1104 - moonless night

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 25mm | f8.0 | ISO100 | 15s | aperture priority | multiple triggered with android application dslrcontroller | raw files cropped, aligned and processed in lightroom 4

urban abandoned places at night have a great appeal with me. see that i had to cater anything for dinner this evening, an urban self-shot was obvious.

while i was driving around the town i was on the look-out for a moody place where i could capture a frozen long-time exposed, depressed shot of a small being in the middle of impressive architecture. really no easy statement of task in the middle of nowhere but i'm not going to lower my sights until i hit the wall. satisfaction implies stagnation.

in my opinion except a little light scattering in the lower middle the picture turned out very well. it shows the educational center of markdorf that was built in 1972. i love the architecture of the 70s with its straight lines, strict symmetry, the plain facades and the primary structures made of metal. it is simple and timeless. and if you put an outlined, shadowed person in the center of attention and illumination, your composition becomes clearer and more consistent. a picture turns into a story.

cu, trshptr

0704 - lovingly cleanliness

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 18mm | f6.3 | ISO1600 | 1/13 | aperture priority | raw files cropped, aligned and processed in lightroom 4

it´s saturday and thankfully we are still having visitors at the moment.

visitor days are always structured equally: after a tremendous breakfast at home we ask our visitors out, for example for a boating excursion or a trip into the countryside. usually we do not turn our´s back on hardly any pub or local all day long. finally as a result of this approach at the end of the day we come out - surprisingly - not really hungry in a restaurant for the next meal, dinner. pooh!

yesterday we upped our feast once again. as if we hadn´t had enough dishes during the day and evening, we additionally made a stop at an inn in our home village shortly before midnight. after another two drinks i urgently had to visit the public convenience.

inasmuch as sunday had begun already, i took my camera along to the toilet. i have rarely seen such a lovingly, with that much blood, sweat and tears erected handicraft.

cu tomorrow, trshptr

0504 - whereto? gone astray

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 24mm | f7.1 | ISO100 | 30s | aperture priority | raw file cropped, aligned and processed in lightroom 4

after my boss had permitted the whole team to take a half day off before easter i left business for my free afternoon already at 1pm. concerning my photography project today different techniques should be being tested. beside correction of structure distortion of a straight-line architecture by post-processing in lightroom a first long-time exposure session should be checked out.

subsequent to lunch with tina in my canteen i had to chauffeur her to the hospital for work - she is currently on call, i´m with you, babe. the architectural test object for the first half my today´s agenda is located directly next to the hospital. the psychiatric ward is eyecatcher and contradiction concurrently, of which more later. anyhow as you can see above i decided to choose the pic of the second half of my agenda although different pictures of the ward had turned out well. but today the sun lost the day against the clouds wherefore only dim light was available. i will shoot a photograph of the this year newly constructed psychiatric ward on a moodier day again.

the photography above is really far away from being a masterpiece, it is not more than a first attempt. the location wasn´t perfect, the shooting position was maybe a little bit too low, the tree is located in the line of sight and the illumination at the lower end of the roundabout traffic is not completely coherent. but even if these facts are excuses, this is not so bad. to get a feel for the situation both while shooting and post-processing was decisive for me. and i achieved this aim. 

to reach a higher position for the shooting i had to burgle an external staircase by climbing a scaffolding - hopefully nobody had seen me. one of the biggest challenges of the shooting was the waiting. in a rural region the passing of five cars in half a minute at 11pm is the exception rather than the rule, ten cars are almost a miracle. but finally i got some stripes on my pics and this is what i wanted.

cu, trshptr

0104 - herringbone at night

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 28mm | f4.0 | ISO800 | 1/6 | aperture priority | raw file cropped, aligned and processed in lightroom 4

as i wrote in the last posting we drove to ravensburg on saturday evening where all stores and shops had opened until 11pm because of a long shopping night. after closing hour we had some drinks wherefor we returned not before the next morning. i hope it is acceptable that i take a shot of saturday night / sunday morning for the sunday posting.

while tina was attracted by all the stores and shops as usual, i discovered the second class roads - as usual - too. this nice herringbone patterned, green door with the grainy yellow wall was not far-off the shopping promenade. did i ever tell you that i like doors?

unfortunately my eos 400d was again at the end of its capabilities. but it mastered the problematic conditions to my satisfaction after a couple of attempts. i visited one specific store yesterday evening, too: in a big electronics store i played a bit around with the nex 5n. tiny little piece of engineering skills.

cu, trshptr

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?

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