Kategorie-Archiv: Blog (EN)

Blog Posts (English)

Ascension Day

Huttenkreuz Bruchsal

I just thought that that today’s photo would be a nice one for Ascension Day. Around Bruchsal, there are around 37 wayside crosses to be found, and this one is is only a short footwalk to get to it.

As quick as it was shot, the photo took long in post processing, as I had to clean up the site a little: Removing the lamp post, the traffic signs, all the shadows of it, and finally the shadows of the photographer and the pole … just click through the gallery to see the changes (use the arrows or the cursor left/right keys on your keyboard):

After all these adjustments I got the final picture:
Huttenkreuz Bruchsal

Finally I tried for a Black and White rendering to give the scenery a touch of drama, that you can see above. I like it even more than the colored version!

By the way: Ascension day also known as “Father’s Day” in Germany, where men usually are roaming around to celebrate a day off with lots of drinks …

I use my spare time mainly for other stuff (as you can read in my blog), but I am also having fun, even without the drinks :wink: …

Spring Woods

Fruehlingswald

Recently i was out *in the woods* again, enjoying early spring during sun rise. This short trip also gave me some opportunity to test the shift feature of my new tilt shift adapter and to explore which kind of images would come out.

As opposed to my usual preference for wide angle shots, i really enjoyed what you can get with a 20mm lens on Micro Four Thirds.

After stitching, I was curious which kind of final composition you would get from 3 single (and shifted pictures). I came home with some shots for a series consisting of 4 final shots. In the end i decided to do a final version of all 4 photos:
Fruehlingswald

But in the end I’ll only keep the raw data for the one pic featured today. I really like the wood flooded in light and all the small details you can discover in the 28 megapixel version over at G+ (activate the full screen version and use the mouse wheel to dive into the picture).

Enjoy :wink: !

Shift Adapter

Shift Lens Adapter
I issued a new article on a new tilt/shift adapter for the MFT system. Today i am covering the Shift Feature of this Adapter …

Too Good To Be True

Kraichgau Auf'm Acker

The strip of area i am living in is called “Kraichgau“, and it is even nicknamed as the “German Tuscany”. I wouldn’t dare making this comparison, but the rolling hills have some elements of it, I dare say.
And so I was out again last week end, in order not to miss this relatively small period in spring, when all the trees go into full bloom and transforms them into nice fluffy balls populating the countryside …
But the weather was not the best, the sky was shady and grey cast, but I was out there and HAD to do some shoots …

Even despite the weather I was enjoying the landscapes, and so I strolled through the fields for a good 3,5 hours.

In the end I came home with a couple of interesting shots, and one of them is featured today. I call today’s creation “Too good to be true“, as ….
* you don’t see the road roaring with car noise not too far away
* you don’t see the outer rim of a typical and not very exciting looking suburban village
* I did overdo the post processing a bit and the picture is looking much more cheerful as it was on site
* finally I added a bit of sunset atmosphere in the sky area that wasn’t there …

On the unusual 3:1 format: I just went out with a telephoto (for the first time i was using my monopod to stabilize my camera) and made 3 separate photos and I stitched them together later on. And doing some contrast adjustments and additional postprocessing made this pic “too good to be true“.

However, the fluffy balls are real :wink: !

Early Spring

Wood Images with the Bokeh Monster

Spring is there ... i really enjoy watching nature waking up again. On that day i went out with a nice Bokeh lens and tried to catch Nature in spring. I went home with roundabout 250 raw shots so as to have a comfortable number of photos to be weeded out later. Maybe you’ll ask yourself on the title photo how I did it.

I do this in a three step approach
* Capture Mass instead of Class: In digital times it costs nothing to take some more shots than needed. To raise the chances for a good photo, I usually will do more variations of the same photo (idea) in order to be able to choose the best one later
* Massive Classifying: Triage through the photos and weed out the bad shots …
* Get Class Instead of Mass: Coming back from a photo tour, i try to keep only the best ones so as to keep hard disc consumption low and to keep a certain quality level of my photos. From this walk i hoped to keep 5 shots of 250, to a keep quota of 2% …. in the end I failed by keeping 8 :wink: !


Maybe you’re interested, what other photos were shot besides the great ones. I invite you come along with me and revisit my walk into the forest. Click on a picture below and click through by using the arrow symbols. Check out my comments (and overlook the typos) what my thoughts were as i went through each one back at my computer. Maybe you can learn something about how you can approach your own photos as well … less is often more!

If I Were A Child …

If I Were A Child I'd Have Flown Away

If I were a child…I would fly away…

My mind was wandering … wouldn’t it be sometimes easier to go through your life with an innocent, playful and “kid like” mind full of imagination and fantasy beyond our grown-up day to day operations?

This picture brings me back into this kind of mood ... for a grown up, such a place is just an assembly of some wood and some tons of sand (and often a place of boredom while sitting on the bench beside while waiting for their kids to finish their play :wink: ), for the kids it’s the place to go into their own imagination …

Question To You: When did you switch on you own “inner kid’s mind” last time ?

PS: Check what you find better, above’s “Kid version” or the more down to earth version of the playground:
If I Were A Child I would fly away

Test Panasonic 12-35mm F2.8

Objektivtest

Test Panasonic 12-35mm F2.8 (GH2)

Lens Test (English)

Alle im Text verwendete Markennamen sind Warenzeichen der jeweiligen Eigentümer und dienen hier nur der Bezeichnung. Dieser Blogeintrag wird von diesen Markeneigentümern nicht unterstützt, authorisiert oder steht in anderweitiger Verbindung zu diesen.
Any brand names used in this blog post are used for denotion only and are trademarks of the respective owners, which do not sponsor, authorize, or endorse this blog post.

Test Olympus 9-18mm F4.0-5.6

Objektivtest

Test Olympus 9-18mm F4.0-5.6 (GH2)

Lens Test (English)

Alle im Text verwendete Markennamen sind Warenzeichen der jeweiligen Eigentümer und dienen hier nur der Bezeichnung. Dieser Blogeintrag wird von diesen Markeneigentümern nicht unterstützt, authorisiert oder steht in anderweitiger Verbindung zu diesen.
Any brand names used in this blog post are used for denotion only and are trademarks of the respective owners, which do not sponsor, authorize, or endorse this blog post.

Animated GIF

An Animated Bird

20130329_mw_animated_bird
Click On The Picture for animation :wink:

Ever wondered, how you can do one of these animated gif yourself? Often only annoying, but sometimes fun, especially doing them with your own stuff … here’s how!

Inspiration

Think about a subject that might be suitable for an animated gif: Only a small thing in motion behind a static background is ok. So it is for my subject … as with the cold winter now birds are flying through the garden in need for grabbing something to eat. So I had just to wait until a small bird would be revisiting my garden.

Setup

o You need to capture the whole scenery with a fixed background: set up the camera on a tripod, and while your subject does the show, keep on shooting (it’s best to use a remote control)
o Take plenty of shots in order to pick out the best later on

Processing

o Download your photos and assemble them in an order that will make up an animation
Rotkehlchen Ani
o In my case I pronounced my subject by a color key image and cropped most of the background.
Rotkehlchen Ani
o Convert the resulting image files into a gif file (can easily be done in batch by Irfan View)
Rotkehlchen Ani
o Use Programs like GIFtedmotion  to put all gifs into a single animated GIF file
[Bild nicht gefunden]

View


Enjoy the show, or if you do feel bothered, simply switch off animations in your browser :wink:

If you post animated gifs yourself, please be reminded that not everybody likes flashing things on screen … so maybe I consider it as good practise to hide the gifs behind a still image preview and a link so that the user can decide for him/herself whether to show them or not ...

Any brand names used in this blog post are used for denotion only and are trademarks of the respective owners, which do not sponsor, authorize, or endorse this blog post.

Englisch … English

English Only

It’s time to streamline things and save time from blogging for some of my other activities: Up to now i provided  both an English and a German Version of my blog posts.

As the lingua franca of the Internet is still English, from now on I’ll continue to post the majority of my posts in this language … maybe i still may feel like posting stuff in German, anyway :wink: …
And to top it off: Sometimes I’ll just post some stuff over at G+ … see you there as well ?

LEGO®, LEGO® Technic, MINDSTORMS®, the brick configuration and the minifigure are trademarks of the LEGO group, which doesn’t sponsor, authorize, or endorse this blog post.
LEGO®, LEGO Technic®, MINDSTORMS®, the brick configuration and the minifigure are trademarks of the LEGO group, which doesn’t sponsor, authorize, or endorse this blog post.