Not much to time to think, not much time to talk this morning. I have to go to work. Here’s an image from yesterday. It gave me the “Subterranean Homesick Blues” 
The video is of course the classic opening scene from the 1967 documentary film “Dont Look Back” by D.A. Pennebaker. See it on YouTube.
This one would probably have worked in color as well, but then probably not. I didn’t try it for real 
The Song of the Day is “Up Where We Belong” by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, the big hit from the soundtrack of “An Officer And A Gentleman”. I have it on a collection of love songs that’s unavailable internationally, although availability of the original soundtrack album is not so great either
Hear it on YouTube.
As promised: after 24 images with the Nikon 24/2.8, I needed something new, and I really went with the fish.
One of the three blog posts of yesterday was made in the morning and, being pretty much in a hurry, I took the Underground for work. I saw this image in the morning, took two versions, but none was usable. One even included my feet and the paper bag with my breakfast
That’s the hardest part when using the fisheye: keeping out what you don’t want in the frame. I returned after work, and I was very thankful for the image, because in mid-afternoon it had begun to pour down, making outdoor photography a little inconvenient.
That in post-processing I went for toned B&W again was not planned from the beginning, but when I tried it, it worked so well to play down colorful peripheral elements like a red emergency telephone at the upper end of the elevator, that I stuck to it.
All these last images had a B&W conversion layer, usually with a filter like “Maximum Black”, a gradient map with the same tri-tone gradient, all had a layer with a strong 50px gaussian blur applied liberally along the edges, all had 10% monochrome gaussian noise added at 70% opacity, and in all cases I have applied levels and contrasts in normal blending mode after the gradient map, thereby intensifying colors where I have accentuated contrast.
This has become more or less a recipe and it works exceedingly well. In yesterday’s image I have mixed it with distorted edges, today I have increased local contrast, but the basic recipe is always the same. I should really turn this into an action
The Song of the Day is “Something New” from Tanita Tikaram’s 2005 album “Sentimental”. I’ve just heard the whole album while working on this post, and I think it’s really a shame that I seemingly did not sell so well. It is temporarily out of stock at Amazon, but some Amazon market place dealers have it for reasonable prices around $10, from at least one, Caiman (in Florida, where else), I have bought in the past.
Enjoy the song on YouTube. You won’t regret it.
It’s a tiny bit colder now in Vienna and the drizzle has changed to snow. Not much, but enough to give a nice morning view from my living room.
I like this image. Actually I like this very much, and I had already decided to make it the Image of the Day, but then one of the few images that I had shot in the Underground station caught my attention. I had not even noticed the runner when I took the shot.
It took me a long time to get to the point where I was more or less satisfied, and when I finally was, I decided to just try a square crop. It did work even better, it only required cloning out some distractions that were near the left edge now.
I did so, but somehow the image still did not look right. It was unbalanced, and suddenly it dawned to me: the square crop was OK, but I had cropped so that of the three lines that go down towards the lower right corner, the right one, the dark joint ran exactly into the corner. That was wrong, it had to be the middle line, the light one.
Well, no problem, that’s the beauty of Photoshop. Cloning had filled up my history, thus I could not go back, but when you’ve cropped, you can always “Image / Reveal all”, right?
Turned out I was wrong. When cropping I normally always use the option to “hide” and not “delete”, but not so this time. I was severely pissed. In order to get my desired crop, I had to re-do the whole image! I shortly contemplated ditching it altogether, but then I gave in and just did it again, using the layers of the original image as a model.
It was not that bad. Things are always easy when you know what you’re doing, and this finally nailed it: I am still not sure if the winter image is not what I really want, but after I have spent so much time with the runner, it simply has to be the Image of the Day.
“Run Run Run“, originally from the Velvet Underground’s banana album, is the Song of the Day. I have it on a collection called “Gold”. Hear it on YouTube.
Me catching up today?? Forget it! I’ve slept all through the night. Now it’s 6:50, I’ve just processed Tuesday’s few images, this one is what stuck.
Most of Tuesday was processing the Monday images, those of the trip to Krk. I did not even bother to go out. My reckoning was, that I would just take a few images at the train station, maybe on the train, or after my arrival in Vienna. After all, when you’ve been away from a city for two week, then come back and don’t find anything interesting to photograph, you’re probably not much of a photographer at all.
Well, I just made it, sort of
This is the elevator up from the underground, arriving at street level, the doors just opening. At night, when I’m out with the Sigma 10-20, I like to keep ISO low by using very slow shutter speeds. This is ISO 720 at f4 and 1/8s, handheld.
The Song of the Day is “Starting All Over Again” from the 2006 collaboration of Randy Crawford and Joe Sample called “No Regrets”. This is one of the CDs that arrived from Amazon on last week and that I’ve collected from the post office early Monday morning. I’ve found a sound sample, but the link is to a Belgian hitparade site, thus you’ll probably better hear it now, it may become unavailable any time. Sorry, no lyrics, no video.
Sometimes you’ve got only one chance. This is the single image that I shot on Friday. I took it on my way to the train, just as I went up the escalator from the Underground. After the gloomy darkness below, I suddenly saw a blue sky and a flash of strong yellow. I did not think about it, I just raised the camera and, without any conscious effort, got this, just in the right split-second.
I combined three versions from one RAW file to cope with the enormous contrast, but otherwise I could have taken the original composition as shot. That I still cropped it, well, I saw the chance to get some lines int corners, and I simply couldn’t resist. The original was not bad, but this one is even stronger.
The Song of the Day is “The Day That Jackie Jumped The Jail” from the 1991 Deacon Blue album “Fellow Hoodlums“. See them live on YouTube. The song is in the second part of the video.
I already should be off to work and instead again I’m in a hurry. I’m always these days. Very exciting things are happening
I shot this image yesterday in an underground station. Do you notice the camera? They’re everywhere. Why? Because you’re a suspect! Huh?? Oh, it’s not personal, everybody is. It’s just that you exist what makes them suspect you. See? Not exist – no problem.
If you happen to be Austrian, why not go over there and do something about it?
The Song of the Day is “Up with People” from Lambchop’s 2000 album “Nixon“. See the video on YouTube.
The minute when a reflection from some glass pane shed light on the wall outside to the right of my living room window, was a nice start into the day, but basically that was my last glimpse of sun. I am afraid it is becoming a pattern now: bright, sunny mornings that turn into gray slush as soon as I get out of the house
The next opportunity for taking photographs did not occur before I left work. It was already dim and unfriendly, everything from gusts to rain and the odd snowflake. I had protected my Loewepro Slingshot 300 with its all-weather cover (a fantastic bag, the best I’ve ever had), taken the camera out, protected by an umbrella, and tried to brave the elements.
No avail. When the droplets attacked horizontally and the wind turned around my umbrella for the second time, I cowardly retreated to the Underground.
The station “Volkstheater” is a crossing of two Underground lines, U2 and U3, thus it has two levels, U3, the one that I needed to take, being on the lower level. I took the image to the left while riding down the escalator. It is entirely uncomposed, basically a snapshot, but I like the slight motion blur and the strong feeling of perspective.
At the base of the escalator I turned my attention straight upwards for the Image of the Day. That’s always a good idea when you search for an image: look where you normally don’t look. It’s surprising how often this yields interesting views.
All images were taken with the Sigma 10-20 at 10mm, the Image of the Day at f4, ISO 500 and 1/4s, hand-held.
The Song of the Day is “Notes From The Underground” from the 1987 Manhattan Transfer album “Brasil“. I have not found a video clip on YouTube. Maybe there is one, but searching for the title, you only find clips related to Dostoevsky’s short novel, and searching for the group you find so many clips that I gave up wading through. Anyway, if you don’t already have this album, I can heartily recommend it to you. It is different from most of the Manhattan Transfer’s work, but nothing short of excellent.
Same as yesterday: I slept away in the evening, and now at 6am I sit here and try to get something written. Oh my!
It was not exactly meant to be, but fooling around on another rainy day (third in a row, they begin to speak of high water), I shot this, and now it is my take on Craig’s theme week 19, “Waiting“.
“Waiting” is also a song by Green Day. It’s from their 2000 album “Warning” and, surprisingly enough, it’s the Song of the Day
See here for a video as well.
