Storm damage

It’s quite windy at the moment (with force 10 on the Beaufort scale on top of the hills). And it seems that I’ll need a new – used – tank for my motorcycle:

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Storm damage

Trying to call my insurance company while I’m typing this…

Thanks for viewing.

A few photos since last Sunday

Last Sunday I played around with the Four Thirds 50mm/2 macro lens on my E-M10 (via adapter), and here’s one of Tuna the cat taken with that combination:

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And yesterday evening I decided to do something which is quite unusual for me. I took a photo of some daisies on our table, some of which had purple leaves already. I liked the photo just in black & white, but wanted to prevent those purple tips, and when I saw it I also decided the photo needed a bit of yellow – so except those two colours, I removed and desaturated every other one. Got some funny artefacts on the background that way, too:

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And this morning, with the same 14mm Panasonic lens on my camera I took this in-camera black & white photo of our cat which was sitting under our bench and my studio strobe:

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I did nothing to this last photo except tilting it 1 degree to the right, which also slightly auto-cropped the borders. Other than that, I only added some meta information (Exif and IPTC), so the picture is what comes out of an Olympus E-M10 when switched to black & white. The camera set itself to ISO 1600 for this one (with the aperture of the lens at its maximum open position of f/2.5).

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Two close-ups

Today I mounted my ZD 50mm/2 macro lens from the Four Thirds system onto my OM-D E-M10 camera, using Mitchie’s MMF-2 adapter. Here are two photos which I took using that combination at f/3.5 or f/4 together with one of my studio strobes and a gridded beauty dish:

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Carrera S

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Zuleikha, March 2015

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Solar eclipse 2015, as seen from Frankfurt, Germany

Today we had a partial solar eclipse. It started at about 9:30 (am) at the place where we live and where I work, and the peak was forecasted for 10:38 – so I went out with some colleagues (almost all of them with mobile phones as cameras), and took a photo:

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Solar eclipse 2015, as seen above Frankfurt, Germany

See more photos from other photographers (and one taken from a satellite) on the Flick blog.

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Had a Prius for a day

Our car had to have its front brakes repaired, so it had to stay at the dealer for a day. And this time finally I asked for a hybrid replacement – and got it:

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Toyota Prius

Lovely car. Surely not everyone’s cup of tea, but for the daily suburban commutes, you’d hardly find a better one.

I took that photo this morning at my employers’ garage. By now we have back our Corolla – and I’m still happy with that one as well. Even if it takes 2 liters more on each 100 kilometers than this bigger cousin.

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Sometimes at or around the office…

… inspiration strikes, if you allow me that term without sounding too blasé.

For instance, when I sat at my colleague Gunther’s place lately and saw the sun forming a pattern of light on his desk, then sure, I’d loved to have – maybe parts of – a gorgeous nude female body in the frame. But that would have been too cliché (Lucien Clergue did that perfectly already), and after giving it a thought or two, I liked what I saw enough to just take it as it was:

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Zebra office, March 2015

And if you think about work, don’t you also sometimes think that somehow everything is wrong, like turned upside down? Right – so do I:

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Look down to look up (and to see floating stones), March 2015

Thanks for viewing.