Work and Play |
Jul 28th 2007 |
The past ten days in Ha Noi have been rich in experience with me aimlessly wandering the bustling city streets in search of a functioning Internet junction, then walking the same tracks between my guesthouse and faithful wifi café - translating hard, absorbing the Ha Noi energy -, and finally treating myself to a total pampering at a top-class massage parlor near the lake.
The following story is about my work as a translator in the most bizarre of circumstances, and about something else. Go to: Work and Play
This anecdote has been revised for reasons of discretion and clarificataion. |
| Wash and cut at the local hairdresser, Ha Noi back-back streets |
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Leaving for Vietnam |
Jul 18th 2007 |
| In a world often perceived as chaotic and mundane it is sometimes hard to see the signs. Sometimes a moment of clarity comes shining through. Travel with a heart that is light, love the gift that is life. |
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I'm off to Vietnam. Landing in Ha Noi in the north, checking into a guesthouse somewhere, finishing up some translation work before setting off on an epic 2000 km journey south to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Then it's on to Cambodia and eventually back to Thailand. Passport's visa'd up, I have a very basic understanding of what to expect (in Ha Noi!) and am inclined to feel my way from place to place, traveling light, pushing the comfort zone, documenting the experience.
Feelings are mixed. I'm a little tense in the lower back but know the experience will be grand. This morning at 6:30am I was touched by an image left off my my balcony - a mindless reaction and it was caught with the aperture set to f/1.4!
Miracles happen... |
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Holy Heart Space |
Jul 13th 2007 |
Gnarly roots, twirly twigs, curlicue, rooted in heartening browns and deep, verdant greens, splashed with pink, dotted with yellow, traced with swirls of blue and purple. Light! Beaming through the canopy high above the towering teaks, descending, stroking branches, revealing brushwood, summoning texture and detail: ancient brickwork, stone faces; abandoned, overgrown, forgotten... and long reclaimed.
Enter not without invitation, and tread lightly when invited. This is holy territory. Home of the gnome in the hole, realm of the pixie folk.
A space where hearts can flap their wings.
Go to: Holy Heart Space for high-contrast black & white. |
| Camera: |
D-LUX2 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
6.3mm (28mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/25sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/2.8 |
| ISO: |
80 |
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| Camera: |
D-LUX2 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
6.7mm (37mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/25sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/2.8 |
| ISO: |
80 |
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| Camera: |
D-LUX2 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
6.3mm (28mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/25sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/2.8 |
| ISO: |
80 |
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| Camera: |
D-LUX2 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
7.5mm (41mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/25sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/3.2 |
| ISO: |
80 |
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| Camera: |
D-LUX2 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
19.2mm (106mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/250sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/4.5 |
| ISO: |
80 |
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| Camera: |
D-LUX2 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
25.2mm (140mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/400sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/5.6 |
| ISO: |
80 |
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| Camera: |
D-LUX2 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
6.3mm (35mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/400sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/5.6 |
| ISO: |
80 |
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Through the photograph |
Jul 9th 2007 |
| Early morning in Vang Vieng. What's in it for today? |
| ... a dog digging for a mouse? |
| ... or perhaps a little room for imagination? |
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In order to grow as a photographer it seems important to make mistakes from time to time and to learn from them.
One early morning, in the village of Vang Vieng in northern Laos, I went for a walk with a camera and a tripod, following a path leading across an old bridge, through a neighbourhood and out the back toward the rugged mountainscape. There, I encountered a dog. With all my compositional ability and mindfulness I wasn't able to make the scene look interesting. A little unsatisfactory.
A few weeks later I reassessed the images from Vang Vieng when my attention was drawn to a photo I had previously written off as a mistake - it now had a mesmerizing effect on me. Click through the photographs. |
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Live Earth |
Jul 7th 2007 |
Please visit Live Earth and discover what is currently being done in the race against global warming. Watch live concerts from Shanghai, New York, Hamburg and more and tune in to the change which is happening on the seventh of the seventh of the seventh - always one step ahead of the sixth of the sixth of the sixth!
Attached: two pics from today's city strolling. |
| A rare sign of hope: flowing traffic in Bangkok! |
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| A blind man plays the flute with a microphone stringed to his chin. |
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Fun with (bed-)panning |
Jul 2nd 2007 |
| Panning requires a relatively slow shutter speed depending on the speed of the object and the effect which you want to achieve. In broad daylight the condition of a slow speed might require you to stop right down as far as f/22. For night shots you could perhaps settle on f/5.6 if the ISO value is pushed high enough. This man was zooming along at quite a pace. A 90 sec exposure and more or less accurate panning ensured a sharp subject (face) and a motion-blurred background. |
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| Sit in a cab and pan along with interesting motifs. While a tiny aperture will ensure great depth of field there are times when it is hard to predict where exactly the focus will end up - this is part of the panning charm. |
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| Perching on the curb watching the tuk-tuks whiz past... |
| ... tuk-tuks loaded with school girls. |
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| Panning-enhanced action shot in low artificial light. |
| Kicking it under the bridge. Panning along with the soccer ball. |
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Hello friends,
Many apologies for the spam in the guestbook and comment boxes. My honourable brother, webmaster of bjorntoday, is currently ill in China with limited web access and a laptop that refuses to boot, and I myself have been bedridden up until yesterday morning with fever, deliria and little idea of who or where I was. A little scary but not a bad experience. Anyhoo, a solution to the spam's abrewing. For now we're just going to have to ride it out.
Big plans for late July: crude expedition across the full length of Vietnam and back to Thailand via Cambodia. There will be lots of walking, local transporting and photographing. Please stay tuned for updates.
Meanwhile, Go to: Motion Panning for a next batch of images on one of my favourite photo techniques. Find more pictures and captions attached. Thank you and God bless. |
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Bird Views |
Jun 27th 2007 |
Many photographers today swear by the picture quality of simple point-and-shoot cameras. Technology has come a long way and you have to wonder sometimes how necessary - or let's say, rational - an expensive camera set-up even is.
But cameras differ greatly in the way that they deal with light, focus and depth, not to mention color, contrast and resolution - and not to mention handling, manufacturing and other, perhaps more emotional aspects. When in doubt, picture quality will differ at pixel level and thus when printed big.
This isn't an essay on image quality, though. Just an excuse to upload a few bird pictures and detail views. More to come soon... enjoy! |
| The Summilux M 50 mm f/1.4 Asph set to f/1.4 for supreme captures. Click thumbnail for 100% detail view. |
| The result can be blinding. |
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| This Hornbill had flown in to feed on some bananas offered by the locals of the Coral Island in Phuket. I approached it slowly with the Digilux 3, and this was as close as I could get before it decided to take off. The thumbnail reveals a little detail. |
| Camera: |
DIGILUX 3 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
50mm |
| Exposure Time: |
1/640sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/3.5 |
| ISO: |
100 |
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Rainbow Lorikeet - Byron Bay, Australia || meta|| caption
| Recommendation for V-Lux 1 users and low light: before increasing the ISO value try aperture priority (A) and stopping down - this is done with your right index finger on the dial below the exposure button and will give you faster shutter speeds and help avoid camera shake - in this case the aperture was already wide open and maybe the result would have benefited from a slightly faster ISO setting. |
| Not the best representation due to low light and subtle camera shake. |
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| Maybe a little out of context but fascinating nonetheless. A flock of seagulls hovering in an air current off the fish-gutting docks of Essaouira, southern Morocco, taken several years ago with the D-Lux 1 (metadata not available). |
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My Little Traffic Island |
Jun 24th 2007 |
| Camera: |
M8 Digital Camera (Leica Camera AG) |
| Lens: |
Tri-Elmar-M 16-18-21 mm f/4 ASPH. |
| Focal Length: |
18mm (24mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
7/10sec. |
| Aperture: |
Auto aperture value transmission not possible |
| ISO: |
160 |
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Graffiti is usually done in the dark between late night and very early morning, when the city is asleep. Before the act, much of the night is spent socially, watching TV, playing Playstation, smoking reefa or roughing up sketches in preparation for the crime which is about to be committed. As the time for action approaches the excitement increases. A location will have been mapped out in advance, and so will any issues of security or risk. Attack strategies are ingenious and highly elaborate. For decades there's been a full-blown battle going on between cunning graffiti crews and specialist anti graffiti factions. At least, so I hear.
The other night I felt as I imagine a graffiti artist must feel before heading out into the neon-lit cityscape of Bangkok; alone in my studio apartment, in silent contemplation, moving around lenses and camera bodies, fastening belts, buckles and laces, listening to my breathing and beefing up the courage before catching a cab to Lat Prao to some forsaken traffic islands floating below two-storied concrete bridges and massive steel-reinforced carriers - a scene which had strangely captured my interest several weeks ago. Go to: My Little Traffic Island for more pollution. |
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Unwanted Posterisation |
Jun 20th 2007 |
Today's budget flat screens are catered to office work, DVD playback and video gaming. Consequently, our inkjet photos may deviate from what we see on our screens; printouts may look darker, brighter, duller, richer, tinged - you never really know what it will be unless the monitor is calibrated. LFI Magazine takes a look at solutions for everyday people. You can also check out epaperpress for a quick monitor test and some basic trivia.
Whether calibrated out not, our screens may suffer yet another effect: abrupt leaps in tone - patchiness or posterisation -, particularly in areas with nuanced color gradations. However, these are generally due to the monitor's limited capacity to reproduce color and will rarely show in the print.
The sample images show rich gradients. How does your screen deal with that? |
| Left your tripod at home? Try increasing the ISO level a little - the Kodak sensor run at ISO 640 shows very little noise. Any potential noise, like posterisation, is generally less evident in the print than it is on the screen. |
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| Camera: |
M8 Digital Camera (Leica Camera AG) |
| Lens: |
Elmarit-M 28 mm f/2.8 ASPH. |
| Focal Length: |
28mm (38mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/2sec. |
| Aperture: |
Auto aperture value transmission not possible |
| ISO: |
160 |
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| Camera: |
M8 Digital Camera (Leica Camera AG) |
| Lens: |
Elmarit-M 28 mm f/2.8 ASPH. |
| Focal Length: |
28mm (38mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
12sec. |
| Aperture: |
Auto aperture value transmission not possible |
| ISO: |
160 |
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| My laptop screen shows a very subtle break in gradation where the cloud above the island should be fading smoothly into the pink haze on the left. This effect doesn't show in print. |
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New Type in Picture All - Big Pictures |
Jun 12th 2007 |
| Camera: |
D-LUX2 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
25.2mm (140mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/400sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/4.9 |
| ISO: |
80 |
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| Camera: |
D-LUX2 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
11.6mm (52mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/100sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/3.6 |
| ISO: |
80 |
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Picture All now has a space for higher-resolution photographs, starting up with a few D-Lux 2 macros from Thailand and Australia. This section is always expanding so be sure to check back for more.
Go to: Big Pictures or go to Picture All (/pull-down tab/type/Big Pictures) for higher-res pictures.
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