The Daily Photography of Andreas Manessinger

Bye, Bye Blogger!

2009-10-07T22:26:00.002+02:00

It's done. I have changed the DNS entries for my domain "andreas-manessinger.info" to point to my new server at

Most of my old URLs already work with the new blog, especially the turtorials. Some more work will follow, but from now on the new system is stable enough to be used for posting. All new posts will be on the new blog.

That you see this post here on Blogger at all, can have one of two reasons: You have followed a very old link, dating from the time before I used my domain "andreas-manessinger.info", or you are reading this in a feed reader and have subscribed to the original Blogger feed, again probably a long time ago.

If you have a bookmark to "photography-andreas-manessinger.blogspot.com", then please update your bookmark to

http://manessinger.com

If on the other side you have subscribed to the old feed (a blogspot.com URL as well), then I beg you to subscribe to the official feed

http://feeds.feedburner.com/photography-andreas-manessinger

otherwise you won't see any new blog entries. Thank you for your support. See you on

http://manessinger.com

Andreas

Status update

2009-10-05T12:46:00.002+02:00

Well, I guess it's time for a short status update:

Blogger has some serious problems with the allowed number of labels per post at the moment. They will undoubtedly fix it, but for me it comes at a very inconvenient time. I originally wanted to export the blog, fix the image URLs in the export file, delete the original blog entries and finally import them again from the fixed file.

The problem is, that with the current bug, Blogger is unable to re-import my blog. This is pretty serious, and it has caused me to consider a migration of the whole blog to WordPress. I tried that, and it was so entirely painless, that I'll give up on Blogger. Of course I now have the same problem with my WordPress blog: I need to change the image URLs, in order to make them point to my own site instead of SmugMug. Luckily the export format of WordPress is a lot easier to work with than that of Blogger. It still requires some serious Java programming, but I'm in the middle of it and it looks fine so far.

The whole process may still take one or two more days. I do take photographs in between, I just don't post them at the moment. Thus you'll see the next image posts on my new site. I'll give you another update tomorrow, hopefully it will already contain instructions on how to change your bookmarks or feed subscriptions.

See you on the other side :)

1085 - Out In The Rain

2009-10-02T19:34:00.004+02:00

OK, grudgingly even I admit that this summer is over.

It was rainy today, rainy and cool. These images are from Vienna. Carinthia, that's where the train just takes me, seems to have slightly better weather, maybe I can even go swimming one last time. Well, it's not that it will be so hot as to necessitate it, I seriously doubt that, but swimming for the last time in October has become something like a ritual to me :)

As to my website project, I really need to hurry now. There are still two things that I need: The link translator for the blog (this will be a Perl script, I already have parts of it) and an image resize and upload utility.

On SmugMug I simply uploaded a JPEG and SmugMug took care of the rest. On my own site this will be different. I will have a program that takes the original JPEG and locally creates smaller versions in the six sizes that I'll provide. Then that program will automatically upload the images and sort them into the proper directories on my website. Additionally it may output the URLs for the different sizes.

Initially this may be a Linux shell script that I run in an Ubuntu Virtual Box, and if that proves convenient enough, I'll keep it at that. If not, I may create an Eclipse RCP Java program or maybe even some C# .NET program. Whatever the user interface will be, the actual resizing will be done by calling an external program, ImageMagick's "convert" command.

Hmm ... I suppose with unintelligible gibberish like that I'm just losing my last readers, so let's just say there's still some work to do :)

The Song of the Day is "The Rain" from the album "Roadsinger" by Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens. Hear the song on YouTube.

1084 - To Me You Are A Work Of Art

2009-10-02T04:39:00.011+02:00

Sometimes I wonder if I should go back to older images and re-do them in Photoshop. Of course I don't do it, but in many cases it would make so much difference.

It's incredible how much you learn and how this never ends. Of course it's the tools as well. Take this bicycle for instance. I have used Topaz Detail to give it an extremely graphic and overdone look, basically by combining the presets "Creative Detail Accent" and "Micro Contrast Detail". Then I have made a mask to restrict the effect to the bicycle alone. In the next step I have layered on top what I call my "Neutral Blur" (see "542 - The Show Is Over, Say Good-Bye" for details), and as base of the blurring I have taken the original image.

That's something that I use very often: two opposite effects, both pretty overdone, layered in two groups, one above the other, and then I fine-tune the overall effect by varying group opacities. Whatever the result is, due to the leveling effect of the blur, it needs a "Levels" adjustment layer, and finally I do some sharpening, mostly in the mid-tones and probably again with pulled back opacity. Normally I also apply an edge mask to the sharpness layer, here I simply took the mask that I already had made. Does this make sense? Hmm ... I really should make a tutorial of that.

The Song of the Day is "To Me You Are A Work Of Art" from Morrissey's 2006 album "Ringleader of the Tormentors". Hear the song on YouTube.

1083 - Life Is A Long Song

2009-09-30T23:33:00.003+02:00

Don't ask me why I chose this title. Honestly, I don't know. It somehow seemed appropriate.

I spent most of this evening trying to create a simple image display application for my new site. It's not more than a single PHP page, it's trivial, but as it's the first time that I write anything in PHP, nothing seems trivial to me. It's not even done yet. So far it looks OK in everything but Internet Explorer. Sigh!

The Song of the Day is "Life Is A Long Song" from the 1972 Jethro Tull album "Living in the Past". See sort of a chamber music version on YouTube. Gotta love it.

1082 - Big Boy Blue

2009-09-29T19:01:00.003+02:00

One more image for today. Yesterday I felt slightly restricted by the Sigma 150/2.8 Macro. There were several moments when I missed images because I was always far too near and going so far back was not an option.

The problem with going back, even when there is space, is that the longer your lens, the more obstacles fit between you and your subject. In any case, I wanted something shorter for today. The morning was rather gloomy (it did get better though during the day), thus 1/200s, as I use with the Sigma 150mm lens, did not feel promising anyway. I really hate getting into high ISOs at daylight and even at f2.8.

Following that impulse, I decided to use the Sigma 50/1.4, one lens that I have not used in a long time. With it I took this image of a small copy of a greek sculpture. I found it in the window of a greek restaurant.

The Song of the Day is "Big Boy Blue" by Ella Fitzgerald. I have it on a 10 CD collection that I've got for 10€, but as that is not available elsewhere, I link to "The Platinum Collection". Hear it on YouTube.

1081 - Lifted

2009-09-29T18:18:00.002+02:00

That's the best I've got for Monday.

In the afternoon, while walking home, I saw a crane lift a heavy weight of concrete. I waited for the moment when the container would be exactly between building and sky, and that's what I've got.

Nothing special, but it gives me a reason to recommend the Song of the Day: "Lifted" from the 1999 Eurythmics reunion album "Peace". Nice song. Hear it on YouTube.

1080 - September Song

2009-09-27T21:14:00.003+02:00

Funny that I have never used "September Song" as a title. It was an obvious title for this image, in fact so obvious, that I thought it must have been taken two years ago.

Of all versions that I know of this song, none is better than what Lou Reed recorded for the 1985 all-star collection "Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill". I know, this record is not available any more, but if you happen to find a copy: get it. It's so good. Hear for yourself on YouTube.

As for the image, I took it when I went swimming this afternoon. Maybe for the last time this year. Who knows?

1079 - Ghost Of Yesterday

2009-09-27T12:55:00.004+02:00

Swimming in the morning, in a quiet lake, that's still warm enough, driving a dramatic mountain road to heights of over 2000 meters in the afternoon, Carinthia is a stunningly beautiful and surprisingly diverse country.

You could tell from these pictures and the many that you've seen over the course of the last almost three years. This stunning beauty is marred by the presence of ghosts though.

The Carinthians are a fearful people. The ghost that haunts them most, is the danger of immediate annexation by communist Yugoslavia. Their fear is still awake, more than 60 years since the victorious partisans in Yugoslavia last tried to wrestle parts of Carinthia away from Austria, and in fact 20 years after the end of communism in Yugoslavia and in fact the end of Yugoslavia itself. Spooky, those ghosts, huh?

It all began much further in the past. After the slavic invasion, Carantania was what could be called the first Slovenian state. It emerged in the middle of 7^th century and lasted for almost 200 years. Since then, the largest part of what is now Carinthia, was always populated by slavic-speaking people. Christianization of Carinthia was directed from Bavaria though, and soon the ruling class was german speaking as well.

That's how it ever was until the end of the 18^th century. The 19^th century brought the same kind of industrialization, mobility of workers and rise of the urban middle classes as everywhere else, and in that process, the Slovene language was increasingly seen as the language of the peasants, and either through active suppression or through economic forces began to wane everywhere but in the rural areas.

After the end of World War I, Carinthia was the place of continuing civil war between a slovenian nationalist faction that proposed incorporation of the southern part of Carinthia into the new Yugoslav Kingdom, and the now german speaking majority. After two years, an internationally controlled referendum decided that a unified Carinthia would continue to be part of Austria.

From then on the Austrian/German nationalist faction in Carinthia continued to play an important role as the guardians of Carinthia's unity. With nationalism being such a defining part of carinthian history, it is no wonder that this same faction became involved in National Socialism almost from the beginning, and during the six years of Nazi reign, the slovenian population was a target of ethnic cleansing.

With the downfall of the Nazi Empire the leading class in Carinthia should have been disqualified, but surprisingly this was not the case. Now communist Yugoslavia tried one more time to incorporate southern Carinthia, and this was no more than a short episode, ended by Allied occupation, but still the danger was felt again. Carinthia rallied around nationalist leaders and protected war criminals. The ghosts of 1918 were stronger than any revulsion against Nazi crimes.

After World War II Carinthia was ruled by the Social Democratic Party, and many former Nazi members simply changed membership books. In the 1970s Carinthia was in the headlines when the government tried to install constitutionally guaranteed bilingual signs at the borders of towns and parishes. You find those bi- and even trilingual signs all over Europe. It's no problem in Italy, Switzerland, France or elsewhere, but in Carinthia it caused unprecedented riots and the signs were forcefully removed. The ghosts were back.

Since then there have been countless trials by the government to come to a peaceful resolution. To no avail. The rise of Upper-Austrian Jörg Haider to Carinthia's political leader was possible to a big part because he instrumented nationalist feelings and hate against Slovenia. A solution would have been against his interests and those of his party. Now, even after Haider's death, his party rules supreme and it looks as if this could go on and on.

Stupid, huh? Modern Slovenia is part of the European Union, all borders have fallen, there is no cause for conflict any more, and still the ghosts haunt us. I wonder how long this can go on.

The Song of the Day is "Ghost Of Yesterday" by Billie Holiday. I have it on a 10 CD collection that I bought for 10€. It's not available elsewhere, thus I suggest the collection "Canciones" that I've linked to. Hear the Song on YouTube.

1078 - Love Or Something

2009-09-25T20:48:00.006+02:00

Don't fear, this is the last post for today, a short one, showing two bicycle images that I shot in the morning, and two afternoon images from my way to the train.

I really love these small children's bikes. I took the images in front of the same school/kindergarten in Vienna's Josefstädter Straße where I made "727 - The Gang"

I like both of these bicycle images. The love theme in the Image of the Day was obvious, but I don't know exactly what to make of the other one. Neglect? A father leaving his child? Or nothing at all like that? Maybe the small bike only fakes being tied to the railing? What if this bike is spying upon the man? Could this bike be a detective? There's certainly something in his pose, that reminds me of a young hero ...

The other two images happened on my way to the train, the "Karma" image just before I went down into the Underground, the other one just after I had re-emerged. "Karma" is basically the same kind of composition as the Image of the Day or so many of the half / half images in my SoFoBoMo '09 book "Urban Dreams II", only not horizontal but vertical.

The second image, the one with the tramway tracks and the giant advertising in the background, somehow appealed to me, wanted to be taken. It's something about the keen lines and the surreal effect of the giant legs. I don't know, I can't really tell why I took the image. I saw it and the urge was there. I'm pleased with the result though.

The Song of the Day is "Love Or Something" by Bob Geldof & The Boomtown Rats. I have it on the collection "Loudmouth: The Best Of Bob Geldof & The Boomtown Rats". See a nice video on YouTube.

1077 - Morningshow

2009-09-25T17:35:00.003+02:00

Some very interesting cameras have appeared recently, and due to all that web site fuzz I have not yet commented on that.

It's interesting, digital photography seems to get to a point where it's more than good enough. When i bought my Nikon D200, I knew that, short of the high-end pro models, I had probably the best camera one could buy, with only one exception: the sensor was a little bit too noisy at high ISOs. It was still at least as good as film, but the Canons were better.

With the D300 that all changed. Suddenly Nikon had a first league sensor, and the camera itself had become ergonomically and feature-wise more or less perfect.

Sure, the D700 brought even less noise and full-frame, but in the end I decided to save the money. Full-frame would have sky-rocketed my lens costs, I would have lost the 100% viewfinder that I loved so much from the first moment, and the D300's high ISO image quality is just good enough.

Additionally I would have lost the long reach without gaining anything on the short end. The point is this: the wide-angle problem for APS-C sensors is solved, there are plenty fine ultra-wide lenses. They may be not as good as the Nikon 14-24/2.8, but they take filters, cost half of it and ultimately they are again good enough. On the long end though, switching to full-frame would have had enormous impact. On the D300, my Nikon 70-300 VR has enormous reach. It's equivalent to a 450mm lens. Ok, Nikon's 400 and 500mm lenses are faster and of higher quality, but apart from the fact that they cost between 10 and 20 times as much, you can't even carry them. Oh, and need I say that for my application, mostly street photography, the 70-300 is good enough?

With the new D300s (that's a suffix, not a plural, thanks Nikon), the decision was even easier. I don't need or even desire video, and apart from that, the D300s has nothing relevant to offer.

How about other brands? Not that I have any desire to change, but we have seen some interesting cameras in the last month. With the 7D, Canon finally have their answer to the Nikon D300. It has a much improved autofocus module (in this respect toppling the more expensive 5DMkII), has higher resolution, at least on paper it seems to offer excellent high-ISO noise, it has 18 megapixels, thus a whole lot more than the D300, they have even given it the 100% viewfinder. There are no reviews yet, but when they have not fumbled badly, this camera is bound to sell and give Nikon a headache. If I would begin today, I'd strongly consider the Canon 7D. As things are, it is just another excellent camera that's more than good enough.

What else? Of course, the new Leica M9. This beast is totally and utterly out of reach, but I suppose if I had enough money to burn, I would buy one. Finally and after a long odyssey, Leica has arrived in the digital age. I am impressed.

And then? What about the Leicas for the poor man? What about those big sensor / non DSLR cameras that have appeared recently? It's strange, they all have their strengths, but none of them is really interesting yet. The Sigma DP2 has improved upon the DP1, nevertheless it's still much too slow. The Olympus Pen E-P1 is a nice camera, good looking, charming even, but its autofocus is much inferior to any DSLR and even to Panasonic's Micro Four Thirds offerings. On the other hand, Panasonic has brought a too big, too DSLR-ish first offering with the G1, followed by a much nicer GF1, a camera of about the same type as the Olympus, but why on earth have they decided to set on stabilized lenses instead of a stabilized sensor?? That's stupid! About the only argument in favor of lens stabilization is, that it stabilizes the image in an optical viewfinder. Apart from that it is only more expensive and adds complex elements that can fail. On a camera that does not even have an optical viewfinder, lens stabilization is pure folly.

Leaves the new Leica X1. Oh well, no need to salivate about this. Leica's appeal are the M lenses. A fixed-lens Leica X1 is just another overprized camera soon to be obsolete.

All in all it seems that the category is not yet there. The cameras are either not good enough, or if they are, they are irrelevantly expensive.

Let's look into the other direction, let's look at medium format and the new Leica S2 system. This is even more out of reach than the M9, but again, if I had the money to burn, I would probably lust for a Leica S2. It's not bigger than a pro DSLR (which most people would already consider too big to carry around at all times), but it should give us much better image quality. Indeed, the 100% crop shown on The Luminous Landscape hints at probably the best image quality ever seen in a digital camera. Impressive again.

In a way even the big medium format backs from Phase One and Hasselblad impress me, although those cameras are completely unusable for my type of photography. And then there is it again: my 12 megapixels are just good enough for me. They suffice even in those cases where I don't invent half of my pixels with tools like Alien Skin Snap Art. And there is more to it: with 12 megapixels and the corresponding file sizes, my storage problem is solved. Hard drive space increases faster than I can make images, even though I save all my multi-layer Photoshop files, with some of the bigger of them being around half a gigabyte. I can still keep all my images so far on one single inexpensive drive, and I will be able to do so forever. Going medium format would set me back not only financially. Find a laptop that can edit a 60 megapixel image with ease. Well, you may find some extremely expensive MacBook Pro to come near, but then show me one of them that weighs 1.5 kg. No chance.

So do I care? Heaven, no! Times have changed. This is not the early digital age. Cameras keep their value now. Mind it, I don't mean monetary value, that one goes down as it used to, but they keep their inherent usage value. I have no idea when I will change cameras. Should the D300 fail or get destroyed, I would of course buy a newer camera, but other than that I see no reason to change one good enough camera with all features that I could ever need, against another good enough camera with the same or similar features. Fact is, the D300 is already more than I need.

These images are from yesterday morning, thus the title. The Song of the Day is "Morningshow" from fellow Austrian Fuzzman's self-titled first album. See a video on YouTube.

1076 - Ribbon In The Sky

2009-09-24T01:26:00.003+02:00

I'm learning. We all do, and that pretty much all of the time, but I am learning about image resizing now.

For my new site I need downscaled versions of my images. I think I'll provide the same sizes as SmugMug does. Using my image database IMatch, I have copied all my JPEG files tagged "Submissions.SmugMug" to a new directory. From there I want to batch-resize them into directories 0150x0150, 0400x0400, 0600x0600, 0800x0800 and 1024x1024. The obvious choice for that job is Photoshop's Image Processor. At least that's what I thought.

I had already done all those conversions for all sizes, but when I compared my results to the images on SmugMug, they were pretty poor. Well, you can say all sorts of things about SmugMug's current stability, but one thing is for sure: they damn well know how to resize images. I tried for more than an hour to get similar results in Photoshop, I tried to vary the JPEG quality, I tried to apply different levels of sharpening, all in vain. SmugMug's images still looked better. Not by much, but it was noticeable.

Finally I had the idea to try IrfanView, my favorite image viewer. And really, not only does it have a batch facility that can resize (and a hundred things more), not only that the quality matches that of SmugMug's versions, no, it is also much, much faster than Photoshop, uses less resources and does not block the computer while it runs. In fact I am converting 2164 images to a bounding box of 600x600 pixels right now, in the background and while I write this blog entry. OK, one problem solved :)

The Song of the Day is "Ribbon In The Sky" by Stevie Wonder. I have it on the collection "Original Musiquarium I". For whatever reasons it was never followed by a number two. Hear it on YouTube.

1075 - The Closing Of The Doors

2009-09-23T00:27:00.002+02:00

One more post for today, it is a short one, and that's more than fitting. It is well past midnight now.

This is the door of one of those countless small shops that remain closed. Their size is not fitting for today's commerce. Sometimes I think, that the American mind-set of tearing down the old and building the new, has its merits. After all, most of these shops will never find any commercial use, and at the same time they are unfit to house people. Here in the 7^th district, home of Vienna's artisans, at least some of those shops have been converted into small galleries and other art outlets, but even a big city can accomodate only so many of them.

The Song of the Day is "The Closing Of The Doors" from Róisín Murphy's 2005 album "Ruby Blue", so far one of the more original achievements of this young century. Hear it on YouTube. And if you feel that sounds like Moloko, you're right, it's the very same voice :)

1074 - He's Funny That Way

2009-09-22T20:27:00.003+02:00

It's stupid. I shouldn't do that. I really should work on my new web site.

But then, how could I have passed this playground without noticing the kids sitting in the cage, on top of the goal? How could I not have taken the image, how could I have restrained myself from processing and uploading it?

Or the tools of that chimney sweeper, whom I saw in the morning, vanishing in a shop, leaving them out on the street, prey to my Sigma 150/2.8 Macro?

Yes, I use the 150 again and it's pure pleasure. It's an awkward lens in many ways, but once you get accustomed to the fact that you are always too near for what you see, once you have found out that even then it sometimes pays off to get nearer, once you have acknowledged how sharp it is wide open, once you have begun to see in this peculiarly tiny frame: suddenly it feels natural like any other lens. Well, heavier maybe :)

So often I see people ask on forums what lenses they should buy for good bokeh, and then they get all sorts of answers from 50/1.4 to - of course - 85/1.4, but what so many people don't recognize, is that near focus beats wide aperture all the time. That's why this lens is so useful and that's why the Sigma 70/2.8 Macro wipes the floor with the Nikon 85/1.8, although they have so similar focal lengths and although the are similarly priced.

Yesterday was one of these days. I have more images. At least one or two, and each of those shown here would have made it for Image of the Day on a normal day. I relish those days, even though they make so much work and even though it is so stupid and I should work on my server :)

The bicycle made it today. I think, yeah, that guy's really funny. I saw him, and for whatever reason, he reminded me of a clown. There was something in the pose, and of course for me there is something in it that you can't see: he had an orange saddle (you see the color, but you wouldn't have seen what it is) and he has red handles on the handlebar, a handlebar that reminded me of the cap of a jester. Well, it was impossible to fully isolate this guy, thus you only see what you see. For the rest you have to believe me. He's still funny enough I think, isn't he?

The Song of the Day is "He's Funny That Way" by Billie Holiday. I have it in my cheap collection of 10 CDs with early Billie Holiday recordings. I have it by Ella as well, but Billie is what I found on YouTube, thus she makes it.

1073 - The Land Of Plenty

2009-09-20T18:23:00.002+02:00

I made not a single image today. It does not feel good, believe me, I tell you.

Today, like the last few days, I spent most of my time working on my new web site. The plan is to keep the blog on Blogger (I really can't complain in the least about them), but to migrate the images from SmugMug to my own site.

Why? Because I have been patient now for more than half a year, have endured the outages, have heard the excuses. I am fed up with them. I have no idea if I can make it better, i.e. create something that at least for me feels better, without making it feel much worse for you, but I have to try. Paul Lester would say "It's a guy thing" :)

This image is from yesterday. Yesterday the weather was much better anyway.

The Song of the Day is "The Land Of Plenty" from Leonard Cohen's 2001 album "Ten New Songs", co-written by Sharon Robinson. Hear it on YouTube.

1072 - Summer's Almost Gone III

2009-09-20T15:09:00.000+02:00

There are some image titles that I use once a year. "Summertime" is one of them (I kinda missed it this year) and another one is of course "Summer's Almost Gone".

I took this images yesterday on my way to the lake. The water level is unusually high for this season, but it is still warm enough to enjoy ten minutes of swimming. This is late sun falling between the trees of a rural orchard.

The Song of the Day is again "Summer's Almost Gone" from the 1968 Doors album "Waiting for the Sun". We had it last year and the year before. Actually it was interesting for me to compare the pictures, but in a way they all seem to carry the concept over.

Hear the song on YouTube.

1071 - I'll See You (In Another World)

2009-09-19T00:07:00.002+02:00

I was awfully tired today, had not had much sleep the night before, needed to rise early and to go on a shopping spree, in other words, it was not the best of days.

I didn't even want to go out photographing. Well, in the end I did, quite spiritless, and as I drove around near home, I had the idea to this image: How about taking an image of a mirror, focused on the mirror itself, keeping background and mirror image well out of focus, with the background and the mirror image showing vastly different scenes.

I admit the execution was a little sloppy, I may get back to the concept another time. It also does not need to be a car mirror, it could be a mirror shard held in a hand, just like on Joe McNally's book, a little hand mirror, that's all not so important, but it is necessary to face some industrial landscape, while standing with the back to some rural scene, an opportunity that you typically find at the fringes of our cities.

The Song of the Day is "I'll See You (In Another World)" from Sophie Zelmani's 1996 self-titled debut album. Hear it on YouTube.

1070 - Under A Stormy Sky

2009-09-18T23:36:00.003+02:00

Sorry for the irregular posting intervals. At the moment I am pondering a major overhaul of this blog, and most of my time goes into reading web reviews of web hosting services, comparing hosting plans, etc.

Anyway. Yesterday was supposed to be a mostly rainy day and it actually turned out to be not. There were high clouds towering on all horizons, but most of the day it was warm and sunny in central Carinthia. I was even swimming.

The Song of the Day is "Under A Stormy Sky" from Daniel Lanois' first album, the 1989 release "Acadie".

To my great surprise YouTube has multiple videos, for instance a live performance, another that's part of a documentary, where Daniel explains what this song is about, and finally another documentary about the Canadian "Mariposa" festival, where he performs the song in a manner very similar to the album version. Pretty nice coverage :)

1069 - Shelter From The Storm

2009-09-17T04:37:00.006+02:00

A big, fat rain cloud squats over Italy, Slovenia and Austria. All of Austria? No, today there was a spot in Austria's utter east, Burgenland, where the sun still shone, and that's where we sought shelter from the storm. It's a bit crazy and completely irresponsible from an ecological point of view, but it sure felt good to sit in the car and drive 2.5 hours for a little sunshine.

We went to Güssing in the south of Burgenland. It's a small town best known for its mineral water, featuring a castle atop of a hill and a Franciscan monastery. This image has been taken in the Franciscan church.

The Song of the Day is "Shelter From The Storm", originally from the 1974 Bob Dylan classic "Blood on the Tracks", unequivocally acclaimed as one of his best albums, and a live version is also available on the 1976 release "Hard Rain".

YouTube has the album version and a 1976 live video. Well, I'm a fan, I love both, but when you press me hard, I'll take the live version.

1068 - Simple Things

2009-09-16T00:03:00.003+02:00

Sometimes very simple things are enough to produce an image that pleases me. In this case it is a storehouse of a local hardware shop, seen through a bunch of yellow flowers.

I took the image on my way to the lake. Most of today was sunny and I decided to go swimming. At this time of the year you never know. Every time could be the last time. Due to the excessive rain before we left to Poland and in the last two days, the level of the lake has risen by at least 30 cm (one foot) in less than two weeks. The lake is now full and begins to spill over. The forecast announced more rain until Sunday, thus we'll probably see floods.

The Song of the Day is "Simple Things" from The Crash's 2001 album "Wildlife". Hear it on YouTube.

Btw: I said I would catch up and I just did. For the first time in a week this is again an image posted the day it was made :)

1067 - Ride Across The River

2009-09-15T22:19:00.002+02:00

Forget about post-processing. Yes, I did some things and it's been more or less random. I followed impulses, and as on another day the impulses would be different, so would be post-processing.

No, it's not the procesing, it's the crop. This is what took time, what made me try and go back, back and forth, many times, but now I am satisfied. I really like the balance in this image, and - interestingly enough - it's a kind of hobsonesque balance that I originally set out to achieve with today's image, and that I now enforced in this image of last Monday, our first full day in Poland, the day we went to Auschwitz. Obviously taking photographs and processing photographs are two very similar creative processes for me, cropping being very similar to the original process of composing through the viewfinder.

Why I post a past image instead of what I photographed yesterday? Easy to answer: I only made one image, a personal portrait snapshot. We had rain all day and that very fact sucked the creativity out of me :)

The Song of the Day is "Ride Across The River" from the 1985 (oh my, so long ago!) Dire Straits album "Brothers in Arms". This is the very album that made the then new Compact Disc popular. Hear it on YouTube.

1066 - No Place Like Home

2009-09-15T20:37:00.003+02:00

1066: Battle of Hastings. Uhhh ... damn those associations :)

This is an image of Sunday. I took it in the early evening, just minutes before we arrived in Villach after 9.5 hours of driving. Most of the way from Kraków to the Slovak border it just did not rain, most of the way through Slovakia we had sunshine, but then in Austria we came into some of the worst rains that I've ever had to endure on a highway. Still, everything went well.

The Song of the Day is "No Place Like Home" from the 1992 4 Non Blondes album "Bigger, Better, Faster, More!". They had one or two hits then, made this album and were never heard of. It's not their best song, YouTube has it, but I suggest you hear into the biggest hit "What's Up?" as well. Much better for my retarded taste :)

1065 - Your Own Choice

2009-09-15T12:36:00.003+02:00

You may or may not object to it, but resistance is futile. Today an image is what you make of the raw data that the sensor captured.

These are two images of Saturday, our last day in Poland. We had been visiting Kościuszko Mound in the morning (the image of the spiral stairs is from there), later the salt mines of Wieliczka, and finally, late on that overcast and gloomy afternoon, we drove a little bit around, and that's where I made the other image.

As to the Image of the Day, I could not really decide what I like better, the B&W version, concentrating on tonal density and contrast, or the color version, concentrating more on the Yin-Yang aspect. I like both. You decide.

The other image is presented in two versions, to the left straight out of the camera, and to the right what I made of the RAW file. This is not a particularly good image, it's more that I tried what I can do with it and myself was surprised about the result. I post it as a reminder to all those JPEG shooters. You miss something :)

The Song of the Day is "Your Own Choice" from the 1970 Procol Harum album "Home". Hear it on YouTube.

By the way, I had a hard time with yesterday's image of the town hall in Tarnów. I finally decided to give it an overhaul and have cropped it from below. The result finally has the balance that I was looking for. See for yourself. You may have to reload the page to see the new image.

1064 - Tarnów

2009-09-14T00:52:00.005+02:00

I'm back from Poland. We drove back all day, without any problem. Now it is Sunday night, well, actually it's past midnight, and again I have no more than one post today. I will try to catch up tomorrow. These are two of the images that I made on Friday.

Friday we mainly visited Tarnów, a city about 100km east of Kraków, the warmest place in Poland, a city that had about 50,000 inhabitants before World War II, half of them Jews, the highest percentage in any Polish city.

Tarnów is another place where Amon Göth committed his crimes, the very same man whom you most likely know from "Schindler's List", a man who delighted in the fear of his victims, a man who liked to play God, a man who played games by randomly killing people. Göth was the leader of the troupe that "cleared" the Ghetto in 1943, Göth, another Nazi criminal from Austria, maybe the worst, at least there is not much more bestiality imaginable in a man.

The Image of the Day shows the entrance to the old town hall in the middle of the central square, the "Rynek".

The second image was taken on our way back, already near Kraków. It was one of these gloomy evenings, the sun had vanished in smokey fog, long before it had had a chance to set. It doesn't completely catch the atmosphere, but I think it is not completely wrong either.

Other than that we drove through Nova Huta, the former "ideal town" of socialism, built as a place for the workers in the big steel mills to the east, built as a revolutionary counter-weight to the traditionally conservative Kraków. In the end the experiment failed, Nova Huta became one center of resistance under the flag of Solidarność. But not that is interesting here.

What fascinated me, is the fact that I absolutely like that place. I had imagined it as ugly, utilitarian, a typical case of cheap and bad architecture, but quite the opposite is true. Of course, today Nova Huta is plagued by unemployment, many of the shops are closed, but I think that from its basic architecture, this is a fine place to live. I suppose at one day in the not so far future it will become fashionable to live in Nova Huta, new shops will open, the town (which is really the most eastern district of Kraków) will boom. I may be wrong, I have been in the past, but I can't imagine I will be wrong this time.

South of Nova Huta there is also an old Cistercian monastery in Mogiła. Poland is certainly the most catholic country that I've ever been to (no, I've never been to Ireland), and it is amazing to see, how much money the Polish put into restoration of old churches and into building new ones. Mogiła is an old one, but it has been restored in a very beautiful way. They may have taken liberties, as a priest said, to whom we talked when we visited the cloister, the fresco paintings may be far from how the originals had looked, but the whole place radiates a very healthy aura of being used.

The Song of the Day is "Songs of Rejoicing" from Giora Feidman's 1992 album "Magic of the Klezmer". Hear it on YouTube.

Well, that's it for today. I could go on, I could and probably should post more images, but it is well past 2am and I really must go to sleep now. Good night, and see you tomorrow!

EDIT: It's morning now, and I have replaced the Image of the Day with a slightly tighter crop. It's much better balanced now.

1063 - Past In Present II

2009-09-12T22:28:00.004+02:00

Do you know that feeling, that whatever you do, it comes out wrong? Today's images (actually images of Thursday) are such a case.

We visited Kraków's royal castle, the Wawel, saw the fantastic renaissance architecture of the castle's big courtyard, saw the exhibitions, saw the cathedral, ... and I made no single good image there.

OK, you are not allowed to take images inside castle or cathedral, but there was so much wonderful architecture there and ... nothing. Not a single original image.

I am not sure what exactly causes this ... block? No, it's not a block, it's maybe more that I feel these places have been photographed from every possible angle, there is not much chance to come up with anything original, at least not while on a short trip, certainly not within an hour or two. It's a kind of resignation.

I don't say that you can't make good images there, but at least for me it would take more time and leisure than I can muster at such times. It would mean to go there, look, go away, sleep a night over it, come back, look again, and then I think I could find one or the other new and original view. Probably.

The other thing is, that on travels you are at the mercy of the weather and all kinds of external or self-imposed schedules. You make plans for visiting this and that, and when you get to the Wawel in brightest noon light and under a clear, blue sky, you have a pretty hard time to produce anything that does not look like the typical tourist picture. My image, the one of the cathedral, certainly does.

Being in such a place, you basically have the choice to hunt for moments when nobody stands between you and the monument (and the wider the lens, the less likely that will be), or to make images not about monuments, but about monuments and the people viewing these monuments. I mean, the way to go is pretty obvious: don't avoid the people, use them. Make images of people and their interaction with monuments. Show them viewing, show them photographing.

Sometimes I try these things, but most often I do them when I am on home turf. Here, on vacation, more often than not I can't help but act as a tourist myself. Plenty of room for improvement, I guess :)

All other images but one were taken in Kazimierz, the district formerly inhabited by a lively Jewish community, but of course that was before the Nazi barbarians made an end to it. Today you still feel a shadow of the past, and of course there are many Jewish tourists, but the Jewish infrastructure of today is only touristic.

The last image, this gentle landscape, is from outside of the city. We concluded the day with a short trip north, just to get some different views. I actually used one of my split neutral density filters to darken the sky, and although I managed to make the sky quite dramatic, I ended up cropping most of it away. Just like so often, a square made for better balance.

The Song of the Day is one more time "Past In Present" from Feist's 2007 album "The Reminder". Hear it on YouTube.