1009 - everyday life

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f2.0 | ISO800 | 1/80 | lightroom 4.1

with today's pic unfortunately i really don't know if tina will be still fond of me tomorrow morning when she will light upon my daily post.

withal i want to use today's posting for a declaration of love to my lady: also with a towel in your hair you are for me simply the most adorable girl in the world. okay, there are some garments like the white teddy sweatpants, that are not quite ... joke aside, you can even do with towels in your hair and ugly sweatpants.

today's pic was shot while tina was checking anything on the internet. luckily she'd thought that i'm already in the shower but this was not the case. candid portraits please me more and more - the blog seems to convert to a photographic diary. hopefully concerning the photographic matter a learning curve will become visible increasingly.

cu, trshptr

0909 - there's no shortcut

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f2.8 | ISO100 | 1/1000 | lightroom 4.1

being relaxed doesn't particularly mean not to be active. especially on fair weather days i have to set out into the world, whatever this is supposed to mean.

today this meant to go climbing in the danube valley with my mate martin and tina. the so called parking area rock near the village hausen im tal makes a good first step into the outdoor climb. you can burn yourself out without any problems at the 20 meters high rocks by spooling uphill after uphill. of course we have done the utmost to reach this condition at the latest today in the afternoon. next time we will probably have a try at one of the other 26 rocks in the danube valley.

whereas swimming in our wonderful lake constance is our common cool down program on those days and the very refreshing danube river was only at a stone's throw from the climbing place, we decided to go swimming in a river today what turned out to be a very cold but great experience.

at the end of the day i am finally reclining on the couch in a very relaxed condition despite being completely exhausted after a very active weekend.

cu, trshptr

0809 - summer relapse

setup: sony nex 7 with sigma 30 f2.8 ex dn | 30mm | f3.2 | ISO100 | 1/4000 | lightroom 4.1

earlier than expected the summer is back for a late summer interlude. yes, this weekend was supposed to be an active outdoor weekend but we couldn't calculate on such prime weather conditions. even better that we've had almost 30 degrees and bright sky today again.

whereas tomorrow the upper sections of our bodies will be strained by an outdoor climbing session in the danube valley today extensive hiking was due. we visited the marienschlucht, a ravine on the steep bank of the western end of lake constance. we walked almost 20 kilometres, half of it along the waterfront and the other half through the fabulous woods of constance.

of course our feet were glowing when we finally arrived bodman after our hike again. so why shouldn't we use the late afternoon for no resting and cooling down in the fresh water?

cu, trshptr

0709 - multiple bob

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f2.8 | ISO100 | 0.8s | tripod | lightroom 4.1

i necessarily need an ally! since two weeks i keep struggling with an incompetent ebay seller that has already sent me a wrong item for the second time. four weeks ago i'd ordered three simple macro tubes for my nex 7 from a chinese ebay seller with mostly good ratings for the reason that i'd like to have the option to shoot with a greater magnification if necessary.

two weeks ago i had my first rude awakening: the tubes that had been sent to me didn't fit for sony nex e-mount. some sample and evidence pics and mails later they apologised in person and promised to send me the correct article next time. this one arrived yesterday but it is anything except correct. they've really managed to send me the exactly same wrong article of their first attempt again. unbelievable.

now i have to write mails and shoot evidence pics again. really annoying. anyhow during this time sideshow bob may reside in the otherwise useless bunch of adaptors and tubes and spread fear and terror.

maybe i'm going to attach today's pic to my recent evidence mail. i think bob would be a good confederate.

cu, trshptr

0509 - backlit beauty

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f1.8 | ISO1600 | spot metering | 1/30 | silver efex pro plug-in for lightroom 4.1

i really don't know if i fulfil my ultramodern camera's capabilities when i process images with results like today's. why do i sometimes want the results to look like photographs from the 70's? is it pure retro fashion or hipster culture? i don't think so.

first of all without the low light capabilities of my nex 7 i'd have never captured this moment on camera. the room in that tina was bustling around was almost completely dark, only the backlight of the terrace window in her back made for an illumination. furthermore the integrated spot metering mode of the camera made a perfect illumination easily available to me. so far, so good. finally the negative was quickly captured.

whilst post processing it should be the aim of the photographer to give the finished image the expression the scene had originally conveyed. if i look at my lady and see a soft, satin-gloss sepia face with an intimate expression, an analogue-like processing is simply appropriate. in my opinion it absolutely is, because the above-noted image shows exactly what i'd seen.

cu, trshptr

0209 - looking up

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

today was a very social day. after we had slept till almost noon and eaten an opulent breakfast, we went to the local wine festival with our neighbours and met some other friends. subsequently we continued the appointment at out place with coffee, cakes and parlour games.

today in the afternoon the particular was to get to know how (very) young children interact with such a big group of persons. my mate marcel's boy mika is currently at the age of one year - he is exploring his surrounding the entire time. his hunting instinct after our kitty nila was most amusing for us, he forgot simply everything around him when he spotted her.

additionally it was real fun to see how his mood was changing within seconds. anger and fun, disregard and admiration, all these lay close together.

cu, trshptr

3008 - behind bars

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f2.8 | ISO800 | 1/80 | lightroom 4.1

keeping of animals is a sensitive topic. who gives the mankind the authorisation and permission to cage up animals of any kind? is it the evolution, our superiority? or is it outright ignorance?

every human being on this planet has to answer this question for itself. basically there are different reasons for keeping and caging animals and i don't want to kick off a huge discussion about the reasonableness of caged pets. only one question: dear lovers of nature and animal protection advocates, why is it okay for (the most of) you to cage up these wonderful horses?

cu, trshptr

2908 - silent reading

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f2.8 | ISO100 | +3.0ev | 1/640 | lightroom 4.1

it's quite possible that we've had the last day of midsummer today. probably for the last time of this year the air was pleasant warm and the lake's water invigorating cool. at the moment heavy clouds and thunderstorms are gathering over lake constance and south germany.

i'll definitely miss the daily short getaway on the lake when i'll leave the area around lake constance one day. tina was already on the lake when i ended today's work and enjoyed the silence by the water. she had soaked up the sun the whole afternoon and unfortunately her skin was already coloured in a kind of brown-red. for that reason she dressed with her white bike longsleeve and turned her back on the sun while she was reading her current (german) book "die unglaubliche geschichte des henry n. brown". she sitting in front of the glowing, silent lake was the perfect subject for today's candid picture.

cu, trshptr

2808 - the white pantheresses

setup: sony nex 7 with fujian 35 f1.7 | 35mm | f1.8 | manual focus | ISO100 | 1/640 | lightroom 4.1

in life some things make a very good match: black and white, maybe chalk and cheese and definitely tina and kitties. my gracious lady is deep in love with cats since her early youth. an old black cat was living in the yard of her grandma and accompanied tina and her friends to the bus station every morning and waited for them there every afternoon to pick the kids up after school. since with zizou the first living ball of wool has moved in with us, tina is finally and completely contagioned with the kitty virus. although zizou had to be moved from our place to tina's grandma - i've already told you about the problems between her and nila - the number of cats in our yard has still risen. luckily our neighbours brought two more, very beautiful, white kitties with them to the joint yard.

from that perspective tina is currently very happy to live on our little farm. by pure chance paulinchen, the white pantheress, was recently bursting in on a little shooting in the yard and suddenly we had newly allocated the leading role of the planned image. now we have two white pantheresses that are like chalk and cheese... 

cu, trshptr

2708 - summery enjoyment

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f5.6 | ISO100 | 1/500 | lightroom 4.1

at odd times the actual state of our living conditions passes through tina's and my mind: fortunately we are able to enjoy the four seasons in a region where the most of the germans (and also a lot italians, dutch people, polish and other europeans) want to go for holidays.

the lake, the mountains, all the boats and (sometimes even) the foreign people mix to a great pleasure. being only half an hour on the lake in the evening compensates almost a whole exhausting work day.

today we've played the joker again and faded out the time at work with a relaxing cruise in a pedal boat.

cu, trshptr