638 - In The Grove

Oh Goodness, I'm hopelessly behind. These are some of the images of Saturday.

Two of them are experiments in B&W conversion, and I think that the process is simple and works well. Basically the idea is to use the new B&W conversion layer in CS3, use its presets (high-contrast red, high-contrast blue, maximum black, maximum white, ...), just concentrate on parts of the image, limit the conversion with masks, and overlay another filter for another part, again masked, until everything is B&W.

In both images the upper part uses the high-contrast red preset, while the lower part uses high-contrast blue, and in case of the farmhouse there is even some maximum black in between. Finally I have applied toning with a gradient map and overlayed some blur, restricting blending to parts of the tonal range. Hmm ... that's probably stuff for a tutorial.

The two B&W images and the Image of the Day were taken with the Sigma 70/2.8 Macro. I love this short telephoto lens and, funnily enough, I even seem to dream in this kind of images. Just as I woke up (it's Tuesday, 5:59 as I write this), I saw an image before my eyes, and I know, when I ever want to take it, I'll use this lens. The image faded as my conscious mind set in, and thankfully I managed to remember it. It was a bedroom window or rather a door to a terrace, shot as a vertical across the bed, focus was on the bed, there were flowers on the bed and in the background I saw a person, very much out of focus, just recognizable, probably opening the door.

The composition was very vertical in the upper part, parallel lines, the person being one of them, occupying the left half of the upper two thirds, the right half being the lines of the door frame and some curtains. The flowers in the foreground lay asymmetrically, higher on the right side. Just as I was trying to analyze this image (or at least to not forget it), an image of a yacht harbor flashed up. Boats and masts, a similar composition, divided in asymmetric halves in the upper part, the lower part holding it together in a balanced way.

What that means? No idea. Things like that don't happen regularly to me. In fact they normally don't happen at all. Seems like a rather interesting kind of inspiration to me :)

Let me leave you with one final image of Saturday. We were dining on the terrace of a restaurant, and just after the main course, I turned my back, looked across the street and saw this spectacular evening scene. I took some images with the Sigma 10-20, some with the 70/2.8, but what I like most is this fisheye image. Landscapes with a fisheye? Sure. Just keep the horizon in the middle and it will be straight. Of course you don't only get a spectacularly big sky, you'll also get a lot of boring foreground (at least here it was boring) but that's easy to fix with a crop from below.

The Song of the Day is "I had A Dream" from Ray Charles' 1958 album "Yes, Indeed!!". A video is supplied with the lyrics. Admittedly it's not Ray Charles, but it's not shabby either. So who are Bob and Clive??

614 - Rattlesnake Shake

Wednesday I've been working almost until 11pm. I took some images while on my way home, but post-processing them was absolutely out of the question.

It's interesting: the fisheye gets absolutely familiar now. for a time I have used it exclusively to get into it, but now I keep returning when I am in the mood. Yesterday I was.

The Song of the Day is "Rattlesnake Shake" from the time when Fleetwood Mac still was the Band of the great Peter Green. "Then Play On", their 1969 album is one to absolutely have. Wanna know why? See here or here. Oh well!

609 - Machines R Us

Today is Sunday and I have three entries to deliver. Well, it's for a reason that I'm late. You'll see :)

This image is from Friday morning. You know, the main problem when photographing details with a fisheye is, that it is almost impossible to get rid of the environment. Go as near as you want, everything around you is still visible. It bends further back, it moves further to the edges, but it is still there. Here I have solved the problem by cropping.

Post-processing was a matter of controlling contrast and keeping the colors fresh. I am not sure if this is the optimum, but I guess I could have done worse. This is really one of the most tenacious problems with the fisheye, and I can't stress it enough: the enormous field of vision almost always includes something overly bright, thus hitting the right exposure is much harder than with a normal lens. I don't know if you follow the discussion about RAW vs JPEG over at The Online Photographer, initiated by Ctein and followed up by Mike, but shooting with a fisheye is only one more reason to shoot RAW. You need every headroom that you can get.

The Song of the Day is "Machines R Us" from the 2001 Faithless album "Outrospective". No lyrics, none necessary :)

607 - Let There Be More Light

I had some other nice images yesterday, and I was already willing to throw this one away. I had shot it at 8:11pm, when I just had left work. The image was badly lit, with a nice sky, but overall way too blue. It had some comic-like look, charming in a way, but still, I had already deleted it when I finally decided to take it back, load it in Photoshop and see if it has any potential. 14 layers later the Image of the Day is what I got. I like it :)

The Song of the Day is "Let There Be More Light" from the 1969 Pink Floyd album "A Saucerful of Secrets". Hear it on YouTube.

606 - Made In Portugal

It's not over yet. I'm still struggling with this lens and most of the time it wins. My ratio of keepers is terribly low these days, and this is also nothing more than another lukewarm approach. I promised you junk, didn't I? :)

The Song of the Day is "Fado Português De Nós" from Mariza's 2005 album "Transparente".

605 - One More Round

This is the image of yesterday, Monday. I'm a little bit behind my schedule, because yesterday evening I was too tired for anything, and today I spent hours visiting portfolios. You may have seen that Fine Art Photoblog looks for one or two additional photographers. We had a total of 44 submissions, which is absolutely incredible, and at the moment we are busy casting our initial votes. This is not only a lot of work, it is painful as well. You simply have to narrow the selection down, and with so many quality portfolios it is not possible to do everybody justice. See for yourself (scroll down for the portfolio links).

As I said, at the moment we cast initial votes, five each, and the top-ranked portfolios will be discussed further. I'm sorry that this is such a lengthy process, but at the moment we are seven photographers on four continents and in six time zones. Communication can be challenging under these circumstances :)

Yesterday saw no progress in book making, neither will there be today. I'll rather write another blog entry.

The Song of the Day is "One More Round" from Bette Midler's 1990 album "Some People's Lives".

604 - Hiding In The Shadows

Well, that's really nothing special, but more was not possible today. I drove over to Keutschacher See, swam a little, and on the wayside, when I drove through a forest, I found this flower, hiding in the shadows. Basically the same recipe as yesterday. Apart from that I was editing SoFoBoMo images. Goodness, that's tedious.

The Song of the Day is "Hiding In The Shadows" from the 1999 Peter Green Splinter Group album "Destiny Road". No lyrics needed, it's an instrumental :)

603 - The Garden Of Earthly Delights

Landscapes with the fisheye, that's still elusive for me, but using it in the typical wide-angle style with a prominent foreground works quite well. This image was taken at the entrance to our parcel of land at Keutschacher See, the lake where I normally go swimming and where I did so yesterday. Btw, this is a "Philadelphus Coronarius" or "Mock Orange" shrub :)

The Song of the Day is "Garden Of Earthly Delights" from the 1989 XTC album "Oranges & Lemons". Hear it on YouTube.

602 - The Day That Jackie Jumped The Jail

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.

601 - Rainy Day in June

There is a school of thought that reminds us to concentrate on one subject, to not clutter our images, to keep them free of distractions, and I am only too willing to submit, but not all of the time. Sometimes life is clutter, and to feel it, I have to let you dive in. Have you ever tried to photograph from under an umbrella, while walking in the rain? Well, that's how it feels :)

The Song of the Day is "Rainy Day in June" from the classic 1966 Kinks album "Face to Face". If you don't have it, go for it. Hear the song on YouTube.

600 - My Days Are Numbered

So we've got some more, huh? Oh my, 600. The funny thing is, that when I began posting an image a day, although I was not sure that it would be easy to come up with one daily, I did not doubt that I would do this for a very long time.

Sure, I had photographed a lot before, for one and a half years with a Kodak bridge cam, and then since May 2006 with the Nikon D200, and although I had tried to photograph daily, I had never really managed to do so. When I began blogging, obviously the time was there. Since then, there has been an image for each day, and only something between 10 and 15 were not shot on the very same day.

As Ted always says, this has brought me along quite a way. I guess if you at all happen to like using a camera, there is no better training than using it. On the other hand, it slows me down in other respects. SoFoBoMo is an example. I would have had no trouble finishing in time, had I not taken it as a side project. Anyway. The current plan is still to finish it around this weekend.

The Song of the Day is "My Days Are Numbered" from the first Blood, Sweat & Tears album "Child Is Father to the Man". Hear it on YouTube.

599 - Corners I

If the title of today's post makes you suspicious that more of that corner stuff may come your way, you're absolutely right. If there is anything that this fisheye lens is great in, then it's looking around corners.

Basically we have two approaches here. In the first image the surroundings seemingly wrap around the street crossing. The place almost becomes a room.

For the second one, the Image of the Day, I actually stood nearer to the corner, keeping the other buildings out of sight, keeping them from wrapping the place. The result looks wider. Now repeat: to get something that looks wider, you have to go nearer. There may be logic to the fisheye, but it certainly is weird.

One more thing: You may remember "594 - Warning: Junk Ahead", the somewhat crappy first approach to all things fishy. Well, I finally think that this one, a variation taken this morning, is not junk any more. But what's more important: whereas Thursday's image took me half an hour of attempts and still was junk, this one was shot in less than a minute, and it only took me so long, because I needed three versions until I finally got my feet out of the image :)

Photographing with this lens is fun again.

The Song of the Day is the old Blues standard "Meet Me Around The Corner" by Big Joe Williams. I have it on disc 46 of "The Ultimate Jazz Archive". Sorry, no lyrics and certainly no video, but here is a sound sample.

598 - In The End

In the end it seems we're finally getting somewhere. This fisheye lens gets controllable, the number of usable images rises again :)

Well, not much more to tell, especially nothing book-related. I'm in a hurry. I've got to be off for work.

The Song of the Day is "In The End" from the 2002 Stranglers album "Coup De Grace". Nobody seems to like this album, I do. Quite a different thing that this song wants to say, but it's beautiful and the title fits my needs. I take it anyway :)

Hear it live on YouTube.

597 - SoFoBoMo - A Hard Day's Night

You may have read the post from this Sunday noon, "SoFoBoMo - Not Yet", that I have missed the SoFoBoMo deadline. Still, I don't give up. This afternoon, shortly before 6pm, I have finished the last image. I am at 51 images now. I think I will cut that down to about 40 images in a very simple layout. I don't even think about something as complicated (though it may not even be) as the book of Gordon McGregor. For me a very simple layout will do. One image on each right hand side, a piece of text on the facing side. The images will have a simple white background without a border. El cheapo? Sure, but so are many books. You must not forget that I have no influence on the sequence. What came first comes first. Strictly along the time line. This was one of the premises for the whole project. I wanted to get that combinatorial problem out of the way.

Have a look at Paul Butzi's book "A Good Walk" (PDF). The left and the right image often combine wonderfully and make for one big composition. I can't do that. I don't have 800 images to choose from. I have what I have and the sequence is given.

Anyway. Now I sit on the train to Vienna, finishing this hard day with today's blog entry. The Image of the Day was shot somewhere in the middle between Carinthia and Vienna, of course with the new fisheye.

The Song of the Day is "A Hard Day's Night" from the Beatles album of the same name. See the video on YouTube.

596 - SoFoBoMo - Funny How Time Slips Away

Funny. At the moment there are a lot of things that I'd have imagined easier. Let's talk about this fisheye lens first.

I was very busy yesterday, basically editing SoFoBoMo images all day, but every once in a while, when I needed to get on my feet for some minutes, I took the camera and tried taking a picture.

Normally when I do that, I pretty much know what an image will or can look like compositionally, and that without even having used the viewfinder. This also works for more exotic lenses or when the intended depth of field is very shallow. It even works for the Lensbaby. They all are quite predictable. Take some images and you know how the lens works, know how the lens works, and you can predict any image. Easy.

Not so with this beast. Everything twists and turns, and so do you while trying to get your feet out of the image. Or your elbow.

At the moment I try using the lens for macro shots like with these roses (I suppose that's what they are, some wild roses). And really, wide open, at f2.8, and going so near that the front lens almost touches the petals, there is even something like bokeh :)

SoFoBoMo editing is the other hard stuff. I did it all day yesterday, and at night there were still six or seven images missing, and so was the text. Still, I reckoned I would manage to get it ready by Sunday 11:00am.

The trouble is, that a sequence of images that were shot in varying conditions of light must be edited in a way that makes a continuous, smooth impression. Color temperature is such a thing. In normal image editing, e.g. for the Image of the Day, it is completely irrelevant whether the absolute temperature is "correct" or not. Sure, I could use a gray card, but what for? If it looks OK, it's OK, if not, not.

Sequences work differently. The images must work together. Any abrupt color changes will get noticed, and the same is true for different styles of post-processing. And that's my problem. Over the course of almost two weeks of editing I have changed styles, using different monitors, all calibrated but all with different limits, I have introduced color shifts. These things are often not visible when you see only one image at a time, but together the differences hurt the eye. More than a million years of evolution have trained us to see the most subtle differences.

And that's why time slips away :)

The Song of the Day, "Funny How Time Slips Away", is from the 1974 Bryan Ferry album "Another Time, Another Place".

595 - Junk: Everybody's Got Something To Hide

I said junk and I mean junk. I've had slightly better images on Friday, but I finally decided for this one, not for its aesthetic qualities (on a scale from 0 to 100 it would firmly score in the negative range), no, not for aesthetics, but because it reveals something. How so, you ask? By hiding, I say.

Vienna's southern train station, Südbahnhof, is is (and will be for years) a big construction site. I remember four images ("448 - Down In The Hole)", "525 - Too Much Of Nothing", "588 - SoFoBoMo - Progressing Pretty Well" and one earlier, that I'm too lazy to search for now, that have been shot at that place. I did it always on Fridays, as Friday is my traveling day from Vienna to Carinthia. I always shot them through this wire fence ... and now they have hidden the site.

Suddenly.

Unexpectedly.

Oh, I know why. It's because in two weeks Austria will be host to "Euro 2008", the European soccer championship. It always amazes me, how well organized this crime is. All newspapers are staunchly pro, as are all television stations. This is propaganda with an efficiency every authoritarian régime of the past, Nazis included, could only have dreamed of. Sure, the Nazis had similar results, and so had the Soviets, but they had to use force. Today the propaganda system is fueled by money only.

Ask someone on Austria's streets. People are at best indifferent, most are outright fed up with this "event of the year". Public and publicized opinion contradict each other strongly. Why? Money.

Euro 2008 is sold as a big event that will be beneficial to the public. The saying is, that restaurants and bars will profit hugely, and that it will have a lasting effect on tourism.

Maybe. So far I see that in the so-called "Fan Zones" everything will be controlled by the biggest European brewery Carlsberg (nobody will be allowed to sell a local beer), Coca Cola and McDonalds. The usual suspects, one might say.

And now they've hidden the construction site on Südbahnhof. Ok, ok, I stop my rant. Things are as they are, the world won't change because I find it disgusting, thus I could as well arrange myself with it. Uhh ... yes ... thank you, City of Vienna, that you spare me the view of holes in the ground and machinery, from now on I'll happily photograph white fences. But probably you'll spare me even that. You'll hopefully rent the white fences to advertisers. That's it. The only thing that's still missing. Advertising. And if at all possible, please do it for "Euro 2008". This city needs it. Advertising will make it a better place.

But now for something completely different.

SoFoBoMo.

Yesterday morning I was ready to give up. Not so now. I certainly won't finish before midnight, but I have reinterpreted the rules. As long as it is May, 31 somewhere on this planet, it will be SoFoBoMo. This gives me 11 hours more time. My deadline now is tomorrow, 11 am. At that time there will be no May any more. Hmm ... one could cheat and deny daylight saving time for probably another hour :)

Anyway, I've got to be back to editing now. See you tomorrow, hopefully with a book. Good Night.

The Song of the Day is "Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey" from the White Album. Hear it on YouTube.

594 - Warning: Junk Ahead

Every once in a while there is a new piece of equipment in my bag, this time it is a fisheye (Nikon 10.5mm/2.8), and just as always it will take me a while to come to grips with it. Only that this time it could take longer :)

Let's see: what have I learned today?

• There are too many things on the streets. This lens has such a wide angle, that you almost always include something that you don't want. Lesson: This lens is not for bicycles.


• Shooting architecture with a wide angle lens, I frequently try to let lines run into corners. Two is easy, three is common, four are the Holy Grail. Try that with a fisheye! It's funny. Lesson: This lens requires new aesthetics.


• Many of my images these last six months were taken with the Sigma 70/2.8, and I have found 70 mm (which is equivalent to 105 mm on my camera) to be a very useful focal length for a walk-around lens. Most of the time I am on well known territory and frequently I concentrate on details. A short telephoto lens is ideal for that, and today in the park it would have been ideal for this tiny furry animal that crossed my way, mistaking my camera for a nut. The fisheye was not ideal. Lesson: this lens is not for squirrels.


• Although it was warm, light in the park of the imperial castle of Schönbrunn was rather flat. Often in such light I use a polarizer. Not today. Lesson: This is not a lens for situations when you need to use a filter.


• I tried some landscape images, and on the plus side, there was hardly any problem to get everything into the image. On the other side, it was hardly possible to NOT get everything into the image. Lesson: This is not a typical landscape lens.


• Having so much in the image hugely increases the chance to have something very bright and something very dark, meaning that most of the time you have extreme contrasts. Lesson: This lens is not for harsh light.

I'll let you know when I've found out what it really is for. In the meantime please be warned: To master this lens, I'll have to use it. Often. There may be junk ahead.

The Song of the Day is "Warning" from the 2000 Green Day album "Warning". See them perform live on YouTube.