May 2015 – Wolfgang Lonien

May 31, 2015May 31, 2015

Half a week of portraits

Last Tuesday I was in Mainz, and I showed some pictures from there in my last blog post. And Wednesday, I took a photo of a colleague.

And then I took more. And more. Two on Thursday, four on Friday, and so on. And I decided to go on and take at least one portrait a day.

Yesterday I wasn’t really lucky. Tho I had some photos (and some of them of strikingly beautiful young women), somehow it wasn’t my day. They were either unsharp, or taken in too crappy light, or they just didn’t fit into what I was taking before – tight shots of faces. It’s also a learning experience, not only technically but at least as much in what is nowadays called “soft”, or “people skills” – so these photos still benefit a lot, even if only to learn from errors.

So here are some photos which I took since Wednesday:

Markus

Arno

Matthias

Marion

Roland

Gertrud

Jonathan

Sophie

Babi

I took some more, but like I wrote above I also made errors. The photo of Sophie above for instance isn’t as sharp as it could (and probably should) be, and it’s also more about the dress and costume than about the person. But ok; I’ll try to learn from that, and to improve.

Technical: the first two were taken with the Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm/1.4, all others with the Micro Zuiko 45mm/1.8 lens, all used wide open on my Olympus OM-D E-M10 camera. In-camera black & white with simulated orange filter, and in post processing with the Olympus Viewer 3 software I also turned on “auto” gradation in most cases. Slight but global corrections with RawTherapee, which I also used to add some Exif data like title and tags, but no “retouching” of any kind – so these photos are as good as out of camera, as most of my photos are.

Thanks for viewing. And of course thanks to those whose portraits I was allowed to take. You’ll get some prints in a few days.

May 27, 2015May 27, 2015

Pictures from an exhibition

Well – the title is slightly misleading. Firstly, yesterday’s event was way more than just an exhibition, and it also has nothing to do with Emerson, Lake & Palmer (or Mussorgsky for that matter, and that is why I didn’t call it pictures *of* an exhibition). So here are a few photos from “Home is where…”:

Markus

Huge prints

Huge camera

Goj T-A-TR

And while speaking the keynote (or the laudatio), Markus took my picture as well, and he kindly allowed me to show it here:

_DSC1679 ©Markus Kuhn

See lots of more photos in Markus’ Flickr album. Or go there if you want to see those photos yourself – those prints are really impressive, and they will stay there for the next two weeks.

Thanks for viewing.

May 25, 2015

Invitation: “Home is where…”

Tomorrow starting at 1900 (7pm) there will be a vernissage in Mainz:

Home is where...

You can read a description in German on the site of PENG, and I will say a few words to greet the guests and to introduce the artists.

Entrance is free, and donations are welcome – it’s a non-profit event as you will see.

Thanks for reading – and it would be great to see some readers there.

May 24, 2015

We’ve had some visitors

Some friends of Mitchie’s visited us over the weekend, and tho they came well-equipped themselves (everything from smartphones/tablets over a GoPro and some Sony mirrorless), I took some photos of them and uploaded them on Flickr – but for friends & family only. These 4 have some pretty high level positions, and since they post their photos in a closed Facebook group only, I’d rather not show any here without asking first.

First thing on their pretty busy schedule was a visit to Eltz Castle, which we did:

Burg Eltz

This is a photo which almost everyone takes, and which you can even buy as a postcard inside of the castle, but I thought if they want pictures like these, they can have them.

On the way back I almost managed to get back into the planned schedule (which was to check in into their hotel at 1700) – until we ran into a traffic jam exactly at Frankfurt airport, which cost us an hour again:

In a traffic jam

This is under a newly built bridge where aircraft passes the A3 motorway, and yes, we had to stay in this lane. After the traffic cleared and we found their hotel in the vicinity of Frankfurt’s trade fair area, I left Mitchie, Zuleikha and the four friends who had planned some sight seeing and a girl’s day and sleepover.

And today at home I took a photo of these:

Mitchie and Zuleikha bought some flowers

Thanks for viewing.

May 22, 2015May 22, 2015

Yesterday evening, after a meeting

Bus stop, and one of the two train stations in Groß-Gerau

Added a slight vignette to the image, also slight tone curve adjustments like desaturating some of the colours. Hand-held at 1/20s, ISO 1600, f/2.8. Olympus OM-D E-M10 camera with Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm/1.4 lens.

Thanks for viewing.

May 20, 2015

Me

From this morning:

Self portrait, in one of the company’s lifts

Thanks for viewing.

May 16, 2015

Three with the 45mm wide open

From today:

Flower pots

Sleeping cat

CD: Ulf Wakenius “Vagabond”

Got this wonderful music as a present today – terima kasih sayang!

Thanks for viewing.

May 14, 2015

Four photos from a short walk on Ascension Day

Took these while being out today:

Water fountains

Well – those signs said: “Forbidden for humans”…

End of track

Hungover leftover, from James B. Beam

All taken with my E-M10 camera and 25mm/1.4 lens (didn’t carry anything else).

Thanks for viewing.

May 13, 2015

From colour to black & white – and back. Generations.

I haven’t published much during the last week or two, tho I did the occasional file upload to Flickr. The reason was that I used film as much as digital during that time, and film needs time. I just got back one black & white film, but mostly I had colour slide film in my OM-2, and my E-M10 was switched to black & white. Here they are together, in colour, and I took that one with the E-PL5 and the 14-42mm zoom on it:

Generations

Like I mentioned, my digital E-M10 was set to black & white – here are some I took with it that way:

Olympus OM-2N

Approaching Frankfurt

Lufthansa Airbus A321-200 “Bingen” D-AISV

But it’s still spring, so I went back to colour lately, also with digital:

Spring in the garden of my employer

Big and small. Small and big.

Cloudscape. A tribute to Caspar David Friedrich.

As always, you can see the full size photos when clicking on any of them, which will open it in Flickr in a separate tab or browser window. Except of setting the camera to different aspect ratios, I don’t crop (but sometimes I correct a slight tilt which will auto-crop a bit).

And I will show some photos made on film when I have “scanned” (momentarily that means: re-photographed; still have to get a scanner) those negatives and slides.

Thanks for viewing.

May 3, 2015May 6, 2015

Black & white, and someone to watch (and to listen to)

I don’t know if it was Mike’s article about the new Leica Monochrome (Typ 246), and the links from his readers in their comments, but I imagined about having a black & white camera only. So I switched mine to black & white and left it like that since a few days. I knew that for portraits this can be very nice, but how about general photography? I was curious. So here are some, as always almost like out of camera:

Tuna the cat, May 2015

Gravity? What gravity?

Taraxacum (common dandelion) (in German, we also call these “Löwenzahn”, or “Pusteblume”)

I have written about Youn Sun Nah already, but here’s another photo I took today. It shows the “Concert” part of a French/German TV station, and until October 18th this year, you can see a concert of her and her quartet of “musiciens exceptionelles” as she introduces them. Just look for this on your Arte channel:

“Screenshot” Arte: Youn Sun Nah Quartet

Or look at the station’s site like here. It’s worth it – if they offer this as a DVD one day, I’ll buy it.

Which lenses did I use for these photos?

First one: M.Zuiko 45mm/1.8 fully open at f/1.8
Second and third one: ZD 50mm/2 Macro at f/8
Last one: Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm/1.4 at f/4

Thanks for reading.