New Phone but nothing worth to take pictures of

Now, would you believe it? I got myself a brand new iPhone two days ago, to get back into photography and use Instagram. But so far I haven't taken one lousy picture. When you started with Instagram, how long did it take you to post or even  comment?

Street Festival at Leipzigs "Kö" on June 1st

The "Kö" is the Könneritzstreet in Leipzig's west and there will be a street festival at the afternoon of June 1st this year. The big news:

I will take part with a stall and offering my (printed) postcard-sets, ornamental drawings and photographies there!

Exciting, eh? Well at least it is for me. And there'll be a whole lot of work during the next few weeks. I'll have to draw a lot and decide which drawings and photos to print, etc.

Post 555: Perfection and Yogi Tea

Most of us photobloggers only present the best pics we have made. I'm often wowed at the prowess of each of you. 

And I'm sure that for every pic posted there are countless misses.* When you photograph with a digital camera, getting rid of crappy pictures is really easy, photographing with an analog camera you are often stuck with the bad pics because most of the time the perfect pic is on the same piece of film as the miss.

As I'm a bit different, I have also posted some of the misses. Not so much because I wanted to show the world that it is okay to fail, but because I held the drilled in believe that my photography isn't good enough anyway. Same goes for my drawings.

Have you ever heard of Yogi Tea? They produce ayurvedic infusions.** The fun part is that on the little piece of paper at the other end of the string of every teabag, they have printed a small aphorism. Which makes it fun to play little mind games*** and it's always fun to drink some of the tea.

Now, if you have followed my blog(s) closely, you know that I'm right in the middle of a huge self changing process, growing up, coming into my own, call it what you like. Funnily enough the universe, life or the Flying Spaghetti Monster support my moving into the artistic direction. And so does Yogi Tea, whenever I'm not sure of my artistic prowess and therefore if I have any right to call myself an artist I seem to draw a teabag that says in one way or another that I should forget what happened in the past (that I believed I'm not qualified to be an artist) and to move on and look forward. See that's why I love Yogi Tea (and my little mind games).

I now know and believe that I AM A GOOD ARTIST. I SURE HAVE WHAT IT TAKES.

What means all of this for this website of mine? From now on you will find even better pictures here on this blog, mainly photographies and some drawings. There will be even better products in my shop and I will eventually take on assignments in my chosen skill fields. 
I will also get some stuff I need such as a charging cable, a logo, a good scanner, a good printer (if only I knew which one) and a Canon EOS 600D and maybe a vacuum cleaner. ;) One thing at a time.

For now I wish you a wonderful Sunday and hope you enjoy the pictures of the park around the Silver Lake in Leipzigs south.

* Even so, I often fall into the mindtrap to think that everyone else is a better photographer than I am. That every single pic of this person is a study of perfection. Even though I know that's not true.
** I recommend the Classic.
*** Last week I wasn't sure if it was right to have bought the shoes. So I "asked" my teabags and I drew "Who treads softly goes far", therefore my shoes were the right choice. XD

A walk in the park in January in Leipzig

Yes, even January can be nice. Nevertheless I prefer the summer months. In January the days are too short. Tonight I'll be back at my Yoga-class. I'm really excited about it.

Clouds over Leipzig

Good Morning. A new week has started. When you leave your home to go wherever, take a second to look at the sky. It's always changing and even if it is grey, you might find a smidge of beauty in it. Look at the sky and take a deep breath, it will probably relax you. I hope this pic relaxes you too and sets you of to a good start in the new week.

The board walk

*Sighhhhhhh* I love this picture.

Back on the track

Yesterday I've been to my first Iyengar yoga class and surprisingly I liked it (had plain Hatha yoga a few years back and I disliked it very much). So next Tuesday evening I'm back and train my poor muscles. I will do some of the stuff at home too. Because the stretching feels just too good to not do it.

Sanssouci - one of the big buildings

Though I don't remember the name of it.

Post 501 - Wolkenburgs perfect reading place

Believe it or not, but this is my 501st post on this blog. Impressive, no?

I took this picture in the castles park in Wolkenburg. This town is obviously worth a trip, when you love photography.

Have a great new week everyone.

Sunday afternoon walk with Chris

This Sunday afternoon the weather was perfect for this kind of shots. Chris and I did some really cool combined effort shots and bubbled over with ideas for many more combined effort shots. You'll see those shots on our ChrisSan Photographers Blog sooner or later.

Some of those ideas are pretty simple and easily to do, others need months of planning and preparation (clothes, venues including permission, some peoples like violin players and pianists, requisites like the violin from Grandpa, hats and gloves, etc, etc).

Believe it or not, but I started a notebook just for those photoshooting ideas, which is a novum for me, as I never really planned photoshoots. I just take a camera with me and then take a picture if something picks my eye.

222 - Sneak peek from my hat photo shoot with Chris

Yeah, I'm a big kid and not a grown up. But who is watching us there? Is it a spy? Stealing our ideas?!

Post 200 - I can't believe that I'm already here

It's not even a year since I started this blog and I'm already at post 200. This is incredible to me. Because it took me a year to get to post 200 with my Triathlon blog. And my first two blogs never got over post number 5.

For one thing I'm sure it's because I just love to share my photography. It's much more fun to take pictures when you can share them with people who have the same interest. An old friend of mine (we know each other since 8th grade) asked me on my birthday dinner 2 weeks ago, what I take all those pictures for? What do I do with all those pictures? (She even made fun of my organized archive!)
I just had shown two freshly developed films with pretty amazing pictures. Chris (the digital photographer) loved them and was totally excited about the outcome. Chris and my jaw dropped on these questions.
It seems my old friend has no concept of what a hobby means to someone. She and her husband stopped taking pictures because they would only crowd the harddrive or the room (he used to take slides a few years back).
So after I had collected my scattered brain I said that I want to get better at photography, so that I can take part in contests for the fun of it (and the possible won cameras) and that I publish them in my blog. I don't think that she grasped the whole idea of just having fun while taking the pictures, to explore the possibilities and then sharing the excitement with other photographers. (Poor girl.)

So, I'm glad that I've got all of you photographers out there, to share the fun. Thanks for coming here.

Playing with Dunes

I've been to the Nuit Blanches Photographies yesterday which are pre-events to the F/Stop International Photography Festival in Leipzig. While the event was really cool, music and a photography projection between the stilts of a restaurant next to the Karl-Heine-Channel, I was surprised about the kind of pictures shown. Maybe I have become a snob concerning photography due to my own photography and all of the lovely photo blogs out there. But a lot of those pictures were average and plain boring. Most of them were with objects in the center. Quite a few had only the goal to repel you, it seemed. Almost all of them used cold (flash) light.

There was just one series that played with exposure time (long exposure, really cool stuff). Just one picture with double exposure (which was really good). And two portrait series with fantastic lighting and different picture compositions. Oh and one really nice series with flower still lifes. Except for that...

I'll definitely send in some of my lomographies next year. There is a good chance I make the cut.

Shadows in the Golden Hour

When the sun shines, about one hour before the sunset the light turns golden and soft. I love this hour and not only because it's perfect for taking pictures, but because it makes the world feel alright and wonderful, as if good things happen everywhere.

What is your favourite time of day?

Would you believe it?

While archiving tons of films and pics I found the said Sand Canyon pictures from several years ago.

And you know what? I must've had tomatoes on my eyes (okay, german saying don't know the english expression), those pictures were perfectly fine! This goes for a lot of other old pics too.

Just wanted to let you know. *smirk*

Oh, and I made my appointments for the application pictures, I'll get them taken on my birthday in exactly one week, wohoo. I can't wait to see the results.

Tree Light

Looking at the nightsky

The building is the "Uniriese"

Leipzig at Night series - Starting now

Do I really have to tell you, how ridiculously proud I'm on this shot? It seems I have to! Because I screamed of joy when I saw this developed pic. To me it looks like a night shot of a pro. (If you don't think so, keep your mouth shut, I don't want to know.)

I took it with my Nikon F90 and used an 800 ASA film.

Different Impressions

All of you probably know The Photodiarist. I visit her blog practically everyday and learn a lot about photography from her through her pictures. She takes most of her pictures in Black and White. Her pictures are stunningly beautiful.

Today she posted a series of beach pictures and we got into a discussion over them (read it all at her blogpost). My first impression was that beach pictures with lots of people should be in color, otherwise there seems to be something missing to me. Biana from A little something something brought up the idea of giving them a vintage color theme, which made me think, that if you turn the "pure" black and white into sepia this impression of something missing would be gone. On third thought, to me it seems that this impression of something missing was brought forth by the "plain" sky, there is no structure or depth to it. Well there was obviously cloudless sky, so what should provide this structure?

In any case this inspired me to play around with a picture and iPhoto (I've got Gimp but I simply haven't found the time to learn how to use it. *blush*). Here are five versions of the same digital picture I took one evening a few weeks ago. I would love to discuss them with you, so don't hold back your thoughts.

The original, no alteration.

Turned black & white.

Turned sepia.

Faded colors.

Saturated colors.

So what do you think works and what not? What impression do you have, when you look at the sepia or the faded or ... picture? How would you do it?

PS: You find my opinion in the comments. Please read those only after you made up your mind on the pictures impressions, as to not cloud your first impression with the other readers thoughts. Thanks.

Clouds 3- Villingen 2009

Nikon F90 with Nikkor 35 - 135 mm lens, 200 ASA