04/01/2019
For the two photographs I plundered a bouquet of flowers and took out a eryngo and yellow peruvian lilies, both are tabletop pictures which I illuminated with two continuous lights in front of a dark blue background. Macro shots offer the possibility to show small details, which you would otherwise hardly notice, in a big way. This can be seen particularly clearly in the fine structures of the eryngo.
With macro photos, one very quickly has the problem that the depth of field is too limited to show the entire object in sharp focus. Even if you close the aperture very strongly, in many cases it is not enough and unfortunately one also quickly gets problems with the diffraction blur that reduces the image quality again. A good but somewhat complex solution is a technique called focus stacking. This involves taking a series of pictures in which the focus is slightly shifted from frame to frame until a sharp image is taken of every part of the object. Then the single images have to be combined. I used the software Helicon Focus for this. But it also works with Photo Merge as part of Photoshop, if you don't have to process too many single images. Very helpful is the use of a special focusing rack and also a stable tripod is indispensable.
For both photos I took 60 single shots each. It was important to me that the background remained blurred. This often looks better than when everything is sharp from front to back.
Yellow peruvian lilie (Alstroemeria)
Eryngo (Eryngium)
> Nature
03/31/2019
Spring is slowly arriving in my hometown Bielefeld in Germany. At the end of March there is not much growth, but the hyacinths are already blooming in our botanical garden. The three pictures of the blue hyacinth (it is the same plant) were taken early in the morning in backlight. The sunlight, which falls through the trees in the background, together with the wide open aperture provides the bright blur circles. I worked with the focus stacking technique to get the rather small blossoms sharp in front of the background. A Novoflex CASTEL-MICRO focusing rack was used for the camera movement. Fortunately it was windless, so that only a few attempts were necessary to get good raw material. All three photos are composed of 20 single shots.
Blue hyacinth #1 (Hyacinthus)
Blue hyacinth #2 (Hyacinthus)
Blue hyacinth #3 (Hyacinthus)
> Nature
03/30/2019
In a supermarket nearby I found a flower pot with a yellow calla. It was the last one that was still there and it looked pretty worn out. I bought it anyway. Not that there aren't enough photos with a calla on them already, but I had the idea to make a tone-in-tone composition. The picture was taken in natural daylight in front of a piece of yellow cardboard. Since the blossom was not very big, I worked with the focus stacking technique. The image is composed of 20 individual shots. Thus the calyx is continuously sharp and stands out well from the blurred background. I used a Sony Alpha 7 III with a SEL 2.8/90 mm macro lens and a Novoflex CASTEL-MICRO to move the camera. All mounted on a tripod.
Yellow Calla (Zantedeschia)
> Nature
03/17/2019
In 'Baumheide', a district of the city of Bielefeld, there are wooden sculptures on a footpath. I suppose they simply serve the purpose of landscape and park design. But somehow they also seem archaic to me. As if they were legacies of the old Germanic tribes, which after 2000 years have still not been cleared away. I have photographed the sculptures many times before. This picture was taken at dusk. It is a double exposure with the blurred lights of houses and traffic lights in the background. As lens I used the ZEISS Batis Apo Sonnar 2.8/ 135 mm.
Wooden Idol
03/11/2019
Raindrops on a window at the tram stop 'Sieker Endstation'. April weather in March with lots of rain and storm. Cold and wet. But when the light breaks in the wet window panes it is also particularly beautiful.
Light drops (Bielefeld, Germany)
03/09/2019
Telekom tower block in downtown Bielefeld. Most people in Bielefeld probably consider this building to be one of the ugliest in the city. But it also shapes the appearance like only a few others and it is an architectural document of its time. The 18-storey skyscraper was built in the 1970s. Deutsche Telekom no longer uses the building; it was sold to an investor who plans to rent apartments and offices in the future. Before that, however, a fundamental renovation is necessary. The photograph was taken with the Zeiss Batis Distagon 2.8/ 18 mm.
Telekom tower (Bielefeld, Germany)
03/06/2019
Sometimes, even in our tidy inner cities, one encounters urban still lifes that seem to have fallen out of time. Facades where the plaster peels off, backyards with only scantily patched plaster - places that perhaps because they no longer fit into the cityscape seem to have a peculiar charm. This picture shows a backyard with a parking lot at the 'Van-Randenborgh-Weg' not far from the 'Kesselbrink' in Bielefeld (Germany). The photo was taken on a rainy Sunday afternoon with a 35 mm wide-angle lens.
Backyard
03/02/2019
Red light. Another picture at the 'Nikolaus-Dürkopp-Straße' in Bielefeld in the morning shortly before sunrise. This photo uses the ZEISS Basis Distagon 2/ 40 mm. I find this focal length very interesting, because for me it can replace a 35mm and a 50mm standard lens. The initial aperture of f/2 makes it easy to shoot without a tripod in situations like this.
Red light
02/18/2019
The company 'Dürkopp' was a manufacturer of sewing machines founded in 1867. For a long time the production facilities were located in the centre of Bielefeld. The company itself later merged with 'Kochs Adler' and still exists today. However, the historic buildings are no longer in use. Today, offices and apartments are located in the building complex. The two old towers at the 'Nikolaus-Dürkopp-Straße' are particularly attractive from an architectural point of view. Since the street, which bears the name of the company founder, has an orientation from east to west, the light in the morning is often very beautiful and is ideal for photographs. Both pictures were taken early at around seven o'clock in the morning with the ZEISS Batis Distagon 2.8/ 18 mm.
Crossing
Morning glow
02/17/2019
Graffiti in the light of a street lamp at the 'Brüderpfad' in Bielefeld. The photo was taken very early in the morning in the centre of Bielefeld. Here I used the ZEISS Batis Distagon 2.8/ 18 mm.
Graffiti
