618 - Melancholia

It was hot today, very hot, and on my way to my favorite lake, I took this image from out of the car. Post-processing took some time and involved a selectively masked and overall subdued B&W layer, some cloning and rather traditional burning. The result was not unlike yesterday's image, but in the end I've added a strong saturation layer that brought almost all color back. Still, a little bit of the B&W character remains, and that's what I want.

Yesterday's image was really the result of a desparate experiment, but I feel that there is potential in this technique. I mean, selective B&W is cheesy, you know, these bright blue eyes in othewise B&W faces, but this is promising and you may see me walking that route once in a while.

The title? I have no idea, it just feels right :)

I'm on the train right now and with only a limited selection of music, and apart from that I can only slightly remember a song that has the word "melancholia" in it, but probably not in the title. Therefore I have simply searched for something on Google, and I have found this: a video on YouTube, titled "Melancholia", and attributed to Led Zeppelin. No doubt, that is Led Zeppelin, I know the song, but they have nothing called Melancholia, I've checked the track listings for all their albums on Amazon. Googling for text fragments finally revealed that it is "Since I've Been Loving You". I have it on a 4 CD box set called "Led Zeppelin", but it is really from "Led Zeppelin III". Well, whatever you choose, you can't go wrong.

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.

557 - Sarah

May I introduce my niece Sarah? She is a year and some days old, daughter of my sister Astrid and her husband Martin, and she is the delight of my father, who has spent the last two weeks working in Vienna and living with them. Yesterday we returned to Carinthia.

These images are from my visit on Tuesday evening. I had already worked on them and uploaded them to SmugMug, thus I can post this entry. The other images of the week, Wednesday and Thursday, are unrecoverable at the moment, I will post them when I am back in Vienna.

The Song of the Day is "Sara" from Antonello Venditti's 1978 album "Sotto Il Segno Dei Pesci". The lyrics are not exactly what one would write about his baby niece, but Bob Dylan's "Sara" wouldn't have been better in this regard :)

See Antonello Venditti perform live on YouTube.

470 - This Is The Place

Yes, this is the place that I've mentioned yesterday. I've returned, because yesterday's image was cut too tight on the right side.

You see, I'm still shooting unorthodox landscapes. Hmm ... can it be that shooting landscapes with telephoto lenses is out of fashion? Or is it only I who can't see those images in a sea of wide-angle shots? Whatever it is, for me this is an exciting place to explore. I did it with the Sigma 70/2.8 for more than a month now, and at the moment it is the Sigma 150/2.8 that I use. It gives me even more compression, and wide open the DOF is so shallow, it's pure bliss.

I have long wondered what this image means to me. The trees are a bit like a barrier, a fence, a circle unbroken, guards protecting a forbidden place. This is an inside viewed from an outside, and maybe this place was sacred for some long forgotten people? What does it mean to you?

There is only one more image for today- It's from the same place where I've been in the afternoon, two days ago. Power lines and telephone cables can be the bane of the landscape photographer, but who says that they can't be an interesting subject?

The Song of the Day is "This Must Be The Place" from the 1983 Talking Heads album "Speaking in Tongues". See it performed live on YouTube. I guess it's from the concert movie "Stop Making Sense". Funny that I've never seen the movie, funny that its soundtrack is the only Heads CD that I don't have. I guess I'm atypical in this respect :)

468 - Wild Wood

As promised yesterday, today we are back to that place where all that timber lies, and as you can see here, there is firewood as well. What is wild with that wood, you ask? Well, you're right, so let me offer you an alternative:

While the preceding image was shot at f11, this one was taken at f2.8. Both of course with the Sigma 70/2.8 again. Some more typical macro shots :)

The Song of the Day is the fabulous "Wild Wood" by Paul Weller, once of Jam fame, long since a solo star. You can either have it on his 1994 album "Wild Wood" or on "Live Wood" from the same year. Hear a very good live version on YouTube.