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.

641 - Series Of Dreams

Remember the dream, or shall I say, the series of images that flashed through my mind when I woke up last morning? Remember that I told you about it in "638 - In The Grove""? When I went to work yesterday morning, I was constantly on the lookout for vertical compositions that had elements of those dream images.

Of course I did not find anything that even remotely matched what I had seen, but given that I was in Vienna's streets, it did not come unexpectedly that there were neither flower-strewn beds nor sailing boats around. That was not what I was looking for anyway. I was looking for structural similarities, and what I found was vague at best.

Here are five vertical images that have been shot with the dream images in mind, plus a fancy car and another vertical that I could not resist to take when the sun went down. I present these images in unedited form, and I do that for two reasons: firstly, I was too lazy to edit seven files, and secondly, this is not about any single image, this is about a series, inspired by a dream.

The images are mostly in the order they were taken. What I was after, was roughly a pattern of vertical stripes in the background, and a foreground that covers the lower third of the image, but in an asymmetrical way. The Image of the Day was my first attempt. Compared to the dream of the bed and the window, the relation between foreground and background is inverse: here the background is sharp, my hand, used as an impromptu foreground is out of focus.

This does not matter for my purpose, but I believe that one of the two should be out of focus. All images were taken with the Sigma 70/2.8, mostly wide open, to provide for a shallow depth of field.

While working, I found this base concept inspiring, although I did not stick strictly to it. Most images keep only the verticals, and the foreground is replaced by part of the sidewalk, asymmetry provided by the perspective.

What's the point of all that? For me it was interesting to see these dream images at all, and trying to respond to them was only natural. Why do I share it? Sure, this is as "work in progress" as it could possibly be, but in a way I think this is interesting. It's more or less a kind of unfiltered visual thought.

Now for something completely different. I often photograph and write about bicycles, and many of them are products of the former Austrian company "Puch". I had almost forgotten that they had also made cars, but when I saw one on the streets, I simply had to take an image. This is a "Puch 500", basically a licensed "Fiat 500". I have never sat in such a car, much less driven one myself. They were almost extinct before my time.

The day ended with wonderful late sunlight, and I had to record this as well. This is the view through my living room window in Vienna.

The Song of the Day, "Series of Dreams", is the last song on the 1991 official "Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3". The song is from a collaboration with Daniel Lanois and U2, as far as I remember. See the video on YouTube.

563 - The Sun Died

It's still Thursday, first of May, and I seem to be catching up at least a bit. This is the image for Monday.

On Monday I didn't achieve much. I made a very nice portrait that I can't show, photographed a fantastically colored pattern of green chairs in front of an orange background, but somehow I framed it in a way that I can't salvage the image, regardless of what I do, and at the end of the day, while eating at my favorite Greek restaurant, I watched the sun dying. This is what made it. Don't ask me why I framed it like I did. I couldn't tell you why. It simply ... feels right :)

The Song of the Day is "The Sun Died" from Betty Carter's 1969 album "Finally".

560 - The Magic Castle

It's Tuesday evening now and this is the image of Friday. I'm not exactly catching up, but I'm not falling further behind either. One gets so humble :)

Actually there was not much material and I was lucky finding anything at all. This image, taken with the Sigma 30/1.4, was shot when I had just arrived in Carinthia. As you may remember, my father had been in Vienna for two weeks, and we returned together, me driving his car. He's 73 after all.

Traffic was modest, all the accidents (two exactly) were on the opposite lanes, and so it was rather relaxed. When we crossed the border to Carinthia, even the sun came out. Unfortunately this didn't help me much, because driving on the highway you are at least as unable to take photographs as on the train.

In post-processing I have cropped the image to be symmetric, cloned out some distractions, and re-adjusted contrasts between sky and earth, mimicking an ND gradient filter. Basically that's it.

The Song of the Day is "In The Forest" from the 2004 Coral album "Magic and Medicine". Sorry, no video found.

513 - Slow Down

I was tired and uninspired today. When I set out for photographing, it was already late, about one hour before sundown, and none of the usual locations made a big impression on me. The snow is almost gone, but due to the high contrast, what is left of it distracts even more.

Anyway. I've promised you snow, here is snow. This small house has fascinated me for a long time, but it is situated in a place where I normally drive by with the car, and pretty fast so. Many times I have thought that I should take a photo of it, but when I saw it, it always was too late to stop. Today, also motivated by the dramatic sky, I remembered to stop in time, and so I finally got my image :)

The Song of the Day is "Slow Down" from Anita O'Day with Gene Krupa. You get it on "Let Me Off Uptown: The Best of Anita O'Day", I have it on a different compilation that may be not available any more. Hear it in a nice video on YouTube.

494 - On Every Street

It's Friday morning now and this is the image for Tuesday. Still struggling :)

I didn't have too many spectacular things, so you gotta to work with what you have, right? I've treated this image with my recipe for creating detail in noisy or slightly unfocused images, neither because it was noisy, nor because it was badly focused, no, I did it in order to not lose detail.

The problem is, that these street scenes against the sundown contain so incredibly much contrast, that you really have to push the image to extremes, in order to get shadow detail, and if you didn't have noise before, then you have it for sure. The final image has rich detail, is smooth and has color depth. I'd print it big anytime.

The Song of the Day is "On Every Street" from the 1991 Dire Straits album "On Every Street". See a live version on YouTube.

491 - Just In Time

Dobratsch is a mountain that we had quite often now and I won't bother you again with the story of the catastrophe of 1348 (no, not the plague). If you have not read it yet, just have a look at these past entries.

Today when I was ready for photographing, it was already mid-afternoon. I could have gone out again to shoot power lines or farm houses but, knowing that it would be my last opportunity for a week, I decided to drive to Villach and up the mountain Dobratsch again. At about 4pm I parked the car, changed to winter boots, mounted the Sigma 10-20, took the Lowepro slingshot with my gear, shouldered the tripod, and then I began climbing the mountain.

Well, climbing is a big word. Actually there is a well prepared way up the mountain, but there was still snow, the summit is 300 meters above the parking area and several kilometers away. Sundown was predicted for 5:30pm, thus I had plenty of time. At least that's what I thought.

I'll show an image of the way up there tomorrow when I'll be writing about a new tool I have. The whole way is on the shadow side (well, at least in the evening), and when you finally think that now you've got it, the summit must be very near, you realize that you have reached only a platform, and there it is, the summit, far away, impressively looming in a distance.



It took me 90 minutes to reach the big broadcast station (mercifully omitted here) and the ridge between the two churches. Yes, there are two churches up there, and I happily admit that I cowardly refused to follow the ridge past the cross and to the western church. This last image may give you an impression why :)

The way down was comparatively fast. The moon cast strong light, and even without my headlamp I would have had no trouble getting down, merely the wind was a tad chilly. Afterwards I heard on TV that the temperatures on Dobratsch had been at around -12 degrees Celsius, and that together with the wind this would correspond to -26 degrees. Oh well, so that's why it felt cold :)

All images were shot with the Sigma 10-20 at 10mm and as sequences of seven bracketed shots. The merging to HDR and the tone mapping were made in Photomatix Pro, the final touches in Photoshop.

Oh yes, one more word about the temperatures. Most of the time I carried the camera in the slingshot, and when I had it out for a longer period of time without actually shooting, I had the battery removed and wore it near to my body. Batteries discharge much faster when in the cold. I simply did not want to take a risk. During actual use everything worked completely normal.

The Song of the Day is Nina Simone's "Just In Time". I have it on the "Tomato Collection", a double CD compilation with somewhat mixed acoustic quality, that nevertheless is absolutely recommendable. Hear another, equally good version on YouTube.

485 - The Sea Calls

Every once in a while I feel a strong desire to drive down to the sea, either to Croatia or to Italy. Yesterday it had to be Italy. The first image, right out of the camera, was shot in the small yacht harbor Grignano, a short way north of Trieste, right after Miramare. I used the Sigma 70/2.8 Macro at f2.8.

The next image was also shot with the Sigma 70/2.8 Macro, this time at f4, and about 10km to the north, in Sistiana, another yacht harbor. On Sundays all of Trieste and Monfalcone are out at the sea, thus it was rather crowded. That's really the time, when fast telephoto lenses shine. I walked around and shot details, lots of details. and the crowds didn't bother me at all.

Next comes another image from Sistiana. This place is really only a bunch of piers with boats and some bars :)

We finished our trip in Duino, a small village with a large castle, made famous by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

In Duino I changed to the Sigma 10-20. For this image and for the Image of the Day I used f11 and shot from the tripod. This is the harbor of Duino, with the unpretentious but excellent restaurant "Dama Bianca" in the back. Hmm ... just the right time for some sweet twilight shots, but then, don't boats move? They do, and this is one more lesson learned :)

The Image of the Day is from only minutes after sundown. There were no spectacular clouds, only a nice gradient and the moon. I was lucky, because the girl sat there, completely motionless, and only seconds after this shot, she stood up and walked away.

The Song of the Day is "The Sea Calls" from the fabulous Richard Hawley's 2007 album "Lady's Bridge".

One last thing: there will be an important announcement today, Monday 11. Be sure to check back, it's an amazing thing. See you this night!

482 - Waiting (for a Miracle??)

What was I thinking of? Yes, I had a lot of probably usable images on Thursday, but this is supposed to be a daily photoblog, right? I should have simply taken one of them and been done with it. No, instead I held up the queue, searching for the "best" image. Of course you don't know what's best, as long as you don't have post-processed all of them. Well, if I had continued to process all candidates, you'd still be waiting. This morning image, taken with the Nikon 18-200 VR at f13 and 1/50s was the first candidate. I already had taken some shots, when finally the fog rose from the valley. Moments later we were shrouded.

This image and the Image of the Day were both taken at sundown on the mountain Dobratsch. I have been quite often up there last year, but this year it was the first time. I was really there for the eastern sundown, for the soft, gentle gradient, but how the sun vanished, that really had its charm :)

Both images were taken with the Sigma 10-20 at 10mm and f11. I shot these images hand-held, later for some HDR images I changed to the tripod.

The Song of the Day, as a memorial to my stupidity, is the Bruce Cockburn composition "Waiting For A Miracle", interpreted by the Jerry Garcia Band on their 1991 live album.

464 - He's A Runner

Well, it's foggy now all day. We are at an altitude of 600 meters, and it would take a hundred more to get out of the fog. Today when I brought Michael to the train, we were a bit late for Klagenfurt and early for Velden, thus I took the alternative route via Schiefling, because I hoped we would get out of the fog. It was not entirely successful. This image was taken at the highest point, and we were still not really out, but at least the flaming clouds were already visible. I decided to take an image, just as a runner came by.

Nikon 18-200 VR at 18mm, f8, 1/8s and ISO 1100, hand-held.

The Song of the Day is "He's A Runner" from the third Blood, Sweat & Tears album "3". Hear a version by Laura Nyro on YouTube.

463 - At The End Of A Short Day

Yesterday was a short day for me. I slept until 1:30pm, and I was lucky to be ready to shoot at sundown :)

There is a certain kind of scattered clouds, and when you see it, you know you have to run and fetch your gear, because these are the clouds that make for a spectacular sundown. What really happens then, and if you'll be able to score not only a beautiful, but a great image, that largely depends on chance. Of course, you can be at a place with different interesting foregrounds, hoping that one of them will rhyme off of the shapes of the clouds, but in reality you would have to be at that place long before you can be sure that there will be anything interesting at all. In this case it was not more than beautiful.

The image is a tad noisy at the bottom, because I had no time to fetch split-ND filters or tripod and cable release for creating an HDR image. I took what lens I had (the Nikon 18-200 VR) and that was it. Later in Photoshop I used three layered versions from the same RAW.

And that's how it ended. I took the image from the first floor of our house, to the right you see the neighbor's house. While I've worked on the first image and am not sure if I've not overdone it, this one is out of the camera.

The Song of the Day is "Short" from "Damaged", the 2006 album of Lambchop.

450 - Freezing

I'm back to Vienna, it's ghastly late, let's keep it short :)

This image, like most images lately, was shot with the Sigma 70/2.8 Macro, and if you still need evidence that this lens can be fine for landscapes, then I can deliver more. I shot this particular image down in the valley at the storage lake, just some seconds before the sun vanished behind the trees.

The Song of the Day is "Freezing". Lyrics by Suzanne Vega, music by Philip Glass, the beautiful voice by Linda Ronstadt. It's from the 1990 album "Songs from Liquid Days". We already had the title song in "209 - Liquid Days". Hear "Freezing" on YouTube.

445 - Torn, Battered, Still Standing

Back again to the Sigma 70/2.8 Macro and another typical macro shot :)

I was late for shooting and again drove to a place near Sternberg. This torn and battered fence, leading alongside a way from the local graveyard, through a pasture and up to a forest, was where I decided to stop and try to catch some last sun. Do you recognize it? The configuration has this distinct Iowa Jima aesthetics :)

The Song of the Day is "Torn" from Natalie Imbruglia's 1998 debut album "Left of the Middle". See the video on YouTube.

387 - Going up the country

I'm back to Vienna right now. This image is an HDR image from five bracketed exposures, shot this afternoon in Carinthia, not far from home. Nikon 18-200 at 18mm, f16, shot from the tripod. Tone-mapping was done in Photomatix, further post-processing in Photoshop.

The Song of the Day is "Going up the country", but not by Canned Heat, no, this time by the legendary Bavarian band "Spider Murphy Gang" (they had their 30^th anniversary this October), from the 2004 live album "Unplugged,Skandal im Lustspielhaus".

383 - Fog Creeping

Late in the afternoon, or better, what's to be called late these seasons, I drove to a neighboring village to buy some provisions, because tomorrow, All-Saints, is a public holiday in Austria. We are a very catholic country.

When I left, I had already decided to leave the camera bag at home, knowing that I had taken some usable images in the morning, but in the last moment I returned and grabbed it, and now I'm glad that I did.

On my way, the sun was already down, I suddenly saw fog creeping up, and it looked ghostly, just as if it would seep out of the ground. I parked the car at the first place possible, grabbed the camera, the remote control and the tripod, and ran back some 100 meters to the place you see here.

I made three series of bracketed exposures, seven each, with the intent to create HDR images. When I came home, I processed the last series, the best one, with Photomatix Pro and then worked on it in Photoshop.

I didn't like it. Photomatix strongly emphasizes local contrasts, and in this case that produced a halo above the clouds. The sky looked uneven, unnatural. As a result, I threw away the fruits of more than an hour of work, loaded three of the original exposures as layers in Photoshop, and blended them with masks. The result looks much more natural.

The Song of the Day is "Right Tool For The Job" from Marcia Ball's 2005 album "Live! Down the Road". Sorry, no lyrics found.

360 - Where Do We Go But Nowhere

We are back to the present. This is the image of Monday, I'm back in Vienna.

It does not happen very often that I fully pre-visualize an image. Most of my images are found. This is one such exception. A thread at the Radiant Vista forums gave me the idea. Michael Campbell from Toronto had taken an image of a fountain in a shopping mall, slowing down the water with lots of neutral density filters. He found a peculiar pattern of people watching the fountain being sharp and those passing by blurry and ghost-like.

This inspired me to go to Mariahilfer Straße, one of Vienna's most busy streets, at sundown, put the camera on a tripod, pointing just above people's heads, use f13, ISO 100 and a polarizer to slow down to 3 seconds exposure. I figured that people would blend into an anonymous mass of ghosts at the ground of a sea of shop's signs and advertisements. I took about 10 exposures and this is the one I liked most.

The Song of the Day is once more by Nick Cave: "Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere" from the 1997 album "The Boatman's Call".

357 - On the Train

This is the image for yesterday, Friday. I shot it on the train from Vienna to Carinthia, through a compartment door with stripes of frosted glass, through the window of the train and into the sun. Nikon 50/1.8 at f1.8, 1/8000s and ISO 180. The train was running at 100 mph.

The Song of the Day is "That Train Don't Stop Here" by Los Lobos. I have it on an album called "Run Away With You" that ... hmm ... doesn't seem to exist?? Well, at least I can't find it anywhere, but fortunately the song is also on "Wolf Tracks: The Best Of Los Lobos".

There will be an Image of the Day for today, but I won't be posting it before Sunday night. I'm off to Florence, Italy for a night to meet Ted Byrne :)

See you on Sunday. Have a good weekend.

345 - When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky

I have mostly whiled away this day, was swimming late in the afternoon, but nothing else. I wasn't very inspired either. What do you do on such a day? Well, I shot the sundown :)

"When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky", the Song of the Day, is from Bob Dylan's 1985 album "Empire Burlesque". It was the first Dylan album that I bought on CD right when it came out. Actually it is not that good. I like the version on disc 3 of "The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased" much better, and when you want to hear the whole song, why not have a look at a live version on YouTube?

331 - Let It Shine

Well, I was right, the sun did shine again :)

Actually, I always feel a little guilty when posting a sundown or sunrise. There is so little artistic interference, it's just like displaying somebody else's work. On the other hand, this is a particularly beautiful one, isn't it? So, let it shine!

This is the JPEG right out of the camera, shot with the Nikon 18-200 at f8 and 34mm. I had no idea of what to change in post-processing, so I let it be.

"Let It Shine" is a song from Zucchero's latest album "Fly", and by chance it's the Song of the Day. Here is a sound sample.

330 - The Sun's Gonna Shine Again

It's like I suspected: there is sun in Carinthia. I was even swimming this afternoon. The water is still warm and I'll go again tomorrow.

Photographically I was rather uninspired. When I came home, there was a nice sundown though, and I shot this image using the Nikon 18-200 at 200mm.

"The Sun's Gonna Shine Again" by Ray Charles is the Song of the Day. Amazon.com has no sound samples for this album, the 1958 release "Yes Indeed!!", but fortunately the Germans have. Again I scratch my head and wonder.