lens head

you might wonder about the new design here. well, i've finally decided to get a full website. besides the blog there is nothing working yet, but this will change during the next days. i'm going to vitalise the whole site with a lot of stuff, so stay tuned. target for today was to get a funny self portrait with the message: don't take yourself too seriously. if you are a rather serious person (as i am), this mantra seems to be a proper approach to life.

0902 - grain skin

grain skin - sony nex 7 | sel50 f1.8 | f1.8 | ISO6400 | 1/15

today i finally decided to make the next small (fun-) step in my photographic life - before the production of 35mm film will be completely discontinued anytime, i'm going to have at least one try with analog photography even this spring. therefor i ordered one role ilford delta 3200 Professional (b+w), kodak portra 800 (colour) and fujifilm superia 1600 (colour) each. 

why such sensitive films? well, i want to begin (and probably stay) with a ultra-compact fun cam, something like a diana mini or any other lomography camera, since it has to accompany me to music festivals and other chaotic events where the nex usually has no place in. naturally you have to use high iso films if you want to shoot these lomo cams (fixed plastic lens, (almost) fixed, slow f-stop - f8/f11 switch, fixed shutter speed - 1/60) at dusk. although i definitely expect not less than blurred, grainy, absolutely poor exposed results of my coming lomo cam, i'm able to look forward to work with film. expectations can only be belied if they are exaggerated. actually i have only one expectation: with at a max 36 images on a role you have to think long and hard about your composition, which is why i hope to improve my photographic skills further.

with the intention to give high iso film a try sometime, i avoided to apply noise reduction to my self portrait already today. what you see is my grainy face in the double window of our kitchen with the idyllic, nightly yard in winter dress in the background.

0701 - reflection

reflection - sony nex 7 with sel 35 f1.8 | f2.0 | ISO1600 | 1/13

today was a good day. fairly old, pretty good memories appeared and caused a lot of questions in my mind. self-reflection is a process that i've internalised during my trainings, but this is of course way beyond looking at oneself in the mirror - have i changed for the better or the worse since a certain point? highly likely this question has to be answered by others.

any way, today is a very good day.

2011 - sting of remorse

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f11.0 | ISO100 | 30s | lightroom 4.2

i really don't want to be narcissistic or blow my own trumpet but i would actually count myself among the medium to high performer. despite that i sometimes think about closing my eyes, taking a longer time out and a breather, if only rarely in life. relaxation, muse, inaction. for many a long year.

no, not now and not here! later! you are young and especially during the next years you will be able to sop up everything easily. show iron will, studiousness and endurance and you will benefit from these years in not too distant future. bear in mind that time is sustainably measured only on a long term scale: everything consists of nature and will be merged in nature again.

cu, trshptr

1810 - anticyclic acting

setup: sony nex 7 with walimex pro 8 f2.8 fisheye | 8mm | f8.0 | ISO100 | 3.2s | cornerfix & lightroom 4.2

anticyclic acting is a way to escape from the daily routine.

after i hadn't managed to be the first on the roads yesterday, my today's alarm rang already at half past six in the morning. with an eye to the great weather forecast for today and hopefully a great sunrise at the lakeside i ate my breakfast in less than 15 minutes and left home still in complete darkness. equipped with my ultra bright led headlamp and red blinking lights on the back pack i started my journey into the dark.

having the knowledge of being the sole human in a dark forest and withal riding a bicycle with a visibility range of not more than 20 metres is a very special experience. i spotted the sparkling, sometimes white, sometimes yellow incandescent eyes of the forest animals a few times through the undergrowth of the woods. at last i felt like a real man again.

getting up early paid off today.

cu, trshptr

1410 - home again

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f1.8 | ISO1600 | 1/40 | silver efex for lightroom

being separated from tina for more than a week let me feel sick.

coming home after ten days feels a bit like getting to know her and the whole surrounding completely new. a sense of delight mixes with a feeling of relief. hopefully this will stay forever.

cu, trshptr

2009 - in the red focus

setup: sony nex 7 with sigma 30 f2.8 ex dn | 30mm | f5.6 | ISO100 | 1/250 | lightroom 4.1

vacation time is family time. so today i want to break my habits and let a guest writer, my most beloved and so far only one, refer about today's occurrences:

"hi, i'm tina and today it's a honour for me to write the daily posting of my husband's blog :)

i write this posting because today i saw my first two marmots!

although it was really not the first time that we were hiking in the mountains, till today i've often heard them piping but never seen one of them. so i was very lucky to finally spot one of them for real! fortunately we've had my grandpa's spyglass with us, so we could observe them while they were observing us, haha! :)"

the pic came up when i observed tina while she searching for anything interesting in the mountains. the red coloured reflections of me and the landscape in my back, the recurring colour red itself and the wonderful mountainscape in tina's back really please me.

our today's walk in prime weather:

cu, trshptr

2607 - out of the depths

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f1.8 | ISO1600 | 1/60 | lightroom 4.1

... the dark knight is rising.

i'm just back from the cinema where the movie "the dark knight rises" has premiered. and i'm still stunned by the vigorous images that were presented in the third part of christopher nolan's film series. although i might say that the story of the second part pleased me a bit more after the first view, the outlining of the several characters is realised very, very well! just this fact justifies the visit to this movie.

maybe i'm going to dream about the movie characters tonight, about good and evil, batman and bane, integrity and betrayal. all these points are really hard to get hold of and the borders between them are partly fluent.

in the most general sense this posting renders homage to the great batman trilogy. unfortunately i don't own a batman mask so that i had to take a wooden mask from bali to cause a bit of fear. who can say how the next baddie will look like?

cu, trshptr

2007 - experimental views

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f2.0 | ISO320 | 1/80 | lightroom 4.1

weekend time is visiting time. this weekend two fellow students are visiting me at lake constance. christian, who is the father of a two and a half year old, cute boy, hasn't been at my place since more than two years. and i've not seen karl, who is also a father since more than one year, since we ended our movement to the lake in summer 2009. a long time passed since then, but luckily we are still on the same page although we three are completely different as different can be.

after they'd arrived at my workplace, i've showed them everything in my company, the facilities and the beautiful surroundings at the lake. when we came home tina had already prepared the dinner so that we could directly have a seat for a great spaghetti bolognese and some beers. in the evening we visited the opening of the exhibition "experimentelle 17" and ended in a tiny little bar with another beer.

the vernissage gave variety in modern, experimental art: iron structures, paintings and sculptures of well- and also little-known artists are exhibited at five places at the lake constance for two months from now on. the work of peter casagrande was the most impressive one: he works with huge canvas and glaring colours, beautiful to look at. however the work of andreas lau was the most interesting one: as an example he creates plastic, three-dimensional images with dozens of multilayered dots with different diameters in front of a shadowed background. really formidable!

the image in my pic shows a blurred child, that is traversed by some parallel lines. if you view this image at a remove from some meters, the child is clearly visible. however if you see the painting from up close, everything blurs to a coloured mass. also very formidable and a top implementation by the artist!

for logical reasons i used the topic and the kind of implementation of "the child", my favourite exhibited painting, as an opportunity to implement my daily pic also of this character. my pic a multilayered, partly blurred, candid self portrait of tina and me in the environment of the exhibition.

cu, trshptr

1107 - humanoid camera

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f2.8 | ISO100 | 1/13 | lightroom 4.1

when you are an ambitious photographer that is willing to learn constantly, at some point you will realise that you have begun to see your life only in frames. this is basically not so bad, you learn to handle this circumstance.

whereas the point to feel pressured by the obligation of capturing a suitable pic per day is a real problem. i ran into this issue some weeks ago and believe me, especially for an absolute beginner of serious photography this burden is definitely not conducive to obtain the best possible results and to learn the hobby in a relaxed way. you try to figure out if any, really any object would make a good scene - this is an exhausting process!

learning is known as a process whereby you improve your skills with every fault or problem you did. you have to be fully aware of this case, otherwise your expectations on yourself will always be unaccomplished. my personal aim of this photography project is the self-discovery which kind of photography i like and what kind of photographer i am, too.

in the course of this i sometimes feel like a humanoid camera.

cu, trshptr