The weed in the sea of wheat
Posted on Januar 14th, 2014
One day I was on an evening photowalk and shooting this and that, as I saw this symbolic situation. A single plant in a large cornfield, fighting its way to the light. In these gray days we can looking forward; the days will getting greener. For this image I needed one single shot and my fancy macro lens at f/2.8 to bring only the weed in the focus.
The smoky moon
Posted on Januar 13th, 2014
The sun was allready down and the stars visible, as I shoot this photo. But something’s strange on the image. Either the moon is burning or there is a doomsday meteor in the sky. The fact we are still here, excludes the 2nd possibility. But why is there smoke at the moon, I thought it couldn’t be smoke in the space without air. Or maybe they are right and there is also no space and the technicians fixed the problem with the fire. And yes, I think there are now more dark spots on the moon…
Grindelwald
Posted on Januar 12th, 2014
Yesterday I showed you a nightshot of the Eiger. On this image, I shoot next day afternoon, you can see down to the village of Grindelwald. On the left border you can see a path trailing up, somewhere there I was the night before and shoot the Eiger. On th right side you see the large shadow of the Eiger but you can’t see the mountain. This is maybe a normal tourist photo if you are walking from the Männlichen to the ‘Kleine Scheidegg’. It’s an easy afternoon walk and if you stay in Grindelwald or Wengen, don’t miss it.
Eiger nightshot
Posted on Januar 12th, 2014
As you can think, I didn’t go to Grindelwald and take photos from the Eiger Northface only by day. It was clear, that I go to get some nightshots of this fames mountain and the best spot I found was the Bussalp, because there was a street up there. The problem was, you couldn’t drive this street without a permission. Luckily I found an officer at the down house which gave me this permission, so I could drive up there in the middle of the night.
It was a very dark night without any moon light but also without any clouds, so I had this clear view southward on the Eiger, Moench and Jungfrau.
For this image I took 8 shots for noise reduction with 1600ISO and my old Canon 60D.
The great wagon
Posted on Januar 11th, 2014
This is another image of my picture series of the Togggenburg region. You can see mount Saentis with the large antenna, which is no more vertical because of the strong wide angle lens at 16mm I used. And the bright light behind the clouds on the right side, is not the sun, it’s the moon. But the most impressive part, how I think, is the star sonstellations ‘great wagon’. You can see it in the center of the image. Mostly you won’t see star constellations on nightshots, because of all the stars which you can’t see by eyes. But luckily there is a thin cloud which gives the brighter stars a glow and you can recognize the wagen.
I took this image by 8 shots for noise reduction, but I used for the sky part only one image for clearer clouds, else the clouds would be more blurred.
HDR panorama of Manhattan
Posted on Januar 9th, 2014
It tooks me a lot of works to do this. If you want to make some panoramas then you shoot several images with an overlapping range and stich it together with a panorama software. And if you want it more complex, then you shoot a bracket series for each image. Make an HDR of each series and stich it together.
But my HDR workflow ist different. Because after I used an HDR software I’m manually fix all the ugly parts with pieces from the original images. But hell, the stiching software are made every panorama different, they are no more congruent. So I have first to make 3 hdr images with manual corrections and stich it together at the end. But then you’ll have no more clean intersections. It was a bunch of work and I’m not really happy with the finish… btw. watch it in FULL resolution!
The stave church of Heddal
Posted on Januar 8th, 2014
This is one of the oldest still existing stave church in norway. It was probably built in the 13. century, there is no exactly date when it was built. Of the 750 documented stave churches existing in the medieval are only 28 left until now. These fully wooden buildings constructions are an interpretation of the viking ship constructions and not a copy of other european stone churches.
I used a 5 image bracket series three times for this picture, to eliminate the moving people inside.
Weinheim at sunset
Posted on Januar 7th, 2014
One year ago, me and my wife were invited to a wedding in the beautiful small town, called Weinheim near Frankfurt in Germany. Of course I was photographing this event :). At the day before, after our arrival, I saw this nice alley with the restaurant and I couldn’t resist to take a photo of it. The sun was allready deep in the sky and send her colorful light to this scenery.
I took a bracked series of 3 images with 2EV steps, for this hdr shot.
Deep in the sky with the Pleiades
Posted on Januar 6th, 2014
The last time, when I was going to get some deepsky images with my Astrotrac, I turned my lens to the Pleiades. You can see this star cluster by your eyes in the constellation of the bull. The Messier object 45 is 380 light years away from Earth.
I took this image by 6 shots of 110s at f/5.6 with ISO 3200 on 400mm FF, no telescope. For the noise cancellation I used Fitswork as stacking software. And next time, I will also take some darks to eliminate the static noise.
Exploring night shooting spot
Posted on Januar 5th, 2014
It’s allready two years ago as we had the idea of shooting some starscapes in the alps. It should go nearly three weeks until we had some images with stars from this location at Tschappina, but step by step.
The temperature on this image was below -20°C and I forgott my wind jacket at home. I used 4 layers of sweater, luckily there was no wind. I shoot this image right after the sun was down but to late to see the moon rising over the mountains.
Because it was so damn cold, we drove back to the valley, eating something and getting a jacket for the foolish photographer. We want to come back, when it’s dark enough to get this exciting sceenery at night. Well, as you can see the weather was the best you can get, at this moment, but after we came back, the fog was cover all what you can see. We walked two hours up to the peak, but the fog was getting thicker and thicker. So we had to go back, teeth grinding, without any nightshots, only with cold hands.
