Waves - The Rocket Festival |
May 25th 2008 |
| Entering the Rocket Festival in Alhama de Granada, Andalusia |
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| Jay Jay with the cool red hair and sparkling blue eyes tried to talk me into paying him 50 cents for his portrait. But that was before I told him he'd be the star on bjorntoday.com. Peace, bro! |
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| At an event - say, a festival - we all take to different types. Wow, she looks amazing! Or look at him! If you sit in a spot for a while, observing and absorbing the multifaceted human experience waving by, you eventually begin to notice the same people come around. As a photographer, these are the ones I want to make contact with. |
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| Camera: |
M8 Digital Camera (Leica Camera AG) |
| Lens: |
Summilux-M 50mm f/1.4 Asph. |
| Exposure Time: |
1/1500sec. |
| Aperture: |
Auto aperture value transmission not possible |
| ISO: |
160 |
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Life's a wave, dude. Experiences come in waves of all shapes, sizes, lengths and strengths. Encounters with sharks. Conversations with friends. Movement of all sorts; washing in, spilling out; physically, emotionally, mathematically, illogically - it's all very wavy. Me, I'm a surfer. A novice surfer. I'm paddling a lot, surfing occasionally, crashing frequently, ducking respectfully, swimming over fearfully, falling out fervently and, from time to time, riding out ecstatically. The art, it seems, is to take the waves as they come and - the Big Wave willingly - learn to surf with a winged heart (Gibran).
The Rocket Festival was one such wave. I was there briefly. The means to help me take this wave in an enjoyable manner came in the form of a beautiful backdrop, warm sunshine, friendly company, wacky people, two beers, patience, a digital camera and a willingness to indulge.
Go to: Wavy Rocket Festival for a surfer's glimpse into a bizarre wave. Pictures taken with Leica M8 and 50 mm Summilux. |
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Pastel Breeze |
May 4th 2008 |
We're breezing down the highway, Hamburg bound. The sun is low and the yellow rape fields are glowing. You can smell the intense perfume, hear the bees buzzing, feel the warmth just by peering out the coach window - as it passes through the gold-lit countryside of northern Germany at spring time. I pull out the camera and start clicking; non expectant as to what might happen. The aperture set to f/16 gives me a slow exposure. Just what I want. I'm right up against the window, watching, framing, clicking, holding, panning even. I'm checking the display, and liking what I'm seeing; the soft pastel colours, the interesting shapes and lines, the clean motion blur; the cars, trucks and motorbikes overtaking; the signposts, balustrades and P-stops passing - blended into abstraction. There's little traffic this day. We're flying, taken by a gentle inspiration, into the sunset.
Go to: Pastel Breeze to soak up pastel motion blur experience, captured with digital rangefinder camera and 50 mm lens. |
| Camera: |
M8 Digital Camera (Leica Camera AG) |
| Lens: |
Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 Asph |
| Exposure Time: |
1/6sec. |
| Aperture: |
Auto aperture value transmission not possible |
| ISO: |
160 |
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Puppies 'n' Duckies |
Apr 22nd 2008 |
| In Asia I learned to travel by bus. To sit through 12-hour hauls and somehow manage to disengage from my body, transcending the pain that inevitably creeps up when there's no leg space and your spine's all bent. Having taken a real liking to squat toilets and street folk I also learned to crouch indefinitely, sitting on my heels with my arms dangling over my knees for balance; hug your shins and it becomes a yoga position. It's the way to hang and meet the many grateful souls who get a kick out of meeting you. Introducing the backstreet puppy pappy and the Ninh Binh lucky ducky, northern Vietnam. |
| Senseless experiment: open all three images and place next to each other. If the mouse-click no longer works use arrow keys to close images. |
| Camera: |
DIGILUX 3 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
14mm (28mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/60sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/2.8 |
| ISO: |
400 |
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| Camera: |
DIGILUX 3 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
14mm (28mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/60sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/2.8 |
| ISO: |
400 |
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| Camera: |
DIGILUX 3 (LEICA) |
| Focal Length: |
16mm (32mm = 35mm film equiv.) |
| Exposure Time: |
1/250sec. |
| Aperture: |
f/2.8 |
| ISO: |
100 |
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Powerful Memories |
Apr 11th 2008 |
| Paddy fields in northern Vietnam |
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| Paddy fields in northern Vietnam |
| Paddy fields in northern Vietnam |
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Applying keywords to vast numbers of images can take time. I've been at it (on and off) since mid last month, describing photos with specifics, like the names of countries, people and events, and generic terms, like dogs, monkeys and flowers. Now I can punch in any combination of keywords - e.g., Bangkok Chickens Best - and pinpoint material in a matter of seconds, rather than having to battle through thumbnail mayhem over and over again. Taking the time to keyword also pays off because you rediscover pics in the process - like these impressions from northern Vietnam on a dark and ominous afternoon. |
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Fight the School |
Apr 10th 2008 |
Photographing students for a school-is-over project at the Gesamtschule Harburg south of Hamburg's Elbe River. My sister - a soon-to-be graduate - pitched me her idea for a shoot comprised of 18-year-old girls and boxing gloves, an offer I found hard to decline. Not sure why. So we met on a late morning, sought out a more-or-less interesting location with decent lighting and a graffiti backdrop for diffuse bg structure, and started to pick off the ladies (and two lost lads) one by one. I say picking off because that's kind of what it's like when you're working with an f/1.4 and a focal plane no deeper than the width of a raspberry. You're picking off the tiny focus point on the eyes by carefully adjusting the lens ring or leaning forward or backward a little, and thus facilitating the connection between the subject and the imaginative viewer. The girls were all natural posers; I took about 10 shots per subject...
Go to: Fight the School for cont. and portraits taken with Leica M8 and 50 mm Summilux. |
| Picture by Lilian Haitzmann using Leica V-Lux 1. All other photographs taken with Leica M8 and Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 Asph |
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Music Video |
Apr 8th 2008 |
| Shooting on upper park deck in lower Hamburg. Maskoe for SK Clikk |
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| Maskoe with young filmmakers from Wuppertal. Video coming soon. |
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With Maskoe MC and SK Clikk on the upper park deck near the New Digging S-Train station in southern Hamburg, Germany. I wish I'd arrived on set 20 minutes earlier, when a squadron of special enforcement coppers had shown up to crash the party and check for probable illegalities, like the kilos of weed bags that had been quickly stashed beneath the front tires of the E-Class Mercedes Benz. Any hoo, ears another dozen of Maskoe pics from a continuous work in progress: Go to: Music Video for more Jung, Arm und Wütend. In stores in Summer 2008. Peace. |
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Hood to Hood |
Mar 13th 2008 |
My family resides on the verge of the forest in the outskirts of southern Hamburg. It's a green haven, you can go walking for hours; when the sky is blue and the heather purple - usually around late spring time - my greater backyard can be just as beautiful as anywhere else in the world. This is Forest Peace: a different shade of Hamburg. As far as the neighbourhood goes, though, I'd say about 80 percent of forest dwellers here have greyish-white hair. When I catch the bus to the super market in the late morning - when the kids are in school and the adults out working - I might just be the only grape in a bucket full of raisins.
However, things get a little different about 5 bus stops down the road, where there are high buildings, three of them strong. It's ghetto. The infamous projects of Oat Acre. Home to ruffnecks and...
Go to: Hood to Hood for SK Entertainment. |
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Every Infinite Exploding Instant |
Feb 19th 2008 |
"God needed another trumpet player, so He took Larry." - Larry's mother, Dorothy
Watch YouTube for Larry's last concert on January 27, 2008. |
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Our close friend Larry Elam (64) died suddenly on January 29, 2008. It was a blow to his family, partner, colleagues and everyone who knew him. My family has known his family ever since we moved to Germany some 23 years ago. Larry was a much-acclaimed trumpeter who played with many of the greats, including Frank Sinatra, Al Jarreau, Sting, Bobby McFerrin and others. He was one of my father's best friends and work partners here in Hamburg. To me he was a kind-hearted, plenty-humorous and much respected adopted uncle who's life philosophy was to live by "every infinite exploding instant" and riddle his friends with the jokes that simply made him the Larry we all loved.
Larry's partner, Klaudia, asked me to take some photographs at the farewell ceremony where some 400 people came to pay their respects.
Go to: Farewell Larry for photos from the St. Ansgar Kirche in Hamburg. Also see YouTube for Larry's last concert on January 27, 2008. |
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Adding Captions |
Feb 1st 2008 |
This blog entry links up to the most recent portrait collection (see below) - now with added captions. The idea for the time being is to catch up with all the outstanding captioning on www.bjorntoday.com before moving on to greater things. Note the two bonus images to the right - of the wool spinner lady in Luang Namtha, Laos - and catch ya later!
Go to: Face to Face for a familiar stack of - captioned! - face to faces. |
| The magic that permeates the space-time continuum. |
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| From sheep's wool to thread. |
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Face to Face |
Jan 11th 2008 |
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The past year and a half was rich. Countless beautiful encounters in India, Australia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, southern China and Hong Kong. I've taken some 30.000 photographs using the latest digital cameras made by Leica and enjoyed the rare luxury of being able to make a living while travelling - something I've come to call "traliving" (p.i.). I'd spend months and weeks in Bangkok, Siem Reap, Luang Prabang and Yangshuo, and cover thousands of kilometres of land by bus, train, motorbike, tuk-tuk and on foot; with company and alone. It's fantastic, the life of the technomad. I am so grateful.
But it's time for a holiday. In the anything-but-tropical realms of, erm, Hamburg, Germany. With family, friends and fiancée - whom I haven't seen in 9 months and longer...
Go to: Face to Face for a few face to faces. |
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