OK, I admit, at first, when I took the image, I didn’t see him. In fact I didn’t even see him while processing the image, but when I finally did, I had to smile.

The Song of the Day is “Supermann” from Marius Müller-Westernhagen’s 1998 album “Radio Maria”. For the majority of you who don’t understand German, I have linked the song title to an automatic translation of the original lyrics.

The original video is kind of a “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” story. See it on YouTube.

Yesterday’s “Damage” image would have been perfect for B&W as well, but somehow I didn’t think of it. Today I did

Just a shrub growing in front of our office, but why never look, why always pass it by?

The Song of the Day is “Shades Of Grey” from the 1998 Billy Joel album “River Of Dreams”. Hear it on YouTube.

Not only did the thunderstorm yesterday cool Carinthia down substantially, it also made a lot of damage in parts of the country. Here’s some minor one.

The Song of the Day is “Weather The Storm” from the 1973 Incredible String Band album “No Ruinous Feud”- Hear it on YouTube.

Yesterday evening we’ve got heavy thunderstorms, rain, and temperatures dropped by something between 10 and 15 degrees. No swimming today. Instead I spent most of the day converting the months February through April from iMatch to Lightroom. Here are some images that I couldn’t help but processing

Well, actually it’s not really converting what’s that much work, that’s just a matter of importing files into Lightroom. The problem is, that I have given up on keywording years ago, and that I want to have keywords in Lightroom. Thus I spent those hours keywording the images of four months.

Oh yes, I have a Flickr pro account now. From now on you can also see my images in my photostream, and you can also download original sizes there. Why that? Well, just because Lightroom makes it effortless.

The Song of the Day is “Words Can’t Describe” from Sarah Vaughn’s 1957 album “Swingin’ Easy”. Hear it on YouTube.

The forecast for today only told of rain and cold. It was all different though.

Michael is here and we went swimming in the early afternoon. The lake is already warm enough, though there are almost no tourists yet. I took the image from a bridge (the word bigger than the thing) over a small creek, just around the corner from the lake.

The Song of the Day is “Hiding All Away” from the 2004 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album “Abattoir Blues / Lyre Of Orpheus”. Hear it on YouTube.

Just a table that gleamed at me this Friday morning. In case you wonder, I think that are dried blossoms on top. Thus the title

The Song of the Day is “The Secret Life Of Plants” from Stevie Wonder’s 1979 album “Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants”. Hear it on YouTube.

We already had this song in “298 – The Secret Life Of Plants“. Then I had just bought the Sigma 20/1.8, a lens that I always call my wide-angle macro, something that I currently miss.

When I saw this bike, it was clear that I had to take an image. The problem only was, that it was impossible to properly isolate it.

In such a case, when I can’t get rid of the surroundings, I try to use them creatively. Half a face, a strong, oblique line, I think it balances quite well.

The other image reminded me both of a cross and of a ship’s mast.

Both images, like all images during the last 10 days, were made with Lightroom. I still haven’t finished viewing the video tutorials, but I already feel confident. The program is pretty amazing, in 10 days I had only once the need for a short detour to Photoshop.

The Song of the Day is “Meditação”, taken from the 1999 selft-titled Quarteto Jobim-Morelenbaum album. Hear it on YouTube.

Here’s a little guy I saw today on a children’s bike. And look at the bird in the background! What are they up to???

Made me smile

The Song of the Day is “Tiger Toon” from the Jethro Tull album “Nightcap – The Unreleased Masters 1973-1991″. Hear it on YouTube.

Am I faster using Lightroom? Faster than with Photoshop? Yes. Slightly. Not as much as I have hoped for.

Why? Because the main time eater is not the actual processing of an image, it’s the thinking about it. It’s doing something, looking at it in detail and in overview, it’s the work of correlating what I see with a steadily emerging vision of what I want the picture to be. No program in the world can speed that up

I have often said I enjoy post-processing, and when I think about it, the joy is not in pixel bending, it’s in developing an image in my mind and in seeing it come to pass.

All three images are from today, the view from the tram window down on the street and the bike are morning pictures taken with the 20/1.7, the light on the fence is evening light.

The Song of the Day is “I’m Still Here” from Tom Waits’ stellar 2002 album “Alice”. Hear it on YouTube.

Yesterday I’ve mentioned the “Advanced Guide + New User’s Introduction to Lightroom 4” by Jeff Schewe and Michael Reichmann. I’ve seen the whole introduction and a little more than half of the advanced guide during the past hours. It’s good, actually very good, and I can strongly recommend it to everyone who wants to learn how to effectively use Lightroom.

Well, maybe it’s just I, but I really love learning how to use programs from training videos. It’s just so much more effective.

One good thing is, that they have broken up the whole video thematically in parts of about 15 minutes. It makes sense to see the whole thing in sequence, but when you’re later interested in one single aspect, say split-toning, then there is a single short video for that. Very handy.

One part that I’ve found exceptionally worthy was that about noise reduction. I’ve always shied away from using Camera RAW’s noise reduction and have instead used first Noise Ninja and later Topaz Denoise. With what I’ve seen (and already practiced) today, I think this is a thing of the past.

I’ve played with an image taken at ISO 12800 (not shown here), and the result was extremely good: low noise, much detail, punchy colors. The point is, that although the controls are easy to use once you know what they do, the interplay of the controls is not obvious. This is something that someone has to explain, and thankfully Jeff and Michael do a very thorough job.

The Song of the Day is “Cloudspotting” from the 2010 De Phazz album “Lala 2.0″. Hear it on YouTube.