682 - Little Boy Blue

Well, I guess I've written enough today, but here is another image, shot this morning. I already photographed this tiny bicycle once and then did not use the image, so here it is again today, this time cropped to a square.

The Song of the Day is Tom Waits' "Little Boy Blue", sung by the wonderful Holly Cole on her albums "Temptation" and the live album "It Happened One Night" (at least it's on my copy of the Japanese version). See her perform live on YouTube. Good news is, that she seems widely available now, and Amazon even has sound samples of most of her albums. I suggest, if you don't know her yet, check her out. You won't regret it.

681 - The Meaning Of Life

Paul Butzi recently wrote about the sources of meaning in photography. He was inspired by a comment Seth Glassman made about another of Paul's posts, that one inspired by a third post on Doug Stockdale's blog (don't you love the blogoshere?).

Paul is mostly concerned with the fact that, while it is difficult to give a single photograph precise meaning, a series of photographs condenses and focuses meaning, and the more so, the longer the series. This is quite obvious but important to keep in mind.

One side topic were the sources of meaning, and Paul writes

But I still think that the meaning was in the scene before I photographed it, would have been in the scene even if I hadn’t strolled along, and was not placed there by me.

which finally was the reason for me to chime in. In a comment I already wrote

I think it’s fundamental to note that the whole concept of meaning does not make sense without communication, even if the communication is only between you and yourself. Meaning is either shared meaning or it is not at all, and when you think about it, that has quite a tail of consequences, e.g. that meaning can’t simply reside in configurations of objects. It needs a thinking mind.

and that's exactly where we need to go into some depth today.

What is "meaning"? Does a stone or a tree mean something? Does a book or an image? And if they meant something, to whom would they mean it? To me? To you? To everybody? And if so, would they mean the same to everyone? And if so, why? Or if not, why not?

Let's begin with some observations. Some days ago we had the matter of women wearing headscarves, centered around an image of a most probably Turkish woman. While looking up the correct term on Leo, I came upon a (german) discussion in their forum, where a fellow Austrian mentioned, that in his youth (whenever this was) in Burgenland, the most eastern province of Austria, neighboring Hungary, married women were more or less required to wear a headscarf. The way he says this makes clear that it is not the case any more. Thus we can say that the headscarf, worn by a woman at that time in that place, carried the designation "married", and I guess nobody will object when I call this a "meaning".

Let's look into that further. A headscarf is a piece of cloth. They come in all sizes, colors and designs. The same piece of cloth, not worn by anyone, certainly does not carry any designation at all, it does not mean a thing. But even in that particular configuration the meaning is local to a place and with time it has changed or vanished. If you ask me, these facts don't portend well for a concept of "meaning" that's inherent to objects or even configurations of objects. Thus, from now on, I take it as given, that "meaning" is assigned.

There is more to learn from this example. Upon first thought it would seem that at least there and then this meaning has been universal. Everybody seems to have known it, but even that is only correct for members of that very culture. Someone from, say, the US would not necessarily have "got" this meaning, at least not without having been told at least once.

Now, this is important: meaning is not universal, but it can be shared, and this is done via communication.

Is meaning shared easily? Does shared meaning automatically mean equal meaning? Even that is not the case, and you see it at once when you just have a look at Ted Byrne's comments to "677 - A Stranger In Town". We talk about "left" and "right" as political concepts, but it becomes instantly clear that Ted and I "mean" different things by that. We are certainly able to communicate, and with some exchange we can easily adjust our meanings, at least temporarily, to meet at common ground, but this is not instant at all. We share the exact symbols but only approximate meanings.

To me this again hints strongly at the individual human mind as the source of all meaning.

What does all this mean for art, and there especially for photography? Is it a problem that meaning is always subjective, and that even in a rigidly defined system like a language (well, it's not math, but certainly much more precise than photography, right?), even in such a system, meaning is neither automatically available nor instantly shared? Does this take away from our expressive power? Does art suffer from vaguely defined meaning?

I believe it does not. Let's again look at an example. This time it is one of the most ugly pieces of architecture in Vienna, a so called "Flakturm", meaning a massive tower built during WWII as a base for anti-aircraft artillery. Vienna has six of them, and because they were built to withstand all allied bombardments, they are practically impossible to get rid of. Now, one of them, the one in Esterhazy Park in Vienna's 6^th district, has been used by the American concept artist Lawrence Weiner for an art installation. It was painted white at the top, lit at nights, and it carries the monumental inscription "Smashed to pieces (in the still of the night)".

Weiner's installation is certainly recognized as art. Let's look at the most important part of it, the only one that has survived and is easy to see for everyone, the inscription. Ask anybody on the street what that is, up on the tower. You will most likely get "Art" as an answer. Depending on the person it may come with a derisive smirk, but nevertheless the art aspect is generally recognized and agreed upon. Why? And what is the exact meaning of this installation? Is there such a beast at all?

Let's look at the text itself. There is a strong tension between the concepts of "smashed" (which implies noise) and "still of the night" (which does not). This tension is what we feel as surreal, and surreal means there is no obvious, inherent meaning at all. Neither of the two fragments of this text is surreal, both could be said to have meaning, but the combination is surreal and in that surrealism it is void of meaning. It's easy to see that just that property makes it art in the first place. It is art because it is ambivalent. It is art because it can work as a receptacle for all kinds of meanings that we like to project on it.

In the end it does not seem to be a problem that we photographers have trouble forcing our images to have an exact and universally shared meaning. Much more than a weakness, it seems to be a strength. Art's power lies in ambivalence. There is nothing to worry about.

The Song of the Day is my only one with the word "meaning" in its title. It is "The Meaning Of Life" from the Monty Python film of the same name, available with lots of other famous songs on "Monty Python Sings". Hear it in the intro to the movie on YouTube.

679 - All The Tired Horses

It's Saturday, I am in Vienna to work over the weekend, and these are the images of Friday. Well, there's at least one advantage in staying here: there is no dearth of Friday images as usual.

Yesterday all was about bicycles, ranging from moderately new to very old, but all of them tired and standing resting.

Therefore the Song of the Day is Bob Dylan's two line lyric wonder "All The Tired Horses" from his much ridiculed 1970 album "Self Portrait". Hear it on YouTube.

Now really: How are we supposed to get any ridin' done? Hmm.

677 - A Stranger In Town

Ah, that's how it looks like. The threat of threats, the downfall of Western Civilization^TM, a Turkish woman wearing a scarf! It's election time again in Austria, and the two biggest parties, those that were in a coalition for merely two years now, are going to lose big time. At least that's what the prophets say.

What does this mean? More votes for a democratic, constructive opposition? No, of course not. The extreme right is predicted to be the big winner, and of course they blame foreigners for whatever runs wrong in this state, and of course it's most of all against Muslim minorities like the Turks. In fact we have quite a strong Turkish minority here in Vienna, in some parts of some districts they are even the majority now. Frightening, huhh??? All those scarves!

Oh well!

The Song of the Day is "A Stranger In Town" by Dinah Washington. I have it on disc 2 of the collection "The Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury, Vol. 7". Pretty pricey nowadays.

676 - Mother Stands For Comfort

I'm back to color again with three of yesterday's images, one from the morning and two night images.

The first is shot into a street on Spittelberg, the heart of Vienna's 7^th district, home of a lively artistic community. 270mm, f5.6, ISO 2200 at 1/15s, handheld. Did I ever say I love VR?

The second is a Harley that I simply could not ignore. Even for 70mm and already with my back against the wall, I was a tad near, thus the composition. Still, with the rails in the background, I think it works.

The Image of the Day is straight from the camera. Why exactly this image? Well, it's something in the gesture of the child, something carefree, something trusting, something comfortable that appealed top me.

The Song of the Day, "Mother Stands For Comfort", is from Kate Bush's 1985 album "Hounds of Love". Hear it on YouTube.

675 - Dexter Rides Again

Black & white, the last refuge of the color blind, as Ted likes to say. I don't do it very often, but sometimes it is a no-brainer, for instance when there is not much color to begin with.

I shot these two images yesterday morning on my way to work, and the interesting thing is, that I had something totally different in mind. I wanted to use the long lens to capture the hundreds of cables above our streets, long rows of light fixtures dancing in between. In fact I did and the images were not even bad, at least workable in any case, but then this image of a bicycle rider came in between, and somehow everything else paled.

Does this happen to you as well? That you go out with a certain goal, determined to concentrate on a certain kind of subject, and then the unexpected happens? What do you do? Do you give in as I did?

For all who don't like B&W, here is something in color. Although, it's graffiti on a garage door, and some people don't like graffiti either :)

The Song of the Day is "Dexter Rides Again" by Dexter Gordon. I have it on disc 84 of "The Ultimate Jazz Archive". I even found a sound sample. It's the background music to a video about "HAM Radio:PL-259 Installation Made Easy and FUNny". Oh well.

670 - The Letter Home

This is one of the few images of yesterday, Wednesday. It was a gloomy day, all the time on the verge of drowning Vienna, but surprisingly it finally didn't. I shot this image very near home, it's what I call a desparation shot, but for that it turned out pretty nice.

The Song of the Day is "The Letter Home" from Elvis Costello's 1993 collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet, "The Juliet Letters". I have linked to the double CD re-issue, I have the 1993 single CD original. Some bonus tracks can't be wrong, can they? See here for a sound sample.

669 - The Night Comes On

Tuesday I've been at work till after 8pm, and that's the time when light fades away, evening falls.

You know, I have all sorts of funny rituals, and one of them is, that I use any new lens for quite some time exclusively. Sure, I may be forced to change for a shot or two, especially when someone asks me for a particular image and it is simply impossible with my current lens, but apart from that I pretty much stick to my rule.

Why? It keeps you creative. You are forced to try all sorts of things, and while doing so, you discover funny ways to work with your lenses, ways that you would not have gone otherwise.

In this case I found that it is an interesting problem to use a 70-300/4.5-5.6 in low light. Normally I use this lens with an Auto ISO threshold of 1/100s, and that means that the camera automatically raises ISO as soon as the shutter speed would go below 1/100s. Now, in low light that would almost always mean ISO 3200, and so I decided to try if VR on this lens is worth it. Well, it is.

The first image was shot in twilight at 70mm, ISO 1250 and 1/15s. Ouch! Still, it came out perfect. What I did in post-processing was only related to color. Basically I have combined two versions with different color temperatures and then added saturation, tweaked contrast, etc.

The next image, the train and the ghost of a man, was a tad more daring. 300mm, ISO 2800, 1/15s and me leaning to a lamp post. Wow! Did work.

The final image, the Image of the Day did cost me some effort. I crouched on the sidewalk, leaning on some support as well, and shot a series until I got the lines where I wanted them to be, plus the street with a nice distribution of people and a car. That's the most unnerving thing about long lenses: There is so much potential for distractions, that you sometimes have to wait for a long time until your perspective is clear. 300mm, ISO 1400 and 1/15s, but in this crouching position the lens was much harder to hold steady.

It may not be apparent from the size displayed here, but in post-processing the Image of the Day I ran wild and applied some pretty graphic effects. Here is an 800x800 crop at full size.

The Song of the Day is Leonard Cohen's "The Night Comes On" from his 1985 album "Various Positions". Hear a sound sample at last.fm and see a very nice cover version by the Avalanche Quartet on YouTube. And they have more Cohen covers on YouTube. Well worth to be checked out. I did and have just ordered their first CD at fazerecords.

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.

664 - So Long

Yes, I've done it. This image was shot with the Nikon AF-S VR 70-300mm 4.5-5.6G IF-ED. Wow, what a name :)

It's not more than a test image, simply a boy on rollerskates, speeding past me on the sidewalk. This was only minutes after I'd bought the lens and, to be honest, I have not used it for anything really useful since. I intend to make a point though.

The general tenor about the 70-300 is, that it is quite a good, slightly overpriced lens, not overly sharp on the long end, and certainly not wide open, so let's see if this verdict is justified.

This particular image was shot at 300mm and f5.6, i.e. wide open. I simply pointed at the boy and pressed the shutter. Later, in Photoshop, I've cropped from the sides to a square.

If you click on the thumbnail to the right, you get a 600x600 pixel 100% crop of the image. It's a crop of the JPEG that I saved in Photoshop last night, thus there is some sharpening, but please believe me, it is about the same amount that the camera had applied, it's only that I have thrown away the original JPEG. Now, what do we see? There are stitches of the seam, there are single hairs, there is some texture in the shirt, well, for me this looks pretty sharp. Pretty damn sharp, I'd like to say. Add the fact that the lens focuses very fast, and you can imagine that I am happy as a puppy.

Remember yesterday's confusion? Why did I resort to this lens? More than one reason: First of all, it was the cheapest candidate. Quite a good reason if you ask me. Second: it was by far the lightest. The two Sigmas (120-400 and 150-500) weigh 1.750 kg and 1.910 kg, that's more than double the Nikon. The Nikon AF VR 80-400mm 4.5-5.6D ED, another stabilized alternative with seemingly good optics, slow autofocus and a notoriously unusable tripod collar, is only 60% heavier than the 70-300, but it costs triple. The "Weapon of Choice", the Nikon 200-400, is obscenely expensive and with its 3.250 kg is unusable for street photography.

Here you have it. Given my constraints, the Nikon was definitely the best choice, and it performs a good deal better than I had expected, in fact it is quite impeccable. Due to nine rounded blades, even the bokeh is pretty attractive.

Another thing you may notice is, that this image is square. I rarely do square images. The butterfly two weeks ago was, and there may be some square images at times, but they are exceptions. Well, recently I've seen lots of squares on two blogs: Ted Byrne's recent works are mostly square, and the other master of the square is Mark Hobson, aka "The Landscapist". I have asked both for their reasons to shoot square images and for their method of composing for the square while using a rectangular viewfinder.

Let me make it clear: I like the results of both, in fact both have produced some masterpieces. Just look at "Dixie #10" or "Framing", and when you check out Mark, don't forget his new "Shore Light" site! It is only that I really enjoy the process of composing through the viewfinder. I wouldn't mind a square viewfinder and then I would compose squares, but as it is, I rather use the given format than accepting an intermediate step.

Ted answered my question in a comment to "Street People '08e", and when I interpret it right, it is mostly a mix of nostalgia and a sense of rebellion against the dictate of a certain German engineer :) Ted discovers his squares after the fact, while working in Photoshop.

Mark dedicated his "ku # 531 ~ it's hip to be square" to answering my question, and for him it is a preference for the tighter composition and for the way that the square leads the eye. Mark explicitly composes for the square and says that it is only a matter of practice.

Here we are. This image was less than a snapshot and had no recognizable composition at all. Cropping to a square may have salvaged it at least a bit.

Expect more and better squares from me in the future. The two guys got me hooked :)

The Song of the Day is "So Long" from Sopie Zelmani's 1998 album "Precious Burden". See a live 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.

662 - Easy Living

It's funny how my interests shift. At the moment I have the Nikon 18-200 VR mounted, originally by chance, just because I had needed it for Sunday's flower session, and now I use it at full 200mm to photograph ... people.

I have two images today, a warm and a cool one. Let's begin with cool. I took this image while sitting in the patio of a restaurant. The frame fascinated me, I had time, and so I waited for interesting people to pass through. Compositionally I probably like this image better, it only lost color-wise.

The Image of the Day was shot a little earlier, in bright sunshine, and I absolutely love the colors of the shop and this relaxed, sleepy summer afternoon feeling. And of course those walls that remind me of my childhood, when I grew up in an old house with warm, yellow walls.

The Song of the Day is "Easy Living" from Bryan Ferry's 1999 standards album "As Time Goes By".

661 - You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)

I'm doing injustice to the poor guy. He only toiled with his luggage and basically was there. This is one of four images of the scene, and this is the one where the configuration was just right. Searching for a title, I found "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)" from Bruce Springsteen's 1980 masterpiece "The River". Nice version on the album, but you really have to see it live on YouTube. What a performer! Go, see it now. I mean it :)

657 - Here We Go Again

You know this guy? We had him in "377 - I Should Have Taken It As A Warning". I took this image on Thursday morning in bad light, actually I don't even know why I took it at all. In any case I definitely did not have the intention to use it. Then, yesterday on the train, it was the first that I looked at, and I thought, well, let's just have a look at it in Photoshop, just to see ... let's say I was taken away :)

The Song of the Day is "Here We Go Again" by Norah Jones and Ray Charles, to be found on the 2004 production "Genius Loves Company". Hear it on YouTube.

656 - Bomba O Non Bomba

If you are a photographer, you have read the recent stories about photographers being harassed for taking images on the streets. It seems to be particularly bad in the UK and in the US, here in Austria it's currently bearable. Remember "524 - For You Blue"? I took that image in a public bath. Granted, I used a small point'n'shoot camera in little more than a plastic bag, thus I may not have looked particularly dangerous, but it could as well have gone severely wrong. I didn't know then, and I guess in the UK I could have ended up in jail.

As comforting as things still are on this front, the overall climate of hysteria and xenophobia has not spared us. We'll be having general elections at the end of September, and - as always the last years - the main issue is the invasion of foreigners that we seem to suffer. Seemingly there are only two positions that the parties want to take: open xenophobia and weak defensiveness. Only two small parties, the Green and the newly resurrected Liberals, stand up openly against this kind of populism, but their voices are drowned in the never-ending waves of brain wash that are spewn forth by populist politicians and the yellow press. Tell me, is it really possible that this spiral can only ever go downward???

It wouldn't take very much to break the circle, would it? Some logic maybe? Well, without people of other nationalities we would not even be able to run this state at all. Not its economy and certainly not its health system. So what?

The Image of the Day, a lonely paper bag standing on the sidewalk, immediately reminded me of the other big hysteria of our times: terrorism! Sure, I did not believe that it contains a bomb, but even the very thought of it is perverse. We had a similar situation in the 1970s with some incidents of terrorism in Austria and especially Germany, but nothing compared to the witch hunt after 9/11.

Please don't get me wrong. I know what 9/11 meant to people in the US. Basically it was the first act of war on your home turf since Pearl Harbor, and there was a terrible count of victims and so forth, but now just have a look at some statistics on the pages of "Drive and Stay Alive". In 2001, the number of total road deaths in the USA was 42,196. That's more than 10 times the victims of the attacks, and these numbers stayed pretty constant over the years. What did the US? In an economically tight situation, they fought the most expensive war of their history, risked their international reputation by using methods of torture, and they didn't even get Bin Laden. Is that strange?

Well, it's so easy to criticize the powers when you are not even in a position to make their faults, but what about Europe? We try to keep out of military action (which I think is a good idea), but we blindly follow the American lead when it's about giving up our rights. CCTV cameras everywhere, total surveillance of all communication, a constant erosion of constitutional rights in the name of God Safety, we have all that. And, guess what, in Austria, as a small country, we had only about 1000 road deaths in 2001 and were down to approximately 700 in 2007, but we had ZERO victims of terrorism since the one or two in the 1970s. Try to divide that: gives quite a ratio!

What can I do? Certainly vote against xenophobia and populism, for freedom and rationalism, for democracy ultimately. Stand up, raise my voice. Gosh, it's so little, sometimes I'd like to despair.

Have you ever read Albert Camus' "The Plague"? If not, well, if I would have to recommend one single book, none more, a book to learn by heart and to literally become the book, just like in Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451", then I would certainly choose "The Plague" for its central message, that it is our damn job to carry on regardless.

Sorry for the overall depressive tone. It has to be said at times.

The Song of the Day is "Bomba O Non Bomba" from Antonello Venditti's 1978 album "Sotto Il Segno Dei Pesci". My zodiac sign actually. See the original video or a live version from 1983.

655 - On A Lonely Avenue

Science Fiction ages rapidly. Read anything from the 1950s and you know what I mean. Not so Fantasy, and that may be a reason why I ws always affected more by Fantasy than by SciFi. In fact I am quite sure I have not read any SciFi book in 20 years. Until yesterday, that is.

Yesterday, shortly after I took this image of a fence in Kaiserstraße, I went into a bookstore to find some Fantasy books. Their English section has quite a lot, but as most Fantasy comes in at least trilogies, it is rather difficult to find something complete.

For me, with books it's a little bit like with music: I know some names, and when I see a new book of one of my favorite authors, I normally buy it, even if I know that I am not going to read it at once. And it's not only that: I routinely scan the shelves for certain names. Katherine Kurtz is such a name, but the sequel to "Childe Morgan" is obviously still in the works.

Another candidate is of course Ursula K. Le Guin, and from her I have bought three books, two SciFi and one, "Voices", the second part of her Fantasy trilogy "The Annals of the Western Shore". One of the SciFi books, "The Lathe Of Heaven", is what I currently read. It is set in a then-near future, now actually in the past, but this does no harm at all.

This is not a book about strange inventions, not a book about technology, just like all of Le Guin's books it is about people. In this case it is about a certain guy living in an overpopulated, run-down Portland at a time when pollution and climatic change have done away with the polar ice caps, the seas have risen and Oregon has even more rain than it already has in reality.

The guy, George Orr, gets psychiatric treatment, because he tries to suppress his dreams by drug abuse. He does this, because every once in a while his dreams "come true" in a very special way. He may dream of an alternate reality with an alternate history, and when he awakes, not only has the alternate reality become real, even history and the memories of people have changed.

At first his psychiatrist does not believe him, but then he begins to abuse George's dreams to actively change reality. About that and about the relation between psychiatrist and patient is this fabulous little book.

In a way that's not so very far from what we do in photography. We dream up worlds, and when we're successful, people believe in these worlds, they become "real". Yesterday's "654 - Don't Wait Too Long" is quite plausible for me, and that even though I know that it did not look that way while I was there. It could not even possibly have looked that way. Well, probably some off-camera flash would have done the trick, but is this different from Photoshop? You may get better quality, but essentially it is the same meddling with the reality everyone on location perceives.

Still, now that I have made this image, it is going to stay. The moment is gone and it did not even have any significance, but the image has started a life of its own. It is part of reality now, mine as well as yours.

Same with the Image of the Day. I shot it in the morning in blinding sunlight with extremely harsh shadows. For a long time I wanted to photograph one of these carts that postmen in Vienna use. While they enter a house, it stands outside on the sidewalk, and when you're lucky, the street is empty and you have time enough to compose an image. What came out of the camera did not satisfy me at all. The final result, a 17 layer job, sure does :)

The Song of the Day is the fantastic "Lonely Avenue", again from the 1958 Ray Charles album "Yes, Indeed!!". Hear it on YouTube.

654 - Don't Wait Too Long

Let's get colorful today, will we? These are the images of Monday. I left work early enough to go swimming.

The red alarm device is in the Underground. Sometimes I am a junkie for vivid colors. Give me a screaming red and my heart beats faster :)

The next image, the chair, is already in "Gänsehäufl", the biggest bath in Vienna, actually an island in the back waters of river Danube. Over time I acquire a nice collection of these images, because the chairs fascinate me every time I see them. For once, they are old. Very old. For twice, they are colorful and I see them always against a creamy white background. Finally: they are simple. Expect to see more of them.

The last image is the sundown over another back water, with some modern architecture. The image out of the camera was completely silhouetted. It's amazing what you can get out of a RAW file. These are two variants from RAW, a contrast mask and a saturation layer in "Soft Light" mode, basically the same technique that I applied to the Image of the Day.

The Image of the Day is from early in the morning. I was waiting for the tramway train and fooling around a bit with shallow depth of field. The post of a traffic sign, the only thing that could remotely be used as a sharp foreground, came out extremely dark, color was bluish and far off, and indeed I didn't even think about actually using this image. Only when I began to play with it in Photoshop did I see the potential.

The Song of the Day is "Don't Wait Too Long" from Madeleine Peyroux's 2004 album "Careless Love". Very nice. Here is the video.

650 - True Love Tends to Forget

These are images of yesterday, Thursday. As I have nothing for today yet and plenty of time at the moment (I'm currently on the train from Vienna to Carinthia, a four hours ride), I felt the temptation to use one of them for today. Well, I resisted. There is still time and I intend to get lucky :)

The Image of the Day was taken only seconds after I left my appartment, while still on the same floor. This is something I really believe in: One should never dismiss a subject on the ground that it has been used before. I had quite some Images of the Day made in this very staircase, and while I would not spend an hour shooting images here, a few every few days tend to be fun and the routine is productive as well.

The umbrella has not been arranged by me, it was simply there, someone seems to have forgotten it. As always when I have a new lens, I currently use the Nikon 85/1.8 almost exclusively, and as always with fast primes, I mostly play with shallow depth of field.

This image surprised me quite a lot in post-processing. The original out of the camera was dark and moody, but when I clicked "Auto" in Adobe Camera RAW, I found that I liked this light look much better. A comment on SmugMug, my photo hosting site, described this as "a very lovely shot", and indeed there is something serene in this shot that I did not anticipate originally. Well, some people may be disturbed when their images begin to acquire unintended sense, but I am a great believer in the process of discovery. I think it's honest. I believe that much of what we see as coherent in the work of other artists is only what has been arranged that way.

Let me conclude with two more images, the first one being a morning image as well. This is another product of Puch, the Austrian manufacturer of bicycles, motorcycles and cars, that I have already written about or its products shown more than once. Just like the car recently, these scooters were old-fashioned in the Seventies, but I remember having seen a lot of them in my youth, all of them in the posession of old men.

The last image is from the afternoon. This is a park along the street where I work, and there are always flowers. I tried to get a nice distribution of verticals and asense of depth. Nothing special, but I like it.

The Song of the Day, "True Love Tends to Forget", is from Bob Dylan's 1978 album "Street Legal". Funnily enough this was the first Dylan album that I bought. Hear the Song on YouTube.

649 - Big Rain Tonight

Ahh, these days that begin bad and then only deteriorate! I left home in the morning and already had to duck under an umbrella. It did only rain moderately, but nevertheless enough to make me fear for my camera, and then it grew worse the whole day. In the evening when I left work, it poured down again.

This is an image that I shot in the morning. The lens? Just like in the other two images of today, my new Nikkor AF 85/1.8D! That's what I finally settled for. Given that I have a fantastic Sigma 70/2.8 Macro, it is probably equally redundant as the 28/1.8 had been, contrasted with the 30/1.4, but, hey, it's not about logic, it's about fun.

So, what can I say about this lens? It's metal, it's robust, it looks good, it focuses fast, it focuses precisely, it has a nice bokeh and it is a bargain compared to the 85/1.4. The Image of the Day, the bicycle in the rain, is right out of the camera, the daylight image had its colors pushed, not more, and the night image of Volkstheater had all kinds of things done to it. All three images were shot from under an umbrella :)

The Song of the Day is "Last Night Was a Big Rain" from Sara Hickman's 1989 album "Equal Scary People". See a video on YouTube.

647 - Out In The Street

Again two images made with the Sigma 70/2.8, one sharp from front to back, one not. I shot the images some minutes before I entered a shop and ... but that's a story for tomorrow :)

The Song of the Day is "Out In The Street", again from Bruce Springsteen's 1980 masterpiece "The River", and this time I have a video.