Populus canadensis

Christmas come and gone

Christmas has come and gone once again – and that with about 12-15°C where I live. Way too much. The above picture is from about a year ago when the temperature was as low as it should be. I’m fascinated by the variety of colours in which the crystals refract the light. I hope we’ll get weather like this again soon so I can do some new shots and see if I improved my technique in the meantime.

Btw: Father Christmas (aka Amazon…) sent me an external HDD for storing my photographs and other documents a bit more securely. If you consider getting an external HDD too, you should check out this test. I got the Hitachi Touro Mobile for its speed when copying pictures. Recommendation pending, have not tested it yet.

Merry Christmas

Ein frohes Fest und ein paar schöne Weihnachtstage wünsche ich euch!

 

PS: Ich hoffe ich bin nicht der einzige, der noch kein bisschen in Weihnachtstimmung ist.

Münster II

Not the Weihnachtsmarkt this time, but the Prinzipalmarkt between the town hall and the Lamberti Church. The atmosphere was really very enjoyable. There were many people walking around the sidewalks and the street was also full of people bustling along to get their Christmas shopping done or visit the Weihnachtsmarkt.

Münster – highly recommended in the Christmas time (and every other time of the year really)!

Olympus 35SP

Another trip into analog again. This one’s from my grandfathers Olympus 35SP which is the left one in the picture from my post „Flexora„. It has a 43mm 1.7 which shows very nicely in terms of depth of field when shooting a close-up.

The picture above is only scanned and otherwise unprocessed. Unfortunately, my dealer did a very bad job of scanning the negatives. The whole film looks over-sharpened and the files are mostly <1 MB small. Not much for a full 35mm negative in my opinion. Maybe, I’ll get it scanned again somehwere else with better quality. But till then I’ll enjoy the great colours this scan provides.

Clouds

Shining

Same time, same location like last post. I found it hard to find the correct angle and exposure to capture the sun rays but evenutally two or three photos were alright. This is one of them. A second one is this:

Aaaand the number three is this:

I hope you like them. I enjoyed that morning very much actually. It was last Friday and I should have been at university but then again there’s just some things, well … you know what I mean, sometimes you’ve got to take the chance.

Winter’s coming

Description coming tomorrow, it’s 2.50 a.m. …

Silver & Light

 

Anyone who is interested in photography should know this video! These guys really created something fantastic that as far as I know has never been done before. I am awestruck about every part of this endeavour: from the general idea to the acquisition of the necessary know-how and materials to the spirit with which these stunningly shaded photographs were obtained!

If I knew how, I would so much love to create pictures like these by myself! Just looking at those extremely fine, metallically shining gradations – that is to say – nuances of brightness makes me want to weep with joy. The sheer brilliance and clarity of these pictures is probably simply not attainable with a standard consumer camera. Not to mention the amount of background blur you can get with this camera because that is just over the top!

Congratulations to Ian Ruhter and his team for doing this and taking all the risks that come with it!

Flexora

This one is from my cute little Flexora 6×6 TLR.

A TLR is a Twin Lens Reflex camera, meaning that it has two lenses: one through which you look and one you take the pictures through. It is an analog camera that takes up to 10 exposures on one 120 format roll film. Addition: The one in the middle.

It is quite an experience to work with this kind of camera because it handles completely unlike a modern (D)SLR. Plus you have to consider before every exposure: 1. control your settings and 2. really decide whether your subject is worth it. Because getting a film developed and scanned can easily cost about 20€ in my area (maybe my dealer is a hustler). That equals about 2€/picture and you also have to buy the film itself, of course. But on the other hand, that’s what makes it exciting! You really have to think about what you’re doing and not click away madly.

If you ever get an analog camera from your grandparents, maybe, or from a flea market, give it a try! 😉

Autumn shadow II

After I saw that I’ve been uploading rather close-upy pictures so far, I’ve searched for something more wideangled within the depths of my hard drive (there are no depths really, I keep it well-organized). On the search I found the above photograph. It isn’t wideangled at all, much rather the opposite but I like it nonetheless.
Unfortunately, the landscape around here is just so overwhelmingly boring, mundane and unphotogenic that I find myself hard put getting any worthwhile wideangle photos at all. Normal houses, flat fields and power poles just don’t do for good photographs. At least not for me, altough I think you could somehow get something out of it. But I don’t like to force results, I’m rather documenting appealing moments as they come along.

Serenity

Relax …

Münsteraner Weihnachtsmarkt

And this one is a little impression from todays trip to the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market ;)). Far from perfect, especially considering the composition but I didn’t want to spend too much time on each picture because I was being accompanied. Regret that now but there’s some time to get a better shot. Therefore: Always remember to concentrate on one shot and do that one good instead of hitting the shutter a dozen times and hoping there’s a good pic among them!

As a side note: I don’t see why Pentax is the only manufacturer/brand (as far as I know) that offers a fast 43mm-ish lens. I find myself much too often with my 50mm on APS-C wishing that the lens was just a bit wider! 50mm is too long for many occasions in my opinion and 35mm is a bit too wide for flattering (head) portraits. I really can’t see why…

Anyhow, have a nice Christmas time! 😉

Autumn shadow I

Aaand another one… This is one the few pictures whose light and shadow variation I find rather considerable. Unfortunately this was rather achieved by post-production as the used lens shows a significant lack of contrast in backlight situations. But I enjoy it nonetheless and hope you do so as well.

Summer morning

So, this is my third post within 48 hours and I’m a bit nervous that I can’t keep up that speed for too long or I won’t have any good photos left to post. But this blog needs some content, so here we go. I actually like this photo very much and had it printed some weeks ago in 20×30 cm and have to say … I’ll have to reprint it in a bigger size.
I shot it some morning this summer. I woke up at 5 o’clock (God knows why) and just knew that it would be a wonderful morning with lots of sunlight and „atmosphere“. There are some other photos from that morning waiting to be published. For this one I actually would have wished for a FF with 85mm 1.2 for shallower depth of field but hey… I did the best I could given my limited equipment. And I’m fairly happy about the outcome.