friends – Page 39 – Wolfgang Lonien

December 31, 2015

R.I.P. Ian

Thank you Ian, and condolences to your family.

December 29, 2015December 29, 2015

Today (Tuesday) Zuleikha invited some of her friends to her birthday party. She wanted to go bowling again, so this is what the kids did. I took some photos, most of which I cannot show without getting allowance for that first, so here are only two:

Impressionen vom Bowling

As you can probably see, the hosts dimmed the lights and switched on disco lights, and the kids were absolutely delighted about that, but for photography that was of course a challenge. I used the brightest lens I had (Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm/1.4) wide open and the camera at ISO 1600, and still I’ve got a lot of movement blur. But that often adds to the vibe, because the kids were moving simultaneously and most of their time, so in lots of photos I have exactly one detail (face, hand, ball etc.) sharp.

Just uploaded a few of them into my dropbox for the other parents, and of course for the kids as well.

We all think we’ve had a great time, and hopefully all of Zuleikha’s guests enjoyed it also. Should anyone of you read this, then thanks again for coming; it was a pleasure to have you around.

Thanks for reading.

December 12, 2015December 12, 2015

Pictures from paradise

My colleague Arno and his wife are on Ko Samui, and our colleague Nabil is on Phuket. Some ten days ago, Arno sent a picture which he took with his phone, writing that he doesn’t really want to come back…

Reminded me of our last time in Malaysia, which is five years ago already. Well, paradise, yes, maybe. For us. But first and foremost, it’s hot. You’re sweating without doing much:

Zuleikha, Malaysia 2010

So after noon, you sometimes just sit around, feeding keropok to the cats:

The kids – here are some of our relatives – play and pose, but even under the trees in some other kampung further North, it’s hot – and at night, you’ll get eaten up by mosquitoes:

Finally, here are two portraits I made during that holiday (I’ve shown them before). The first one is of Comel who is now married and has a baby boy herself:

Comel, July 2010

And the second one is of her brother, who sadly isn’t amongst us anymore:

Mohammed Haniff, July 2010

So is Malaysia, or is Thailand paradise? Like I wrote above: Well, paradise, yes, maybe. For us. But that is only because first these people – relatives or not – will do everything they can to make it paradise for you, and second we’re ignoring most of their problems.

Have to go back there soon…

December 10, 2015December 10, 2015

Meike at the Rhine river in Mainz

– and here is something like “the making of”:

Taken by and © Markus Kuhn, used with his friendly permission

Thanks for viewing.

December 9, 2015December 9, 2015

A “featured” image

Never tried this until now, so I decided to have a look at blog posts with a “featured” image.

The one you see here is one of myself, but it is not a “selfie”. It was taken by Mélanie Gomez in February, two days before my birthday. She used her Nikon D800 camera and one of my studio strobes (and grey background) to make this.

Merçi encore, chère Mélanie!

Of course I had to take some of her as well. Here’s one I took using my E-PL5 with the 45mm lens, also with studio strobes:

Mélanie Gomez, February 2015

Thanks for viewing.

December 5, 2015

lonien.de is 15. Or was it 16?

Today I was working on our server a bit, updating and checking things, and everything runs smoothly. I was wondering about the past a bit while I did all this, and so I checked.

Netcraft first “saw” us in the year 2000, which means that I used Netcraft’s services to check on us. The Internet Archive, and its Wayback Machine still have some stuff starting from 2001, and our site looked like this, or like that. I also had my own hosting company during 2001, called “fairhosting.de”, but nothing much of it is left, and that was later taken by domain grabbers. From 2005 Netcraft’s site saw us hosted by other companies.

So while the oldest history might be from early 2000, I think I actually registered the domain in 1999 – would have to check with Denic to find out. And, as I wrote on one of these early pages, the internet as we know it now was barely 10 years old (that means the mouse-clickable web, some other stuff like internet news is older).

Fifteen years only, and even less since people started to stare at small screens while walking the cities. Feels much longer tho – but imagine how life was before that (hint: it wasn’t worse).

Thanks for reading.

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.

February 15, 2015

A visit from Mélanie

Today Mélanie came over to visit us. She was one of the other two photographers with whom I met on January 18th in Mainz for an outdoor photo walk together with Meike, Rhia, and Jana.

After having some cake, we started to play around with my lights, so Mélanie took some photos of me, and I took some of her – with both her camera and mine.

From the ones out of my camera I selected nine, and it’s hard to narrow them down further – even Mitchie wasn’t able to select just a few out of these. So I decided to upload all nine to Flickr, and to let Mélanie see if she likes or even can use any of them: