Rehearsal for Elijah

On October 6 and 7 the  associated choirs of St. Lantpert in Freising are performing Elijah by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Some pictures from the latest rehearsal:

The Israelites watch Elijah compete with the priests of Baal

The prophets of Baal call to their god

Singing is fun!

More information about the performance is available here and more pictures are here.

Thoughts on the Craft of being an Artist

Kirk Tuck of wrote two very interesting blog posts. The first is about art and digital photography. One sentence really stuck with me:

I hear a lot of people talk about how much better their work is with digital cameras and workflows but I personally don't see this trend reflected in art.  The images that art culture still talks about are mostly done on film. 

The second post is about the changing/changed paradigm of camera use and the fact that most of us churn through our equipment instead of using it for many years.

We’re moving from a craft mentality which demanded a long and detailed mastery of all areas of a discipline into a post-craft world where the latest apps and styles take cultural precedence over perfectionism.

Alain Briot in "Marketing Fine Art Photography" writes at length about the fact that being an artist means constantly pushing toward the 100% perfection mark. In other words, being an artist (or a certain type of artist) is about the "craft mentality".


It takes a lot of time and effort to get from "good enough" to "perfect". If you switch equipment before you get there, you start over again. Because digital encourages switching equipment, far fewer practitioners reach perfection with their equipment than with film.

So maybe the fact that the "images that art culture still talks about are mostly done on film" is not a coincidence?

Afterthought: I am not claiming that it is necessary (or even desirable) to reach perfection to take good photographs. Striving for perfection may, however, be necessary to make Art.

Abstract Roof

I was recently passing through Munich central station when I noticed the play of sunlight coming in low contrasted against the clear blue sky. With the deep shadows in the roof, this gives an almost surreal image.

Abstract Roof

3 Musketeers online

A gallery of pictures from the performance of "3 Musketeers" in the Luitpoldhalle in Freising on October 28. and 29. Oktober are now online.

Here are some samples:

Milady de Winter in "Men"

Athos sings "Crystal Angel"

The choir can dance!

All for One

Using Canon WFT-E1 with Mac OS X 10.7

I've written a post about how to set up Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) for use with the WFT-E1 (or later). As it is quite technical, I've placed it in Random Problem (solved) blog:

http://randomproblem.blogspot.com/2011/11/using-canon-wft-e1-with-mac-os-x-107.html

Enjoy!

(Another) Queen Anna

Queen Anna, too, is cast twice. Like in Joseph last year, there is no first and second ensemble, but two of equal calibre (internally, they are "1" and "A"). That is too complicated for me, so I'll just introduce the queen:

Queen Anna in the musical '3 Musketeers'.

The date of the performance in Freising is rapidly approaching. For some of the performances there aren't all that many tickets left. It would pay off to get some before it is too late.

Louis XIII

König Louis XIII in the musical "3 Musketeers" is a weak and easily to manipulate ruler. He does not know that his wife, Queen Anna, is having an affair. This gives the scheming cardinal an opening for an intrigue. Luckily, his loyal musketeers rush to aid him ...

König Louis XIII in the musical "3 Musketiere"

If you want, you have the opportunity to see the cast and the performance live in October. Check it out!

Queen Anna

Queen Anna in the musical "3 Musketeers" is one of the central figure around which the intrigue the cardinal schemes revolves. The three (four, really) musketeers rush to aid their queen and are thus involved in the power struggle.

Queen Anna in the musical '3 Musketeers'.

d'Artagnan

What would the Three Musketeers be without the young hero d'Artagnan?

In the Freising production d'Artagnan is cast twice in order to cover all six performances.

d'Artagnan ...

... and d'Artagnan

It is fascinating to watch how two actors interpret the same role differently. This a matter of "better" or "worse" but rather of personality and artistic freedom. It also makes the two cast different enough to warrant watching them both - I count myself fortunate to be in a position that allows me to do so.

Constance

At the end of October, the Musical "3 Musketeers" will be performed in Freising. One of the main roles is Constance, Queen Annas handmaiden and d'Artagnans lover.

Constance aus "Die 3 Musketiere"

The story of the 3 Musketeers is set in 17. century France. That is why Constance is lit with a soft, diffuse light, as if the light was falling through a diffuse window. This style (Chiaroscuro) reminds me immediately of the great painters Rembrandt and Vermeer and carries me to the past.

Pauline with Felix and other Fair Folk

My entry for the Strobist Boot Camp (BC3) assignment #1:

Pauline with Felix and other Fair Folk

When I read the assignment, Pauline Hermann was the first person that came to mind. I knew that I wanted to do a picture of her because I admire the work she does in my community.

Pauline Hermann is a native Freising artist specializing in the various fairy creatures (the Fair Folk) of the area. She initially started to create the fairies her grandfather told her stories about when she was a child. When she ran out of space, she converted a room of her grandfathers old house to fairy living space. With time, the house has filled up room by room ...

During long walks in nature, the fairies seem to find Pauline. She then offers them a home in the house so people may become re-acquainted with the enchanted fairy world and the special ways of its denizens. Pauline believes that it is important in this very rational age for children and adults alike to elope to a magic realm every once in a while in order to stay connected with the creative and imaginative powers that are inherent within all of us.

I had planned to spend an hour on the entire shoot, but I overran the time by over 100% ... My initial plan was to light the background and throw just a tight spot of light on her face. But that did not work out, I needed more separation from the background. So I set up the hairlight (which I don't usually use) and over an hour was gone by the time that looked right.

Then Pauline sat for me and we chatted and I shot away another hour. Finally, the doorbell rang and we had to stop. I can only thank Pauline for being so patient - I hope she had as good a time as I did and is just as pleased with the results!

Lunar Eclipse over the Munich Airport

A total lunar eclipse was visible over Germany tonight. After an hour spent waiting anxiously, the clouds did finally clear and revealed the red moon:

Airport Eclipse

Learning to Swim

My son is learning to swim and consequently I am regularly spending time at the pool. I recently took a camera along.

Swimming Lesson

Stefan Schoberth of www.kinderschwimmen.de is watching a student who is quite low in the water ...

Saved!

... until he reaches solid "ground".

I like how closely Stefan pays attention to the children, creating a safe environment for them to experience water on their own terms. It seems that it's not just the children who are having a great time!

Swimming Instructor Stefan

A word of advice: because a lot of intense sunlight passes through the giant windows the air temperature can easily reach close to 40°C (104°F) with high humidity. Cold metal or glas immediately collects a film of condensation. On the one hand this can quickly damage the electronics, on the other hand it is not really possible to take a picture through a fogged lens.

In order to avoid this, the camera and lens should have enough time to acclimatize and reach the ambient temperature. This is best done in an airtight plastic bag. I have had good results using Ziploc bags, such as Ziploc Double Zipper Gallon Storage Bags. Pick a size suitable for your camera. If you do not get the double-zipper bag, you can use two bags, one inside the other, to ensure that the content is really kept dry.

Uncurling Nascent Fern Spiral

With seemingly nothing better to do than to crawl around on my belly wrangling a tripod with a camera, I found the this little baby fern:

Fern Spiral

I find the hairy stem of the fern quite lovely and I really like the way the fern spiral repeats itself in the background.

Tech Tip: Soving the need to Authenticate a "Print Operator" to Change Printer Settings on Mac OS X 10.6

On Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) a non-administrator user can not change all settings of the installed printers. This is really annoying when a printer error causes the print queue to go on hold: the user can not resume printing when the problem has been solved. Instead, a dialog pops up asking for the user name and password of a member of the "Print Operators" group. Usually, that means a system administrator has to manually enter the credentials before the user can resume working.

The problem is caused by the fact that only members of the group "Print Operators" are allowed to control the printer. Normal users (i.e. members of the group "Staff") are not automatically added to the group "Print Operators". This makes sense in an environment where you don't want Joe Public messing with printer settings. It makes less sense in a lab or production environment where the staff can be trusted with the printers.

Fortunately, I found a simple solution here:

In Terminal.app, type the following:

dseditgroup -o edit -u ADMINUSER -p -a USER -t user _lpadmin

where ADMINUSER is the user name of an administrator and USER is the user name you want controlling the printer.

You will be asked for the password of ADMINUSER and then USER is added to the "_lpadmin" group, solving the problem permanently.


CAUTION
A word of advice to the wise: I do not know if adding a user to the group "_lpadmin" has any side effects. The users of the machines I administer are considered trustworthy. The only reason they do not have administrative privileges is to protect the machines from unintended damage. So giving limited administrative privileges is not a problem. This may be different in your environment.
Consider the implications carefully before making changes!


Background Information
It appears that the problems observed are not uniform: some machines always show the problem, some not at all, and some only for some users.

It looks like Apple changed the defaults some time during the life-cycle of Mac OS X 10.5 (I have been unable to ascertain when exactly). Users created before the change were all members of "_lpadmin", users created later are not members.

The best solution would be to tell CUPS (the printing system used in Mac OS X) to allow members of the group "Staff" to control the printer. To do so, the file /etc/cups/cupsd.conf section


    AuthType Default
    Require user @AUTHKEY(system.print.operator) @admin @lpadmin
    Order deny,allow

needs to be changed to something like


    AuthType Default
    Require user @AUTHKEY(system.print.operator) @admin @lpadmin @staff
    Order deny,allow

I did not try this myself. If you do, you may find cupsd.conf documentation useful. I would appreciate a comment telling about your experiences. Good luck!

Common Wood-Sorrel Blossom

Under a hedge in our garden, a small colony of common wood-sorrel is doing quite well. Because of the warm weather, the wood-sorrel is now in bloom - an opportunity I did not want to miss!

It is shady under the hedge and when a ray of light penetrates through to the wood-sorrel blossoms, the blossoms light up like magic:

Common Wood-Sorrel Blossom

Cherry Plum Blossoms

All the trees are braking out in blossoms, including my favorite cherry plum. It's a prunus cerasifera 'Nigra' (as far as I can tell) which means that instead of green leaves it grows red-brown leaves which get darker with time until they turn almost black in late summer. You can see some of the young leaves if you look closely.

Cherry Plum Blossoms

I took this picture during a lunch break, so the light was a bit harder than would have liked. But I adore its color and the light, springy (pun intended) feel of the image.

Siberian Squill

Spring has really hit the ground running here, it was over 20°C this weekend! So nature is now extremely busy and all the plant are growing like crazy. Especially the flowers are competing for the attentions of the first bees and bumblebees.

I'm quite taken with the following little blue blossoms that cover the lawn like a sea of blue:

Siberian Squill

I'm fairly sure that it is the siberian squill (scilla siberica), but it could also be the Scilla bifolia. Who am I to say? Maybe a reader is more knowledgeable on the subject?

If I allow myself to dream a little while looking at the picture above, it takes just a little bit of imagination for me to see tiny fairy-creatures dancing about, celebrating their joy in the golden rays of the warm sun ... yes, a hopeless romantic in spring, our author. ;-)

Carved Praying Monk

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the Buxheim Charterhouse formerly of the Carthusians. The church St. Anna, which is part of the complex, contains absolutely wonderful baroque choir stalls, carved from 1687 to 1691 by Ignaz Waibl. Apparently he carved all of the figures himself, which is quite a feat seeing how much work he had to do and how well he did the work

Here is a sample of his work:

Carved Praying Monk

As an ironic footnote, despite all of Waibl's talent, he died impoverished, receiving support from the Carthusians. I do not know if he actively tried to get work elsewhere or if he was content to live a simple life in Buxheim. But it certainly did not help that, even though he clearly was one of the most gifted wood carvers of his time, no-one ever got to see his work because the Carthusians never let outsiders into the charterhouse.

Freysing Larks in Concert

I was lucky to be able to attend a concert by the gospel choir Freysing Larks recently. The choir finished a weekend of musical workshops and a small concert tour with a concert at home in a packed house (well, church, actually). I was thrilled and moved by the music!

Freysing Larks in Concert

Having a seat in the front row, I couldn't resist taking a few pictures. I was fascinated by the observation that the singers not only sang the same note in any given moment, but they would often have exactly the same expression while doing so.