Today someone had let “Cookie” the neighbours’ cat in, and so first he woke me up, and later when I came into our living room he had occupied my chair. So I took a chance to take his portrait:
As always, thanks for viewing.
A Cookie on my chair
Cologne, and/from Bensberg Castle
Yesterday we were invited to a wedding, and the invitation said “no cameras please”, so I left everything home.
Still, since part of the wedding was at Bensberg Castle and I knew that the look from up there onto Cologne was/is quite nice, here are two photos from my mobile phone:
The wedding was lovely, although we’ll have to wait for the photos from the pros, and for information about what can be shared.
As always, thanks for reading, and for viewing.
My computer housekeeping is kind of ready
Since yesterday morning I installed the new Debian 11 with codename “Bullseye” which is now officially released. And that’s my main operating system since over 16 years, I remember that I started to use that while still living in Bremen where Zuleikha was born over 16 years ago. And if you keep something that long it has to be good, doesn’t it?
Anyway, I have everything up and running nicely by now, and even Ardour runs on both Debian (with Jack) and also on Arch (with Pipewire). The next thing I did was to take the same background image – a photo of the moon I took in 2011 using my Olympus E-520 DSLR (I didn’t have a mirrorless camera yet) – for all of my devices (2) and operating systems (4). Looks like this:
Since my Conky is using a light font, a darker background like this helped. But this is cosmetics, meaning I’m done with the most important stuff already. Cool, now I can turn my attention to some other things again.
As always, thanks for reading.
Another chair, another cat
Took this with my employers’ iPhone while having breakfast this morning – “Cookie” on my new/old computer chair:
“Out-of-camera image” from the iPhone SE (2020) with 4mm, f/1.8, 1/17s, ISO640. As always, thanks for viewing.
Edit: here’s the same photo with a Kodak Tri-X film simulation added in RawTherapee 5.8 on my employers’ notebook (just before I had to start working):
Again, thanks for viewing.
Grasshopper on a baking tray
My first photo in August was simply a snapshot from this morning – we’ve had a smaller kind of visitor since at least yesterday, and today he walked around a baking tray on the dining room table – so I took my macro lens fully open (the little guy was moving) to take his portrait. After doing that, I took the tray to the garden where he left onto some plant.
As always, thanks for viewing.
A “selfie” with my “webcam” at 720p
Toying around with my camera and OBS again because in less than a month from now, I won’t be an employee of IBM anymore, and so I’ll have to give back my current notebook, iPhone, and all what belongs to them. And on my own desktop machine I don’t have a webcam. But I have a very nice photo camera which is my Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mk2, and my latest lens is the 17mm/1.8 Micro Zuiko which has that awesome manual focus “clutch”, very useful especially for videos… so here you go, tried this one in 720p:
OBS is currently set up to use Full HD (1920×1080), but that isn’t enough to show my whole desktop which would be 1920×1200, so I’ll have to experiment and to decide how to use that camera. A video stream of 720p would certainly be enough for video calls, since normally you’ll have more than one other person on the screen at the same time anyway.
But yes, let’s see how that goes – would like to use it with my fellow moderators from Wikiloops for a test, so I’m excited to see them again as well 🙂
Anyway, thanks for reading and viewing as always.
Partly in the shade
Took this one of “Cookie” today, with a Panasonic 35-100mm zoom lens (set to about 64mm) on my camera:
I used an Ilford HP-5+ film simulation within RawTherapee, and corrected the exposure about hald a step down.
As always, thanks for viewing.
One of my most used tools
A few days ago I showed you a self portrait which I took while working, lit by one of my studio strobes with a beauty dish attached to it. Counter shot, directly out of my camera, so not lit is this:
I have these since over 10 years now, and reviewed my first one three years later for Lighting Rumors, here. They still work as on the first day, and I have taken very lovely photos with them, not only for money like the high school class lately, but also for memories like this one:
I don’t know if these are still made, maybe under different ownership in China, because the original manufacturers site seems to not exist anymore. But if you find some of these on the used market, they’re worth it, at least for this amateur photographer.
As always, thanks for reading.
The last days of work…
… at least for *this* employer. In about 6 weeks and 2 days it will be over …
Self portrait, lit with 300Ws studio strobe, manually (zone-) focused (love that feature on the 17mm M.Zuiko lens), 12s timer, “developed” with RawTherapee 5.8, Kodak Tri-X film simulation, cropped square, 1/20s to keep some of the outside daylight…
As always, thanks for viewing.
Photo session
Yesterday I took a day off from work – I was asked to take photos of the Abiturfeier – high school class receiving their final exams certificates – again, like last year. And also like last year, Zuleikha helped me, taking all the group shots with Mitchies camera while I took single portraits using mine. Here’s a setup shot she took with my camera and lens, and me holding the ColorChecker:
photographer: Zuleikha
And I also took her picture ‘on stage’…
… and in between shots:
Of course we can’t show the photos we took here because we didn’t ask if we could, but it was fun like always. Now these photos will go back to school, and from there to the students and their parents. Wishing them all the best for uni or wherever they might go now…
As always, thanks for reading, and for viewing.