Found this just stepping out of the tramway, before entering the office. It seems there are certain predispositions where I just see. Now if I could only find the switch or trigger for it…

Commuting again, while the summer weather takes a break to make place for rain showers and cold temperatures around 13°C in the morning (that’s 55°F for you folks outside the metric system). My self chosen lens diet – only the wideangle – is not a diet in the sense of restriction, instead reveals constantly new images to me. And meanwhile I even manage to create shallow DoF frames – it’s all a question of moving near enough.

Working on prominent lines and combining strong foreground with a blurred, yet still informative background, I found new joy in wideangle perspectives. Of course I am curious if the partial unsharpness I deplored in my widangle images from Budapest and Krk is a problem of the lens – then I would be willing to replace it – or the photographer. If it’s, as I tend to assume now, the photographer, then I could assign the money set aside to replace it for a workshop, probably on the landscape subject.

Sunday ended with a short excursion, one of the daughters with me. Talking a little bit, explaining to her an older film camera but also various plants and insects, and enjoying the last light of the sun, already hiding behind rain-filled clouds, but still providing a golden shine. Quality time, a reservoir for a week full of work.

And this is another aspect of landscape photography, not the grand scale, and not the glorious light and full creamy color. I recently had a conversation with Martin Storz of the public eye blog, and I would highly recommend to have a look at his blog and his take on ‘landscape’.

Never leave the house without the camera – and never hurry. I was sent on a mission to capture some pastries for sunday afternoon and did hide the camera well to avoid admonishments re. loitering et. al. And after business I saw this board, which I have probably passed hundreds of times, always in the car, bound for something important. Stop I did this time, got the 25+ years old minolta tele zoom lens (the famous beercan), which allowed me to stand in safety and cover the distance over the street and get just the right crop. Sunday saved.

Again from yesterday’s photowalk: One of the main tourist attractions here is the Old Saline, dating back to 1837 and filled with the most advanced pumping machinery invented at that time. The staircase to the miner’s chapel (here) proved a rain protected vantage point for this image.

Hard to believe, but this year’s weather for the photowalk was even more wet than last year’s. The palm trees (planted in pots and brought into the streets by the spa administration, only to pretend a mediterranean climate) were dripping with rain. At least I was lucky having brought my own model (to the right). Other than that a fine time was having had by all, and plans were made for next year, maybe sporting a wet suit and fins then. So I will save my money for an underwater housing for the camera.

Can’t resist to answer Tyler Monson’s duplicities in “American View”, which gave me such a lasting smile today.

That late summer look was achieved by some curves magic in bibble5.

The house in the image to the right was already subject of a post, here. This time I got a glimpse of the shadows’ play out of the bus window, and instead of changing immediately (and reaching the office early) I decided in favor of the sunlight’s spectacle on the walls. Processing of these images was easy – early morning front light doesn’t stress the dynamic range too much – but the leading image did benefit from some selective fill light at the bottom. Bibble5 as usual, it gets improved every minor version step. That it still lacks some of the plugins of the 4 version, this for me is more then compensated by the possibility to work in regions on the raw file itself. Definitely a straightforward workflow for no-frills raw conversion.

A missed deadline is a missed deadline, and a SoFoBoMo book that takes more to complete than the given 31 day period is not a SoFoBoMo book. Such as mine.

What is a failure in SoFoBoMo categories is still not a failure for me. I made my book, and the process of selecting, editing and laying out was… well, it was not fun, but a pleasure, especially when seeing the product. You can download it here , and I will also adapt the menu structure to accomodate the books, as there are now two. And I guess they will not stay alone there.

So, deadline missed, but personal mission accomplished.