3003 - symmetry

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 28mm | f8.0 | ISO200 | 1/200 | aperture priority | raw file cropped, aligned and processed in rawtherapee

a hard working day was followed by a great, atmospheric walk at lake constance. tina and i cut along the waterside until we arrived at one of my favourite memorials in germany - the war memorial in remembrance of the fallen troops of the world wars in the 20th century, named kriegerdenkmal meersburg.

while i was struggling with my tentative equipment through the last few days - birthday, where are you - today´s conditions where not really challenging for lenses and sensors. although the light shined a bit soft, this fact matched with the mood of this impressive place. again and again the clouds teared up for some seconds und let a bundled sunbeam pass their natural umbrella. 

today i captured several good pics, so that i had to decide which one should be published on the blog. i picked this one, because i love its symmetry, simplicity and clarity. these three keywords exactly express the heart of the subtext that the monument conveys. it is unalterable, will survive longer than the humanity is able to look ahead and stands for the lives of thousands of men. may they rest in peace.

if you want to discover the memorial in detail, please visit my corresponding album on flickr.

cu, trshptr

btw:

sony nex 5n

sel 16 + wide angle conversion lens [12/2.8 + 16/2.8]

slr magic manual special lens [35/1.7]

sigma e-mount [30/2.8]

sel 50 [50/1.8]

consistent bundle for a beginner?

2903 - pink lady

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 39mm | f5.0 | ISO200 | 1/160 | aperture priority | raw file cropped, aligned and processed in rawtherapee

although i had to travel to munich today by reason of my job - for that reason only a very short posting today, sorry about that -, an occasion to capture a photo of an urban scene wasn´t caused. that didn´t matter, because on my way home i espied a really funky holland style bicycle in front of a not yet opened beer garden.

its purpose as an eyecatcher worked in my case - i stopped my car and inspected the object in detail. the finish of this oldtimer had been spread very amateurish, even the tires are painted. nevertheless i felt a not explainable gravity of this scene. in combination with the blue painted boards, the white window and the timber-framed wall the bike doesn´t appear displaced.

even though real life scenes look different, this funny mix had to be captured.

cu tomorrow, trshptr

2803 - grainy idyll

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 49mm | f5.6 | ISO100 | 1/250 | aperture priority | jpg file ooc, only cropped in gimp 2.6

remember where you come from. this saying that was preached by dani, my last year´s surf teacher from bilbao, is always on my mind. times are changing, circumstances and surroundings, too.

what is and will remain is your origin. although i like to be an urban city boy who enjoys all kinds of the provided possibilities, who goes out and explores the streets every day, i currently have to accept that at lake constance rural life dominates.

for different reasons this fact isn´t a deal breaker for me: first of all we are situated in a stage of life of temporary nature. fortunately we exactly know when we will leave the south of germany again to move to ... . dot, dot, dot, because we already have an option for the next period of our lives but here and now we want to focus on actuality. otherwise you spend too much time with planing your further life while missing out on currentness. the second matter has to do with our beginnings. tina and i had grown up at a highly rural region in the east of germany before we got together in may of 2004 and moved to hamburg a year after. the liaison with the nature has always played a huge role in our lives and wasn´t disregarded during urban phases. last but not least the area around lake constance has the distinction of being one of the most beautiful regions in central europe. a great many tourists visit meersburg, hagnau and lindau or the southern coast of the lake in switzerland during the summer period between easter and september. why, this being the case, should we wish to be somewhere else?

the incluence of this issue on my photography project can´t be denied. so i take it as it comes - periodically pictures of our wonderful nature will be interspersed in my blog stream. but don´t worry - as often as possible i will give relief to them with involving anything that makes them less monotonous.

hope you enjoy the great sunset in the pic above, tina and i did. cu, trshptr

2703 - chaos men

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 18mm | f4.0 | ISO800 | 1/13 | aperture priority | raw file cropped, aligned and processed in rawtherapee

many men at one place produce very big chaos, maybe apart from military organized assosiations. my soccer club isn´t part of the well "shepherded" organisations when it comes to keep orderliness and cleanliness in its changing rooms.

when i arrived at the club house today in the evening some minutes after training had already started, the in the picture above outlined gracile chaos came out. all players were already engaged on the soccer field, so i had two minutes to capture this image.

inasmuch as i have a long history with soccer i feel home in and like the mood of changing rooms. while my city trips i have also inspected some changing rooms of professionals, f.e. in hamburg, glasgow or munich. never once the smell of grass, sweat or dubbin was perceptible. that is not really me scene.

cu, trshptr

2603 - sensitized nila

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 27mm | f4.0 | ISO100 | 1/100 | aperture priority | raw file cropped, aligned and processed in rawtherapee; jpg healed in gimp

after a rushing weekend today was a slow day. the winter isn´t able to struggle against the spring - our two kitties begin to enjoy the upcoming warmth, too. whereas our first cat zizou, which means white cat in french and was the nickname of zinedine zidane, runs away from home as far and as fast as she can every morning, nila, the second one, most of the time sticks around.

unfortunately zizou´s character has varied heavily since she is allowed to leave the flat after our movement from hamburg to lake constance. currently she is not willing to accept any other kitty in her surroundings. this issue is really sad because the circumstances - nila suffers and as a result she developed a cystitis - prompt us to think about giving zizou away to tina´s grandma. :(

nevertheless we are very happy with both of them. sometimes everything is like we used to do. more usually nila is very sensitized in anticipation of a stupid mobbing by zizou. in the pic above you are able to count her whiskers. i processed the image in a kind of cold style with minor saturation because this feature mirrors the still heavy cold that can be felt when sun is setting down.

cu, trshptr

2103 - decay of a youngtimer

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 48mm | f7.1 | ISO200 | 1/40 | aperture priority | raw file cropped, aligned and processed in rawtherapee

today it was sports day, especially fitness day. unfortunately my eos failed again in the very low lighted gym. thatswhy i´m going to tell you this episode of my life in a future posting - i fervently hope that my birthday will come very soon.

fortunately my backup position was planned very well. some months ago i realized that nearby the gym a bmw e21 decays lonely - its construction year has to be approximately 1980. despite the car is still roadworthy according to its owner - i met him by chance today, so we had a short conversation about everybody and his dog, of course his car, too - the ravages of time have gnawed away its new condition as the flora becomes overgrown little by little.

in my dream tonight i´m going to break down that grand car neatly and restore it completely. i love youngtimers like that.

so if anybody could help me to banish winter, moisture, road salt and everything else that is able to endanger the condition of unprotected old metal?

cu, trshptr

2003 - courtyard with bakehouse

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 27mm | f9.0 | ISO100 | 1/100 | aperture priority | jpg file cropped, aligned and processed in gimp 2.6

After a great long night - had slept from 11pm to 7am - the shiny morning sun bid me welcome back to life. it is always a better start of the day if outside is at least a tiny little more brightness than in your unlighted sleeping room. so understandably todays breakfast especially hit the spot.

completely satisfied i entered our courtyard, as usual the camera stored in my bag waiting for daily surprises. tina and i live in a more than 300 years old timber-framed house which was the home for many nuns in the 18th and 19th century. the building is an absolute eye candy - the former workmen used beams that are anything but straight, unique bricks and natural tiles. we were lucky that the sanitation was completely modernized before our moving in, the building itself had already been restored in the 1990´s.

it´s a kind of magic to spend time in that wonderful piece of history. you´ll participate in my experiences during the following year(s) - i´ve got many ideas how photographies of details or whole parts of this house can revive this blog. hopefully living beeings will play their role, too.

by reason of the dwarfs only suitable ceiling height photos of our flat won´t come up before my equipment supports high iso capturing. but that doesn´t mean that our environment couldn´t be a part of my day by day blog shooting yet: right on your doorstep there follows a huge courtyard with an enormous lime in its middle. at the northern end you can find a small single family living house that in former times had been used by the nuns as a bakehouse and in front of it a tiny small pigsty that acts as a storage shed today. our groudskeeper seems to like the colour orange - me too.

regardless i decided to develop this photography in a cold and hard style without much colour because the summer is still far away and the temperatures don´t yet allow to put the winter coat away. furthermore in my opinion this kind of image processing perfectly shows the compromise between the sensitivity and the resistivity of buildings like that - they really don´t have a new look but come back in 10 years and they will appear like today.

don´t be afraid again: it will not be my focus to process my images, their natural characters are most important for me. so welcome to our nearest neighbourhood. have a peep, but be discreet.

cu, trshptr

1903 - power failure

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 30mm | f4.0 | ISO800 | 1/6 | aperture priority | cropped, aligned and processed in rawtherapee

on the way home from todays work i stopped at an old factory that i had discovered some days ago. i love architecture, i love nature, but both in compound i love most. thatswhy old collapsed buildings marked by the laws of nature fascinate me.

Afterwards i parked my car not far away from the building at a small street i had to chop through some fields of apple trees to reach the factory. the provisional fence was no problem for me.

unfortunately today the light was not nearly as bright as yesterday. So my good old - temorarily used - canon reached its high iso limits already at iso800. even if i usually require a little more support of my equipment today in the evening some suitable photos appeared.

i found this old destroyed fuse box in an almost complete collapsed outbuilding. indeed the image noise cannot be overlooked the overall quality is not that bad. nevertheless i´m happily looking forward my birthday when this project blog finally and officially will be activated with the purchase of a sony nex x. x={5N,7}.

enjoy electricity free time without any fuses after reading that posting.

cu, trshptr

1803 - looking down and up

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 48mm | f6.3 | ISO100 | 1/640 | aperture priority | cropped, aligned and processed in rawtherapee

later in the day we again recognized why the area around lake constance is famous for its grey days: within minutes the very intense micro climate caused by the lake by itself and the alps produced heavily fog that melted the sky and the horizon to a milky, grey mixture.

an old man looking down and feeding the ducks gave me a perfect contrast to the upwardly directed field glasses. i like the minimalistic character of this image, its huge grey areas realistically reproduce the drop of temperature and change of mood caused by the rapid weather turn.

cu, trshptr

1703 - yo soy

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 55mm | f5.6 | ISO100 | 1/200 | aperture priority | cropped and processed in rawtherapee

today the weather was beautiful. so it was our decision to chill a little bit at the lake, drink a bunch of coffee and capture some photos. slightly inciting that tina shot two photos which are at least as coherent as the best of mine.

so now it is a pleasure for me to publish a partial image of my own with the first serious photography that was taken by my wife.

cu, trshptr