630 - Oooh, What A Lucky Man I Was

Yesterday's food is from the can. I was short on time in the morning, and when I left for the train, the light was utterly flat and uninspiring. I could have delayed photographing to the evening, but on the other hand I had plenty of time for post-processing while on the train.

I always carry a bunch of files with me in a folder "TODO", and for lack of anything better to do, I began processing some of them.

The decaying house front is not far from where I live. When I am late and take the way to work via the Underground, I always pass by, but this particular image was taken about a year ago, in the afternoon. I used my Nikon 50/1.2 and was on the way to a concert where I wanted to use this fast lens.

The next image, a garbage can in Mariahilfer Straße in Vienna, was taken last August with the then new Sigma 20/1.8. It was early morning on a bright day with blinding sunlight, and I liked the contrast between the modern design and the traces of ... uhmm ... neglect.

The final image, the Image of the Day, is from that Sunday morning in Florence/Italy when I was photographing with my friend Ted Byrne. This image was taken while Ted was on the other side, making the first image that he posted from Florence.

This is one of those images that I always wanted to process. I tried it one time and did not particularly like the result, so it went back into the "TODO" folder. Much to Ted's annoyance I took all my images that morning from the tripod and I really took my time. Just as I was satisfied with the framing, a white car drove by to park in front of these poles, right in my image. I pressed the shutter only a second before. The sidelight is from the car's head lights. While the original would have been nothing but a failed attempt, this side light makes the image, and that's also what was so hard to bring out in post-processing. I was just a lucky man :)

The Song of the Day is "Lucky Man" from ELP's 1970 debut album "Emerson Lake & Palmer". See something like a video on YouTube.

629 - Electric Ladyland V

Time for another installment of my "Electric Ladyland" series. This time we are in Vienna, the image is from today (caught up!!) and again I don't fight the ever present cables, the wires that keep our civilization running, again I use them. Apart from that I may have added some slight enhancements in Photoshop as well. I can't help it, it just happens some times.

The second image is from the morning. That's what I originally wanted to present as Image of the Day, before things got out of control :)

As always in this series: The Song of the Day is still "Have You Ever Been (to Electric Ladyland)" from Jimi Hendrix' 1968 album "Electric Ladyland".

628 - I'm Waiting For The Man

I had processed these two images of yesterday right in time, but this time SmugMug had thwarted my plan to catch up. They had a longer outage last night (my night that is) during which no images could be added to the site.

I took both of these images yesterday afternoon, on my way home through Lerchenfelderstraße, one at the corner Lange Gasse, one at the corner Kellermanngasse. The bicycle fastened to the railing was only a question of composition, the other one required some thought :)

The Song of the day is "I'm Waiting For The Man" from the classic 1967 Velvet Underground "Banana" album. See this video or that. Why exactly this song? Honestly, I have no idea :))

626 - Gotta Travel On

After yesterday's somewhat lengthy post, I'll keep it very short today. This is the image for Monday, you see, instead of catching up, I managed to get even two days behind now :)

Monday afternoon I left Vienna for a one-day intermezzo in Carinthia. We had concert tickets for Tuesday evening. On my way to the Underground, I regularly pass this building, Justizpalast. You've seen it in "141 - Memories of Summer", in "336 - Split Decision / Up In The Sky" and "154 - The Triumph of Parliamentarism" was taken from its roof terrace.

I had the Sigma 30/1.4 mounted, and when I saw the light/shadow pattern caused by the shadow of a flag falling on the wall, I decided to get very near and use extremely shallow DOF. Well, in fact f4.5 was what I ended up with, and even with that I was already at 1/4000s. In hindsight I like it better as it is anyway. Any shallower and the image would considerably loose depth.

The Song of the Day is "Gotta Travel On" from Bob Dylan's much despised 1979 album "Self Portrait". On youTube I have not found it by him, but as this is an old standard, there are other versions, for instance this one.

625 - Who Cares?

So I wanted to talk about creativity, right? It was all induced by a post on Paul Lester's blog and the discussion that resulted from it. Please go there for the whole thing, but basically I've argued that creativity is not the thing to care about, productivity is.

Creativity is the outside view of a productive artist, answering to the inputs from a source of inspiration, busily producing art.

What does that mean? It means that creativity is something to be observed by non-creative people. It is not a category of any importance to the artist. Creativity is an indirect by-product. If you constantly produce, and if your productivity answers to the inputs of your source of inspiration, then you can't be other than creative.

Creativity was one point in Paul's post, artistic growth was the other, but it is again the same thing. Constantly produce, and you can't help but grow. It's automatic. It's one of the few things in the world that are free and that we don't have to worry about. Being thankful, yes, worrying, no.

Let's get back to the definition of terms. What's a "source of inspiration" anyway? Well, whatever inspires you. I mean it in the widest sense. For me it's the visual world. My surroundings. I am a visual type of person. I see, capture, work on that, and the outcome may be either art or a failed attempt, but in the beginning there is always some visual input.

Other artists may be different. Some may be inspired by music, literature, other art, but for me it's normally raw sensory input. Well, that again can be on a very abstract level, like some lines or angles, an isolated color or some other details that most people wouldn't see. With enough practice you become pretty good at seeing.

It is also not so that I blindly respond to every input at any time, no, I may use a filter. One such filter is the choice of lens. Normally I leave home with one particular lens mounted, and most of the time I don't change it during the day. The lens works as a filter, it causes me to look for a certain category of things.

Another filter, one that was effective when I made the first two photos, those of a street scene in Vienna, another such filter is a concept. Here it was the concept of consciously trying to capture "along-the-street" and "diagonally-across-the-street" views. It's something that I have been on the lookout for during most of the last week. The idea is to slow down on the streets, stop in places where there are no "sights", look for the "in-between" things, denying the view that there are "sights" scattered around with nothing in between. See "Oasis in the City" on Marti Jeffers' blog "My View" for a discussion on "in-between-ness".

I don't know if these two images are art and, honestly, I don't care. This "project" if you will is an attempt to see my own city with fresh eyes. I concentrate on something that I have not done in a while, and looking at the images that result, Saturday's "624 - It's OK To Listen To The Gray Voice", Sunday's street scenes that you see here and so many others that I don't show because they either had some flaws or I simply did not have the time to work on them, looking at these images I am amazed to discover views that I must have seen before, but can not remember. All that is fresh and exciting.

What's so exciting about two street images that look almost the same, you may ask. Well, it's that they are adequate solutions to two very different problems. In fact, that's something important. The subject is not what an image is about. Yes, these two images have mostly the same subject, a crossing of Neubaugasse and Neustiftgasse in Vienna's 7^th district, but that's not the what they are about. The first image is about an urban canyon, a meandering street, a fan-like roof line in the background, and about some details that you unfortunately can't see at this resolution, even when you click on the image. You would need a big print for that.

The second image is not about a canyon. You know now that it was taken at roughly the same place, but from the image you can deduce the other side of the street only by looking at the shadows. They hint at buildings, but there is no way to tell what kind of buildings that are. The curving, diagonal movement of the street is important here, but it is broken up by verticals. I have included the posts in the foreground to take up the dominant vertical movement.

You see, these are images with roughly the same subject, but they are about completely different things. In both cases I have responded to my source of inspiration. I did it both spontaneously and with a plan in mind. The plan allowed me to restrict my attention to those aspects that I wanted to trigger my spontaneity.

Whatever your source of inspiration is, if you constantly observe it, you will find a stream of ever changing input, sometimes more, sometimes less changing, but if your work is based on that, your productivity will always be creative and you will continue to grow. The only way to avoid it, is to stop listening to your input.

That's what happens when artists "find their style". Nonsense! That's a euphemism and it should read "find something that sells and that they stick to for the rest of their now non-creative lives".

Style is another thing that an artist must not worry about. Mind, I don't say "need not", I say "must not". It's another thing that should be left to be perceived by others from the outside. It's not your concern. An observable style will result from busy productive work, it's also automatic, it's also free.

Basically these are two sides of a coin. When you are productive and listen to input, then you will be perceived as creative, because you respond to an ever changing world, and thus your art is ever changing as well. On the other hand, the experience that you gain by busily producing, will allow you to make shortcuts, to re-apply partial solutions that you have found to be appropriate for certain partial problems. An attentive viewer will recognize that, will see you invariably take a certain direction at a certain crossing, probably most of the time take the other at another crossing. That's really what style is all about and why it is so absurd to try to appropriate someone else's style:

From its very nature style is a verb. It is a way of doing, of acting, that is directed by personal and artistic experience. Other experiences, other style. No way to copy that, and why should you want to? You don't have other people's experiences, you have your own, and they are worth to be used.

The Image of the Day is simply funny. A battered sign across, telling van drivers to mind the height of the arch. Obviously nobody cared.

The Song of the Day is the Gershwin tune "Who Cares". Ella or Anita? That's a little bit like Beatles or Stones, huhh?? I prefer Anita on her 1955 album "This Is Anita". Any live recording by Ella could change that though. Give me a hint if you know of a good one.

624 - It's OK To Listen To The Gray Voice

Ted won't say so, certainly not. Sorry Ted, even I did not intend to do B&W today. It just happened :)

The Image of the Day is from yesterday afternoon, and what attracted me were of course the reflections on the street. The other two images are from the morning, the first 50 meters from home, just in front of where I shot "622 - Stormy Weather". I had already posted it in a color version, but somehow I was not satisfied.

When I did the second image, I also tried color, but there was not much to begin with, mainly shades of reddish earth tones, and so I tried B&W. I frequently do that, just to see how it looks, and normally I revert to color, but in this case B&W did well, because it emphasized the already abstract nature of the image.

Frequently I tone B&W images, and most of the time I use the actions from ePaperPress. That's Tom Niemann's site, the guy who brought you PTLens. While PTLens is a commercial product (but the price tag of $15 is more or less symbolic for what this program does and how well it is supported), the Photoshop actions for toning are free. Try them, they are great.

As I said, normally I use these actions, lately I tend to tone myself with a Gradient Map layer over the B&W conversion layer. I did so this time, and playing with colors and the gradient's mid-point brought exactly the tonality that I've had in mind. As a result, I copied these B&W conversion layers to the other two images, adjusted tonality, but let the tone intact. There you have it. Three identically toned images, all shot with the Sigma 70/2.8, none originally intended for B&W, all victim of my curiosity :)

I really wanted to talk about creativity today, but, sorry, these images got in my way. I also wanted to post one more entry with my the images of today, but that won't work either. It's already past midnight, maybe I get two entries posted tomorrow. We'll see.

The Song of the Day is "It's OK to Listen to the Gray Voice" from Jan Garbarek's 1984 album of the same name. No lyrics, only saxophone :)

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"

622 - Stormy Weather

This is certainly no great photo, the yellow reflection to the left is much too distracting for that, but it does one thing very well: it accurately shows the light that caused me to take it in the first place.

Technically this is not an HDR image. It was made from one RAW file by combining three different versions, using luminance masks, "Blend If" sliders, an extra layer in "Soft Light" blending mode and a photo filter.

I could probably have found a better composition, but I was in a hurry. I crouched in the middle of the street, sheltering myself and the camera from the heavy rain with an umbrella, using a short time when there were no cars. Pretty inconvenient :)

Here is one more image with the same Sigma 30/1.4 lens. I kinda like it, though neither my artistic contribution is overwhelming, nor is it that of the graffer. Sometimes I wonder. I can understand what someone could get out of making graffiti, at least a certain kind. Some graffiti are art, even if Ted disagrees :)

But where does this trend to use stencils come from?? Why do people do that? There is nothing at all artistic in it. Even a monkey could do that. Why bother? Do you have any idea?

The Song of the Day is "Stormy Weather", one of my most favorite songs, a Harold Arlen composition, this time interpreted by Ethel Waters. I found her by chance, searching for versions of "Stormy Weather", not knowing that it was actually her signature song. Well, it's probably excusable, she was slightly before my time :)

I have it on a compilation of recordings from between 1931 and 1934, but that does not seem to be available any more. Instead you could probably get this one called "Am I Blue?". Hear it on YouTube.

621 - Right Place Wrong Time

Leaves are falling??? Sorry guys, that's the wrong time. Up the trees again please, I'll tell you when you're due :))

We have storms here in Vienna these days. Well, nothing that would overly impress our friends in the US, but for a mountainous country like ours they are pretty strong. This image is from Wednesday morning, I'm still a day behind schedule.

The Song of the Day is "Right Place Wrong Time" from the incredible Dr. John's 1973 album "In the Right Place". Hear it on YouTube.

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.

619 - An Afternoon Walk

Sometimes it is much trouble coming up with a single good image, and sometimes the trouble is, that I have so many that are quite nice, but not a single one that really stands out.

This is what we call a Mofa. That's the abbreviation for "Motorfahrrad" or "motor bicycle". This is an old one and it is a Puch. We had quite some of their bicycles so far (just check out my collection of Bicycles, a lot of them are Puch), but they have made motorbikes as well, some bigger, some like this one. I remember, when I was a child, the postmen used them. Well, that was at the end of the sixties, early seventies.

Monday afternoon was very hot and I slowly strolled home, taking one of the routes that I especially like on such hot lazy afternoons. It leads through one particularly sleepy part of Vienna's 8^th district. This is neither a historic region nor a shiny one, much of the architectural body is from the 1920s/30s, it seems to have been heavily bombed in WW2 and hastily mended in the fifties, but even that is now some time ago, and this part of the city has the charm of a place where people live but are quite not there. In fact that may well have been on that hot afternoon. I guess everybody but me was swimming :)

Originally I had wanted to stay at work longer, but I was still tired from my late-night arrival from Carinthia, and instead decided to go home. For part of the walk I used the Sigma 70/2.8, for the other part the Sigma 30/1.4. Both are among my favorite lenses.

Sometimes I wonder what people think when they see me standing or crouching there, and sometimes they even tell me. Just as I was taking an image of ivy on the garden side of a house (i've omitted it here), an old man came by and said "What are you photographing here? The ivy? But that's everywhere!".

He is right, and that's exactly the way most people run around. Ask them what they've seen, and you get a "Oh, nothing special". That's wrong. Everything is special around us, everything is unique, so are our lives, and if we fail to see and recognize it, then we fail to live at all.

The Song of the Day is "Lazy Afternoon" from the fabulous Holly Cole's 2003 album "Shade". Sorry, no lyrics, not even sound samples, Amazon does not like Holly or Holly does not like Amazon. I don't know. There is no video on YouTube either, but it's still the Song of the Day. You have to believe me :)

615 - The Light

Funny image, huhh?? Well, I like the effect. This involved some weird tricks like overlaying a layer that was generated by "Filter / Stylize / Find Edges", major pushes in the color department and a lot more. I was inspired to do this for two reasons: the reflection patterns in the tiles looked interesting and, more important, the highlights looked completely burnt out. I just had a discussion with Paul Lester about RAW vs JPEG, and if ever an image was a good example for why I shoot RAW, this is it.

Well, I've done all sorts of violent things to this image, don't get distracted by the graphic syle. The point is, when you look at the lower right corner, there is nothing but white. Everything is clipped and gone. In RAW it took me just an exposure correction of -2.5EV, the details were back and the image was back in the game. But of course, Paul and I do completely different things to our images, and with the kind of shooting he does and his gentle style of post-processing, he won't ever stress an image like I do here. In the end it's quite simple: do what you need and what's enough to reach your goals.

The Song of the Day is "The Light" from the Stranglers album "Coup de Grace". Hear it on YouTube. Judging from the reviews on Amazon, "real" fans seem to dislike this album passionately. Well, I don't :)

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!

613 - Shiny Things

It is only now and only slowly, that I find the time to enjoy some of the books that came out of SoFoBoMo. One that particularly inspires me because of its wonderful fresh look on details "in between", is Esther Emma Jongste's "Colorful Daily Details". I'm loving it and it influences the way I see. Yesterday's telephone receiver (which is currently on Fine Art Photoblog) came out of that, and in a way today's image as well. After two weeks of fisheye images I enjoy being back to small details.

It's early in the morning now, I was too tired to post yesterday. Work is tough at the moment. When I left, light was already failing. I probably should have asked two guys, who were practicing bicycle jumps, if I could take some images. I would even have had my flash with me, but after 11 hours of work I could not muster the energy. Pretty silly though. I guess I could have gone away with some first class action shots.

Anyway. I decided for the slow route, and on my way home I took a series of images of the usual things, cars, street corners, graffiti and such. This closeup image of a car back light is what I liked most.

The Song of the Day is "Shiny Things", again from the great Tom Waits' Opus Magnum "Orphans". Take the time and hear into the sound sample on Amazon's site. The only thing I've found on YouTube was an arrangement for ukulele, but - hey, why not? It's a pretty little melody.

Bill Birtch and I are playing ping pong with these songs from Orphans, every once in a while he chooses one and then I do, but they are really that good. Oh, by the way, Bill has a pretty nice image of a bicycle over there. You know, I love bicycles :)

612 - Private Goes Public

It's a funny feeling, now that SoFoBoMo is over for me as well. I feel ... relaxed. The pressure is gone. Sure, I will go back once more and produce the physical book, but there is no deadline to that.

Do I feel tired? Do I need a creative break? Not really. I probably need more sleep, yes, but otherwise I feel as creative as ever. I guess the reason is, that I have not spent much time shooting, actually not more than six hours. Most work went into post-processing, and that, although tedious, was fascinating and interesting. After all, I have never before tried to create such a big and consistent body of work, much less from one shooting. In a way it was a similar experience to that of making the exhibition in January.

Yesterday night, on the train from Carinthia, I have tried my next book, some "Best of 2006/2007", just a compilation of the best images of the first 15 months of my blog, and although it was technically no problem, the result was rubbish. This is another lesson: I may have the means now to produce a book in very short time, but this is no substitute for a vision and for proper planning and design. Otherwise I may produce something in the form of a book, but it won't be a good book :)

Now for today's images. Actually I like both of them. The vandalized telephone receiver caught my eye because of the color and, even more so, because of the curve of the cable. I finally settled for the other image though. Austria is currently host to the European Soccer Championship, and today was the match Austria vs Germany. Thousands of people were on the streets, mostly on their way to one of the public viewing areas in the so-called fan zones, and what I saw in Westbahnstraße, was one of the funnier ideas. Some people had taken a TV set out onto the sidewalk, along with some furniture, and were viewing in public. Someone made a video, and they really seemed to enjoy themselves. Oh yes, Austria lost 0:1, but that was to be expected :)

The Song of the Day is "Private Goes Public", the last song on the European version of the 1992 Suzanne Vega album "99.9 F°".

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 :)

608 - On The Street Where You Live

Oh my, for two weeks I had nothing but fisheye images. It was time for a change, and what a change it is. You can't imagine how incredibly relaxing it is, to be back to the Sigma 70/2.8. I took this image while sitting outside of a bar, drinking a good glass of "Starobrno", a really fantastic Czech beer - and I was feeling fine :)

The Song of the Day is "On The Street Where You Live" from "My Fair Lady", interpreted by Mel Tormé on "Mel Tormé Swings Shubert Alley". See him perform live many years later on YouTube.

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".