916 - If I Were A Bell

I have not used a long lens in quite some time now, and the Sigma 70/2.8 Macro not since September 25, 2008. Wow, that’s half a year!

For me the joy of using such a lens comes from the endless variety of things that it allows me to see. I can go very near as in this flower macro (and these are really, really tiny flowers), semi-near as in the Image of the Day, or I can use the same lens to record a street scene. Completely different worlds, all in one lens.

In fact, going to work took me much longer today. I took many more images (OK, I threw many more away as well), and I had a hard time stopping being immersed in photography and instead go working.

I seriously consider using this as my SoFoBoMo lens, or if not shooting all images with this particular lens, at least adhering to that style of changing between different worlds. Two other lenses that work particularly well in that regard are the Sigma 50/1.4 and the Sigma 20/1.8, the former for its creamy bokeh wide open, and the latter for its macro capabilities. All three lenses are particularly well suited to dreaming the urban dream.

“Urban Dreams”. I have used that title for my exhibition last year, and I am extremely tempted to use “Urban Dreams II” as title of this year’s SoFoBoMo book. Does that sound good? Well, to me it sound so good that I’ve just committed to the title and created my book page on the SoFoBoMo site.

In a way that will be easy, because it leaves me great flexibility. Dreaming of the City! That can be everything, can it? On the other hand, it is challenging as well, because this is not the jumble of a daily photoblog, this is the linearity, the cohesion and the order of a book. In any case this is very different from last year’s project, images of one afternoon’s walk through the canyon “Tscheppaschlucht” in Carinthia.

There the whole structure was given through the temporal order, and the only thing that I had to do, was post-processing the images to a consistent style.

Anyway, we can’t always do the same thing. Let’s see how it turns out this year.

As to the Song of the Day, it’s “If I Were A Bell” from “Guys and Dolls”. I have at least two versions of it, Ella’s is fantastic, but today we take Holly Cole on her 1992 album “Blame It on My Youth”. Thankfully her songs begin to appear on YouTube. Here is this one.