Digital Life and Photography
Photokina 2010
Oct 18th
Ok, a little belated – but better late than never – my blog post about the Photokina 2010 in Cologne. I’m very lucky, as I live only about 70km away from Cologne and I can get there for free, because of my students’ public transport ticket that I can use all over North Rhine-Westphalia. In addition to all that, my girlfriend gave me the ticket as a birthday present so I even didn’t have to pay that. I didn’t want to go alone and my girlfriend is not exactly interested in photography, so I asked a good friend of mine if he wanted to come along. He had been there two years ago and had some valuable tips, so we decided to pack light and go on Thursday instead of Saturday. He also brought his girlfriend so we were a nice group of three.
We took an early train that arrived exactly at 10am when the Photokina opened. There was a huge crowd of people waiting at the south entrance to the exhibition halls, but we were told by staff that we could take a shuttle bus to another entrance to avoid two hours of waiting. We happily accepted the offer and More >
Hamburg
Sep 30th
I have some catching up to do! I was in Hamburg in the middle of August, a marvelous city. I’ve always liked water, cities with a river or at the sea, but Hamburg has so many little and broad waterways all around the city that it is a pure delight to walk through it.
Mast of the 'Rickmer Rickmers'
If you are pondering where to go next, consider Hamburg. This picture was taken on the ‘Rickmer Rickmers’ a sailing ship that is now a floating museum. It was the first day of our stay and the weather was crazy. It rained cats and dogs when we had to pull the luggage from the bus to the hotel, but as you can see, it was very nice in the evening and a perfect start for the holiday. On the later days the weather was cloudy, sunny and not too warm. Hamburg has lots of great sites, so we were busy all day.
Unfortunately I didn’t have the opportunity to do some night photography, which would have been awesome, as there are certainly great places for that. The construction of the new so called ‘Hafen City’ is underway and when it will be finished in More >
Linus
Aug 8th
Baby photography has been a no-no for me for a long time. I’ve seen lots of baby photos on Flickr which are much too soft, too dreamy and simply to cheesy for my taste. Since I am an uncle myself this attitude had to change when my sister and my brother-in-law wanted me to take some photos of their son. Not too eager to do this, I asked myself what kind of photos I would take. Overcoming one’s personal taste for the sake of taking photos that the “clients” like can be hard, but I think there’s a way to make compromises. The photo you see on the top of this post is one of the pictures that do fit my personal taste, I desaturated the colours and added more contrast to make the picture look less soft. The picture was taken right after his christening (hence the concerned look) without much consideration, but turned out quite well. At first I was not sure about it, especially the post-processing, but now I think it is one of the best pictures of him I have taken so far.
However, the shot on the right is a more typical photo, but More >
The Balcony
Jun 22nd
“The Balcony” on Flickr Surprisingly, even my iPhone 3GS is capable of producing better than average pictures. People use to say that camera phones are the death of serious photography, but I think that they are a great way of capturing things the very moment you see them. No one except the most serious photographers carries his whole equipment around all the time, but the camera phone is almost there, the moment you need it.I processed this image using Camera+ [iTunes link], which is an awesome app for taking and post-processing photos. The automatic enhancements for brightness and colors work great and the predefined effects are versatile and look very good. No need to say that you can upload your photos from the app directly to flickr or facebook.
The new iPhone is here
Jun 7th
An exciting day for everyone interested in the latest tech/smartphone news. Again, Apple started the WWDC in San Francisco with a presentation held by Steve Jobs, famous for his Reality Distortion Field, words like “awesome”, “amazing” and “gorgeous” and of course “One more thing”. And again, lots of rumors and expectations went with the announcement. What he delivered seems to be the biggest improvements since the introduction of the iPhone 3G in 2008.
New iPhone 4
Of course everyone has seen it before. At least everyone who doesn’t live back in the woods without internet and TV, as the news of the presumably lost iPhone 4 prototype spread even to the mainstream-media. It’s amazing that never before a news story, that would usually be interesting to only the always connected, the ones who cannot be without the latest gadget, has made it that far. In the past few years the iPhone has changed society’s attitute towards little black things that let you do anything at any time.
