Spider on Andreas Manessinger

1575 - The Lonely Spider

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 15:13:01 +0000

Saturday we had a spectacular sunrise, but for the rest of the day Villach was under a dense cover of clouds, and finally in the evening we had a maybe even more impressive sundown. I saw both, enjoyed both, and did not take any photographs.

What you see here is an old image, one that I found by accident, and as I could connect it to the music that I wanted to present, I stuck to it.

1545 - Let The Bells Ring

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 21:43:53 +0000

Delayed again, I’m sorry. My absence even caused Anita to inquire about my health. Thanks, I’m fine, maybe a little tired.

On Thursday I went for another walk along the river, this time a much longer distance along the southern shore, up to the next bridge and then back on the other side, something between eight and ten kilometers.

Again I came back with almost 200 images, but this time the weather was not as clear and the light most of the time flat.I probably could find some more images worth processing, but I think I can leave it as well at three.

1045 - Misty Mountains

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:27:00 +0000

As promised, here are two more images for today, like the birds of the last post taken with the Sigma 150/2.8 Macro.

The first shows a wasp struggling to get out of a spider’s net. Cruel things happen around us all the time, most of them going unnoticed. And even if, a wasp is dangerous, just look at the colors. Our compassion is only for the furry, cuddly animals with big eyes.

In case you’re interested: this ended 1:0 for the wasp. It finally got free.

The other image is more like what I was looking for in this early morning after a rainy evening. I set out so early, because I hoped to get scenes just like this: mountains shrouded by wind-torn mist.

Just like yesterday’s image (which actually also was from today), this is a rather brutal re-mapping of tones, certainly much more dramatic than it was in reality. While yesterday’s challenge was to isolate the birds, today I wanted a certain balance between the cliff in the foreground and the bright spot in the sky.

The Song of the Day is “Misty Mountain Hop”, originally from the 1971 album “Led Zeppelin IV”. I have it on the 4 CD collection “Led Zeppelin Remasters”. Hear it on YouTube.

262 - This Land Is Not Our Land

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:53:00 +0000

The twin islands of Cres and Losinj are thinly populated. There are some tourist centers like Mali Losinj, but for wide stretches there is nothing but Macchia, walls, some sheep in between … and spiders. Spiders just like this one. They look very much like normal spiders in our garden, but in comparison they are big. Very big.

Their body is big like a hazelnut. This is not big by absolute measures, but for spiders like that in our garden it is very, VERY big.

Let’s look at it from another angle. The island of Cres has a size of approximately 400 square kilometers, that’s 400 million square meters. I have made only two forays into the macchia, but both times I have found these spiders. Many of them. I’d suppose a density of one spider per four square meters. And now go figure.

This means 100.000.000 spiders on an island with a human population of 3184!!!

This land is not our land. It is spider territory.

I have the Song of the Day on this 42 disc collection called “The Ultimate Jazz Archive”. It’s the Rhythmakers in 1932 with “Spider Crawl”. Sorry, no lyrics on the net.