It's late, much too late to say many words. I'm in Vienna again and tired now, and by the way, did I mention it's late?
I took this image in the maybe two minutes that I had for photography today. It's a combination of two exposures, one at f5.6 for some depth, and one at f2.8 for the soft background.
The Song of the Day is "Sunday" from the 1992 Cranberries album "Everybody Else is Doing It So Why Can't We?". See a live video on YouTube.
Saturday began with rain. Much rain.
Again there were floods in parts of Austria, and the air cooled down by about 15 degrees Celsius. High mountain roads above 1500 meters were impassable without snow chains, in other words, it was a rather unusual high summer weekend.
In the afternoon the eastern part of Carinthia seemed to be sunny, so we took the car, drove down to Saualpe, a north-south mountain chain in eastern Carinthia, and explored the country roads.
Carinthia is not densely populated, but certainly denser than all that gorgeous nature would demand. In this certain part though, there are only some small villages far and between.
It's really a wonderful landscape up there on the mountain, but of course it has a reason that not many people live there. You are far away from every supermarket, not to speak of a real city, and what looks so wonderful in summer, is quite a problem in winter. Winters up there are long, and to live there probably means to be snowed in a couple of times a year.
There are plenty of churches up on the mountain, one in every village, sometimes for not more than maybe ten houses, some solitary, and one of the churches, Sankt Leonhard, is even off the road in the middle of a forest. That's the one with the walls in the Image of the Day.
The images were taken with three prime lenses, 24, 35, 70, and two zooms, 11-16 and 70-300. This was lens changing day :)
All images were treated with a combination of Topaz Adjust and Alien Skin Snap Art. For the high-contrast images with lots of sky, I have normally taken two differently developed versions from the same RAW, combined with a mask. I love these effects on landscapes.
It's probably Kitsch, but it triggers something in me. Those images look like a certain kind of illustrations that I liked in my books when I was a child, a kind of illustrations that completely came out of fashion in the 1970s.
The Song of the Day is "In A Country Churchyard" from the 1977 Chris De Burgh album "At the End of a Perfect Day". Hear it on YouTube.
It's already Sunday and I'm so much behind. Sorry for that, I ran pretty out of time. That's for quiet weekends :)
This image was taken Friday morning on my way to work. I actually thought all the time I would take another image, one of the current mirror series, but when it turned out worse than expected, I instead found that I really like this one for a certain quietude in it and for its composition in general.
The Song of the Day is "Morning Glory" from the 1967 Blood, Sweat & Tears debut album "Child Is Father to the Man". Hear it on Deezer.
Mark "The Landscapist" Hobson did it again. He wrote one of his usual rants against what he calls the "pretty-picture crowd", and as so often, I mostly agree.
He argues with the two Japanese concepts of "hade" and "shibui". Both mean a form of beauty, "jimi" being a third one, with shibui being roughly the ideal middle between flashy, gaudy hade and dull jimi.
From "The pursuit of comparative aesthetics" by Mazhar Hussain and Robert Wilkinson we learn that
Restraint is one of the ingredients in shibui. Shibui art objects are unobtrusive, unostentatious and modest with understatement as a characteristic style. An underlying notion is, that the less powerful object will probably be the more artistically effective.For Mark, the full saturation mindset of the "pretty-picture crowd" is of course hade, and he insists that hade, while not intrinsically wrong, is only endurable against a backdrop of shibui. So far, so good, and I agree, but it may be worth looking deeper.
I think another aspect of the same thing is, that we should realize we have time, how much time we have, and that it is OK to take time. When I begin to express myself in any creative way, I have all my life to fool around, to try things, to change, both myself and how I work, and I have the freedom to allow myself to do that.
I also don't mean to play down the value of feedback, positive or negative. Feedback is OK and it is important as a means to determine where we are in relation to others. It only does not nourish us. What nourishes us, what gives our efforts substance, what gives us freedom, is to stand deeply rooted in our own experience and our own judgment. Other people can help us find out where we are, but it is up to us to know where we want to go.
Yesterday I commented on "Inertia" by Paul Lester, and out of a whim I announced the idea of trying to follow side-projects, a kind of thematic or stylistic pursuits, that would have a more project-like feel, but that would not completely occupy my time.
Well, connecting to yesterday's mirror image, I went out and looked especially for mirrors and reflections. That's the starting point of the first such side-project, but I guess it need not be restricted to mirrors only.
The idea is more along the lines of "unusual or puzzling views", but the whole thing is so new, I won't even take that as a working title. Who knows, maybe I'll kill the project off in two days :)
I got several images that I could have taken, this street scene is just one of them. Actually I selected it more because I really like what I could make of this low-contrast and noisy reflection in the dark rear window of a van.
Really, if there is one thing that those Snap Art filters are great at, then it must be their ability to make every image usable, regardless of technical quality.
The Image of the Day was taken on the sidewalk in front of the same shop where I took the image of the mannequin, that ended up near the end of this year's SoFoBoMo book "Urban Dreams II".
Again I have not used Snap Art in this image, but I have used the "Skin Even" filter in Topaz Clean. Basically that's a skin beautifier, that works great on females and most of the time not so great on males. Here I've used it with a mask and lowered opacity. And this reminds me that the trial periods for these filters will be over in a few days, and that I will have to part with some money. So far the shopping list contains Alien Skin Snap Art, Topaz Adjust and Topaz Clean.
The Song of the Day is "The Great Song Of Indifference" by Bob Geldof. I have it on a collection called "Loudmouth: Best Of Bob Geldof & The Boomtown Rats". YouTube has a video.
This is the third blog post for today, this time the images were really made today.
You will notice that none of today's images uses the painting effects of Alien Skin's plugin Snap Art, but on the other hand, all were processed with the help of Topaz Adjust, and one of them, the tractor from behind, also with Topaz Clean.
It's not that I grew tired of the painting effects, and I could probably have used them well on the forest ground, but sometimes ... well, maybe I did grow tired of them :)
I had to fetch some things from two shops in Villach, and afterward I drove to our parcel of land at the lake. Actually that's where those Mock Strawberries grow. After swimming I took a series of those leaves and berries images and thought that would be it, but on my way back, I drove behind a tractor.
At first it only annoyed me, because I could not overtake, but then I noticed the dog. Uhhh ... I had the camera on the passenger seat and, yes, I shouldn't have used it while driving. On the other hand, how could I have resisted?
But it's not only that one shouldn't do that, it's also that the dirty windshield took away contrast, thus I overtook as soon as possible, and after some hundred meters I parked the car and waited for the tractor. I was lucky, it had not taken a side road, and so I got some more images.
Really, is that cool and is that dog cute? Obviously the driver did not mind being photographed, and neither did the dog.
For a short time I considered playing the game once more: overtaking, waiting, making more images, because that way I probably would have got an image with a less cluttered background, but I was already in a hurry and decided to go with what I'd got.
The Song of the Day is once more "Reasons For Waiting" from the 1969 Jethro Tull album "Stand Up". Hear it on YouTube.
OK, here's the missing images of Monday, and then I'll only have to make one for today and post it :)
Sorry for the inconsistent posting, but yesterday I was still sick, tired and completely unmotivated. We would have had tickets for another concert in Graz, but due to my condition, we skipped that.
The image with the tractor was taken from out of the window of my study, in the morning, when I saw that the wonderful flowers were brutally murdered.
The second image is from the same window, late in the afternoon. I liked what the shadows and the clouds did.
Actually I really love these images from my study. It's always the same landscape, but light, clouds and perspective change enough to make it interesting over and again. Who knows, I may end up with a book of those :)
The Image of the Day was taken later. The sun had gone down, I tried to sleep a little on a camping bed on the balcony, and suddenly I felt the urge to get the camera and try to make some images from my perspective. Over the years I've learned to always follow such impulses, and so I did. Thus: never go to sleep without your camera :)
The Song of the Day is "Sick 'n' Tired" from the 2002 Ms. Dynamite album "A Little Deeper". Hear it on YouTube.
I haven't been too well these last two days. I had a little bit of fever and my digestive system was ... out of order.
I can't know for sure, but I blame it to the steak tartare that I had for a starter Saturday evening. It was a pretty respectable restaurant, but it's summer, and ... well, as I said, I can't say for sure, thus I won't drop any names, but on the other hand, I won't give them a second chance either :)
Most of Sunday I spent copying image data from the old 1 TB hard disk to the new 2 TB one. The computer here in Carinthia must still run Windows XP, because we need a certain accounting program to run on it.
That "operating system" seemingly has some severe problems copying from a big drive that's more than 99% full. It's true: the problem was reading. After copying some 50 GB of data, it suddenly became extremely slow, to the point where it would have taken days to finish the copy job, and the only way to make it fast again, was to reboot the computer. Copy, stop, reboot, repeat. Have a nice day!
Yeah, that's how I spent my Sunday, and when it was finally done, I went out to make some images. That's where I recognized that I must have fever. I returned after only half an hour, but at least I discovered a Mexican restaurant, that I had not known about, and that's only minutes away from home. That's what became Image of the Day.
The Song of the Day is the "Cantina Theme" from Bob Dylan's soundtrack to the 1973 Sam Peckinpah classic "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid". YouTube has it for you.
Yesterday evening the office chair in my study broke, and I spent most of today finding a new one. Well, I eventually did, but it took me a hell of a time. Once I even fell in a shop, because the chair that I tested, had been wrongly assembled. I tried to lean back ... and suddenly the chair tilted over.
Actually that is not really funny. You sit in the chair, you lean back, and suddenly it topples over, and you feel like falling, and then you fall, and you try not to, but there is nothing in the world that you could do. You can only hope that you won't break your neck.
Well, I didn't, and I'm pretty glad about it. Now I'm sitting in a nice and comfortable new leather chair and all's well again.
The Image of the Day was taken shortly afterward, while we sat in the garden of a pub nearby. While drinking a beer and relaxing, I saw this bicycle, the planks leaning against the shed, and I thought this could be a composition.
The Song of the Day is "On Saturday Afternoons In 1963" from Rickie Lee Jones' 1979 self-titled debut album. Deezer has the album, and on YouTube is a video, albeit with inferior sound quality.
Friday. Travel day. Actually I'm happy I got an image at all. We had rain in the morning and I missed a fantastic image: a young woman all under a hood, in front of a mostly bare wall, no face visible, one arm put forward in a strange gesture, obviously checking if the rain still falls, her appearance nothing but ghost-like.
It would have been a great image, very strange, if, yes, if I had not completely botched it. I just saw her peripherally, raised the camera, had one chance ... and failed. Her feet were cut off, I got her in front of the only part of the wall that was not bare, the gesture was gone, it really had stopped raining and she had taken off the hood. Oh dear!
But that's simply how it goes. On the street you don't have many chances. You see something, you react, and then you've either got it right or not at all. Experience raises the number and quality of keepers, but it will always be a gamble, even in ten years, when I will be a 100% master photoblogger :)
Today's image was easier to get. I saw the multitude of signs, found that the 85/1.8 compressed them enough to make for an image, and then I saw the young man coming from behind. I focused on the sign in the middle, and I only had to wait for him to pass the sign.
Btw, knowing that many of my readers are active bloggers themselves, I'd really like to ask you a question: What is it that you get out of blogging? Why do you do it?
I ask, because apart from the reasons that I mentioned yesterday, I also see this blog (and my photography as well) as part of a diary and as a timeline. I can use my images to locate past events, and frequently my blog entry triggers a fairly complete set of memories.
A project, that I've carried around for some time now, is to document the books that I read. I don't really know what this will be, a critique after I've read it, or simply a list like the list of my Songs of the Day, but I strongly feel the urge to document what I do, and in this case it is primarily for me. We'll see what comes from it.
The Song of the Day is "Don't You See How This World Made A Change" by Blind Willie McTell. I have it on disc 43 of this fabulous 168 CD collection called "The Ultimate Jazz Archive", but if you insist on something smaller, "The Definitive Blind Willie McTell" will also do. YouTube has a video.
It was all over the Blogosphere, you know that 10,000 hours rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, the rule that says that when you put 10,000 hours into something, you become a master at it.
Well, I guess I put at least two hours every day into taking photographs, processing them and blogging about it. Now figure: You're listening to the words of a 20% photoblogging master! Isn't that great :-?
But really, when blogging, you eventually get used to any kind of jubilee. For instance I remember "50 - A Small Jubilee" and "100 - Lazy Afternoon", oh my, how big those numbers seemed. And then "500 - The Half Of It, Dearie". That was really respectable, and this is exactly how I felt. But then, there is nothing like a #1000. I don't know why, but even a 10.000 will not feel that magic. In fact, I have waited for this moment for months, have thought about how it would feel and it feels ... swell :)
A thousand images, that's more than two and a half years. When I think about that time, I definitely see progress. It's not that every image is a little bit better than its predecessor, it's not even that all those images are good, fact is, many of them are lousy, but the pure effort to produce at least one single good image a day, whatever the result is, makes sure you make progress. And I did, I can see it.
It's not that I have developed an obvious style though. I have even tried to resist that temptation, the temptation to search myself a niche and try to defend it. I don't have to, I don't do it for the money.
When you have followed this blog for a while, you have seen many, many different approaches to photography and digital image processing. You saw me use LAB color mode for months, you saw quite some HDR images, one of the recent fads was the use of amber gradient maps for B&W images, now the dernier cri is the use of Alien Skin Snap Art for post-processing. If you don't like it, rest assured, it will go away like all the others did.
And still, those things don't just vanish. They contribute to my experience. Actually that was one of my initial motivations to start blogging: to keep me working, to keep me motivated, to keep me experimenting, all while trying to slowly build up a body of work. And now, after 1000 images, it has long become a part of my life. I guess it would be hard to stop it, and I have certainly no intention to do so.
Can I recommend blogging and especially this kind of routine? Certainly, I can. It's a chore, it eats your time like a hungry, hungry monster, but it sure is an experience that I won't like to miss. It's one of those things that force you to make progress, that send you on a journey into the unknown, it's one of those things that - probably - may make you eventually know what it is that you want to do. I sure don't know now, but - after all - I am still only a 20% master photoblogger :)
Well, enough of that, and now for something completely different: my SoFoBoMo book. Only today I learned of a blog entry that Amy Sakurai has written about my book. Mine was one of the three books that she had looked forward to in this year's SoFoBoMo, and seemingly I did disappoint her. I don't know exactly yet what her gripes are, and even if I knew, I could do nothing about it, because the book is done. I could change it, but I won't. I have it printed on my shelf and that's it.
Still, I guess I could share some thoughts about why this book is what it is. Amy mentioned the small size of the verticals. Well, the basic layout, normally one image per spread, with a lot of white space around the images, was dictated by two things:
First, I wanted to make sure that nothing essential gets cut away in the printed version. I had used InDesign templates that someone had made for Blurb book sizes, and though I basically trusted the source, I was anxious to come near the borders. Thus the big amount of white space. In the end it turned out that all my worries were mute, the dimensions of the template and the printed book matched perfectly, but how could I have been sure?
The second thing is, that this year I wanted to make a printed book. Having to choose between Blurb's different book sizes, I chose what I like to hold in my hands. Yes, really, this size, 8"x10" is a size of book that I have at home and that feels comfortable to hold, even for a longer time. See, I have another photobook with wonderful images by Magnum photographer Rene Burri. I absolutely adore his images, but ... I can't hold the book. It's too darn big!
Same goes for a book by Henri Cartier Bresson. Wonderful book, incredible images, but I can't hold it. My arms would immediately fall off, and because I can't hold it, I don't read it. Too bad, but that's what it is.
OK, this explains the size and the format. Amy also mentioned "a subtle repetition of form, an unexpected sameness" of the images in my book. I'm not yet sure what exactly she means, I've asked and got no answer yet, but I guess it's the repetitious use of horizontal compositions that consist of two halves, just like the title image. If so, well, that's fully intentional. I strove for some visual coherence, a stylistic theme, that would hold the book together.
Actually this was a rather late decision. This kind of images was my first inspiration for the book, but while taking images, the focus changed to a more literal interpretation of the word "dreams": Dreams of wealth, dreams of living with the luxury of balconies and roof terraces, material dreams if you will.
Those other images, those vertically split compositions, mostly of graffiti and stickers on sign posts, were introduced to contrast the material dreams. They represent the immaterial dreams of the underground of our urban society, and in the sequence of the book, they are meant as distanced, ironic comments. At least that's what I think about it today.
While doing, I did not rationalize a concept for this book. In fact, this book was made wholly by instinct, and that's another reason why I would not want to change it:
This book is the result and the document of a semi-conscious process, a process that I fully intended and that I found extremely pleasurable. It's not that I refuse responsibility for it, to the contrary, but the process has finished and I would not like to change the documentary. Does that make any sense?
The Song of the Day, "A Thousand Beautiful Things" from Annie Lennox' 2003 album "Bare", was originally selected simply for the word "Thousand" in the title, but interestingly enough, its lyrics describe a conscious view on the world, that I find very familiar, a view that in a way grew in me through my photographing and blogging experience. YouTube has a live video.
Well, I'm afraid I have to rush this entry. It's early in the morning, I need to go to work, and I have to get the evening clear of any backlog. I'd really like to post #1000 on time :)
This is one of a series of people images taken with the Nikon 85/1.8. You know that I'm not overly fond of this lens, but at times I like to use it. Actually, for street photography it's quite nice.
The Song of the Day is "We're Not Going Back" from the 1987 Housemartins album "The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death". Yes, that's the first band of Paul Heaton, the guy who then went on with The Beautiful South. Deezer has the song on a live album.
This entry comes a day late. Sorry, I was busy upgrading a hard disk. Gosh, formatting a 2 TB disk takes forever, and copying 1.1 TB of data ... longer.
Anyway. It's done, my computer in Vienna has almost 4 TB of storage now, I guess as long as I don't begin producing HD video, I'm safe for almost two years :)
These are images of yesterday morning. Nothing special, just two images that I would have happily taken anytime, but lately, how should I say, lately I've become rather choosy.
I don't know if there is a connection with SoFoBoBo and the more project oriented work that I did for my book, in any case I cringe when I combine two images like those of today. Well, I still do it, I don't have anything else, but at least I recognize and I apologize: Sorry for that :)
The Song of the Day is "Flower Punk" from the 1968 Frank Zappa album "We're Only in It for the Money". Hear it on YouTube.
It's really true, Vienna is on the wrong side of the Alps. On my first day back, we had two extended periods of rain, the first between 2pm and 3pm with massive downpours. After that it calmed down, only to begin again when I walked home :)
I made some images in the morning, but what really made my day, was this image of people waiting in the rain, with an advertising of our mayor, Michael Häupl, in a kind of stay-in-minds-between-elections poster, stating "Always a hit: summer in the city" :)
The old Lovin' Spoonful hit "Summer In The City" is also the Song of the Day. I have it as a cover version on the much underrated 1997 Stranglers album "Written in Red". Deezer does not have the album, Amazon has no samples, I didn't find a video, thus I can only offer you the Lovin' Spoonful version.
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.
A dam, and not only a normal dam, one of the highest dams of its time, that's a very prestigious project, and even more so, it is an enormous investment.
Imagine a mid-sized valley in the Italian Alps, the river Piave running through it from north down to the Adriatic Sea. Not much north of the provincial capital of Belluno, a small valley, the valley of river Vajont, joins it from the east, narrowing to a gorge where it meets the Piave. Just there, smug to the hillside, on the opposite shore of the Piave, lay the village of Longarone. 1500 people, a church, a train station, hardly worth a stop.
The first two images, the Image of the Day and the historic photography (about 1950), were taken from approximately the same point. On the left side of each, you see the cleft in the mountains, the gorge of the river Vajont.
A dam is a big investment, and when you see that the project goes awry, when you get first indications of a coming landslide, and when a first landslide occurs, and when all experts tell you that there is more to come, much more, what do you do?
You may be lucky, they may be wrong, and your investment is saved. On the other hand, when they're right, you've lost nothing more than you lose when you cancel the project in face of the warnings. Thus if you persist, you have some chance to get away with your money. If not, well, what's the difference?
Such may have been the thoughts of the managers of SADE (Società Adriatica di Elettricità), and purely from an economic point of view they were right, but the difference were between 2000 and 2500 lives.
Initial reports of landslides were suppressed, journalists were sued by the company and by the government, local protests were suffocated, and even the dire warnings of an imminent landslide on the day before the catastrophe were ignored, and even worse, the people down in Longarone were kept ignorant as well. 
It is very likely that it would have been possible to at least partially evacuate the people in the danger zone, it is very likely that it would have been possible to at least begin to empty the storage lake, but nothing was done.
Finally, on 9 October 1963 at approximately 10:35pm, the whole side of mountain Toc came loose and slid down at an enormous speed of up to 110 km per hour (68 mph). 
An enormous landslide, 260 million cubic meters, crashed into the almost full storage lake, squeezing out about 50 million cubic meters of water, producing a wave that destroyed the lower houses in the village Casso on the opposite bank, 260 meters above water level, and then overtopped the dam by about 245 meters, a fuming inferno of water and mud, that crushed down upon the sleeping residents of Longarone, within an instant killing everyone but a few children, who survived by freak chance.
Wikipedia has more background information and you may also want to read the original report in Time Magazine. See the analysis of Dr David Petley for a more scientific view of the event. Marco Paolini has made a famous TV film, half theatrical recount, half documentary, showing much original footage. It is available via Google Video. Finally the Italian movie "Vajont - La diga del disonore" tries to reconstruct the events.
Now, if you expect the most dire consequences for those responsible, don't be a fool. Too much money was involved and too many men in highest positions. In the end everybody went free.
One engineer committed suicide, and that's ironic in itself, because the work of the engineers was sound, the dam never broke. The fault can't be blamed to the geologists either. Their reports were correct, but ignored. It was a matter of greed and irresponsible management that led into disaster.
All images, along with those of the previous entry, were taken on Friday afternoon, a mostly sunny, partially overcast day. I used the Tokina 11-16/2.8 and the Nikon 70-300 VR. Two images were taken from Longarone up, two from the landslide, over the dam, down to Longarone, and one from just below the village of Casso, i.e. from the opposing side of the valley, down onto the aftermath of the landslide. With some images I have taken more liberties than with others :)
The Song of the Day is the "Dies iræ" from the 1995 recording of Verdi's "Requiem", directed by John Eliot Gardiner. YouTube has a video with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Claudio Abbado. Not a bad choice either.
This is the church of Longarone, Italy. Longarone is a small town north of Belluno, and if we hadn't seen a documentary on Arte about an enormous landslide and flood catastrophe, that had occurred there in 1963, we probably never would have bothered to visit the place.
And if we hadn't, we would never have seen one of the most interesting examples of modern sacred architecture. The church was built between 1966 and 1976 by the Italian star architect Giovanni Michelucci, in order to remind of the more than 2000 victims of the disaster.
The church has a central room with circular rows of benches, that rise more like in a theater than in a traditional church. There are side rooms with the baptistery and an open room looking east to the valley of Vajont, from where the flood had come, that almost completely destroyed the old village of Longarone. In fact, the only building that had survived the event, was the steeple of the old church. For some time the old steeple was left standing beside the new church, but in the meantime it must have been torn down, it's not there any more.
On top of the church, reached by a spiral ramp, there is another arena, and that's what you see in the Image of the Day, looking east. On the left you see a cleft in the mountains, that's the entrance to the valley of Vajont, that's from where death came in the form of an enormous wave of tens of millions cubic meters of water and mud.
The catastrophe of Longarone, better known under the name of Vajont, was not a freak accident of nature. It was a case of human error and reckless greed. There's more to that in the next entry.
The Song of the Day is the "Requiem" by Johannes Ockeghem, maybe one of my most favorite Renaissance composers, not as well known as Machaut or Josquin des Prez, successor to the first, predecessor to the second, creator of the most wonderful "L'Homme Armée" mass of all times. I have several recordings of this "Requiem", and although I have no way to check from here in Carinthia, I believe the one that I've linked to is one of them. YouTube also has a version.
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.
Of course it's not allowed to make photos in a concert like yesterday's "Porgy and Bess" in Graz, directed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Let me only tell you that it was very operatic, complex and technically excellent, although it may disappoint some expectations. Can you imagine that I sometimes was reminded of Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde"? Not by the melodies of course, but by the music's complexity and its shifting layers. We may tend to forget it, but Gershwin did not compose Jazz, and he is well rooted in a long history of composers. Well, I thoroughly enjoyed it :)
Though I have no images from the concert, Gershwin fits nicely. Graz is the capital of Styria, the Austrian province to the east of Carinthia. We decided to skip the highway over the mountains and instead crossed on one of the old roads. I must admit, I have never seen so many Lupines in my whole life. All the mountains wear glorious blue.
The Song of the Day is "Rhapsody in Blue" from the 1994 album "The Glory Of Gershwin", featuring Larry Adler on harmonica, accompanied by Peter Gabriel, Chris De Burgh, Sting, Lisa Stansfield, Elton John, Carly Simon, Elvis Costello, Cher, Kate Bush, Jon Bon Jovi, Oleta Adams, Willard White, Sinead O'Connor, Robert Palmer, Meat Loaf, Issy Van Randwyck and Courtney Pine.
There is one solo piece, "Rhapsody in Blue", at the end of the album, featuring Larry and an orchestra arranged by George Martin. YouTube has a video of the shortened version from the B-side of the 7" single of Kate Bush's version of "The Man I Love". A longer and more intimate version, featuring Larry Adler and his brother Jerry on piano, is also available on YouTube, although the sound quality is regrettably bad.
I have linked to the import version of the album, because the US version did not contain the two songs performed by Chris De Burgh. Btw, did I mention that this album is a MUST??
In the morning I was in a hurry again, and being in a hurry is normally pretty adverse to being creative.
I solved the problem by letting the camera do on its own. This is one of a series of images that I took while being on the train. I pointed the camera out of the window, in different directions, in angles that I thought could probably make for an interesting image, and from that series of essentially random images I got at least this one.
In the meantime, after one and a half days in Vienna, I'm on the train back to Carinthia. Tomorrow night we'll see an opera in Graz. Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the great Austrian master of Baroque music directs, no, not Purcell, not Haendel, not Bach, he directs Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess". More about that tomorrow night or Thursday.
Btw, while I sit here on the train and look through dirty windows, outside is fantastic weather, golden light, a sky mixed with blue and scattered clouds. It's pure masochism to even look out of the window. Oh well :)
The Song of the Day is the Elvis song "Mystery Train", interpreted by the Neville Brothers on their 1990 album "Brother's Keeper". Hear it on Deezer.
