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

Airport Morning

Airports, to me at least, tend to be very technical looking. There is nothing wrong with this, I can find incredible beauty in these man-made constructs.

But I was delighted when I saw this sunrise over the airport one morning:

Airport Morning

I love the luminous quality of the sky and the way the dramatic clouds are making way for the blue sky (or is it the other way around?). The ground mist softens up the shapes of buildings, airplanes, and other artifacts of man just enough to make it clear that everything is part of nature, whether we realize it or not.

Bleeding Heart Flowers

The windflowers in the last post are wilting away, unfortunately before I had a chance to re-visit them. Instead, the bleeding heart flowers are in full bloom - such is the cycle of life.

The bleeding heart, also known as Venus's car, Dutchman's trousers, lyre flower or by their latin name lamprocapnos spectabilis is originally from Korea and north and western China, but it seems to do very well in almost any temperate climate, so it is a very popular garden plant.

We simply let it grow and cut the wilted stalks short in the fall and they come back year after year.



In order to take the photo, I mounted the camera on a tripod and used an insane amount of extension (over 50 mm for a 70-200 mm lens). Despite an aperture of f/16, the depth of field is extremely shallow, about 2-3 mm in my estimate. That, combined with the light wind that moves the flowers like swings on a playground, made it challenging to get sharp images.

What really amazes me is how the lower white parts of the blossoms are textured. I had never noticed this with the real flowers before taking these pictures. Which just goes to show how photography can expand your awareness of the world. :-)

White Windflowers

The weather has finally turned sunny and warm, spring is definitely here. In fact, it's almost warm enough to be early summer.

These beautiful white flowers grow in my garden under a rose bush. They are windflowers, also known as wood anemone, windflower, (European) thimbleweed, smell fox, or by their latin name anemone nemorosa.



The flower is quite small (about 2 cm across), so I had to get very close using an extension ring between the lens and the camera. A tripod was required, of course. ;-)

Ice Crystal Colors I

It is currently rather cold and it snows quite a bit in Bavaria. On Sunday the sky was a clear blue and the sunlight was crisp and clean, lighting these ice crystals beautifully:

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Ice Crystal Colors I"][/caption]

Can you guess what the background is?

Tracks in the Snow

Winter has arrived here in Germany and it is getting cold and snowy. On an outing I found a frozen pond with crisp, fresh snow on the frozen surface which an animal, probably a dog, had explored.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Tracks in the Snow"][/caption]

I like the way the sunlight plays on the white surface with the shadows appearing blue, not black, because of the ice.

Surfer riding the Waves

Apparently the Eisbach in München is a hot place to ride the waves on a surfboard. As you can see from the photo below, it is not very wide (only a few meters) and there is quite a crowd queued up on hot summer days waiting their turn. There are many, many more spectators milling about, so if you are a beginner, you might want to choose someplace more private to fall in. :-)

This surfer did quite well, staying on the board for a long time while riding back and forth as the waves took the board:

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Surfer riding the waves."] [/caption]

I like the stark contrast between the foamy white spray, the rich green of the water, and the dark silhouette of the surfer. Look at how the line formed by the torso and head is mirrored in the lines of the waves in the background.

To me this picture shows the dynamic, fluid unity that the surfer needs to achieve with the water in order to stay on the board.

Black and Orange Butterfly

I saw this unidentified black, orange, and off-white butterfly at the same show as the last post:

Black, orange, and white butterfly on a green leaf.

The slight motion blur of the wings and antennae make the butterfly come alive for me.

This image, like the last, was taken in available light at ISO 400, 1/80s, f/2.8.

Painted Lady on Purple Lilac

While out walking I spotted this Small Tortoiseshell Painted Lady butterfly sitting on a purple lilac:

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Painted Lady butterfly sitting on a purple lilac."] [/caption]

For some reason, lilacs seems to drive butterflies in general and these in particular into an ecstatic frenzy: the butterflies come from all over, congregate on the blossoms, and flutter about as if delirious with pleasure. I guess the nectar from the blossoms is really, really tasty.

Photographically speaking, the image was quite a challenge to obtain: I was carrying only a Canon G9 at the time, so I had to get quite close to the butterfly to be able to photograph it. And even though the butterfly was having a really good meal, it clearly did not want to become a meal for someone else - so it was moving about at a brisk pace and did not allow me to get very close at all.

I cranked out the zoom all the way and held the camera at arms length, which at least allowed me to get close enough to get a significant part of the frame to show butterfly, not background.

The problems did not end here: when cranked out fully, the G9 is at f4.8 and the late afternoon light was not bright enough to allow a short enough exposure to freeze the butterflies motion at ISO 80, which is the lowest ISO the G9 will allow. (I usually use ISO 80 to reduce noise to the minimum.) In this case, I decided that noise would be less of a problem than motion blur and set the ISO to 200 to allow a 1/320s exposure.

The result is adequately sharp. If you look very closely, you can tell that sharpness begins to drop off near the butterfly head. Just a little bit softer and I would have tossed the image - I guess that having a small sensor (and therefore great depth of field) was good in this case.

Update 06-MAY-2010: Reader J Danson kindly pointed out that this is not a Small Tortoiseshell but rather a Painted Lady. He's right, so I've fixed the posting but have left the URL intact.