Just an arc of thoughts…

… from a new and respected pianist, Bach, via Schubert, to being kind…

Yesterday – just by chance – I saw a few minutes of a music program in ARD Mediathek, and it’s also on Youtube. It’s about a young pianist called Víkingur Ólafsson who explains and plays Bach like no other, very impressive. Maybe I’ll put his CD onto my wish list… (and that link has an affiliate reference back to Wikiloops again).

Through the German Wikipedia page about him, linked above (English one is here), I learnt that he also has a Soundcloud account – and there I heard him together with Kristinn Sigmundsson perform “Gute Nacht” from Schubert’s “Winterreise”:

Schubert: Gute Nacht (Winterreise) Kristinn Sigmundsson + Víkingur Ólafsson

Very cool, and probably one of the most well-known musical pieces about unrequited love, just like in literature this would be Goethe’s “Werther”, or H.C. Andersen’s “Under the willow tree” (German *and* English versions are here).

This might all sound or read nicely from a warm home, but it all ends tragic, and there’s nothing romantic about winter, and/or freezing to death. So my thoughts went further on to those who don’t have a home, no matter the reasons.

And that made me think of “The Doctor” (Doctor Who, best played so far by Peter Capaldi in my opinion), and his imperative of “being kind”. It’s all the same story which fits this Christmas time which just went past with so many people thinking about their own problems and grief – please also think of the others. Share if you can, and/or at least be kind, that costs you nothing.

Oh my. This sounds like me preaching. But sometimes this is how I think, and how my thoughts jump from one thing to another, so please don’t be too harsh with me 🙂

Wishing you all a good time, and don’t forget to stay safe, and to take care. As always, thanks for reading.

P.S.: here’s a song which I just recommended to some of my colleagues. It’s from 2013, but in my opinion it also fits the time. Have to remember to tag it with “matteredToMe2020” in the ‘loops this evening:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-11882.php

Enjoy…

Today, 16 years ago…

… in a hospital in Bremen, Zuleikha was born. Don’t know if I can show you her picture (haven’t asked yet), but here are her birthday calendar, and our cat, both in black & white and with a simulated Kodak Tri-X film:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/50765554793/
Birthday calendar, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
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Tuna the cat on ZUleikha’s birthday, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

As always, thanks for viewing.

Tuna, sleeping on boxing day 2020

Sending out so many Christmas wishes on behalf of the family got our brave little companion a bit exhausted – so as usual she was resting next to my feet a bit:

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Tuna the sleeping cat, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

Although I had the camera set to black & white already, this is “developed” using RawTherapee on Linux only, with a Kodak Tri-X film simulation. I also cropped the image into the 3:2 format like we had in the old film days. Light was pretty much non-existent, so this is ISO 1600 with a bit of electronic noise added to the simulated film grain. My 25mm/1.4 lens is fully open, still this was 1/8th or even 1/6th of a second – I’m really thankful for today’s IBIS (in-body image stabilisation).

As always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

Edit, ca. 3.5 hours later: alive and kicking again. Here taken with a studio strobe:

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Tuna on the sofa, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

Again, thanks for viewing.

Merry Christmas from Ms Tuna (and from her family)

It should speak volumes when you have your real camera in reach but still take the mobile phone to take a portrait. No, the handling of the phone is much worse that that of a real camera – but I still like what it does. This is “OOC”, or “out of camera”, with the phone’s software in “portrait” mode, and “enhancing” it after the shot:

pxl_20201224_103511017.portrait~2
Merry Christmas from Ms Tuna, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

As always, thanks for viewing. And merry Christmas to those who celebrate it.

About food and nutrition

Michael Johnston from The Online Photographer is not only an expert and a must read on photography, he’s a very interesting and friendly guy to follow on a lot of topics. So now he wrote about food again, here and here. And he put links to videos of some doctors in there as well, listen for instance to Dr. Gemma Newman:

WHY I QUIT LOW CARB & WENT VEGAN – Dr. Newman

Or to her colleague Dr. Barnard, and others:

WHAT I EAT IN A DAY: Dr Barnard & Other Plant Based Doctors

What Michael describes quite nicely is that you can eat as much as you want, and some if not most of these doctors confirm that – as long as it’s healthy food, which means fibers, and plant-based. In that last video you also saw Dr. Greger, and I have both his original “How Not To Die” plus the accompanying “How Not To Die Cookbook“, and I can recommend both of them.

By the way: these last two links to the German Amazon contain affiliate links back to Wikiloops, so in case you’d use these links to buy something there, Wikiloops would get a bit of support as well. Normally I never do this, but for that page I make an exception – it’s like supporting oneself if you’re using that great site as a musician during these times of Covid-19.

As always, thanks for reading, and for watching.

A great video featuring Wikiloops

Our relatively new but very talented member Stamim2000 made this one:

WikiLoops

Thanks bro for this great video about our site, really appreciated 🙂

The music is also here:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-205378.php

Love it. Wikiloops at its best. Thanks again Salahuddin 🙂

Those last three black & white images…

You’ve seen them already if you read this blog, but here they are side by side, as a screenshot from my Flickr stream:

These were all unprocessed, and from left to right, taken with a smartphone (Google Pixel 4a), my normal digital camera (Olympus), and film (Agfa).

I think I see different tones here – the one on the left seems “warm”, the film image “cool”, and the middle one “neutral”. What do you think and see? Interesting to see what comes out of cameras without any manipulation (ok, in the film case you can’t really say that – it’s not only the film, but also the developer, and here a picture printed out on a certain paper (Fuji), scanned in by our all-in-one HP office printer/scanner… but that would apply no matter how you’d digitize a negative, you’d always have at least that one additional device…).

Anyhow, as you see I sometimes just like black & white (or, as my brother said lately, black – the background is white already (if you think subtractive)).

As always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

Feierabend

Yesterday after work I couldn’t make music – some neighbours were using power tools, so it was too loud for that. And so all I could do was to sit on the sofa, and lay my feet high on one of its armrests, and since I had my camera in my hand, set to black & white, I took a photo:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/50706175413/
Feierabend, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

“Feierabend” is German for “closing time”. And this photo is like out of camera, no post processing whatsoever. As always, thanks for viewing.