An occasional Photo Blog
The Festive Season, time to have a beer after work, to saunter around the old part of town and admire the Christmas decorations, perhaps even do some Christmas shopping, but I don’t want to rush into things, there’s another whole week yet!
Trying to avoid images of Christmas trees, reindeer and Santas with sacks of goodies (plenty of time for that next week) I opted for a couple of wet street scenes.
As usual I achieved the almost impossible this morning and arrived on the dot at the local railway station. Imagine then my delight to find the train was running late, giving me a full 27 seconds* to pull out my mobile phone and snap this sunrise. – *may have perhaps been half a minute 😉
During the journey the day looked bright and friendly on the left hand side of the train, and as black as night on the right. Not wanting to disturb my fellow travelers, and in fear of losing my seat, I decided against clumsily wading through the jungle of legs, newspapers and laptops to snap the absolutely fantastic rainbow through the opposite window.
It’s been quite a while since I last posted anything on this blog, and the reasons are many fold.
First of all I’ve been spending far too many enjoyable hours playing about with new laptop and PC 🙂
see the Hardware page on http://www.harding.ch/computer/compi-index.html
Then of course there was……
Work: I’ve either been leaving early in the morning or getting home late in the evening. Both seem to form a natural barrier against taking any sort of reasonable pictures.
The time of the year: During the summer months I tend to browse through Photo magazines on the way to work, and soak up motivation by the pagefull. But during the darker time of the year I’m seen standing on platforms and sitting in trains with my head buried deeply in a paperback – In case anyone’s interested, I’m about halfway through Ken Follett’s ‘Fall of Giants’ as always, a jolly good read!
Social ‘duties’: and last but not least, various Christmas markets, decorated shops and cosy bars all seem to compete for a slice of my time.
Perhaps I need a nice new camera to get me back on track? 😉
Yesterday afternoon my desk was bathed in cool autumnal sunlight and my eyes strayed from time to time to the golden trees standing idly in the office car park. But back home in the village, after a couple of Friday evening beers, I was greeted with fog.
Not thick fog, but that fascinating misty fog that provides the sinister backdrop to so many detective stories.
Unfortunately I couldn’t capture the atmosphere of gas lamps and narrow, cobbled streets, but I did manage to take this photo of the new village filling station.
Despite the impressive golds and browns that are now making trees such a particularly attractive photo subject, I just couldn’t seem to get it right at the weekend. Having played for far too long with a bit of brightness here and some contrast there I decided to convert the photos to monochrome. “Sunny Woods” seems to have gained a little something and “Waiting for Christmas” hasn’t really lost anything…. perhaps.
I’m by no means what you would call a ‘Horsey’ person, but thoroughly enjoyed being pulled through the countryside this afternoon by a couple of very large majestic animals. It was a beautiful, warm and sunny autumnal afternoon, and I was glad to experiment a bit with back lighting. All three of todays photos are straight out of the camera, and have simply been resized and reduced in quality by Gimp.
Photographically speaking I’ve not been too active this week. Today, Saturday, is in fact the the first time that the camera has seen the light of day since last weekend. Apart from the Autumnal mist the morning was dry, but colours were subdued and the light was diffuse to say the least. This afternoon cast a beautiful golden hue on all things ‘treelike’, but of course I’d got other things to do. My photos were all taken this morning.
The original ‘Misty Barn’ pic was in colour, but it seemed to scream out for a B&W makeover.
As my two weeks holiday draw rapidly to a close It has become apparent that all those goals I had set myself will not be achieved.
A bit of pottering in the garden, a couple of days away and a bit of lounging about doing nothing are, without dispute, achievements well worth mentioning. Then of course there’s the new laptop: It’s quite frightening how much time can be spent playing about, adjusting, personalising and configuring a new laptop. As far as I’m concerned the invested time and effort were totally rewarding, but of course certain things had to fall by the wayside.
On the photographic front I had hoped to make a start with the next B&W project, or at least decide in which direction the project should take me, but as you may have guessed, not a thought in sight. I didn’t really get round to photograph much at all. So, here’s the second and final set of photos from our short break in Schluchsee.
We’ve just had a short break in the Black Forest resort of Schluchsee, on the shore of the lake with the same name. Not exactly a long holiday, just two nights to be precise, but nevertheless most enjoyable. The dog friendly hotel kept us very well fed and served me the occasional beer in the late afternoon sunshine. We managed to grab a boat trip on the lake before they closed for the season, and had a brisk walk along the lakeside path to Aha.
But what about the photography side of things?
Actually I didn’t take too many photos, and those I did take were far from spectacular and of little photographic merit, but I did enjoy experimenting with a few early morning shots whilst taking the dog out before the village awoke. A fascinating time of the day, the sky was no longer completely dark, the streets deserted. A tripod would have been more than useful, but of course I’d left mine at home. But there was usually a handy piece of fence, a railing or a bench close by, not perfect but beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll publish a few daylight pictures at a later date.
In the last posting I mentioned something about heaving this blog back on the photographic track. Concentrating on all things picturesque. Today therefore, I will keep nice and quiet about when I got up, what I had for lunch and where I went etc.etc. and let art speak for me – hehehe
Pity really: Because today was a rather special day. Wife was out and about, so I had a day with the dog AND the new laptop 🙂
Oh, did I just let slip something about new laptop? Oh dear, but to be honest, in this very digital age I suppose one could say that a laptop is just as much part of photo kit as an SD card or a tripod.
So to cut a very long story short, I spent the day chatting to the dog about all things technical, eating my favorite cheese and (lots of) onion sandwiches for lunch and quenching the arising thirst with a very refreshing beer. Apart from ambling through the countryside for a few hours with dog and camera, the whole day was spent installing, configuring and generally getting acquainted with my new purchase and the latest version of Ubuntu Linux. I know, it really has nothing to do with photos at all, but not to worry.
