, in the end we will probably care more about the thing itself than its name. Help me please to understand the nature of what we are talking about here:
What exactly is it that could make a composite an objectionable photograph or could take away its photographic nature at all? This is obviously directed more at Paul Maxim, but the notion, that there is a credibility problem with composite photographs, is quite common. Is it credibility?
Or is it something about an image that does not look like it has looked “in nature”? Remember my usage of fill flash some days ago? How does this all relate to flash? An image with flash certainly looks very different from what it “looked in nature”. Is flash OK? But if so, why? Because it is “photographic”? Because flash has been used in all of photography’s history? Because it is a non-manipulated capture of a moment when the world was lit with flash? So many questions
The Song of the Day is “Live High” from Jason Mraz’s extraordinary 2008 album “We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things”. Hear it on YouTube.
Two posts in sequence with the same title? This is a little unusual, I am not sure, but I think we didn’t have that before, had we?
But not only this is unusual. While yesterday’s little Harlequin had received a proper treatment in Photoshop, yesterday’s Image of the Day had been straight from the camera – just like the two images of today
And wait, there is even more. The Image of the Day was made with fill flash! That’s really unusual for me. I own two normal flashes, a Nikon SB800 and some Metz the name of which I currently don’t remember, and additionally I have the Nikon macro flash kit, it’s just that I don’t use them. None of them. This was made with the D300’s built-in flash for fill.
I really admire the big Wizards of Flash like David “The Strobist” Hobby, Joe McNally or David Ziser, to name just a few of them. Flashes really don’t fit into the way I work, and as I don’t use them, I am really bad at it. Even for something so simple as adding fill light with the camera flash, I usually need three or four exposures to get it right. Well, to be precise, it were three in this case
How do you do it? Do you use flashes? Are you good at it? I mean, is it something that you feel comfortable with, that you don’t have to try hard to get any results at all? If so, then you are good at it, at least compared to me that is
Obviously the Song of the Day is again “Some Good Things Never Last” from Barbra Streisand’s 1988 album “Till I Loved You”. Hear it on YouTube if you haven’t heard it yet.
Remember that I wrote about unusual cold, about snow falling, and that this was only weeks ago? Well, now it’s different: we have some unusually warm weather
I remember having read that it is subtropic air being spiraled up from the Mediterranean. It won’t last though. These things never last. Most trees have lost all their leaves by now. This one was particularly interesting. A single leaf on a whole oak tree. It’s probably no good photo, but on the other hand, I really tried to catch a feeling for this time of the year, and in a way that’s something that this image seems to achieve, so maybe it’s not so bad either
The second image, this little Harlequin, I have found in a small shop. Not the same as that with the car yesterday, in another street, but definitely similar.
The Song of the Day is “Some Good Things Never Last” from Barbra Streisand’s 1988 album “Till I Loved You”. Hear it on YouTube.
This morning was dark and gloomy. That’s when I made the image of the car. It’s in one of my favorite shops, a small pawnshop in Josefstädter Straße.
Almost every morning I walk by, look into the window and see something that I cold photograph. Most of the time I don’t. It’s near work, when I am there, it’s already late, and normally I have several pictures at that time. This is a shop for desperate moments.
Today I took the image anyway. The car reminded me of Ted’s car miniatures, and somehow I simply had to take it
After this bad start, the day became pretty beautiful. By noon it was sunny, that lasted a whole short afternoon, and when I finally left work shortly after 6pm, it was pitch black night. Oh well, winter can be fine, but not when you have to work during all the light hours.
For the Image of the Day I did not care much about noise. This is ISO 1400 and one could say I have heavily pushed this image. Noise is still pretty acceptable. Actually I really like what I ended up with.
The Song of the Day is “In The Still Of The Night” by the Neville Brothers, to be heard on the 1990 album “Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter”, one real classic of an album. Hear it on YouTube.
