I already had this image on hugoesk.de (the site no longer exists), but I converted it with Lightroom. The uploaded image (just click on the image itself, then it appears) is a 90% JPEG from the RAW image with simple post-processing using Lightsource.
Just in time for the Christmas season, one of the small Strelitzias has bloomed - actually a bit early, Jutta had expected this in two years. And due to the poor lighting conditions, the individual flowers have faded quite quickly. It's still beautiful, though.
Jutta and I have been playing around with macro photography again - Jutta has acquired a Zeiss cold light source, so there's finally enough light even for absolutely crazy magnifications. Result: the cactus mite visited again:
If you want a size comparison: the following image is a section of a fairly precise millimeter scale - the top two lines are one millimeter apart, the bottom one is on the half millimeter. The image field corresponds to that of the image above.
The slight blurriness comes from the extreme magnification ratio - about 12x magnification relative to the base area of the 10D chip - and from the optical system operated far outside its optical parameters.
The equipment used was a Canon EOS 10D, a Canon EF to Contax Y/C adapter, a Contax bellows unit, a Tokina ATX 17mm/f3.5 in retro position, and the whole thing then on a tripod and ball head (such an Arca Swiss Monoball is already something fine - the ideal ball head for macro work). Then some finesse, patience, and series shots with minimally changing distance between lens and subject.
Today I spent my lunch break with my camera and macro lens at the Botanical Garden. There are a few more photos to see at hugoesk.de. And the glorious rest on viele-bunte-bilder.de (no longer online). (And yes, my lunch breaks happen at strange times and in strange forms - at least when I work from home)
More pictures from the Stadthafen Münster can be found on one of my many (too many?) gallery pages.
In memory of the liberation of the concentration camps 60 years ago.
The first ladybug of the year. There are a few more pictures in my new photoblog (not active since 2007). By the way, it also works with WordPress, but with a few self-knitted plugins for photo management and the strip calendar (I'll put that together someday and make it downloadable). I'm already quite satisfied with the state over there. In the long run, I will probably create a mechanism that allows the photos to wander into this site here as thumbnails and then post pictures here rather rarely (at most the usual snapshots).
Why did I build something myself at all? Well, I find a number of features of Flickr quite nice, but I have a massive aversion to entrusting my content to foreign servers where I have no say in the operation or software design. Therefore, I have stolen some of the ideas from Flickr and also helped myself generously from other projects (for example, I copied the idea for the strip calendar from PixelPost) and integrated everything into WordPress. The layout was once Kubrick, but I hope it has become sufficiently different from it even for Kubrick allergics.
I had also looked at a whole range of content management systems beforehand to see how suitable they would be for something like this (you could read about the fallout from this partly here). And even toyed with the idea of doing the whole thing directly with PixelPost for a while. But the clearly superior comment features in WordPress (especially all the anti-spam techniques) eventually led me to stay with WordPress.
A few things are still on the to-do list, but in principle it is already quite usable and is therefore officially announced herewith.
On Tuesday, I spent a day in Cologne taking photos. Some of them are now online - but since I shut down the corresponding site in 2007, they are no longer available.
A very crooked dog, the tower. Somehow, you can photograph it however you want, it always looks crooked. This is because the base of the tower is an oval and the windows are not always the same on the floors. Somehow it always looks like a spiral, but they are just normal floors. Many partition walls probably don't have offices ...
The Skaters Palace is sprayed with graffiti and is a beautiful splash of color in an otherwise bleak area. If you continue from there to Agravis, you walk along a wall full of graffiti.
Here too, the colors are a wonderful contrast to the rather bleak industrial area. Even the plants in the area seem rather depressed - only the colors of the wall stand out. If you walk further to the canal and look at the Agravis silo, you will then be presented with the art.
Somehow I have the impression that the company would rather have spent the money on a decent, safe scaffolding and colors for the sprayers - the result would interest me far more than the colorful rags that were nailed to the silo ...
No idea who has settled there and for what purpose - it is a small hut made of garbage, fenced and with a small area. Everything is equipped with garbage bags and right in the bushes - normally not visible. Only through the preparations for the canal expansion did it become visible. Somehow reminds me of these beachcombers on the beach of Amrum.
Ein Reposting eines alten Bildes aus 2002 - in der Nähe von Husum. Ich spiele gerade mit meinem neuen Photo-Plugin für WordPress rum und brauchte Testmaterial.
Ich hab mir eine neue Polaroid 600 SE gekönnt. Meine alte ist ja sehr lädiert - halt vom Grabbeltisch, defekter Drahtauslöser, Macken, Dellen etc. Die neue ist wie aus dem Ei gepellt. Und es war sogar noch das 127er dabei, das mir ja bisher fehlte. Nette Optik, vor allem eine wesentlich sinnvollere Nahgrenze als beim 150er. Und das Ergebnis kann sich auch sehen lassen - ich mag einfach Polaroids. Allerdings war mein Scanner nach langer Nicht-Benutzung ziemlich verstaubt und natürlich war der Staub nicht plötzlich von ein paar mal wischen weg. Im Ergebnis waren also haufenweise Staubfädchen zu sehen. Naja, Photoshop und das Polaroid Dust&Scratch Removal Plugin haben das Bild weitestgehend gerettet. Allerdings mache ich mir die Polaroids sowieso normalerweise nicht zum Scannen, sondern fürs Fotoalbum. So richtig altmodisch, mit Pappblättern, Pergament-Deckblättern und so …
Heute Mittag war mal Gelegenheit die kleine Digiknipse spazieren zu führen. Übrigens kann man sich mit "View Image" auf dem grösseren Bild das Bild auch in Originalgrösse anzeigen lassen - bei neueren Bildern gibts die dann in 800x600.
Nicht sonderlich beeindruckend was der Winter dieses Jahr bisher so auf die Beine stellt, aber heute morgen lag tatsächlich mal etwas weisser Puderschnee auf dem Boden.
Reiherversammlung im naturbelassenen Teil der Münsteraner Aa in den Aaseewiesen. Warscheinlich zu Gast aus dem Zoo - manchmal sieht man dort auch Störche. Das Bild ist eine Ausschnittvergrösserung, daher weniger Pixel als üblich.
