I made photos, one shortly after I began to work at home, the other shortly after finishing work. Looks like this:
Thanks for viewing.
My first day of the second week of homeoffice
What to do in times of a pandemia
Well I can hardly give any tips of what best to do in a “lockdown” kind of situation, when you can’t or at least shouldn’t really leave the house. I can only tell you what we’re doing:
- we went shopping of Friday after my work already, so we were through with that early on. It also helps if you enter the supermarkets as a single person, not with a whole family. Better for the distances we should keep…
- reading is always good – my current favourite fiction author is Haruki Murakami as you might know if you’re reading this blog once in a while
- listening to music and/or watching TV is what I’ll guess what most people would do, and of course we’re also doing that. Long running series like “Doctor Who” are good tips if you like that
- If you’re a computer geek, get involved into some free and open source project – write some code or documentation, or share some tips via an own blog or Youtube or whatever
- We’re the lucky ones, at least Zuleikha and me – we play instruments. Plus we are both members of Wikiloops where you can play with other musicians from all around the globe for free if you like. All you need is some way to get your instrument or voice into a computer, which is usually done with some kind of audio interface – see here for some examples. And Wikiloops just lifted its time restrictions, so even as a new user you can now start down- and uploading at once, without having to wait (or to pay).
- If you are creative in another field – I consider myself a portrait photographer for instance – then do this at home as well. Take photos of your family, or in case you’re alone, take self portraits. There’s always something new to learn, and if it’s only about lighting.
Other than that I haven’t done much this weekend, in fact I wasn’t even out of the house except to feed the birds:
As I’ve read, the rate of new infections with SARS-CV2 aka the Corona virus is slowing down here in Germany. So maybe (and hopefully) it helps if everyone is staying at home or at least keeping a safe distance. And while it’s still way too early to speak of or to hope for a trend, we can still carry on and wait this out, shall we?
Be safe. Stay healthy. And thank you for reading.
Second internet outage since this year…
Wow. This time our line including telephone and some HDTV (3play) was cut off for almost 24 hours – seems that UnityMedia is up to some restructuring since they have been bought by Vodafone? Let’s hope that it’s stable from now on…
I took a photo of our cat again yesterday, this time with proper light (one of my studio strobes bounced over a wall). Then I cropped it into a 16:10 format to use it as a screen background, turned it into black & white using a Kodak Tri-X film simulation, and vignetted the corners a bit so that my Conky system monitor output (in white) can still be seen layed over it, as here:
As always, thanks for reading, and for viewing.
Happy new year!
I wish everyone who reads this a happy new year 2020.
Ours started with a bit of concern – Mitchie had let our cat out in the night of January 1st after most of the fireworks were done – and then we waited. And waited. And waited. And after 2200 (10pm) and at temperatures below freezing point I was really worried.
But then, about 10 past 10 she finally showed up, smooched us all a bit, ate, and then fell asleep on a carpet right in front of our TV set. I took her photo hand-held using my small Panasonic 35-100mm zoom lens, and converted it to black & white with Silver Efex (on Windows):
And by now she’s had breakfast, and is sleeping again – this time on my bed.
I’m so glad that she came back.
Thanks for reading.
Merry Christmas MMXIX
To all those who celebrate it, we wish a Merry Christmas 2019.
I don’t have any new music (yet), just a few photos:
This is an in-camera black & white photo (also simulating an orange filter) of Tuna from early Sunday morning. She doesn’t eat much since then, so at the moment we’re a bit concerned about her.
We’ve also got a nice Christmas and season’s greetings card from Shi – and I had nothing similar to send as a reply (I’m really not that good in the graphic arts as she is), so I took a photo of an old Welsh song which I’ve played with the orchestra this season. Also uploaded it to Wikiloops to greet all other musicians as well:
Happy holidays 2019 from a bass player…
This is more a New Year’s than a Christmas song, and you can read more about it or hear it if you wish. I took this and the following photo using Mitchie’s nice little 20mm f/1.7 Panasonic Lumix G lens.
The next photo is of Tuna again, close up and with Mitchie’s lens wide open at f/1.7, so just one eye is sharp – and everything else more or less blurry. I also used a black & white conversion in software this time, and simulated an Ilford HP5+ film in RawTherapee. Midtoned as usual, which means the whites are white, the blacks are black, but those middle tones are more brownish than grey:
Two different light colours in this one, natural daylight from outside, and artificial light in our living room. And I liked that high contrast effect from the film simulation in this case.
Edit: here’s another photo from today. In this one I simulated a colour film, Fuji Astia – and also cropped it into a 3:2 format like from the time we were still using film:
Hope that our cat is better soon.
As always, thanks for reading, and for viewing. Nice holidays to you all.
Mirror?
I haven’t done much this weekend – in fact it almost didn’t feel like a weekend at all, since I was busy with the server again (and still am). But in between I could at least take another photo of our cat. Not sure what she saw there – herself, or some potential prey through her own dark silhouette?
Cropped it into a 3:2 aspect ration like from Kleinbildfilm, and used midtoning and also a HP5+ film simulation from RawTherapee.
As always, thanks for viewing.
Tuna the cat, from November 30th, 2019
My proclaimed “month of the kit zoom” will end today, and I haven’t taken many photos this month. So when I saw our cat on that towel beside my computer desk (in our living room), I thought let’s take a picture…
So – that’s my kit zoom at 17mm again, a bit like 35mm on film (tho the format is 4:3 instead of 3:2).
This evening I’ll go and play the bass somewhere, but I don’t know if anyone will take photos of that using my camera – let’s see.
And as always, thanks for reading, and for viewing.
Tuna the cat, on November 18th, 2019
Tuna the cat from today – short before she got about 3/4 of a chicken leg…
I took this with the help of one of studio strobes, “bounced” into the corner above my computer desk. So I had 1/160th of a second at f/5.6, and with ISO200 (the camera’s native base ISO). The lens was at 17mm again like in my last photo. Oh, and this time no post processing at all – straight out of camera .orf to .tif to .jpg. Added only meta information to it (like a title, and some key words).
As always, thanks for viewing.
Daily cat portrait
One of many photos of our cat, this time taken for my ‘month of the kit zoom’ series, with a focal length of 17mm at f/4. Out of camera jpg with no post processing whatsoever applied. ‘Muted’ camera profile.
Still my favourite model by far – she doesn’t pose, and nothing is in vain… 🙂
As always, thanks for viewing.
Month of the kit zoom
I have decided that this November should be my month of the kit zoom. Wanted to go a bit more to taking wide-angle photos, and although I have a very nice Panasonic Lumix 14mm/2.5 I’ll opt for the Olympus kit zoom instead which also offers other focal lengths up to 42mm – very convenient.
Of course it has maximum apertures of f/3.5 at the wide and f/5.6 at the long end, and November isn’t the brightest of all months, but I’ll see how I’ll get along. For inside, there’s always flash, right?
Here are some three shots (of my favourite model) using daylight only:
First and last one are at 14mm (which is like 28mm on film), and the middle one at 42mm (like 84mm on film).
I’ll show you more after I took any. For now and as always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.
Update, in the evening:
Here are two more photos – or in fact it’s one photo taken with two different focal lengths (of the same kit zoom lens), 14mm and 35mm:
Notice how the cup seems to be kind of ‘flatter’ in the second photo, taken with the longer focal length? And how that flower vase seems to be coming closer to the cup as well? Well, you’ve just discovered the main characteristics of tele vs. wide angle perspectives, that’s the exact reasons for using one vs. the other.
Oh, and these two photos are the jpg files straight from my camera – no post-processing whatsoever.
Thanks again for viewing, and for reading.