2012 – Looking back, part 6

 

OK, here is part 6 of my 2012 photography review. Number six indicates June, but I'm still in May with the images I show today. After Seraphine's and Andre's wedding we went for a wonderful trip to Prague, the capitol of the Czech Republic. This is only three hours away by train from my home town Bautzen. I have been there many times before in the old days (Oh boy, it always has been a Mecca for interesting experiences of art and architecture, mostly followed by endless "beer drinking nights" during my 20's and 30's. Those trips where legendary.. ;-)  ). Joan hasn't been there before and so we went. Prague is a city that wasn't damaged during World War II as much as other cities in Europe. History is present by looking at any single stone in a wall or on the streets. As the avid follower of my blog knows, my main interest in photography is wildlife and landscape photography, but an opportunity like Prague, with lots of  architecture, art, street, or just travel photography, can't be ignored. We loved it, including the good Bohemian beer again... ;-)

Not in Africa....

 

No, I'm not in Africa... ;-) Yesterday I just left Düsseldorf, Germany, where I spent last week at DRUPA, the world's largest trade show for the graphic industry. It still goes on for another week. It was as always an exhausting event. I'm now in my old home town Bautzen, Germany and look forward to be tomorrow at the wedding of my son and his future wife. There was no time for good photography during the last nine days but this sculpture at the airport was worth a quick click. Just wanted to say hello to all my friends and followers of my blog. Stay tuned, I hope I have something better to show here soon.

Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 35/f2 ZF for today's self-assignment

Nikon D300s, Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 35/f2 ZF

I haven't done any still life for a long time and I guess it was time to do something different today. The recipe for this image was simple. I set this old 8 millimeter Univex cine camera on a rock with fossils, turned all the lights in the room off, and used two tiny LED lights as my light source. The background is a sheet of black foam board. Painting with light is something I wanted to try since I learned about it on a DTOWN-TV podcast. I thought a little alienation effect would look cool and so I tweaked the white balance in camera. The Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 35/f2 ZF is a perfect lens for a project like this. It is tack sharp and with its smooth manual focus I can easily fine tune the focal point. I bought the 35/f2 several years ago mainly for my landscape photography but I love it also for still life photography and architecture. The D300s was mounted on the tripod, the remote cable release was plugged in, and the camera was set to mirror-up mode. All this is mandatory so you can handle the long exposure without any camera shake. I experimented with many different settings. Above image was made with 8 sec., f11, at ISO 100. I really had fun working on this little self-assignment. I'm sure it will not be my last one during the coming long winter nights.

No nature clicks today

 

Hi folks, It has been a little while since my last post. We have a good friend from Germany visiting us at the moment and that shifts of course my priorities. We were traveling to Milwaukee over the weekend and as usual I made lots of pictures. However, there is not enough time to process all of the images and write about our little adventures. Well, here is one that I took in the Calatrava pavilion of the Milwaukee Art Museum. As you maybe already know, beside nature photography I like art and architecture and whenever I have a chance I can't resist to make a click. That's it for today. Enjoy the rest of your week.

Record Store Day

Saturday was Record Store Day. What's that? "Record Store Day is an internationally celebrated day observed the third Saturday of April each year. Its purpose, …, is to celebrate the art of music. The day brings together fans, artists, and the over 700 independently owned record stores in the United States, along with hundreds of independent record stores across the world." (source: Wikipedia)

Here in Dubuque, Iowa we have MOONDOG MUSIC. I like to go there and dig in their boxes of vinyl LP's, not just on Record Store Day. The staff is very knowledgable and I always enjoy a chat with Jarod, Mike, or Kat.

Listen to music and collecting vinyl records is my other hobby beside photography. Any time I sit in front of my computer and work with my pictures the radio is playing or the turntable is rotating.

Did I find anything last Saturday? Of course I did! "Television: Live at the old Waldorf, San Francisco, 6/29/78", double LP, white vinyl, limited to 3000 copies, and exclusive for Record Store Day. One of my favorite bands and as a collector I can't ask for more… As you can tell by the quality of the quick snapshot above, photography had second place that night. ;-)

Old little project and lessons learned from

Visitors of my photo galleries at phase.com may know that I have a little gallery with images of sign boards. I started it in 2007 when I became serious with digital photography and after I bought my first DSLR. I like sign boards. They add charm to a business or a street and many are artfully crafted.

Seen in East Sound on Orcas Island, Washington

Beside having always fun to look out for them, taking pictures of sign boards has taught me a lot for my photography. I learned about white balance, exposure compensation, depth of field, perspective, and many other technical aspects of taking pictures. I learned about the importance of background for an image. With sign boards it can be quite a challenge, because you can't always choose your background and perspective. They usually hang high up above the store front and I'm like most people, I don't carry a ladder with me  ;-) . If you visit a city during a period of very flat or very harsh light and with no opportunity to come back at a different time, this will add another challenge if you want to get the image anyway. And that leads directly to what comes after the picture was taken. Working on my sign board images in Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop taught me a lot about dealing with the flaws, like over or under exposure, white balance issues, unwanted reflections, you name it. Sign boards are an ideal subject to experiment with different ways of sharpening and noise reductions. They helped me to create a processing work flow that works for me. When I looked at my older pictures (yep, four years are a long time in digital photography ;-)  ) I thought sometimes about redoing them again in post. Would be no problem since I always shoot in RAW. But it is what it is. I will only exchange them in my gallery if I come home with a new and better image.

Seen in my home town Bautzen, Germany

No, it doesn't have to be sign boards. I can think of many other little photography projects that would be fun to focus on over a longer period of time. The sign boards helped me to learn and to deal with the technical aspects of my photography. If you like to see the complete collection, please feel free to click HERE, and let me know what your little or big project is.

Art outside

Nikon D200, SIGMA 10-20 mm, f/4.0-5.6 @ 10mm

The Dubuque Museum of Art here in Eastern Iowa has currently some very interesting artwork on view outside of the museum. Seward Johnson's 25 foot sculpture GOD BLESS AMERICA is inspired by the figures of Grant Wood's painting "American Gothic". A picture of this sculpture in a recent post of Dave Updegraff's blog, another photographer here in the Dubuque area, reminded me that I wanted to shoot this piece of art since I saw it the first time a little while ago. When I went there today, we had a nice thin layer of clouds covering up the sun. This made for really good, slightly diffused light and a gave a perfect background for this photo. I took only the SIGMA 10-20 mm out of my car and after a few minutes of shooting I had what I was looking for.