Ascension, and Father’s Day

Here in Germany, we celebrate Father’s Day each year on Ascension Day. You can read all about it if you follow the links, but I decided not to join a tour with friends, but to do something with my family instead. And of course I took some pictures during the day.

In the morning, one of the first photos I took was one of Mitchie’s tulips, which are now open – even the ones who stand in the shade most of their time:

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Mitchie’s tulips, now open

Later, we drove to the nearby airport, which lots of other people also did, especially if you visit the public viewing places:

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Frankfurt airport, one of the visitors’ platforms

You can see that some of these “plane spotters” even take ladders – they know the territory, and how to get good closeups of those airplanes.

On the way back to our car, I took a photo of an airplane short before its touchdown, and I included a tree in my photo:

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Airplane at Franfurt airport, short before touchdown

What we also saw was a departing Airbus A380 from Emirates, the same one which will take us to Malaysia via Dubai (and back) later this year. Very interesting to see that huge airplane taking off.

I also got some presents for this Father’s Day, and guess what – one of them was a camera. But I guess no one else except maybe the Flintstone family had one of these:

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Stone camera, back side

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Stone camera, front and top

Very cool and minimalistic; it has just what you need to take a photo, nothing more, nothing less. Explains maybe why the Flintstones were camera collectors instead of photographers, and why we don’t have many pictures of them. And no, this is not for sale.

The blackbirds got their young ones already, and in the morning we saw one of them. But during most of the day, the parents are still feeding their breed – and protecting them. They get really loud if they see a cat, even if she’s still inside. Parental instinct…

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Blackbird, complaining

We’re lucky with the weather as you can see – and it’s still 21° Celsius outside while I write this.

My lens for the day was the older Four Thirds Olympus 40-150mm zoom lens which can be adapted to Micro Four Thirds cameras and still provides autofocus, tho it’s not as fast as newer ones.

For the airport I could have brought some wider one – I have enough photos of airplanes, so I wasn’t particularly interested in a long zoom.

And for the stone camera photos I swapped my lens with my Four Thirds 50mm macro lens which lives on Mitchie’s camera most of the time now.

Thanks for reading, and for viewing.

Weekend warriors

Like most people who still have a regular job, and for whom photography is just a hobby, it’s mostly the weekends when I can take photos. So here are two from yesterday and from today:

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Tulip

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Photographer and model (Zuleikha and Tuna)

Thanks for viewing.

Nice analysis of a lovely song

This. It’s from their 1977 album “Aja”, one of their best ever. Oh, and “Aja” is pronounced like “Asia”. Couldn’t have done this any better.

Here is the song without explanations, and here is the album.

Enjoy…

Two moon photos

Here are two photos of the moon, both from this morning, both with the same camera and lens. One from home, short before I entered the garage, the other from after arriving at work:

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Moon over Mörfelden-Walldorf, 2016

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Moon over Frankfurt Sossenheim, 2016

Thanks for viewing.

A car, older than me

Normally I don’t take many photos of vehicles. But my colleague Gunther likes old cars, and this one’s older than me:

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VW Käfer (Beetle) from 1953

Converted from raw using Olympus Viewer 3, Fuji Neopan Acros 100 film simulation, b&w conversion, and white border with Google Nik Silver Efex Pro2, title and tags with RawTherapee.

Thanks for viewing.

Auf Deutsch: Interview mit Sahra Wagenknecht

Ich fand ein sehr lesenswertes Interview, welches telepolis (Heise Verlag) mit Sahra Wagenknecht anläßlich ihres neuen Buches “Reichtum ohne Gier” führte. Es ist sogar interessant für Fotografen – als gutes Gegenbeispiel zu AGs wird unter anderem die Carl Zeiss Stiftung genannt.

Copyright des verwendeten Bildes: konnte ich leider nicht finden; wahrscheinlich aber campus Verlag.

Gefunden bei Heise Online.

Current affairs: IBMers protest

Today at work, we’ve had a short get together to demonstrate against massive job cuts which are planned for IBM Germany. I took some photos with my camera, and also with the one of Bert Stach, chief negotiator of ver.di (our labour union who were the organizers, together with our workers’ council). Here are some taken with my own camera:

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IBMers in Germany protest against planned job cuts, Frankfurt 2016

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IBMers in Germany protest against planned job cuts, Frankfurt 2016

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IBMers in Germany protest against planned job cuts, Frankfurt 2016

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IBMers in Germany protest against planned job cuts, Frankfurt 2016

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IBMers in Germany protest against planned job cuts, Frankfurt 2016

Thanks for viewing.

P.S.: Tho I converted these photos from the raw .orf files of my camera, I haven’t made any changes to them, except adding meta data like titles, exif tags, and so on, which makes them a bit easier to find for interested parties. So you have to excuse if some lines aren’t as straight as usual – this is documentary photography with its own set of ethic rules and such. Also, the light at “5 to 12” (which was the title of this happening) isn’t perfect for photography as we all know.

Some more film photos from last year

On my computer desk there were still two developed films, one Agfa Precisa CT100 colour slide film, the other was an Agfa APX100 black & white negative one. Here are some “scans” I’ve made Sunday evening, again using my Olmypus E-M10, a ZD 50mm/2 macro lens (from the Four Thirds system, with adapter), and a slide copier (plus flash and a white background):

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Olympus OM-1, on film (with OM-2)

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Employers’ garden, on film, early 2015

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Lufthansa airplane, on film, early 2015

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Card playing figures, on film, Darmstadt 2015

I converted the colour photos from the .orf raw files using Darktable on Linux, the black & white one using my conventional method, which is first Olympus Viewer 3 on a virtualized Windows, then RawTherapee on Linux for tagging etc.

Thanks for viewing.