I just noticed that until now I’ve pos­ted any­thing but por­traits. So let’s change that.

Today’s pic­ture is one I took in July this year, when Steffi and I spent a won­der­ful after­noon in Dub­lin. The weather was great, so we went for a stroll around the city and passed through St. Patrick’s Garden, which is right next to the St. Patrick’s Cathed­ral, the biggest church in Ire­land.

In the park, there was that old man just enjoy­ing him­self, his news­pa­per, the beau­ti­ful weather (rare enough), his grand­chil­dren speed­ing about the park, or prob­ably a mix of all that. He looked so happy and relaxed that I worked up the cour­age to go over and ask him politely if he’d mind if I pho­to­graphed him. He smiled, said he did not at all and wondered where /​how best to look. I told him “just as you did before, as if I wasn’t here”. And so he looked back at his grand­chil­dren …

The post-​processing of this pic­ture involved a lot of clean­ing up of the ground under­neath the bench (mostly using the clone-​stamp tool) and of course the b/​w con­ver­sion (giv­ing more weight to the red chan­nel, as it had most of the con­trast). Some care­ful sharpen­ing and a bit of black clip­ping (to fur­ther boost con­trast) gave the final image.

I don’t really know what you’re inter­ested in, beloved reader, but I assume you would also like to see the odd “fresh” pic­ture, not from my “back cata­logue”.

Well, here’s one I took just this morn­ing. At the break­fast table I let my mind wander. Even­tu­ally, it wandered by the fact that I hadn’t used my macro lens in a good while. So I decided to throw it onto the cam­era leave it on for the rest of the day.

Some people like Autumn (oth­ers don’t, and yet oth­ers have no other choice but to like it, since they live in it 365 days a year). Any­way, I shot a bunch of pho­tos today, involving sun­lit spider webs, the cucum­ber a col­league of mine had for lunch, and a dead tree trunk. But in the end, this lovely col­oured leaf made it up here, with its beau­ti­ful, well, leaf tex­ture, morn­ing dew, spider web leftovers and even some hair on it (???). Check out the lar­ger view of it.

This is the best (as in sharpest) shot of the 10 I took in burst mode, as I was shak­ing (it’s not too warm here at the moment) and, moreover, the leaf was dan­cing in the wind. So here’s another good (and old) tip: If your photo risks blur­ring (espe­cially due to cam­era shake), set your cam­era to burst mode and shoot a whole bunch of pic­tures, then there’s bound to be one which is sig­ni­fic­antly sharper then the oth­ers. This one you’ll keep ;-)

An another one from the con­trast depart­ment.

At the time I was on my way into town to meet someone, and didn’t plan on tak­ing my cam­era along, but then I thought, what the heck, take it any­way. I was still kind of new to Dub­lin, and being the anxious Ger­man I am I hoped off the bus about 3 stops too early. Since I had plenty of time (again being a good Ger­man…) /​to “pun­ish” myself /​to bet­ter get to know the city I decided to walk the rest of the way — and was promptly rewar­ded: For no appar­ent reason, there was a scream­ing yel­low bal­loon tied to a scream­ing blue door, which gave, thanks to the sun, a beau­ti­ful strong con­trast.

Apart from that there is not much to say I guess, except I was glad that I did take my cam­era. So here’s the les­son to be learnt: Always have your cam­era with you, and hop off the bus waaaaaay too early ;-)

PS: I got my first photo-​blog-​comment today, yaaay! Thanks Clara!

Ok, back to the “Arts”. Here’s a photo I took on my trip to Scot­land with Steffi, just this August. I saw this little girl in a bright white dress jump­ing around in the Har­bour of a little town called Port­ree on the Isle of Skye.

She already kind of “popped” out of the dark­ish murk left behind by the sea, but play­ing a bit with the grey scale con­ver­sion mod­ule in Light­Room I man­age to make her stand out even more. Even­tu­ally I decided this wasn’t enough, and went on a dodging and burn­ing ram­page, until it ended up as presen­ted here :-)

This is a photo for the darker souls among us. Muaaa-​ha-​ha-​ha-​ha-​ha …