936 - Lord, Help The Poor And Needy

Wednesday. I write this on Saturday morning, thus I am still substantially behind. Frequently I can use the time on the train to Carinthia to catch up, but this time I managed to process eight images. Just now I did one more, which requires me to fill the spaces between with words. Ouch!

Wednesday brought the expected rain, and that forced me to use shorter focal lengths. I decided to take the Sigma 70/2.8, this outstandingly versatile macro lens that can also perfectly be used for street photography.

Due to the rain I had to use an umbrella, but it really doesn’t bother me any more. It may look strange for passersby, but sometimes, mostly with wide lenses, I even use the umbrella as part of the framing. You have seen some of these images in the past.

As to the subjects, well, I did as I said yesterday: I shot impulsively, without much care about if a particular shot would possibly be a good candidate for the book. Basically that’s one of the big advantages of having no idea of what the final book will really be about. And, honestly, even if bicycles probably won’t play a major role (but who knows now?), there is no reason at all to skip a perfectly good bicycle 🙂

Of course the title “Urban Dreams” is still in my mind, and of course this also shapes the impulses, thus I am much more likely to produce something that fits my idea than normally. The scooter in front of the hairdresser’s, the black flag on the theater, dreams of beauty and death.

The black flag is for Fritz Muliar who has died recently at the age of 89, died in the evening after having stood on the stage for the last time that very afternoon. Muliar may not have been widely known outside of Austria, but here he was immensely popular. R.I.P.

Why the other images? Well, the flowers on the window sill represent a dream of nature, the figurine of the boy a dream of family. Both will typically be found among older people from the working class.

But maybe there is more in this figurine. I feel a sense of adventure here. The young boy in a place of wonder and probably even danger.

By the way, this is the same shop that brought us “781 - Piggy And The Frog In Love”. I frequently pass this window, and most of the time I see something that I could photograph. A safe place to go when you are in need of an image. The only thing that you need is a lens with a very wide aperture.

The final two images share the blurry foreground, a style that I have explored greatly last spring.

The first image is shot through the rack in front of a flower shop, using the rack as a frame, and the second is an advertising for a Klimt exhibition, shot through some leaves.

So, obviously my SoFoBoMo efforts come to fruit, I progress nicely, I have processed and published 19 images from three days, that’s slightly above my target average of five images per day.

Thus I may end up with around 65 images by the end of next working week, at least if I manage to keep my pace. I may choose to omit some images, some images of the next days may represent subjects already covered, only better, but all in all I suppose that I won’t need to take a day off, especially because I won’t stop photographing at the end of next week.

The Song of the Day, “Lord, Help The Poor And Needy” obviously inspired by the dream of money in the Image of the Day, is from Cat Power’s second album of cover versions, the 2008 release “Jukebox”. Deezer has the album, YouTube as some live versions, for example this one from Bogotá.