muser

April 07, 2013 in 35, b+w, backlight, bar, bokeh, candid, close up, contrast, eyes, face, friedrichshafen, germany, grain, hair, indoors, mood, nex 7, people, personal, portrait, restaurant, sel, shadow, smile, sony

this week my stinchen turned 28. and this year we will reach 3333 joint days. without you i would be nothing. you teach me the things i don't preside over. be sure, i'm going to look out for you carefully.

clashing horns

April 06, 2013 in 50, action, agriculture, animal, b+w, bermatingen, bokeh, candid, contrast, countryside, eyes, face, germany, grain, hair, light, nature, nex 7, old photo, portrait, sel, shadow, sony

a few weeks ago i stumbled upon google's nik collection discount: only 149$ for six pretty useful lightroom plug-in applications, srp actually round about 500$, that sounded too good. go for it!

today i'd like to show a first result, that was processed with the newer version of silver efex pro - i had used the predecessor for a while, too - and explain, with which workflow the shown sample, that was photographed today a few minutes on foot away from our home, was edited by me: firstly the import in lightroom, application of lens correction, convertion to tiff and transfer to sharpener pro 3 (part 1) for raw pre sharpening, in between buffering in lightroom, transfer to silver efex pro 2 and main editing, again fransfer to sharpener pro (part 2) for final output sharpening and finally export the image from lightroom to jpg. pooh, and all that with my good old laptop... i'm going to familiarise myself with the new software during the coming weeks and i will surely publish more samples.

cornet hopper

April 04, 2013 in 35, b+w, bar, bokeh, candid, contrast, face, germany, grain, indoors, light, night, nex 7, old photo, people, portrait, restaurant, sel, shadow, sony

time has come: winter has finally gone here at lake constance, spring is bypassed and we'll fluently proceed to summer, hopefully. such being the case we indulged in the first ice cream today, although almost zero degrees made it harder for us to enjoy the refreshment.

nightly 2cv

April 02, 2013 in 35, architecture, art, atmosphere, blue, building, car, contrast, colour, darkness, facility, germany, glass, light, mood, nex 7, night, pattern, portrait, ravensburg, orange, sel, shadow, sony, street, townscape, urban, wall, window, citroën

i've no idea why this citroën 2cv has to carve out its lonely existence in the darkest corner of this car dealer's facilities. although it sets a nice scene, especially in combination with the large windows and the coloured lights, driving on the road in the background the 2cv would be an even better subject.

crumb snoot

April 01, 2013 in 35, backlight, bokeh, brown, candid, colour, corridor, eyes, face, friedrichshafen, germany, hair, indoors, light, nex 7, orange, people, portrait, personal, sel, sony, wall, window, yellow, high key, children, baby

today, on easter monday, we visited our friends tanja and marcel, who recently had their second baby. during the afternoon i had the privilege of portraying the whole family, including my friend mika, the crumb snoot, and even his grandma and his grandpa. compared with his only a few weeks old sister, mika only seems to keep still, when he is sleeping or eating. so i had to take advantage of that circumstance for the snapshot above, although you usually should not photograph people at table.

kittens in da club

April 01, 2013 in 35, action, art, atmosphere, bar, bokeh, candid, cat, colour, corridor, contrast, darkness, deeper meaning, face, eyes, germany, fun, hair, indoors, kitty, light, nex 7, night, people, portrait, ravensburg, red, sel, sony, vintage, party, disco

some people represent the personalisation of self-confidence. regardless, of whether i like their doings, styles, apperances or whether there is a doubting soul underneath the cool exterior: just because of their bravery these people earn my respect.

time leap

March 23, 2013 in 35, action, atmosphere, bar, berlin, blue, bokeh, candid, colour, corridor, diner, dinner, face, germany, indoors, light, nex 7, night, people, portrait, red, restaurant, sel, shadow, sony, townscape, trip, urban

spending time in a metropole at the weekends can be compared to pure quality time. once again i'm able to visit extraordinary restaurants and bars, like the absolutely cheesy sixties diner in the center of berlin.

kitchen nook

March 12, 2013 in 8, action, architecture, atmosphere, colour, darkness, dinner, fisheye, germany, home, indoors, kitchen, light, nex 7, old photo, orange, people, personal, portrait, sony, vintage, walimex samyang rokinon, wash, vegetables

this is the functional part of our kitchen. the room per se is very large, but most of the time the action takes place in the shown corner. to make matters worse, there is a guy who - instead of helping the chef - runs around with his camera all the time... well, who might that be?

swiss traveller

March 10, 2013 in 35, atmosphere, b+w, candid, contrast, darkness, germany, grain, nex 7, night, old photo, people, portrait, sel, sepia, shadow, sony, street, townscape, trip, urban, railstation, friedrichshafen

sometimes travelling people show unusual modes of behaviours. the man in the centre of my today's image carried a very heavy case, which, to his sorrow, had to be hefted upstairs on the platform to reach the trains.

after tina had drawn my attention to his troublesome ascent, i asked him if i can help... he answered with a swiss accent and without even looking at me that it's no problem for him to carry his case by himself. ok, whatever. although i won't go as far as tina, who presumed with a bit of black humour, that he probably carried any parts of dead bodies in his case - hopefully not! - i think, that his autarky has to do with either his attitude towards germany / germans or lived independence in old age.

however that be, i took to him.

approach for feeding

March 05, 2013 in 50, art, atmosphere, b+w, backlight, candid, contrast, germany, grain, hair, lake, lake constance, light, minimalistic, nature, nex 7, old photo, people, portrait, sel, shadow, sony, street, sun, hagnau, seagull

finally it's possible to work with backlight again. frontlighting is currently one of my favorite stylistic devices when it comes to composing candid street photographs. there are two, main reasons why very strong and bright backlight seems to be useful for a street photographer: firstly the subjects are often dazzled with the (sun-)light and thereby the people have their own issues to deal with. secondly the backlight makes for very hard contrasts, that support a clear graphical structure in your frame, only if the composition is suitable, of course.