The Daily Photography of Andreas Manessinger

649 - Big Rain Tonight

2008-07-24T00:29:00.002+02:00

Ahh, these days that begin bad and then only deteriorate! I left home in the morning and already had to duck under an umbrella. It did only rain moderately, but nevertheless enough to make me fear for my camera, and then it grew worse the whole day. In the evening when I left work, it poured down again.

This is an image that I shot in the morning. The lens? Just like in the other two images of today, my new Nikkor AF 85/1.8D! That's what I finally settled for. Given that I have a fantastic Sigma 70/2.8 Macro, it is probably equally redundant as the 28/1.8 had been, contrasted with the 30/1.4, but, hey, it's not about logic, it's about fun.

So, what can I say about this lens? It's metal, it's robust, it looks good, it focuses fast, it focuses precisely, it has a nice bokeh and it is a bargain compared to the 85/1.4. The Image of the Day, the bicycle in the rain, is right out of the camera, the daylight image had its colors pushed, not more, and the night image of Volkstheater had all kinds of things done to it. All three images were shot from under an umbrella :)

The Song of the Day is "Last Night Was a Big Rain" from Sara Hickman's 1989 album "Equal Scary People". See a video on YouTube.

648 - Inbetweenies

2008-07-23T07:57:00.004+02:00

Do you know that feeling? That feeling when it is time for a new toy? Yesterday I have hinted at something and today's image was made with a new Sigma 28/1.8. You know my images made with its wider sibling, the 20/1.8, and this one has the same amazing near-focusing capability.

Unfortunately not all was wine and roses. Wide open, at low light, I found it's contrast severely lacking. I mean, I expected it, but not to this extend. In this regard the 20/1.8 fares better.

I originally bought this lens as a wide-but-not-so-wide street lens with macro capabilities. Being able to focus near, is one of the two things that I miss with my Sigma 30/1.4. The other thing is bokeh. What the 30/1.4 does to off-center out-of-focus point lights, can be more than harsh. On the other hand, contrast of the 30/1.4 is fantastic, even wide open. I may come back to the idea and get the Nikon 35/2.0 at some later time. This time I have traded the Sigma 28/1.8 in for a completely different lens :)

The Song of the Day is "Inbetweenies" by Ian Dury & The Blockheads. The compilation that I have is not readily available any more, I suggest you get "Reasons to Be Cheerful: The Very Best of Ian Dury & the Blockheads". Hear a sound sample from some live concert on YouTube.

647 - Out In The Street

2008-07-21T23:48:00.002+02:00

Again two images made with the Sigma 70/2.8, one sharp from front to back, one not. I shot the images some minutes before I entered a shop and ... but that's a story for tomorrow :)

The Song of the Day is "Out In The Street", again from Bruce Springsteen's 1980 masterpiece "The River", and this time I have a video.

646 - Harley Heaven

2008-07-21T06:56:00.005+02:00

I've spent this weekend working in Vienna, and last night, Sunday, when I left work, it poured down like mad. My first idea was to take public transport, but I finally resisted the temptation. I mounted the Sigma 30/1.4, took the umbrella out of my Lowepro Rover AW II backpack, secured its rain cover (AW means "all weather"), and off I went. Mostly caring about the camera, I was slightly wet upon arriving home, but I had quite some nice images. What finally made it is this one, a Harley parked in the rain.

The Song of the Day is "Harleys & Indians (Riders In The Sky)" from the 1994 Roxette album "Crash! Boom! Bang!". Sorry, no video, but last.fm has a sound sample.

645 - The Price You Pay

2008-07-21T00:31:00.005+02:00

Back to normal again. Amazon has recovered during the night and SmugMug is also up again. Sorry folks.

Last morning, when posting Friday's images, I'd almost posted these two as well. Uhmm ... being days behind obviously tends to weaken my memory ... or so :)

Anyway. Here we are with something old reflected in something new. This image, taken late Saturday morning, just minutes after the Image of the Day, shows the building where I work. I chose a B&W conversion with this bluish tint for increased drama. You may agree or not, some will certainly not. But for those I have the Image of the Day, a brightly colored triptych celebrating monetary opportunity and numeric decline :)

The Song of the Day is "The Price You Pay" from the 1980 Bruce Springsteen double album "The River". There is no original on YouTube, but plenty of covers like this one.

Service Interruption

2008-07-20T21:17:00.002+02:00

No, no new image at the moment. SmugMug, my image hoster suffers from an outage of Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3), their storage hoster. S3 has been dead for at least three hours now, and it looks like it will take them at least another hour. Oh bummer!

644 - She Is Still A Mystery

2008-07-20T10:00:00.002+02:00

Black and white again. This is the image for Friday. A woman on the street, that's for sure, but ...

The Song of the Day is "She Is Still A Mystery" from the 1967 Lovin' Spoonful album "Everything Playing".

643 - Here's That Rainy Day

2008-07-19T21:18:00.003+02:00

Thursday was rainy. I took some mediocre images in the morning, while it was still dry, and some more interesting in late afternoon in pouring rain. I don't have the time to process all of them, but this is one of my favorites. Again I use a more or less out of focus background and a sharp foreground, and this time it is a variation on the concept of "601 - Rainy Day in June". The lens used is the Sigma 30/1.4, and it took me some attempts to find the ideal aperture of f4. Here we have just enough definition in the background to vaguely recognize people and umbrellas, and enough blur to keep the image timeless and general.

The Song of the Day is "Here's That Rainy Day". I have it on "Magic Voices", a seven CD collection of all records made by the Singers Unlimited. Unfortunately I have no sound samples, but of course YouTube has plenty of other versions.

642 - Steppin' Out

2008-07-19T03:14:00.002+02:00

This is an image of Wednesday afternoon. It was a hot, sunny afternoon and I went along a big street near work. The dream images of Tuesday morning still linger with me, and although I don't try to force anything, I still do mostly verticals.

There are new convex metal devices mounted on the lamp posts along many of Vienna's streets. They hold advertising posters for cultural events, and I have used one of these things like a wall. The reflection from the white building on the left provides a nice light source. I've used the Sigma 70/2.8 at f8 and 1/800s. Boy, speak of enough light! I am so near to the focus point, that even at f8 there is enough blur on the background to achieve the effect that I wanted.

I have pondered about the title for a long time, and I finally found what it reminds me of: it is like stepping out of a building into a sunny, to some degree uncertain future, but still certain enough to follow your way with confidence. It's an optimistic image :)

The Song of the Day is "Steppin' Out". I have it on "John Mayall - Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton". Hear it on YouTube.

641 - Series Of Dreams

2008-07-16T10:26:00.007+02:00

Remember the dream, or shall I say, the series of images that flashed through my mind when I woke up last morning? Remember that I told you about it in "638 - In The Grove""? When I went to work yesterday morning, I was constantly on the lookout for vertical compositions that had elements of those dream images.

Of course I did not find anything that even remotely matched what I had seen, but given that I was in Vienna's streets, it did not come unexpectedly that there were neither flower-strewn beds nor sailing boats around. That was not what I was looking for anyway. I was looking for structural similarities, and what I found was vague at best.

Here are five vertical images that have been shot with the dream images in mind, plus a fancy car and another vertical that I could not resist to take when the sun went down. I present these images in unedited form, and I do that for two reasons: firstly, I was too lazy to edit seven files, and secondly, this is not about any single image, this is about a series, inspired by a dream.

The images are mostly in the order they were taken. What I was after, was roughly a pattern of vertical stripes in the background, and a foreground that covers the lower third of the image, but in an asymmetrical way. The Image of the Day was my first attempt. Compared to the dream of the bed and the window, the relation between foreground and background is inverse: here the background is sharp, my hand, used as an impromptu foreground is out of focus.

This does not matter for my purpose, but I believe that one of the two should be out of focus. All images were taken with the Sigma 70/2.8, mostly wide open, to provide for a shallow depth of field.

While working, I found this base concept inspiring, although I did not stick strictly to it. Most images keep only the verticals, and the foreground is replaced by part of the sidewalk, asymmetry provided by the perspective.

What's the point of all that? For me it was interesting to see these dream images at all, and trying to respond to them was only natural. Why do I share it? Sure, this is as "work in progress" as it could possibly be, but in a way I think this is interesting. It's more or less a kind of unfiltered visual thought.

Now for something completely different. I often photograph and write about bicycles, and many of them are products of the former Austrian company "Puch". I had almost forgotten that they had also made cars, but when I saw one on the streets, I simply had to take an image. This is a "Puch 500", basically a licensed "Fiat 500". I have never sat in such a car, much less driven one myself. They were almost extinct before my time.

The day ended with wonderful late sunlight, and I had to record this as well. This is the view through my living room window in Vienna.

The Song of the Day, "Series of Dreams", is the last song on the 1991 official "Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3". The song is from a collaboration with Daniel Lanois and U2, as far as I remember. See the video on YouTube.

640 - One More Night

2008-07-15T23:32:00.002+02:00

I left Carinthia on Sunday evening and arrived in Vienna half an hour after midnight. Is an image shot at that time an image of Sunday or an image of Monday? In "639 - Midnight Riders" my answer was a resounding "Sunday, of course!", but today I feel "Monday, probably" would be an equally good answer. Am I opportunistic or what?

This image was taken only minutes after the one posted for Sunday. Actually I like it better, although the SmugMug crowd thinks otherwise.

The Song of the Day is "One More Night" from the 1969 Bob Dylan album "Nashville Skyline". I have no video by His Bobness, thus a cover will have to do.

639 - Midnight Riders

2008-07-15T17:05:00.005+02:00

It's funny, at the time of writing, this image is #3 in the list of my most popular images on SmugMug, my image hosting provider and photo community. It's an image that I took Sunday night when I arrived in Vienna. I think there is nothing particularly wrong with this image, in fact I liked it enough to make it Image of the Day, but of the images of the last days it is certainly not a favorite of mine. I see it as a filler, and it's success is probably a sign of a certain randomness. Some images get picked up by the crowd, some don't. Actually, the longer I think about this image, the more I feel the urge to crop from the right :)

The Song of the Day is "Midnight Riders" from the 2007 Patti Smith album of cover versions "Twelve". You may like her version or not, but if not, there is always the original by the Allman Brothers Band.

638 - In The Grove

2008-07-15T05:33:00.003+02:00

Oh Goodness, I'm hopelessly behind. These are some of the images of Saturday.

Two of them are experiments in B&W conversion, and I think that the process is simple and works well. Basically the idea is to use the new B&W conversion layer in CS3, use its presets (high-contrast red, high-contrast blue, maximum black, maximum white, ...), just concentrate on parts of the image, limit the conversion with masks, and overlay another filter for another part, again masked, until everything is B&W.

In both images the upper part uses the high-contrast red preset, while the lower part uses high-contrast blue, and in case of the farmhouse there is even some maximum black in between. Finally I have applied toning with a gradient map and overlayed some blur, restricting blending to parts of the tonal range. Hmm ... that's probably stuff for a tutorial.

The two B&W images and the Image of the Day were taken with the Sigma 70/2.8 Macro. I love this short telephoto lens and, funnily enough, I even seem to dream in this kind of images. Just as I woke up (it's Tuesday, 5:59 as I write this), I saw an image before my eyes, and I know, when I ever want to take it, I'll use this lens. The image faded as my conscious mind set in, and thankfully I managed to remember it. It was a bedroom window or rather a door to a terrace, shot as a vertical across the bed, focus was on the bed, there were flowers on the bed and in the background I saw a person, very much out of focus, just recognizable, probably opening the door.

The composition was very vertical in the upper part, parallel lines, the person being one of them, occupying the left half of the upper two thirds, the right half being the lines of the door frame and some curtains. The flowers in the foreground lay asymmetrically, higher on the right side. Just as I was trying to analyze this image (or at least to not forget it), an image of a yacht harbor flashed up. Boats and masts, a similar composition, divided in asymmetric halves in the upper part, the lower part holding it together in a balanced way.

What that means? No idea. Things like that don't happen regularly to me. In fact they normally don't happen at all. Seems like a rather interesting kind of inspiration to me :)

Let me leave you with one final image of Saturday. We were dining on the terrace of a restaurant, and just after the main course, I turned my back, looked across the street and saw this spectacular evening scene. I took some images with the Sigma 10-20, some with the 70/2.8, but what I like most is this fisheye image. Landscapes with a fisheye? Sure. Just keep the horizon in the middle and it will be straight. Of course you don't only get a spectacularly big sky, you'll also get a lot of boring foreground (at least here it was boring) but that's easy to fix with a crop from below.

The Song of the Day is "I had A Dream" from Ray Charles' 1958 album "Yes, Indeed!!". A video is supplied with the lyrics. Admittedly it's not Ray Charles, but it's not shabby either. So who are Bob and Clive??

637 - Painted From Memory

2008-07-11T19:49:00.009+02:00

These are the images of Friday. It took me two days of pondering about a half-written post to come to the conclusion, that I can't make rhyme nor reason of it. I finally threw it away.

What's remains are three images of Friday morning, that depict old things neglected (like this rusty, dusty door to a cellar), old things carefully restored (like the Russian motorbike), or things that are not old at all but were produced to look old ("retro" is the term, like my fan). For me there is a deep satisfaction in photographing old things, but in talking of that, I ought to make distinctions as to the kind of old I mean.

Gothic cathedrals and ancient monuments are like landscapes to me. They are beautiful, interesting, they may cause my mind go off dreaming, but intrinsically they rarely move me. What moves me, are old things that I can relate to. Things that were made before my time, just not centuries, more like a life-span or two. I mean things that would have been there in my childhood, things that would already have looked old then.

In a comment to 633 - Undecided, dkwett suggested that what we capture in a photograph isn't so much a vision as a memory, and while I don't think that this is generally true (or if so, then in a very subtle way), I guess it is the key to the sentiments that I talk here. These are images painted from memory.

In all these images there is a part of myself, only sometimes it is more literally so, as sometimes there is a self-portrait hidden within :)

The Song of the Day is "Painted From Memory" from Elvis Costello's 1998 cooperation with Burt Bacharach. Hear the song on YouTube.

636 - All Day and All of the Night

2008-07-11T17:03:00.004+02:00

It's Friday, I'm on the train, on my way to Carinthia, and these are two images of late yesterday afternoon.

Bicycles are one of my favorite subjects, and this double-portrait was my second bet for an Image of the Day, just in case #1 would not work. Turns out it did, at least for me, although everyone on SmugMug seems to ignore it :)

"Einfahrt Tag u. Nacht freihalten!" is German and means "Keep entrance clear all day and all of the night", thus "All Day and All of the Night", the 1964 second hit single by The Kinks is the Song of the Day. The recent "Ultimate Collection" is a very good compilation that I can recommend. Hear the single version and a live version on YouTube.

635 - Out Of Time

2008-07-10T07:00:00.003+02:00

We live in a time of big shopping centers. Malls, some central streets, they collect all the traffic, and many of the small shops near our living quarters had to close. This is in a way regrettable, but if everybody who regrets it now, had gone out in the past to actually shop there, they wouldn't have had to close in the first place. That's how we feel: we cherish the sentiment for a past that we would not want to live in.

"Uhren" is German and means "clocks" as well as "watches". The Song of the Day is "Out Of Time" from the 1966 Rolling Stones album "Aftermath". I've linked to the UK version of the album, because that's what I own. Hear the song on YouTube.

634 - With My Eyes Wide Open I'm Dreaming

2008-07-08T23:02:00.006+02:00

This is the second attempt at today's Image of the Day. My first choice, a nice sunrise, perfectly matching the cliché, had some technical flaws and, honestly, at this time of the day I don't have the nerve to do it again. It's always nice to have a backup ready, isn't it?

Well, the backup is another image of this morning, and it perfectly connects to yesterday's entry. This one was shot with the Nikon 50/1.2 at f1.2. It is a detail from a shop facade in Vienna's Josefstädter Straße, but with so extremely shallow depth of field, that it has become a complete abstract. This lens may be a beast to focus, but it sure was worth its money.

The second image is not a very elegant match, in fact the only two things that these two images have in common, are the street where they were taken and the lens that I have used. This second image was taken at f4, and somehow I like the asymmetric composition.

The Song of the Day is another one by Natalie Cole, and that's by chance as well. It's "With My Eyes Wide Open I'm Dreaming" from the 1999 album "Snowfall on the Sahara". The version that I have found on YouTube is not from Natalie but from Patti Page.

633 - Undecided

2008-07-08T18:49:00.003+02:00

Cameras have a stunning potential to show us a world beyond our experience, yet we are so used to this fact, that it is interesting news to many people, when you tell and show them, that some of what they see on images can't be seen through human eyes. Much of Susan Sontag's collection of essays "On Photography" circles around this very topic of convergence between our perceived reality and the world of images.

One of the main culprits is the shallow depth of field that photographers can use to isolate their subject. The result can be everything from looking perfectly real, via deeply surreal, to completely abstract.

Shallow DOF is an effect that I absolutely enjoy using. Probably I should take my time and label all those images on the blog. I suspect they will amount to something between 50 and 100 by now.

I have long wondered about how to title this Image of the Day. For me it is somewhere in that surreal middle ground. The point of view is so low, that there is some aspect of being caught inside. I am not sure if this is positive or negative. Then there is the vaguely recognizable row of windows, quickly fading into a nondescript mist. There is a kind of gray warmth outside, but it does not give me a cozy feeling. Uncertainty? I don' know. I am undecided.

The Song of the Day is the old Jazz standard "Undecided", and the only version I have is on the 1993 Natalie Cole album "Take a Look". Hear another version by a Czech Jazz band on YouTube. Not bad. Not at all bad :)

632 - Ball and Biscuit

2008-07-06T23:05:00.004+02:00

Pretty much my only achievement today was a series of images of our cat playing with a ball. It's not a normal ball though. It has a compartment that you can fill with cat-cookies, and when he rolls the ball, cookies fall out. You can imagine that he was busy playing and all the while kept us busy laughing. This is the best image of the series, as most of the time lately shot with the Sigma 70/2.8.

The Song of the Day is "Ball and Biscuit" from the 2003 White Stripes album "Elephant". See them live on YouTube.

631 - Summertime II

2008-07-06T13:39:00.003+02:00

This is the image for yesterday, July 5^th, and quite exactly a year ago, on July 7^th, 2007 I had another image titled "266 - Summertime". I love this season, and yesterday, while on my way to the lake, I tried to find out what exactly characterizes our landscape these days.

The three images of yesterday represent such a thing: harvested fields baking in the hot sun. They were taken at the same time in the same place, but looking in slightly different directions. As a result, neither the contrast between sky and earth was the same nor the colors. And that's one of the things that I have learned while working on my SoFoBoMo book: A series of images from a certain time and a certain place just does not make it, unless you take your time to match colors and light. It's a well known phenomenon, that strongly contrasting images easily make a good match, whereas largely similar but in subtle ways different images fight each other.

So, "Summertime" is the Song of the Day, but what version? Yesteryear we had Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, this year it's Helen Merrill. I have two different recordings of this Gershwin tune by Helen Merrill, one of them, the one that I like better, on a compilation called "Blossom of Stars", that currently only seems available used and from £45 upwards. Ouch! I suggest that, before shell out the money, you sample the wares around here.

630 - Oooh, What A Lucky Man I Was

2008-07-04T20:51:00.012+02:00

Yesterday's food is from the can. I was short on time in the morning, and when I left for the train, the light was utterly flat and uninspiring. I could have delayed photographing to the evening, but on the other hand I had plenty of time for post-processing while on the train.

I always carry a bunch of files with me in a folder "TODO", and for lack of anything better to do, I began processing some of them.

The decaying house front is not far from where I live. When I am late and take the way to work via the Underground, I always pass by, but this particular image was taken about a year ago, in the afternoon. I used my Nikon 50/1.2 and was on the way to a concert where I wanted to use this fast lens.

The next image, a garbage can in Mariahilfer Straße in Vienna, was taken last August with the then new Sigma 20/1.8. It was early morning on a bright day with blinding sunlight, and I liked the contrast between the modern design and the traces of ... uhmm ... neglect.

The final image, the Image of the Day, is from that Sunday morning in Florence/Italy when I was photographing with my friend Ted Byrne. This image was taken while Ted was on the other side, making the first image that he posted from Florence.

This is one of those images that I always wanted to process. I tried it one time and did not particularly like the result, so it went back into the "TODO" folder. Much to Ted's annoyance I took all my images that morning from the tripod and I really took my time. Just as I was satisfied with the framing, a white car drove by to park in front of these poles, right in my image. I pressed the shutter only a second before. The sidelight is from the car's head lights. While the original would have been nothing but a failed attempt, this side light makes the image, and that's also what was so hard to bring out in post-processing. I was just a lucky man :)

The Song of the Day is "Lucky Man" from ELP's 1970 debut album "Emerson Lake & Palmer". See something like a video on YouTube.

629 - Electric Ladyland V

2008-07-04T02:57:00.008+02:00

Time for another installment of my "Electric Ladyland" series. This time we are in Vienna, the image is from today (caught up!!) and again I don't fight the ever present cables, the wires that keep our civilization running, again I use them. Apart from that I may have added some slight enhancements in Photoshop as well. I can't help it, it just happens some times.

The second image is from the morning. That's what I originally wanted to present as Image of the Day, before things got out of control :)

As always in this series: The Song of the Day is still "Have You Ever Been (to Electric Ladyland)" from Jimi Hendrix' 1968 album "Electric Ladyland".

628 - I'm Waiting For The Man

2008-07-03T18:03:00.004+02:00

I had processed these two images of yesterday right in time, but this time SmugMug had thwarted my plan to catch up. They had a longer outage last night (my night that is) during which no images could be added to the site.

I took both of these images yesterday afternoon, on my way home through Lerchenfelderstraße, one at the corner Lange Gasse, one at the corner Kellermanngasse. The bicycle fastened to the railing was only a question of composition, the other one required some thought :)

The Song of the day is "I'm Waiting For The Man" from the classic 1967 Velvet Underground "Banana" album. See this video or that. Why exactly this song? Honestly, I have no idea :))

627 - Mon Vieux Joseph

2008-07-02T22:50:00.005+02:00

As I said, this was a very short intermezzo in Carinthia. I took the train down on Monday afternoon, and today, Wednesday, I returned to Vienna early in the morning.

Of course I was swimming, albeit much too short. On my way to the lake, I took the first image, two blades of spelt (as I found out on Wikipedia), using the somewhat inelegant but extremely effective "machine gun" approach. Of the 11 surviving images, this was the one that I liked most. Talk about industrial image making :)

Technically I have converted the image in Capture NX, because I liked the original approach of the camera and would have had a hard time to mimic colors and contrast in Adobe Camera RAW. The only thing that I did in CS3 was sharpening.

The other two images are from the break between the two parts of the concert. The Clemencic Consort gave Carmina Burana, and it was just as great as I had expected. See this video for a sample. In the Gothic church of Maria Saal we had the slightly nicer environment though :)

I am quite sure that the Saint on the glass window holding the infant Christ is Joseph, thus the Song of the Day is "Joseph" from Georges Moustaki's best known 1969 (what a year!!!) album "Le Meteque". Hear it on YouTube.

626 - Gotta Travel On

2008-07-02T22:21:00.004+02:00

After yesterday's somewhat lengthy post, I'll keep it very short today. This is the image for Monday, you see, instead of catching up, I managed to get even two days behind now :)

Monday afternoon I left Vienna for a one-day intermezzo in Carinthia. We had concert tickets for Tuesday evening. On my way to the Underground, I regularly pass this building, Justizpalast. You've seen it in "141 - Memories of Summer", in "336 - Split Decision / Up In The Sky" and "154 - The Triumph of Parliamentarism" was taken from its roof terrace.

I had the Sigma 30/1.4 mounted, and when I saw the light/shadow pattern caused by the shadow of a flag falling on the wall, I decided to get very near and use extremely shallow DOF. Well, in fact f4.5 was what I ended up with, and even with that I was already at 1/4000s. In hindsight I like it better as it is anyway. Any shallower and the image would considerably loose depth.

The Song of the Day is "Gotta Travel On" from Bob Dylan's much despised 1979 album "Self Portrait". On youTube I have not found it by him, but as this is an old standard, there are other versions, for instance this one.