montmartre lane

this picture just screams “timeless paris” for me. i like it.

here are some other of the favourites:

paris in the rain

place des abbesses metro station

the famous gargoyle on notre dame

still sorting the others out. but more will follow…

well, the last photo blog-post was from the landesfestumzug. since then, i’ve had the chance to photograph some tame wildlife, sports action, concerts, candids and some sailing.

IFI staff day, 24/09/2009

we had an IFI staff day towards the end of september. it was an organized trip with an action-packed morning, good lunch, followed by a lazy afternoon with huskies and birds of prey and a bbq to round it all off. here are some pictures:

IFI Staff Day — Hochseilgarten Kramsach

Fun and games and lots of adrenalin at the high-rope course in Kramsach.

IFI Staff Day — Husky-Ranch Angerberg

Relaxing afternoon with huskies.

IFI Staff Day — Birds of Prey

Impressive demonstration of owls and eagls.

IFI Staff Day — Archery Session

Playing with bows and arrows before a BBQ at the high-rope course to round off the day.

surprise class regatta, YKA; 26-27/09/2009

the YKA hosted a surprise class regatta at the end of september. i sailed with andi on graffiti again (the same skipper i sailed with on the lago di garda at the end of august). we won the regatta, which put andi in the overall winning spot for the austrian class association.

saturday was windy-ish, on sunday we spent most of the day hanging around waiting for wind. when it did turn up, it was flukey and turned and died down just before the only race for the day was about to be started. gave me a chance to get some pictures while out on the water though:

Surprise Regatta, 27/09/09

Regatta for the Austrian Surprise class hosted at the YKA, 26-27/09/2009.

Weltfest at the Treibhaus, 02/10/2009

emir, a good friend and great percussionist, volunteers at the integrationsbüro here in innsbruck. they organize a large “world festival” every year; this year, emir asked me to join the photography team of 4 photographers to photo-document the event. we basically spent the evening enjoying the festival and taking bucketloads of pictures. i really enjoyed the evening, and hope to be invited back again next year. here are all the pictures:

Weltfest 2009, 2/10/2009

I was asked to take pictures at the Weltfest in the Treibhaus.

a separate post will follow soon with the pick of my favourites and a bit on equipment and workflow.

hintersee, nr mittersill; 14/08/2009

this one’s been on the backburner now for a long while. when eva and i were tripping back and forth between tyrol and salzburg for two weeks this summer, we also detoured to one of my most favourite locations in the mountains – the hintersee near mittersill. this is a tiny little mountain lake created by an earthquake 800 years or so ago and a fantastically picturesque location. there are some very nice landscape pictures and a couple of quirky ones of eva here:

Hintersee, 14/8/2009

Short walk at the Hintersee near Mittersill with Eva.

that concludes the looooooooong backlog post. to quote the master of available light, joe mcnally, “more tk…”

erntedankfest

the bus picked us up in kufstein, where it wasn’t quite raining. the bus trip, was as always, good fun:

Norbert

Wattenmit einem Tennisschläger

stefan, our tubist, did a great job of running us out to vienna in pouring rain. his driving skills were put to a serious test in vienna when the gps nav system sent him through a series of extremely narrow and winding little lanes. it was an impressive show of skill.

Stefan

Sauwetter

thankfully, hannes wasn’t allowed to drive (note the beer can and the funky hat):

Hannesals Busfahrer

numerous stops along the way:

Mondsee

Pinkelpause

we finally got to vienna and quickly got changed in the hostel (student accommodation) we were staying in. the heldenplatz in vienna is ideally located for a big festival, between the imperial palace:

Marketenderinnenvor der Hofburg

and the viennese town hall (in the background):

Mario

the concert on saturday evening didn’t go too well—the combination of numerous beers and a long bus trip took their toll on some musicians. this is the only picture of the concert itself:

Arminbei "Evergreens"

afterwards, we cleared our stuff back into the bus and went looking for fun and drinks after an impromptu photo-shoot-out in front of the imperial palace:

Ende vom Konzert

Güntervor der Hofburg (und Geli)

sunday morning, everyone was up bright and early and not too hungover, which was surprising. we caught the tram into the centre of town, günter & i amused some of the passengers by getting 19 tickets out of a coin-operated machine using the change the girls had taken through selling schnapps the evening before. the concert on sunday was a lot better than saturday, there are even pictures, thanks to our friendly sound engineer benjamin whom i gave my camera to:

Unterm Konzert

PosaunenSimon, Michael, Günter

there was even a friendly rat who decided to help us out by conducting:

Die Sendung mit der Maus

after the concert, we grabbed a bite to eat and left for home. numerous stops were needed along the way:

Markus

we eventually got home in the early evening after a seriously enjoyable weekend in vienna. a big thankyou to günter, michael & mario for all the organizational work and a big round of applause for stefan for the fantastic drive.

pictures

travelling with bands always give great opportunities for pictures. this weekend was no exception.

if i had to pick five favourite pics from last weekend, it would probably be these ones (in no particular order):

Vorbereitungen

Evavor der Hofburg

Mario

Bianca

Biancaund ihr Spiegelbild

here’s the whole album, all 98 pics:

Conradler in Wien, 12-13/09/09

Trip to the Austrian Bauernbund Harvest festival with the Conradler (www.conradler.com). Serious fun and games and two concerts as well.

world war II memorial:

WW 2 Memorial

washington monument:

Washington Monument

reflecting pool:

Reflecting Pool

lincoln memorial:

Abraham Lincoln

korea memorial:

Freedom is not free

capitol:

Capitol

one of the films i had broke, so the pictures of the vietnam memorial didn’t really come out. i was a bit annoyed at that, but it’s a reason to go back again.

pictures

the pictures were taken with a nikon F80 on Ilford FP4 film. most of them were taken with a nikkor 24mm f/2.8 with a red filter. most of the pictures have only been slightly cropped to get rid of some white borders from the development process. some were straightened.

Washington DC, December 2006

saturday, 29/8/09

Early morningwaiting at the motorway services

while waiting at the motorway services, the low clouds were drifting in over the hillside and getting themselves caught in the trees. it was also slowly getting light, which allowed me to grab the above available light snap of the mist. oh, and the ugly petrol station too (to give the whole thing some context…). andi, gisela & julian (their 11-yr old son) turned up with graffiti in tow, filled up the tank and then off over the brenner motorway to italy. along the way, we stopped for a coffee and a bite of breakfast somewhere north of rovereto. after leaving the motorway, we headed down the east shore of the lake to aquafresca. at aquafresca, first order was more coffee, and then we started working on setting graffiti up:

Graffitisponsored by P-Lab

paolo and josef (and renate) turned up to help:

Paolo

Josef

we then managed to get graffiti on the hook and in the water:

AirborneGraffiti on the hook

after watering graffiti, and taking her out to the mooring buoy, we had to go and register for the race on sunday. sounds easy, but the race office was in bogliaco on the other side of the lake. easiest way to get there was by ferry:

Railing

after registering and having a quick drink at CVG, the yacht club hosting the trofeo di gorla and the centomiglia races, we decided to drive back to aquafresca around the north shore of the lake. on the way, i dozed off a bit, but when i woke up, a storm had started brewing and coming in from the north:

Rain cloudsover the north shore

we had originally considered stopping in riva for dinner, but there were so many tourists, all of whom were stood in lines for restaurants, we decided to carry on to somewhere near malcesine. when we stopped briefly in torbole to discuss dinner options, i grabbed this cool picture of the ferry coming in:

Storm brewing

as it was renate’s birthday—which she tried to keep secret—she had to have a birthday cake, so andi organised a tiramisu with a candle:

Renateand her birthday cake… :)

sunday, 30/8/09

on sunday, we had another early start, left the hotel at 05:45 and were taken out to graffiti at 06:10 by aquafresca’s friendly bosun, ivan. we motored over to bogliaco, arriving in time to rig up the sails before the race started at 08:30. the start was more of a general consensus than a “real” regatta start—at about 08:30, all the boats started their beat northwards over the line, when the whole fleet was about 50m over the line, the starting boat raced past, thus officially starting the race. the gorla and the cento have hundreds of boats starting at the same time in different classes, which makes the start rather stressful and the race tactics fairly difficult.

the course was bogliaco—torbole—aquafresca—bogliaco, so with a strong northerly to contend with, we were on a beat to reach torbole. after about 1hr, andi decided to change the genua for a jib, some time later, the wind had slackened off, so we went back to the genua. this decision probably cost us a better place in our class, but it seemed to be the right decision at the time. shortly before we got to torbole, the wind died and then came back, albeit from the south. we hoisted the spinnaker and reached down to the first buoy, rounding it in 3rd place at 12:11 (yes, that’s 3h41m after the start). joy of joys, we got to beat back to bogliaco via aquafresca. all the way to aquafresca and then on to bogliaco we were fighting out 3rd–5th places with ITA 1400 and ITA 1162, we ended up finishing 5th after 7h09m of sailing, only 7.5min after the winner in our class. we reached back to aquafresca under spinnaker and munched on the rest of our sandwiches and enjoyed the sun and wind. 11 hours after getting on the boat, we were on the mooring and ivan picked us up again.

it was my first time sailing on the lago di garda, and it was definitely an interesting experience. the lago di garda is not like any other lakes. the storm on saturday night had kicked up a horrendous chop, which is not at all like the waves you get at sea. i felt a bit queasy to begin with, but that may have been due to the fact that some of saturday’s evening meal wasn’t agreeing with my digestive system. it was a long day all in all, but i’d do it again. next time, i’ll try not to get sunburn legs though…

pictures

here’s the album of all the pictures. i was snapshotting most of saturday, so there are no “serious” pictures in this lot. most of the pictures of the storm brewing were taken out of a moving car, so i didn’t have the chance to compose them as well as i might have done if we hadn’t been driving. sunday, i did have the camera on board, but it was too wet and due to the beat, it was too busy to take any pictures. bit of a pity really, but the sailing was great fun. and i think i’d much rather have been sailing than taking pictures.

Trofeo Gorla, 29.08.09

Trip to Aquafresca in preparation for the Trofeo di Gorla, a long distance race on Lago di Garda. After watering the boat, we took a ferry to the west shore and drove around the north end of the lake.

both eva and i have never been to the wolfsklamm before, but we heard it was a nice walk with a good restaurant at the top end of the gorge, so we decided to plan a hike through the gorge in for a day. finding it was fairly easy, there’s a nice parking lot at the bottom which was comfortably full by the time we got there at 10:30. they charge you 4€ per person to use the hiking path through the gorge (the only path), but we thought it was worth it.

the path is fairly adventurous and clings to the rock walls, crossing the gorge numerous times on shaky wooden bridges, which you’re kindly asked not to overload. doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence with the amount of people walking up and down there:

Bridge

the klamm itself is totally left to its own devices and nature rules with an iron fist. at least, as far as we could tell.

Dead trees

pictures

i didn’t have the photo groove going and just couldn’t get my eyes to see things right. so not too many pictures from this beautiful part of the world. looks like i’ll have to go back again.

Wolfsklamm

Hike through the Wolfsklamm near Schwaz with Eva.

last sunday, eva and i went for a long-ish hike at the krimml waterfalls. there were bucketloads of tourists, but seeing as it had rained the day and night before, the waterfalls were really impressive. ok, the hike may not have been as long as it was if i hadn’t been taking so many pictures, but after running the RAWs through DxO, i ended up with a few good pictures.

the amount of spray in the air was fun and gave rise to some rainbows:

A little fall of rainEva enjoying the spray

Rainbow

pictures

nothing spectacular about the technique, no experiments, just happy-go-lucky snapshotting really, but i think the results are worth looking at. more on the “new” presentation of the pictures to follow in a different post.

Krimml Waterfalls

The highest chain of waterfalls in Europe. Hiked to the top of the falls with Eva.

Günter Auer advertising for Tiscover…

so, five years after going there w/simon, sarah & theresa, i finally made it back to prague. i love that place. the innsbruck police band was invited to FESTPOL 2009. sadly, we didn’t have too much spare time away from group activities, so i’m going to have to go back again.

the best pictures i took are on my phanfare page