An occasional Photo Blog
This evening my holiday draws to a close and so too does my Summer-fourteen project. Summer 2014 may not go down in history as the warmest or sunniest on record, and photography wise I have experienced more productive summers, but I’ve had fun and that’s surely what it’s all about. With these few alpine images, taken last Friday, I’ll wind up the summer project… and start looking forward to Autumn 🙂
Wife and I had been meaning to visit Bellinzona for quite some time, yesterday was the big day. With only three hours in the city we just had time for a pizza, a visit to the big castle (Castelgrande) and of course a coffee. Here are a few images.
With the summer holidays now over, today would normally mean the end of my summer project “Summer-fourteen”. However, because I am now on holiday I have decided to extend the project for a further week.
I’m not famous for my interest in sport, but even I couldn’t fail to notice that the European Athletics Championships were being held in Zurich. Although I stayed well away from the stadium, I did venture in to the city yesterday afternoon for a stroll around the “City Festival” which held various attractions and events and brought an athletic feeling to the city centre.
So far I’ve been unable to confirm it on the internet, but I heard somewhere that onions shouldn’t see August rain. Being August 2nd. and sunny, a day in the garden was on the agenda and while I was making lots of noise mowing the grass (lawn would be an overstatement) and playing with the trimmer, wife was busily harvesting our onion crop and tackling a very healthy weed plantation. Before reclining in a deckchair with a cool beer I dutifully tied them in bunches and hung them up to dry.
As mentioned in ‘Summer-fourteen 7’, I’ve been experimenting with the myriad of settings on the K30. Yesterday’s onion photos and the couple of images taken this morning were captured using the ‘User’ settings which I’ve set up for B&W use. Increased contrast, yellow filter and one or two other goodies are now available at the turn of a dial, rendering the term ‘straight out of the camera’ quite meaningless. I’m not sure the digital yellow filter is as impressive as the glass filter used with film was all those years ago, but perhaps I need to experiment more and keep a look out for dramatic, characterful skies.
The Rae 4/8 1021 was built in 1939 for the Swiss National Exhibition. The so called “Red Arrow” earned itself the nickname “Churchill” when it was used to show Sir Winston Churchill the local sites during his visit to Switzerland in 1946. Today it’s used for private excursions.
To commemorate its 75th anniversary the train was parked in Zurich’s main station this week, and offered restaurant and bar facilities for the passing travellers and thirsty commuters.
On the evening we stumbled across the train, we were treated to a live performance by Star Saxophonist Florencio Cruz who delighted his audience with a mixture of Saxophone and House Music… to be honest I’m not too sure what his particular musical style is called, but it sounded good.
You may remember my blog post about the rusty fence, a project that inspired discussions about art, the cost of art, and what on earth has an old fence to do with art. But this art form did motivate me to get out and about on a Sunday morning.
Today’s post shows three images from an art installation in a waiting room on platform 4/5 at Winterthur’s main railway station. “Ich Ist Ein Andere” is a video installation with five figures. It was created by the artists Glaser & Kunz as part of the towns 750 year anniversary and is on show until 24th June.
I’ve been watching the waiting room with interest during the last week or so from the train window on my way home from work. I wasn’t just intrigued by the figures in the waiting room, but also the many smiling, happy faces peering through the waiting room windows. This must surely be what art is all about… everyone seems to be thoroughly enjoying it. On Sunday I went to view the installation at close quarters. Absolutely fascinating! Whoever it was who had the idea… well done!!
One can actually enter the waiting room at certain times of the day and listen to the figures chatting.
Being Easter, the temptation to post pictures of eggs and rabbits, not to mention crucifixes and things theological, was quite difficult to resist. But I’m sure there will be plenty of those images on show elsewhere, so I decided to stick to Spring stuff. Last Sunday was excellent Spring weather and I was of course out and about with the K-30, totally motivated by colours, blossom and the like. Today, Good Friday, is a completely different story. I’m sitting in front of the TV warmed by a blazing fire and a warm pullover.
The apple tree in our garden has one big disadvantage, it was pruned by me. It therefore doesn’t look particularly fantastic as apple trees go, so I thought the view under the tree was somehow more pleasing.
Bleeding hearts are a firm favourite with my wife… and indeed we’re very lucky to still have this example because previous plants have either been trodden on, pulled up by the dog or fallen foul of my trimmer.
There’s currently no shortage of blooming trees and blue skies, so I suppose there’s nothing very spectacular about yet another pink tree. However, I couldn’t resist capturing these views of St. Jakob’s Church at Zurich’s Stauffacherplatz this morning.
Whether or not a rusty fence around the town’s waste disposal plant can be regarded as art is a matter of some discussion. I am certainly in no way qualified to offer a balanced opinion on the subject. The very fact that I was out and about (reasonably) early on Sunday morning to photograph the town’s most expensive fence just goes to show how it has captured my imagination. I’m sure I wouldn’t have made the effort for a normal, common or garden fence.
The artist is Katja Schenker. She does have quite an impressive CV and it seems she doesn’t just do fences.
