The “Color Photography” course with Harald Mante was a lot of fun. The group consisted of 13 participants with very different photographic backgrounds and artistic aspirations, and the equipment ranged from a film camera (Harald) to a compact camera to a professional dSLR. The length of photographic experience spanned from a couple of months up to twenty years.
Chrome, black, chrome, orange, some more chrome, lots of black, then chrome again… Motorcycles in all directions, immaculately clean, neatly parked, for as long as the eye can see. Lots of people dressed in black leather and wearing dark sunglasses, men with long hair, women in tight corsets. The aura of the American wild west hangs in the air somewhat, but “be cool” is the definitely the motto of the day.
The polished chrome and the colorful reflections fascinated me most, I guess…
Today is the last day of 2009 and I’m immensely proud at myself — I’ve finished the “Best of 2009″ portfolio on time! Best wishes for 2010 and hope you enjoy the images.
PS: I also finally converted all old galleries from the old technology (SimpleViewer) to the new one (mootools and SimpleBox). Now all galleries have the same look-and-feel, and I like them much better this way.
I’ve just created a new portfolio from my images from Marseille, France. The trip took place in August of 2007, so the images have been ripening for quite a while now, but hey — better late than never!
Marseille is a fascinating city with lots of photo opportunities, so I’d like to visit again and spend more than two days of looking around.
Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the images!
Trying to select the 16 best images among the 600 or so that survived my first selection rounds was not an easy job! I now have about 1500 images from India to choose from, and it’s getting very difficult to stay objective. But during the last days I got focused and came up with the following portfolio of India 2009 images.
You might remember that I recently visited Milan for a second time and took some colorful (and some not so colorful) shots. Today I had some free time, so I sorted and edited the new images and I also expanded the Milan portfolio which I started in 2007.
Oh, and by the way, happy second birthday to this blog! 
I can’t seem to get around to it. It’s partly due to the lack of time, but I also don’t seem able to build a connection to the images. I keep looking through, giving stars, then taking them away, grouping the images by place, then by subject, then by emotion…
There are a few good images there no doubt, but it will take me a while to make sense of them and show them here. Please be patient…
Photographically 2007 was my best year ever. My first trip to India, first framed prints, the explorations of pavement cracks, construction sites and short trips to several European cities led me to produce quite a few excellent images. So it was quite natural to create a Best of 2007 photo gallery.
2008, on the other hand, was full of stress and I was rarely in a creative mood. I did manage a handful of good images, but 11 of the 12 images below are from my second trip to India. In a way I feel like 2008 does not deserve a best-of gallery, but in 2007 I vowed to keep the best-of-the-year project going for a long time, so here is my second installment.
I love the way water glasses break up light into highlights and shadows. I’ve already photographed a few interesting glasses, and I’m always on the lookout for other ones. Recently I noticed an interesting pattern that a glass was making when filled with the appropriate amount of water, but unfortunately I was in a restaurant and didn’t have a camera with me.
My first thought was that it would be inappropriate to go back there with the camera, but I also hated missing the opportunity, so there I was yesterday — having breakfast at the same place with my camera bag and tripod resting next to me. Cause for the interesting reflexions are multiple lights on the ceiling, so I could not easily repeat the shot anywhere else.
Anyhow, after finishing my breakfast I quietly pulled out a larger piece of white paper as background, centered the glass, filled it with water and took out the camera. It was too dark for shooting hand-held, so I set up the tripod. I did everything while sitting at the table, with the tripod between the table and my chair. I didn’t think that anyone even noticed what I was doing, and I was done in a couple of minutes. As I was leaving a waitress asked me if I’d gotten nice pictures, so apparently someone was watching. But she was very nice about it and might even get a small print of the following image.
The fact that I went back for just that one image seems to show that I care about the subject more that I want to admit to myself. So maybe I should put together a small portfolio with the better images that I’ve gathered so far… In the meanwhile, take a look at this post for a few more examples.
How long till we get there?
As you can tell, …
… I’m not very optimistic.
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