walking through life

Snowfall

2011-03-05T23:55:00.000+01:00

Foggy Evening

2011-03-05T01:17:00.002+01:00

Christmas 08 (2)

2010-03-20T02:43:00.020+01:00

I must make a note to myself never to use such expressions as "shortly", "soon", or any other similar one, when it concerns blog posts. It's been seven months since the last entry and it was supposed to follow up shortly.
Anyhow here is the second part of the photos from the Christmas Holidays 2008.Oporto again.

Here I changed from Reala100 to Velvia50. What a difference!

Viana do Castelo.

Some things never change and our place to meet and have dinner is one of them.
In the city park of Oporto. An über cool guy enjoying the sun.

Christmas Eve in Guimarães. The only day of the year when the streets get so deserted.

Casa de Mateus. It's the beginning of a great 4 days trip.

Lamego.

It was unusually cold that day, so the boy was throwing ice sheets. And indeed later that day it started snowing.

Miranda do Douro, the day after the snowfall. Most of the snow already melted at that point, which was great, because the roads were driveable again.

Salamanca.
I liked the small camera she had.

Funny, how the same door has the numbers 2, 3, 3 and 5.

The dam in Miranda do Douro. I'm literally standing with one foot in Portugal and the other one in Spain, since the border lays in the middle of the river.

In São Torcato.

Stuffing myself with sushi in Oporto.

And that's it.
This time I won't make promises as to when the next post comes :)

Till then, take care!

Christmas 08 (1)

2009-10-20T18:45:00.020+02:00

Last year I spent three fantastic weeks on my Christmas Holidays in (mainly) Portugal. Here are some photos of that time.After having landed on the airport Sá Carneiro, in Porto.

When do you know, that you're in Portugal? When you see people watching football instead of working.
Some days after arriving I went to Porto. I needed to give my camera for repair and I also wanted to walk around the city and meet with a friend. So this is one of the first shots with the camera I got as a replacement, an Olympus OM10 with a 50mm 2.8.

São Bento train station.

Santa Claus was giving (green) balloons away. This is one of those cases, where a colour film would have worked better.

One of those funny specimens, who only realise where they have been on holidays after watching the photos taken with their point-and-shoots, called "japanese tourists".
On the wall there's a social slogan and in the background a homeless in his improvised "house".

I shot the first butcher and wanted to go, when I saw, that there was another one carrying an even bigger piece of meat.

I was unsure which one of these two shots looked better, so I just put both.
A couple having a snack.
The postman. He sure doesn't need any gym with all those stairs he has to climb every day.
A blue toy bird built into the stairs.
I like the various levels and also the modern metro carriage on top of old houses.
I couldn't figure out yet what that says, but the picture is funny.

At the estuary with..
.. Vladimir.

That's me grabbing her butt =)

Testing the bokeh of this olympus lens.
Sara and I went to see a small exhibition of some portuguese photographer.
And then went to take a coffee.
That's what happens, when you don't want to sit still. I think Sara'll kill me for posting this. But wait, she can't see it, because she's in Tibet right now and Blogger.com is blocked. How convenient!
I went to see some friends to the Minho University in Braga and Pedro showed João and me his new faculty around.

Yeah, so that's what medicine students learn? How to draw a Santa Claus and stuff?..

A must-have book in a medicine library.

To all of you fans of the show.
Amusing to see a tractor parked under such a modern building.
Framing sucks big time, but it's the only portrait of João Adriano I made that day, so I'm posting it for the record.
Not a much better shot of Pedro, but the hell with it.
Nice couple. ~~It's history now, though.~~
This frame is all about contrasts.
Women <-> Men | Guys <-> Nun
Young skaters <-> elderly religious lady
And this one is about absurdity. A clown texting on a mobile phone outside the "Professor's Home" cafe.

The handwritten text is quite rude, but very funny at the same time, in this context.
(it's shaken, because I still had the reala100 and it was pretty dark already)

That's it for now. Part two will follow up shortly.
Cheers!

Autumn has come

2009-09-07T11:11:00.002+02:00

Not this year, though. I'm still a year behind on my posts, so this is November 2008.Some friends of mine came to see a semi-final of the west european KVN-league and stayed at my place. We decided to go to Strasbourg.

I've never seen that many parking tickets in one place. That's what I call being lazy.

This is what happens, when trees grow near a parking place in France. This was the case of every tree on that street.

I find it funny, how this guys look, with that ridiculous EU umbrella and those seven hats on one head. Of course, they are just selling them, but it's funny nonetheless.
Caught you ;)
Andrey wanted to try the studio equipment out, as he has never done anything like this. So we did a quick, improvised session in the laboratory, with his wife as a model. Nothing fancy, just a basic two-light setup.
We used an ancient screen for an overhead projector as a background, as you can see.

This was an "american evening", on the night of the american elections, if I remember it right. Nothing to celebrate there, but it is a good excuse to play some beer-pong.

Lovely autumnal atmosphere.

Rice Snack

2009-08-27T23:02:00.009+02:00

Hi everyone!
Here's a short entry from October 2008.I went to stay at Vladimir's place for a couple of days.

He's very good at it. I merely watched him.

Watching "A Bit of Fry and Laurie". Hilarious series, btw!

He had to leave early to a concert the next day, I think, hence the baggage packing.

I really like, how this shot came out, although I took it while walking just to finish the roll, before leaving the camera for repair.
I went for a walk to enjoy a nice autumn day.

And then I saw this five trees aligned like that.
So I came back some days later to make a long time exposure.
But the sun came out soon after I came so I couldn't take more photos.
This is a medium format hp5, which I tried out with a Kiev 88.

EuroTrip - 3

2009-08-14T18:36:00.004+02:00

Note: I added a fancy photo viewer to this post, just to try it out. So you can now click on the photo to see it bigger, without having to go anywhere else. It will however only work on the blog itself and not in the RSS Reader.

Last one from this trip.
Port of Rotterdam, the largest in Europe. Pretty impressive. And the wind on the coast was just madness. Also on the way to the next destination I stopped to see the Maeslantkering. That's what I call massive engineering projects.
Also, near Rotterdam I found a town called Portugal, but of course written with way too many vowels, like all dutch words: Poortugaal.
The picturesque fortress-town of Brielle.

After seeing so many documentaries about it I had to see the Delta Works. Next after the Maeslantkering were of course the Brouwersdam and this one, the Oosterscheldekering. It is something else!

Antwerp.

I guess an animal rights activist would get furious seeing this.

Brussels.
I liked the contrast of the Hilton showing up behind this old mansion.

Headless.

Back in Germany. The day before in Aachen it rained heavily the whole day, so no photos.
This is the "Deutsches Eck", in Koblenz.

In one of the numerous castles along the Rhine in the Mittelrhein region. This one is the Rheinfels castle.
The old Shell symbol on an antique Rolls.

Mainz.
The jacket got my attention.
"Capitalism is organized crime"

And that's it. Stay well!

EuroTrip - 2

2009-08-11T17:12:00.033+02:00

So, second post about the trip.
The first stop in Holland in the nice town of Alkmaar, after the impressive Afsluitdijk.Oh, the lovely watermark...
Bikes are a constant in Holland. Much more so, than in Germany.
After driving through Edam (just to see the place that gave a famous cheese it's name) a last stop for the day in Volendam.

Amsterdam.
A chaos of bicycles and youth looking for adventures.
Actually it's not like that, but that is the idea I had of Holland, which proved to be completely wrong. Even in Amsterdam all this hype about love and drugs is confined to a small part of the city and aimed solely at tourists.
I read somewhere that many people just dump their old bikes in the channels to avoid all the trouble of disposing it legally. So every year the city authorities fish an impressive number of them out of the water. Otherwise the sheer amount of bikes on the bottom of the waterways would simply block the ship traffic.
Each member of this family had this walkie-talkies and talked through them, although they were some meters apart.

Peculiar plants... :D

Can you tell the girls from the statues apart?
Chairs from a cafe blown away by the wind.

It's all over the city-center. And there's a grammatical mistake..
No parking allowed. I guess the boat will have to go search somewhere alse.

Interesting sign.

They cracked a beer bottle. That's a shame, really.
They where asking for it.
Very true.

An example of a thrown away bike.

Just a hipshot to finish the roll.
Haarlem.
I like the street lamp.

Den Haag.
I like the look of this "street" on a rooftop.

The typical postcard photo.

An impressive sand sculpture.
Soap bubbles on a wedding. Something new to me, but apparently very common in these countries.
There's another post coming up.
Cheers for looking!

EuroTrip - 1

2009-07-30T21:06:00.014+02:00

Last year I made a 2 week trip around central Europe. Around 2500km and 26 towns in total.
It was a incredible. So many new places and experiences! I wanted to share with you some photos from this trip. It's mostly TriX400 with the usual equipment.

The small town, where I spent 6 months back in 2005.
I found interesting the contrast of the word "elektro" written in Fraktur.
Berlin, if you haven't already guessed.

That's exactly the shop I need. Wearing 48 is a pain.
Cliché...
Travemuende.

Hamburg.

The couple hired him as a guide, but what's the point of the costume?

The car was completely full of empty bottles. Some people told me, that the guy collects them for weeks and then brings them back to the shop.
That's what I call a suitcase!
I would've found it uncomfortable to sleep like that. He doesn't, apparently.
Bremen

The amount is just insane.

The rest will follow up in the next posts.
Cheers!

Peter und Paul Fest

2009-06-21T03:25:00.011+02:00

I'm really unsure, whether I will ever be able to post regularly, but this is yet another shot at trying to do so.
This entry is pretty small, with some images from the Peter and Paul Medieval Festival in Bretten.

We arrived way too early.

View it full size ;)

He was pissing on the people passing by :)

Next post will be about my trip around Europe. Thank you for looking!

Spring08

2009-03-10T14:52:00.017+01:00

Still catching up on the blog entries. This post sums up some of the photos from the 08 spring.

A friend of mine wanted to sell his old laptop, so we made some shots of it. He ended up getting a fairly good price for it. Was it because of the photos?
It was the time, when the famous Mac Book Air Ad came out, so we had to make a parody photo.
And we kept on trying other stuff out.

Which reminded me of an older photo session we made in the woods. We went out there and wanted to do something surreal, full of color, just experiment.

A test shot with a self-made macro-box, using the fireman Lego® set that we have laying in the kitchen.
I went on a bike trip to the Palatinate Forest.

You can imagine what a blast it was to ride down this road at the end.

This is an astounding area... Wine grows already bottled.

A hip shot of a very uncommon bench.

On a walk along the Rhine.

Just finishing the film.

Drinking some beer, while waiting for the others to come. We wanted to be fit for the game, you know...

I accidentally found out that the 31 European Juggling Convention was taking place, while I was shooting a test-film, to finally find out, what the problem with my camera was.
It was fascinating! Over 5000 people juggling with the most unimaginable objects, all at one place.

I was completely unaware, that there is even such a sport, as juggling-volleyball.

Thanks for looking. Cheers!

2007 Christmas Holidays

2009-01-24T03:15:00.022+01:00

Hello dear readers!
It's been a while, since I posted my last blog entry... Almost a year now. Quite a few things happened in this time. Among the photographically relevant ones are the purchase of a 35mm/2.0 lens and the fact that I began building a small studio.

I haven't posted anything because I just wasn't in the mood for it, but after some words of motivation from my friends I feel I should restart doing it.
And I will do so starting with my holidays during the 2007 Christmas break.

Viana is always a must stop.

It's kind of hard to see, but that's a guy taking a photo, looking through the lcd.
Some drunkard.

I went to the Minho University to catch up with some friends. Pedro was giving some instructions to his slaves, during the Praxe.

On another day I went for a walk in Braga.
I present to you portuguese sculpture at it's finest! Seriously, who, in his sober senses, would have done such a sculpture of an archbishop?!

A night of Trivial Pursuit at Susana's house.
<_modestyoff>I of course won all three times :)< /_modestyoff >

After not being there for some years, I went to visit Santiago de Compostela.

I was surprised by the number of beggars.

A very funny t-shirt. Sorry for the dof, but it was dark already and I didn't want to change the film.
D.Afonso Henriques, aka André invited me to join him on a geocaching tour.

The hints spread all over the city led us to the mountain...
...where we found the cache.

It got too dark too keep on looking for another one in that area, so we went home.
We met at a cafe some days after the introduction of the new law, which prohibits smoking in public areas. The air got definitely cleaner.
(no, all other photos were not converted to b&w. I was just finishing a KodakColor film I had ;)

The hands of a possibly future surgeon.
It's supposed to be a dancer. And I pieced together a camera.
Later that night playing Mikado and watching a horror film.
A few hours before flying back, some last fun playing billiard.
Although it wasn't my new year's resolution, I hope I will post more regularly from now on.

Thank you for watching. Cheers!

Geb. 10.50

2008-04-12T21:55:00.009+02:00

A psicologically very tough period of my life is fortunately over. I am now experiencing probably the greatest relief ever and it feels good, I tell you!
But with a lot of lessons learned it is time to move on, which will hopefully mean more time for photography and mainly more motivation. I am scanning the latest rolls, so expect posts with that.

Today I'll share with you just a few photos from a day I went to Mannheim. Nothing fancy, but it was a very nice walk, so it matches my current mood. :)

Sadly I don't remember what happened next and where did this man ride go.This one is for Pedro ;)

Another photographer, as I later found out, testing his new Pentax K10D.

A good start in the new semester, if it is also your case! Stay well!

P.S.: Title from the "first thing you see" method. No ideas atm...

Internship

2008-04-02T03:26:00.016+02:00

Long time no posts. I know, sorry, but I was overloaded with exams. ;)

A year ago I made the 6-week internship all students have to do in the first two years. On my winter holidays! But it was very interesting and in the end I got why they make us go through it. Pedagogically speaking it is just a brilliant thing to do.

So I found this company, that was not so far away and had a vacancy. They make giant metal sculptures of insects
One day I went to the boss and asked if I could bring a camera and take photos, which I would then give the company. It is not everyday that you are in a factory, so I wanted to try myself out in doing a sort of an assingment.
It was a hell lot more complicated than I thought. Because the company didn't hire me, it was very hard making people cooperate, so I literally had seconds to make a shot in the place I wanted them. They were all very nice people and the atmosphere was great, but posing for a camera is something they don't usually do, so I had to shoot while they were working.

Serving as a counter-balance :D

An always happy italian guy, but who couldn't speak german after living here for 45 years and having a german wife.

The production-section boss.

Und jetzt - Feierabend!

I hope you all stay well!

This and that

2008-02-25T01:03:00.023+01:00

This will be a completely random post. But after various requests from friends to show their pictures I decided to post them on the blog and mix a few others in between. It is really as though I would run a script like:

<---- SECURITY ALERT ---->
Content removed due to high levels of geekness.

So we'll start with a great friend, Pedro.

Playing poker the whole night.
Spending the night in Stuttgart in the company of homeless waiting for the first morning train.
Went to Li Zhen's place where with his neighbour we prepared these chinese dumplings. They were absolutely delicious!

Still from the time the 3 american guys were here. Good times...
They taught us how to play beer-pong. Great game!

During a visit from Vladimir.
During another one.

And one more.

Found this photo on my pc and laughed out loud. "Brothers' love" would be the appropriate title.
On my way to meet Aleksandar.

It was laying in the attic of a friend's house, which was under renovations.
Went to a walk with Daniel and Ernesto, from erasmus. The local footbal fans don't like Aachen, thus the glove.
I found this situation hilarious. Three devils and three angels :D
Good things come to those who wait
Hanging out with the spanish-speaking erasmus people. Yes, it is a real steam locomotive.
Met with Pedro for a coffee and to give him some tips on his newly bought camera.

And a cat joined us.

On a photo-walk with the lovely Tanya.
All the pink in the photo. How nice!
There is a square in the university full of such brains. This sculpture is called "The brains field" or something, no idea by whom. Creepy...

First time holding a MF camera. And I love the colours here! It was very easy to achieve. The main light above is fluorescent, so I lit a small tungsten lamp camera left to iluminate her, achieving this contrast.
With Sara and Pedro on a walk through the city.

And that's it. Hope you've enjoyed it!

Back to the Middle Ages

2008-02-06T15:29:00.005+01:00

Once in a conversation I mentioned a Middle Ages Fair I went to and how great it was and promised to show some pictures of it. So here they are ;)

Aleksandar......and I went by train to the nearest town with a train station and then by bike through a nice landscape to get to the small village Angelbachtal, where it took place. The fair was located in the local park, which was transformed into a busy middle ages settlement.

He advertised some stand, so I asked for a picture in exchange.

This one would definitely look better in b&w, but I shot film and won't convert it in ps. Also, the scan quality is crap in all of them, because when I scanned the negative, I didn't think I would publish them, so quality didn't concern me.

Cool beard!
This friendly man sold...
...very good middle ages licors and mead. So it immediately became our favourite shop.
The high point of the day was the jousting tournament, with four knights, who had to battle each other. First they competed in skill and in the end there were the classical one-on-one fights with lances.
The knight, who was supposedly from France and "won" in the end (furthest from the camera), made a good job in acting arrogant, which was funny, and gave him a lot of "ooohs" from the (german) crowd.
Hi there!

He told us that apparently Diabolos already existed back then. Great toy, by the way!

These things of couse do limit the movements of your fingers, but they are far more comfortable, than I had expected.

What I found fantastic about this event, is that there weren't just stands with people trying to sell you something, but they lived their own life, walking and talking to each other, eating, playing, sleeping... and you were kind of a spectator coming from the future.

All routes led to the licor stand on that day :D
A ladybird joined us too.

Did he miss it?
There were also target archery competitions with bows, built the old way. Anyone owning one could join.

The guy was totaly drunk, so he needed to be carried like that. When he saw me, he shouted to the other "Hey, wait. Camera!"

A medieval couple kissing. And a zoomed in photo of the knight laying on the lawn.

It was a well spent day and I'll surely go to another one, probably to the next one in Bretten. If you have the chance, definitely go to one of these fairs.

A trip through Portugal

2008-01-25T23:00:00.000+01:00

While I'm waiting for the chemicals to arrive to be able to develop the latest rolls I will be posting older photos, which I want to organize for myself and maybe they will be of some interest for someone :)

So, during the two weeks I could take from uni and exams on August 2007, I made a short trip through the interior part of Portugal. It is the less populated one, but surprisingly rich historically and culturally. In 6 days we visited 29 places, making it 4-5/day.

Day 1

Montalegre

Chaves
I liked how the cloud resembles the shape of the small tower

Look at the price down on the blue menu ;) They use their own currency, the "€ros"

Bragança
Some local tree, apparently :D
(the flowers are made ot of paper)

Day 2

A typical view of the river Douro, on which margins grow the grapes for the Portwine

Penedono
I do not know what sometime happens to my lens! There is this dark area on top and so many photos get completely unusable because of that. So if you see it, please try to ignore it. I'm sorry.

Castle of Marialva

Guarda (no photos)

Day 3

Sabugal

Castle of Sortelha (no photos)
All of the photos from this amazingly preserved castle were ruined because of that dark spot.

Serra da Estrela
This is the highest mountain in continental Portugal. I love mountains, so I really enjoyed being there and only regretted not being able to go hike immediately.

Castelo Branco (no photos)

Day 4

Marvão
It's a huge fortification high in the mountains, right on the border with Spain.This small girl seated there alone for a long time and I guess she just was too afraid to climb down from the tower.

Vide
The mountain you see the top left part of the photo is Marvão. The Vide Castle is the same size, but not so well preserved and not so high in the mountains, so you loose that sense of wildness.

Almourol
The well-known Castle of Almourol, which is built on an island in the middle of the river Zêzere.

Day 5

Tomar
A small city, where the Castle and Convent of the Order of Christ (Unesco World Heritage) are located. I was completely blown away by the richness of this Templar building. Really worth a visit!
I fancied the pigeon couple :D

And here is the much-publicised Window in Manueline Style. Comparing to the rest of the cluster, I honestly didn't get why is this the symbol of the monastery.

Ourém (no photos)

Batalha

Alcobaça

Óbidos
I like the feeling of freedom, so to say, in this photo.

Day 6: Caldas da Rainha, Leiria, Pombal (no photos)

Canon AE-1, 50mm/1.4, 28mm/2.8, Kodakcolor 200/400

I greatly enjoyed this trip! I got to see parts of the country I never saw before and discover very beautiful places. It also changed to some extent the way I think of Portugal, of it's history, people and culture.

Thanks for watching!

Welcome!

2008-01-23T00:29:00.000+01:00

Finally it's up!

After battling with the choice of name, address, layout... it's ready for posting, which will hopefully be on a regular basis.
This will primarily be a photoblog, depicting situations from my day-to-day life, people I meet, places I visit. Unlike on dA, I will be able to show pictures maybe without huge artistical merit, but which I like or want to share.

I hope you enjoy it!
:<)