1404 - transparency

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 27mm | f4.0 | ISO1600 | 1/6 | aperture priority | raw files cropped, aligned and processed in lightroom 4

i like things being transparent. you know you get yourself into familar surroundings. if you are able to bother yourself about the worst case in this context you will not being caught unawares by anything or anybody. for that reason it is always helpful to know all boundary conditions, so you can estimate the problem's variability. ok, maybe too abstracted.

yesternight was transparent for various reasons: we felt very comfortable in the surroundings of our friends. we know the event, the long live music night is conducted every year. the locations are also well-known. all that led on to a great evening with nice music, some beers and cheerful talks.

one of the twenty stages was proverbially transparent, too.

cu, trshptr

btw: i don't want to discuss the low light performance of my borrowed eos 400d again, but it hitted the wall concerning iso and aperture so that i had to shoot with inappropriate shutter speeds the whole evening. that's why only one of ten pics turned out well. let´s forget it, only some days to go.

1304 - upright

setup: canon eos 400d with efs 18-55mm | 22mm | f4.5 | ISO400 | 25s | manual mode | manual focus | raw files cropped, aligned and processed in lightroom 4

while i was cruising around by bike this evening i saw different places and objects that were worthy of detailed examination. in so doing my short ride was extended to a two hour trip. as a result i have really struggled with choosing a candidate for today's posting. finally i decided to apply the upright photography that you can review above to animate my blog today. some other samples are listed at my tumblr webpage dated today.

the pic of the building site was shot in markdorf again. the light conditions were really very, very bad, the usage of the automatic focus wasn't possible. so i had my first attempts with complete manual shooting: both focus and exposure were manually controlled by me. to accomplish a suitable exposure i had to raise iso speed to 400 and aperture to the almost fastest configuration at this focal length - although i exposed for a long time... i think you can reconstruct how dark it was there.

why this composition? for a variety of reasons... the pillars seemed to have an infinite depth, the lights were playfully reflected by them. the streamers that were hanging from the ceiling breezed in the wind. the silence was impressive. only every now and then a car went past. fortunately i caught one by shooting the pic above.

btw: i have raised the local contrast of the pic while postprocessing to create a hdr-like effect. accenting the size of the builing site i renounced to remove distortion caused by wide-angel.

all being well my project will finally start next week. officially.

cu, trshptr

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