668 - Hello Sunshine

Slippin' behind again. This is the image for Monday, taken Monday afternoon. Weird reflections on the pavement. I would have had some more images, but at the moment I am completely unable to process them :)

The Song of the Day is "Hello Sunshine" from Aretha Franklin's 1968 album "Aretha Now". Hear the sound sample there and hear Wilson Pickett's version on YouTube.

663 - Everybody's Talkin'

Two images for today and not more in common than technical data. I shot both images with the Nikon 18-200 VR at 200mm and f10. I still go "long". I even pondered about buying a new lens.

Of course this would be frivolous, considering that I bought the 85/1.8 only - what? - two weeks ago, but, to be honest, that was not what held me back. What really held me back were two things:

First, I have no idea which one. The Nikon 70-300/4.5-5.6 VR seems like a good idea. It is mostly considered a good lens, and it would buy me an equivalent of 450mm in a very light piece of plastic for a moderate price. But then, of course there is the Sigma 120-400/4.5-5.6 OS for not so much more. OS is Sigma's equivalent to Nikon's VR, Canon's IS and Tamron's VC. Oh well.

Or better the also new Sigma 150-500/5.0-6.3 OS?? Both of these lenses have not many reviews online, and what there is is rather less than favorable, but on the other hand, there is so much Sigma bashing on the forums with everybody complaining that these lenses do not compare well to pro grade lenses that are at least twice the price, my experience simply does not correlate. Yes, autofocus is off at times and frequently slow, but for the first problem I can compensate in-camera, and the second does not bother me. Apart from that, all my Sigma lenses are razor sharp. So what? You see, not knowing what you want can really hold you back :)

Second, this is even amplified by the fact that I do exactly know what I want, and that is really none of these lenses. The long weapon of choice is of course the Nikon AF-S VR 200-400mm 4G IF-ED, and what holds me back in this regard is only a tiny detail: €5720 for the cheapest offer. Uuhhh, and another detail probably: this beast weighs 3.275 kg. Right, with my camera body I would have to haul around about 4 kg. Well, at least you can't complain that you didn't get anything for your money.

OK, considering my confusion and the obscene price for my dream lens, it may not come as a surprise that I ended up buying nothing at all. Instead I went photographing (not a bad idea, really), pulled my meager 200mm to the limit, and that's what you get for today. A reflection of some old architecture in some new, this time in color (see "645 - The Price You Pay" for something in B&W), and a man on the street using his mobile.

It's not so long ago that almost nobody had a mobile. I remember 1996 when I got my first one, and at that time they were just getting cheap. Well, for some time I had two of them, and now I am back to one. Funny, for the still biggest part of my life I didn't have such a thing and I didn't miss it at all. So, these are the two fundamental technological advances of our time: mobile phones and the internet, and both are communication related. Seems like a pretty elementary need :)

The Song of the Day is "Everybody's Talkin'", a Fred Neil cover by The Beautiful South, released on their 1994 album "Miaow". See a TV version on YouTube.

623 - High Summer

It's high summer again, and this year time seems to run on a frenzy. We had mixed weather so far, much rain lately, and work is a little bit over-represented in my life at the moment. I have stayed in Vienna for the weekend and will be off to work in some minutes.

Enough of the rant. I love these long days. I think one should spend all his life on the summer side of the planet. Although I leave work late, I always catch some daylight. This is the image of Friday, taken in Burggasse, in front of a former cinema. The light was blinding and I love the shadows and reflections on the ground.

Tonight I'll really have to go back to my normal schedule. It feels different when you post about an image that you have taken only hours ago. The emotions are much more present. I'll also have to write some words about creativity. Stay tuned. I'll try hard to be back in the evening.

The Song of the Day is "High Summer" from Van Morrison's 1999 album "Back on Top"

620 - In Heaven She Walks

Hmm ... why is it that I always feel like a rabbit with a stopwatch lately? Well, we're still a day behind, this is only the image of yesterday, Tuesday, and I confess, I had my troubles with it. Originally I had taken it because of the shadow to the right, and I have several others of that, with or without feet. This was a vertical, and I really liked how the shadow went on. The problem was, that the big foreground, the feet and the direction in which the woman walks did not play together. Radically cropping from the bottom, almost to a square, finally did the trick.

The Song of the Day is once again from one of those generally disliked Stranglers albums. It's "In Heaven She Walks" from the 2002 release "Written in Red". Sorry, no lyrics, but at least a video on YouTube.

580 - Two of Us

These are the images of yesterday, Thursday. Not exactly my most productive day, but nevertheless I could take some images on my way home.

Both images for today were shot with the Sigma 30/1.4, my most-used lens at the moment. It's funny, at any time I have such a lens that I keep on the camera almost all the time, and that I return to quickly, after I have been forced to change. The 30/1.4 was hardly used at all for almost half a year, now it's back in fashion.

The first image, the flowers, was more of a safe image to fall back, should everything else fail. These flowers grow in a park that I pass by when leaving work. I have no idea what they are called. Anybody?

When I had already given up searching, shortly before I arrived home, I saw what you see in the Image of the Day, a twisted wooden stick in front of a local flower shop, in extreme side light, lit by the low sun.

I took two exposures, one horizontal, one vertical, and when I inspected them later, none was satisfying. The horizontal had this very delicately curved shadow that vanished in the corner, but it lacked the light stripe at the right side. The vertical had this stripe, but the best part of the shadow was missing and the lower part of what was left of the shadow was plump.

What you see here is a combination of the two images, made using Photoshop's "Auto-Align Layers" and "Auto-Blend Layers" functions. Both are new in CS3 and they are one of the many reasons why it's a good idea to upgrade, even when you have a camera that is supported by an earlier version. In my case, with my Nikon D300, I didn't have the choice anyway. As an incentive to upgrade, Adobe chose to make Camera RAW 4 incompatible with CS2 and to not support new cameras in Camera RAW 3 :)

The Song of the Day is "Two of Us", of course from the 1970 Beatles album "Let It Be". See a video on YouTube.

568 - In Children's Stories

In children's stories, ways through the forest always look mysterious, like green tunnels of filtered light. Old, mossy trees seam the way, exciting things happen all the time and, wait, there's more to it. These are not only the ways of the stories, these are the ways of my childhood memories as well. I wonder if this is the archetype of a way, wired into us from times when the whole world was a forest and proper ways did not even exist.

The Song of the Day is "Children's Story", Tom Waits' rendition of the story told in Georg Büchner's "Woyzeck". "Blood Money" is Waits' "Woyzeck" album, but this song is from the 2006 masterpiece "Orphans". Hear it on YouTube.

546 - Gli altri siamo noi

This is the image for Friday, but it was not taken yesterday. Yesterday was one of those travel days. No time to take pictures in the morning (at least nothing worthy), no time to take pictures on the way to the train (I've tried, it was better but still not good enough), and then for almost the whole time on the train I saw the most spectacular weather outside. Fantastic light, dramatic skies, I could have taken hundreds of images, and instead I sat there, sub-par images loaded in Photoshop, trying to ride dead horses. Goodness, that's tough!

Fortunately I have a folder titled TODO on my hard drive, and there I found this image that I always had wanted to work upon and that I never actually had. It's from my trip to Florence, Italy, where I met Ted Byrne. See here on my blog (read in reverse order) and there on Ted's (reverse as well). And while we're at it, here are some more images of that day, images that I have not even processed yesterday, images that I have shown on the Radiant Vista forums, but never on my blog. Hope you don't mind when I throw them in :)

Back to the Image of the Day. There is always the question of whether it is ethically acceptable to show images of beggars or not, but this is not an image about a beggar, It is about the shadow of power looming over the outcast, it is about being a stranger in a world that does not welcome you, it is about being outside, about being rejected as "The Other", but as an old song says: sooner or later we are the others, or in Italian, "tanto prima o poi gli altri siamo noi".

Umberto Tozzi is well known for his poetic lyrics, but it is much well known that Giancarlo Bigazzi, with whom he had a long collaboration from the mid-seventies up to the 1991 release "Gli altri siamo noi", was a driving artistic force. About this song Bigazzi later said that Tozzi had written neither a single line nor note. They ended up in court, and such is human nature, that this is neither uncommon for long-standing artistic collaborations nor for friendships or marriages.

Anyway. The lyrics to this song are quite challenging in the Italian original, and although there is an English version of the song, it is very much different, thus I'll try it with Irene's translation to German, translated to English by me:

I have never been lonelier than this,
but at night I wish it would be Monday soon,
to go out with the others and paint the town.
With the others, trapped in themselves, the others
who open up in the sun like the flowers that dress
when they wake up, when they go out, when they go away,
when they arrive.
We are like those shrouded angels,
the eyes in their faces like mirrors,
because the others are us.

Walls tumble under the breath of an idea,
Allah or Jesus, in a church or a mosque,
We are the others, but here on this same way,
like cowardly heroes, we leave behind what connects us
to those who wait and ask themselves why they were born
and suddenly die.
Maybe they are swallows, leaves from Africa,
who smile at us in melancholy,
and all of us are victims and hangmen,
sooner or later we are the others.

When they sing, when they cry,
the others are us.
When they're born, when they die,
the others are us.

In this world we are the others.

We stay in comfortable deserts
of apartments and tranquility,
far away of the others,
but sooner or later we are the others.

In this now so small world
we are the others.

We are the others
between Indios and Hindus,
between youths in drugstores who don't carry on,
Working class families, forced on vacation by robots,
gypsies from the east in ghettos on the outskirts.
All of us are victims and hangmen,
sooner or later we are the others.

Amazonia,
South Africa,
the others are us,
when they shoot,
when they hope,
the others are us.

In this world we are the others.
In this now so small world
we are the others.

Bigazzi, Tozzi or what, I find this quite impressive, don't you? See the video on YouTube.

545 - He Likes The Sun

I like this image a lot. It is impossible and at the same time it conveys what I meant to see. In high-contrast situations like this, one often resorts to HDR, and that's perfectly OK. With the new version 3.0 of Photomatix Pro it is even feasible to shoot bracketed exposures hand-held, because the automatic alignment algorithm can now cope not only with shift, but also with rotation. That's all well, but I didn't bracket in the first place, so all I had when I began post-processing this image, was a single exposure, and on the version from the camera the bicycle had gone almost black.

Well, this is a good example for the leeway we get from using RAW. By combining two different versions from RAW with a PhotoLift layer for enhancement of local contrast, I was able to create a tonally very rich image with a healthy looking histogram. And ... hey, it even gives me the feeling that I had when I was there!

That's what I call success. A successful image is foremost an image that is what I want it to be. You see, my success may not be your success, but that's fine as well. This is the success of the maker. I make the image, I must have fun with it in the first place, or else there will be no images any more :)

But now let's turn it the other way: What's your criterion for the success of an image? I mean, for me it's easy. I have been in the situation, I have taken the exposure, I have processed the image, and thus it is a very tight relation, a very direct experience that makes me like my images or not. You on the other hand have no intrinsic relation to the image at all. If you like it, what makes you like it?

The Song of the Day is "He Likes The Sun" from Tanita Tikaram's 1988 album "Ancient Heart". No clip on YouTube. Sorry.

527 - Meet Me In The Dark

The snow had finally gone away by today's late afternoon, though it was a bleak and dreary day, and I had not gone out photographing at all. And then, in the evening it began to ... snow? Not exactly what I call an easter weekend :)

In the evening, when I really should have been desperate for an image, this one just happened. I went up the stairs to the first floor, when I saw the light glowing through the window of glass bricks, painting a pattern of light and shadow on the landing. This is a 10s exposure from the tripod. Nikon 18-200 VR at 44mm and f8.

"Meet Me In The Dark" is maybe the most beautiful song on Melissa Etheridge's 2004 album "Lucky". It's unbelievable that until two years ago this wonderful singer has completely escaped my radar. Well, not so any more. See the video on YouTube.

514 - Let's Push Things Forward

This is the image for yesterday, Monday. I had not much time for photographing at all, and just as I was trying to make something out of the last sunlight and the shadows of the cars on these walls, two young men came along on their skateboards.

Sigma 10-20 at 20mm, f7.1 and 1/125s.

The Song of the Day is "Let's Push Things Forward" from The Streets' 2002 album "Original Pirate Material". See the video on YouTube.

389 - Exposition

I had two candidates today, the one from in the morning is what you see here, the other, an evening image, was impossible to save.

In an only so very slightly winding street leading directly to the west, the last remains of a sundown were visible, the street lights were on and moving in an elegant arc, there was the right amount of traffic and some semaphores on red, all that photographed at 200mm and thus with considerable compression, in short words: I loved the image!

I could have lived with the noise, but shutter speed at f8 was already down to 1/8s, and even with image stabilization this is impossible to hold at 200mm. I had tried four shots along the street, but none of them was really usable. I know I should use continuous shooting mode in such cases, and shoot bursts instead of single images. Alas, I didn't. Of course properly I would have used a tripod, but I hate lugging tripods to and from work, and thus I had none with me. Anyway, maybe next time :)

This image, shot with the Nikon 18-200 at 26mm, f8 and 1/10s is critically sharp. Small wonder. That's the benefit of the short focal distances.

It's some decorative light on an Italian restaurant. Actually it is one of many, and in reality there is no connection between the light and the boxes, but when I saw it, I immediately thought of a deliberate arrangement. Post-processing was done in Photoshop.

The Song of the Day is "Exposition" from Deep Purple's second album "The Book of Taliesyn"

386 - That's Me

Five days ago, Michael Campbell posted a hilarious self portrait of his shadow, and when today, in the last rays of the sun, I had the opportunity to plagiarize on the concept, I shamelessly did. It is much less cool, but I guess the background makes up for that.

Nikon 18-200 at 95mm, 1/8s and f8, shot seconds before sundown.

The Song of the Day is "That's Me" from Paul Simon's 2006 album "Surprise".

378 - Dazed And Confused

I'm still not too well, thus I had not many photo opportunities today. This is an image I shot in the morning in Vienna while waiting for the tramway to the railway station. It's the light in a phone booth.

"Dazed And Confused" is a song from Led Zeppelin's 1969 debut album "Led Zeppelin". Wonder why I chose that??

376 - At First They Didn't Even Notice

When I left home in the morning, it almost didn't rain, but that changed soon enough. I used the tramway for half of the way, and when I got back on the street, it poured like mad, taking away much of the fun in photographing.

I shot this image when the tramway was already approaching, mostly because of the graffiti and because I wanted to use the image as part of another comics style image. I still wanted to when I began working on the image in the evening, but I soon recognized that it could very well stand for itself.

Nikon 18-200 at 40mm, f6.7, ISO 1600 and 1/6s, handheld. Post-processing in Photoshop.

The Song of the Day is "Small Change" by Tom Waits. I have it on a collection called "The Asylum Years", but originally of course it's from the 1990 album "Small Change".

361 - Good Morning

My plan for today was to get more of yesterday's stuff: ghostly people moving through sharp cityscapes. I actually shot some of these images, but finally had to admit that it really was nothing but more of the same, and consequently I abandoned the notion. Luckily I had shot some images in the morning, this one being probably passable.

Sigma 30/1.4 at f8 and 1/125s.

The Song of the Day is "Good Morning, Good Morning" by The Beatles. It's of course from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". See a video on YouTube.

313 - Feel the Glow

Still a day behind. Maybe I'll catch up tomorrow.

This is the image for Wednesday. When I left work at 7pm the sky was clean and blue, except for a wonderfully impressive cloud that was exactly in front of the sun. Luckily it went away after a short while and I still had some nice late light on the housetops. Again I was using the Nikon 18-200, for this image at 200mm and f8.

The Song of the Day is a problem, to say the least. Seeing the image I immediately knew that this must be "Feelin' that Glow" by Roberta Flack, and I was fairly shocked when I found out that I've had this song already for the last of May. So what now? After searching for much too long, I decided upon the Robert Johnson classic "From Four Until Late", but then, which version? The Cream on "Fresh Cream"? Or better Robert Johnson himself? I settled with the always fabulous Peter Green (with Nigel Watson and the Splinter Group) on the Robert Johnson tribute album "Hot Foot Powder". I hope you don't mind their guest Dr. John on piano :)

288 - The Angel of Death

Saturday we drove back to Austria one day earlier than planned, because the weather forecast predicted rain anyway. It was one of the worst days to travel north to south, because on Friday, school in Bavaria and Baden-Würtemberg had ended, and on the route we would normally have taken, people stood in traffic jams for more than five hours. On the other hand you really can rely on people's tendency to not deviate from their normal routes, and the alternative route we took, though a little longer, was free and safe.

I took no image on Saturday, thus we get back to Friday and Mainz' cathedral. I took this image in a side chapel, 15 minutes before closing time.

This is one of the images that would probably have been easier to post-process in Photoshop, but I did it in Capture NX anyway. Right out of the camera the image had too strong contrasts, a yellow cast, and mostly uniform colors. In the first moment I even thought of black and white. The problem was to find a good white balance, spread the colors apart and then push saturation quite a bit. Sounds like a "Man from Mars" and Lab color mode? Right, that would have spared me an hour, but I wanted to hone my skills in Capture NX, and as it turned out, I like the result pretty well :)

The Song of the Day is "Death Or Glory" from the incredible 1979 Clash album "London Calling", one of the immortal highlights of Punk.

274 - At Sundown

Today I was lazy. I slept in the afternoon and left home only at 5pm for some swimming. I took this photo from the tripod, exposure bracketing with 1 EV apart, and later I have processed it with Photomatix and Photoshop, taking the HDR result from Photomatix as one of three pixel-based layers, the other two being a light and a dark exposure. The process was not at all controlled. I simply did what seemed appropriate.

The Song of the Day is "At Sundown" from Betty Carter's 1958 album "I Can't Help It".

243 - Evening Shadows

This morning I really had not time for photographing, and I took my first images when leaving from work shortly after 7pm. I used the Sigma 30/1.4 and took my way along Josefstädter Straße. The sun already lit the southern side of the street, and the reflections from the shop windows made all kinds of interesting patterns of light and shadow. I had a hard time deciding which image to select as Image of the Day, there are at least two other worthy contenders, but decide I must, and here it is.

I love this image for its feeling of loneliness. It really looks like a deserted city, completely devoid of people. I used "Cloudy" white balance, and in Photoshop (apart from cloning out some distractions) I have only pushed it further along that route.

The Song of the Day, Van Morrison's "Evening Shadows", reveals another mystery of Amazon.com and of our beloved recording industry. I have it on a 2002 album called "Down the Road". Amazon.com lists the album with 13 tracks that you can listen to and mentions two bonus tracks. Amazon.de lists 15 tracks but has no sound samples, Amazon.co.uk, which I have linked to, finally lists 15 tracks with sound samples, albeit not Windows Media but Real Audio (I guess when you're on a Mac, you'll always get Real Audio). The CD that I have has only 14 tracks, "Evening Shadows" is number 13, it is one of the two bonus tracks, but a regular track is missing.

So now: why on earth does Amazon.com list the regular tracks only, when the other versions list all 15 tracks? Why do they have sound samples for the same album in one country and not in the other? Why different formats? And why is my CD missing a track??

213 - Night Time Is The Right Time

Yesterday I was swimming for the very first time this year. Old Danube is already warm enough, weather was hot and Vienna's most famous public bath, Gänsehäufel, in its 100^th year, was definitely the place to be. I really like it there. It has the charm of the 1950s, and it is so big, that it never feels overly crowded. After work I spent one hour swimming and lying in the sun, and then another hour taking photographs. See some of them between here and here.

I really like the images I made there and normally one of them would have made it, but then, on my way home, I saw this bicycle, lit by the headlights of a car. I had no time at all and somehow I seem to have used it well. This is right out of the camera, a grabshot really, but I immediately fell in love with it :)

Sigma 30/1.4 at f1.4, 1/60s and ISO 360, D200 on ISO automatic.

"Night Time Is The Right Time" from Aretha Franklin's 1968 album "Aretha Now" is the Song of the Day.