"It is almost impossible to watch a sunset and not dream."

~Bernard Williams~

Indian Pass, FL at sunset...

#MacroMondays

#Collection

Three of a collection of beads of different shapes, materials, and colours. I randomly collected them while looking for a replacement bead for the – once professionally beaded, now DIY – necklace I redid with a new wire at the beginning of this year (and photographed it three times for MMs). initially, I bought the glass bead in front as a replacement for the broken bead but it's about 2 mm/0.078 inches bigger than the original beads, and of a darker colour, and in the end, I decided to use the broken bead so the necklace is now very much in "Wabi-sabi" style ;)

I'm not quite sure what the two bigger beads (1 cm/0.39 inches in diameter) are made of. From the touch, I first thought plastic but from the sound they make when dropped on a hard surface (and I dropped them a lot, or rather: they kept rolling off the black tile I tried to put them on, so in the end, I fixated them with modelling clay), I'd say glass. And the more I dropped them, the more I was/am convinced it's glass. Their surface is frosted, with a "dented" (tiny, tiny, tiny dents) texture. And when light hits them at a certain angle, they display a nice iridescent colour effect which drew me to them in the first place.

No coloured lights this time because the beads have the colours "in them", so to speak. The smaller glass bead is of a blueish-grey, also slightly iridescent colour, with a partly metal-vaporized (I'm not sure about the correct term here) surface, and of course, its facets nicely reflect all the colours of the things around it (and believe me, there were/are many things). I was also a little shocked at how scratched the (new!) faceted bead already was but I guess it was touched by many hands and rolled around many times in the small ceramic bowl at the shop before I bought it, so that explains the scratches.

The two bigger beads are semi-translucent white, and the colours that emerge when, as mentioned above, light hits them at the right angle, are a bright, electric blue with hints of yellow, green, and purple.

Light sources were natural sunlight from the window to the right, natural white light from my LED photo lamp from above (and slightly from the left), and bright white light from my handheld LED flashlight, set on "spot", from the front. The final image is made of 15 focus-stacked Raws combined in Helicon Focus.

HMM, Everyone, and have a nice week ahead!

P.S. I'm busy today and will catch up with you tonight.

My best wishes to all my friends at Flickr for the year 2019

la mulți ani, fdlscrmn :)

Happy Birthday, dear Cami, I wish you all the best, happiness, good health and lots of photographic fun and inspiration for your new year in life!

“The sky is an infinite movie to me, I never get tired of what’s happening up there.” K.D. Lang

This shot was all about the sky for me - it was just so splendid! The fall colors provide some earth bound interest!

Hagan Stone County Park, Greensboro, NC

Markusplatz 2019

Low clouds hovered over the mountains on the Prince William Sound seemingly meeting the water. Textures emphasize the mood of the day...

Thanks for over 4 million visits.

#ibis #florida #best_birds_planet #planet_birds #birdbrilliance #birdphotography #nature #wildlifephotography #birdextreme #bestbirdshots #discovertheworld #nature_perfection #wildlifeperfection #gregorymountainpacks #sony #gitzo #leofotousa #markins #manfrotto #TKpanel #luminarneo #adobe_LR_PS #nikcollection #topaz #dxo #capture_1 #rrs

Bad Harzburg/Lowersaxony GER

#MacroMondays

#Stationery

I'm not sure if getting sharpened is great fun for a pencil but... I think it depends on the pencil's character. I assume there are pencils out there that prefer to be blunt and others that insist on being razor sharp and therefore see their daily workout in the sharpener as an absolute necessity. Why should pencils be any different from us humans who use them, after all... ;)

I've been after this idea of photographing the inside of a pencil sharpener for quite a while, I think I've tried to make it work on three or four occasions, not all of them "Stationery"-related MM themes. So far, there always had been something off, odd focusing, unsatisfying sharpness, weird POV... you name it, I've unsuccessfully tried it.

Now this photo isn't perfect, either, the framing is still a little weird, but I think this time it works as an image; I like the bokeh, and there also is enough sharpness in the right places. I think what finally made it work was the addition of a slim pencil. Strange as it seems, until now I had never even thought about adding a pencil, although a pencil is a natural (and as clear as mud) addition to a sharpener... While it would have made sense to add the pencil where it belongs, right in the sharpener, it wouldn't have worked as an image, at least not as I had envisioned it. So I stuck the tiny point of a very slim pencil into the small opening next to the blade on the sharpener's top, just so it would be visible when focusing on the inside of the hole where the pencil normally goes in.

As for the colours, they looked different in every single image. I've illuminated the scene with two LEDs and the usual makeshift colour filter suspects: red from the left, green from the right, and blue from the semi-transparent snack can lid that I'd placed behind the sharpener. There also was some sunshine from the living room window involved, and I'd used my small LED flashlight, set to spotlight, to illuminate the pencil point. I held the flashlight as far away from the setup as possible because otherwise, the highlights would have been blown out.

HMM, Everyone, and have a nice spring/autumn week ahead!

#MacroMondays

#OneColor

#blue

Sleepless nights are guaranteed for the Princess on the Pea, and she might very well throw a tantrum if her prince offered her a mattress like this. Now there are neither peas nor roses in this photo but needle-sharp spikes, even though the centre spike which I've focused on looks as soft as a Hershey's Kiss in this close-up. But believe me, those spikes aren't soft at all. The "spike blossoms" also aren't rose-shaped (but to me, they look like roses) but are supposed to represent lotus blossoms, and, as the manufacturer promises, they "hurt so good". It's a detail of a massage/acupressure mat that I've photographed before for our October 2018 theme "Remedy" (please check the first comment; in that photo, you can also see better how the mat is constructed and how spikey the spikes really are).

The spikes on each lotus blossom are constructed so that they won't injure the user; instead, they are supposed to relieve back and other pain, stimulate blood circulation and bring deep relaxation. So who knows, maybe the princess will thank her prince after all ;) I still can't deny or confirm this because once again I've only borrowed the mat for the photo; this time an all-new palm rest my mother, magrit k., had ordered for her desk and computer work. I placed my hand on it a few times, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I still can't imagine lying down on an entire mat covered with these (admittedly beautiful-looking) spikey things.

This time, I tried to get as close as possible and so focused on the centre part of a single lotus blossom. It's a single capture shot wide open at F 2.8 because I liked how the "petals" transitioned into the blur and turned into soft flames.

Size info: The centre part of this single blossom is 1,8 cm / 0,70 inches wide (and the whole diameter of a single blossom is 3 cm / 1,18 inches).

HMM, Everyone!

#MacroMondays

#Tiny

#BlingMonday:)

They are an improbable couple, indeed, but these two items came to my mind instantly when I read "Tiny". The (broken) screw is from a modding set I bought for one of my Casios, and the tip of the screw is still stuck in the watch's casing (I have no idea how to remove something so tiny) so the bezel is now fixated with three screws only but so what, it sits absolutely secure on the watch.

The screw is 0,4 mm/0,15 inches "tall", and the screw and the Swarovski crystal together are 0,6 mm/0,23 inches wide. I've used these crystals (that I got loose and in different sizes – this is the smallest size: 3,5 mm/0,13 inches in diameter) in a few other MM themes because they are so nice and shiny, and because it's Monday, I thought I'd add some extra bling with the star filter.

I'd have loved to stack the screw and the crystal but there was no way I could fixate the crystal on top of the screw because even the tiniest piece of modeling clay would still have been too big for the scene. I did some focus stacking with the 60mm macro but in the end, I liked the single image taken with the Laowa 2x macro better because it looked more organic (although I admit it could be a little sharper) and I was also able to get much closer to the scene with this lens. It's not quite the lens's maximum magnification of 2:1 but almost.

And actually, it's "The Odd Couple II" because I'd already photographed a pair of matches under that title for our "Matchstick" theme in June '21. But since the original movie with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon from 1968 was also made into a TV show in the 1970s, and then again in the 2010s, with several episodes, why not name more than one photo after it ;)

HMM, Everyone!

fast Vollmond

Playing around (messing up ?) with HSL (TSL in french) in DXO Photolab.

Actually, I created 2 copies of the original shot. One copy was simply converted to B&W, the other copy was modified thru HSL to keep only the red color, then I mixed the 2 copies with HDR Efex Pro (Nik Collection).

#macromondays

#Screw

Advice that probably comes too late for these two loonies, because they have quite a few screws loose ;) To my delight, I discovered that the German and the English idioms regarding the "loose screw" are the same, so I knew that my little idea (which, for once in a while, wasn't last minute) could work. I don't use Lego often for photos, in fact, this is only the second time (for the first photo featuring a Lego Minifigure, please check the first comment), but this time, I almost immediately had a clear image in my mind's eye: The hatless head of a Minifigure with a few mini-screws placed in the (hollow! Hooray!) connection piece for the headpiece.

The tiny screws belong to the case back of a Casio (yes, another one) AE1200 aka the "Casio Royale". This cheap, clunky digital "World Timer" has a worldwide fan base among watch modders, because it is very easy to open and to do modifications to, for instance, the faceplate, the case, and even to the watch module. I have replaced the resin bezel with a third-party full metal one which came with its own (and much shorter) screws for the case back. So the tiny loose screws seen here are the ones for the original bezel/casing. There is a real danger of losing these tiny screws in that black hole aka the living room carpet that lies right under the table I'm using as my photo studio. Said carpet has a beautiful Oriental pattern and is pretty thick, so any dropped, tiny item is extremely hard to retrieve. This has happened before (and more than once) to MM props, and I have spent quite some time down there on my knees, equipped with my small flashlight, in "tiny item rescue operations", so I took extra precautions to make sure I won't lose these screws: I put some modeling clay into the hollow connection piece to make sure the screws would stay put – and they did :) The other screws are random picks from the toolbox.

Regarding the size of the frame, I've nearly maxed the 3 inches out. A Lego Minifigure without a headpiece of sorts (cap, helmet...) is 4 cm / 1,5 inches tall. I've arranged both little guys so that what you see of them in this frame is about 4,5 cm / 1,77 inches high – which yields an image height of 5 cm / 1,9 inches. Put on a ruler, side by side, screws included and arranged the way you see them in the image, yields a width of less than 6 cm / 2,36 inches, so I'd say that the entire frame of this scene, negative space included, is 5x7 cm / 1,9x2,75 inches.

I thought focus stacking might be indicated for maximum, all-over sharpness, but in the end, I chose one of the images with some blur in it, because the blur adds a sense of motion and dynamic to this little scene. And since I only had those grim-looking Stormtrooper/Darth Vader heads, I took the freedom to slightly change the look of the left guy's eyes with a few brush strokes in PS to give his face more of a "loony" expression – I hope this post-processing trick is acceptable. Obviously, there was no need to change the other guy's facial expression because he doesn't have a head in the first place. A Lego Minifigure Joe Cocker would probably sing: "You Can Leave Your Head On" :)

HMM, Everyone! (I'm busy today, so I'll catch up with you tonight!)

#red_shoulder_hawk #florida #best_birds_planet #planet_birds #birdbrilliance #birdphotography #nature #wildlifephotography #birdextreme #bestbirdshots #discovertheworld #nature_perfection #wildlifeperfection #gregorymountainpacks #sony #gitzo #leofotousa #markins #manfrotto #TKpanel #luminarneo #adobe_LR_PS #nikcollection #topaz #dxo #capture_1 #rrs

#MacroMondays

#BW

I feel drawn to B&W more and more recently. Or maybe it's just that I have learned (a little) better what works in colour and what in monochrome. Sometimes, I even think "This is a B&W scene" while shooting. Unheard of a few years ago ;) But what looks good in black and white in the macro world? If there's no colour to play with, either the subject has to have "something extra", patterns, texture, depth, something that retains interest when there is no colour, or the setup should provide something interesting such as light.

I collected a few possible subjects like my silver Airdale terrier brooch covered in grey jet stones (or rhinestones) that give it a blingy yet elegant look. Or a simple tin lid, partly broken where I had screwed a bottle open (I thought I could play with backlight and use the crack in the lid). The lid was nothing in B&W but I could have made something of the terrier brooch (and probably will for another theme).

But in the end, I returned to my very first idea: the mode dial of one of my cameras. It (almost) is a black-and-white subject by nature because there only is silver and black (the center ring which doesn't have any functionality other than making the mode dial slightly higher than the other dials, to make it easier accessible and/or set it apart from the other dials, I assume). The dial also has a nice haptic structure of numerous protruding tiny pyramid shapes for a good grip. To get extra close to the tiny pyramids, I mounted the Laowa 50mm 2x Ultra macro, so this is a single shot, only illuminated from above by my daylight photo lamp.

I'm busy today and will catch up with you later!

HMM, Everyone!

Three seconds long...

#MacroMondays

#WearAndTear

The battered glass stone of a steel tension ring that originally belonged to my Mum magrit k.. At one point, it got a little too small for her, and since it's made of steel there's no such thing as widening it easily like a silver or gold ring, so she gave it to me :) My Mum must have bumped against something one or more times while wearing the ring which resulted in this cracked dent that, to my delight, almost looks like a 💗 when seen in close-up; there's also some wear and tear visible on the brushed steel.

And yes, this glass stone is "three seconds" in diameter. Due to the lack of a close-at-hand ruler (and a distinct laziness in fetching it from the desk), I used the seconds marks of my automatic Citizen watch to measure the stone's diameter. The three seconds translate into 4 mm/0.157 inches.

Technical info: single shot illuminated by two LED lamps (left and right) and my LED Lenser flashlight set on "Spot", handheld from above to highlight the heart-shaped "Wear and Tear".

HMM, Everyone! I'll catch up with you later!

Nik Collection Vintage style

#sliderssunday

This was an extremely rare sighting of Crocodilus Cirrocumulus, the ever-elusive (and always hungry) Cloud Croc. I almost missed it, but luckily, I looked up at the right moment and was able to capture the moment when it was about to nibble on (or rather take a hearty bite of) the roof of Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus (MELH), a prominent building in Berlin's government district. I'm not sure where in terms of culinary quality MELH is placed but the Cloud Croc must have changed its mind at the last minute because the roof is still intact. Maybe this particular specimen didn't like the taste of modern architecture or the materials used in the construction (Cloud Crocs are known for their extremely sensitive sense of smell)... Well, we will never know but at least my photo is proof that Crocodilus Cirrocumulus exists.

This is some minimalist cloud creature fun for Sliders Sunday, another oldie that I wanted to upload for a long time but always forgot about when I returned to my newest images in LR. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. When I took the photo, I didn't even notice the croc (or maybe dragon or snake, what do you see?) but thought that the cloud (cirrocumulus, I'd say) looked as if it had been shaped by the roof. It was a quick snap before the cloud changed its shape and the creature was gone.

I'd processed the photo a long time ago, and only added some "Brilliance and Warmth" to it in Color Efex yesterday when I decided it was finally time for an upload. So, unfortunately, I can't tell you much about the previous processing steps. I think I enhanced the clarity and did some denoising before, and I'm sure other stuff as well because almost all my images are post-processed (often a lot) because I enjoy processing as much as photography itself.

HSS, Everyone!

wake up

greet the new day

sing with the birds

say Namasté

smell the morning air

jump up, jump down

fog slowly set the guardian free

dont wait, play the game

and be light as a feather

take the ride on the new day's spiral

what's around next corner doesn't matter

make a new mind bubble

the night is over

and it's allright

pin it on the wall

you dont need matches

to make a flame light

you can do it all ...

disturb the sound of silence

wake up

© Greta v D

~HSS~ all have a great new week!

I used Nik Collection for a slightly better color glow!

Found this in my archives, a colder, foggy morning in April

Barn Swallow at Rest

From a drive through Yosemite's Tioga Road.

#sliderssunday

More from the just re-opened Gendarmenmarkt. This time an (almost) SOOC view of the Konzerthaus/Schauspielhaus building at the center of the place. The statue shows one of Germany's most important poets and writers: Friedrich Schiller. The four banners in the background proudly promote the re-opening. The slogans, from left to right, are: "Finally free again Our most beautiful place", "It only took a few Four Seasons" (the "Four Seasons" part refers to Vivaldis "Le quattro stagioni"), "With trumpets and drums & energy-efficient redevelopment", and "Now you can listen with your eyes again". As you can see from the roof, the renovation work hasn't been completed, yet.

Almost SOOC means that in addition to Raw format I had used the "Soft Sepia Art Filter" and, afterwards, tweaked it in Color Efex. The last time I dabbled with in-camera Art Filters was in 2011 with my very first MFT camera, the tiny Pen E-PL3 (it still exists!). I also (re-)added fine grain in LR.

HSS!

#MacroMondays

#Cold

Fancy some early ESC?

This is the second MM appearance of my Schleich Mini Eldrador "dragon snake" figure. The first one was for "Ficticious" in October '23. It wasn't easy to convince the proud fire creature to let me put it into a small kitchen container, get itself doused in water, and, the possibly worst thing: spend the night and half of Sunday in the freezer. But Bertie Wanda's shining example (and Flickr fame) were very convincing, so it played along. Not without hissing at me "Just wait what will happen to your freezer tonight. You might find it molten to pieces tomorrow!" before I closed the freezer door. No such thing happened, luckily, and when I took the tiny dragon snake out of the freezer, it told me: "I spent the night doing some internet research on ice baths and their health benefits. With all my inner fire, it was quite a refreshing experience." Such dignity... ;)

The image is a single shot, handheld even, to get the right angle. During the freezing process, the small figurine drifted towards the upper edge of the small container, and even though translucent, I didn't want to have it in the image. I also tried some focus stacking but the camera gave me an error several times. The half-frozen dragon snake with the bright ice texture layer on top was probably still a little too diffuse for autofocus to catch on properly during the stacking process. I could have combined the images in Helicon Focus, but liked this single image and thought that it was sharp enough. I hope you agree.

Illuminated from above with my natural light photo LED lamp, and slightly from the left/front with my LED Lenser flashlight set on "spot" to highlight the dragon snake's face and some of the ice texture.

HMM, Everyone! I'm very busy today and hope I can catch up with you tonight!

#MacroMondays

#Cloth

What looks like a 3D surface actually is the flat surface of a finely woven fabric. It's the small pouch LOQI tote bags come in. I don't use it to store the folded-up bag when I'm not using the latter. I'm keeping extra camera batteries, SD cards, and other photo-related small things in these pouches. The pattern that creates such a nice 3D effect is the "Sagmeister & Walsh Beauty Pattern", a mesmerising white-on-black pattern that I'd describe as "space worms" ;) And of course, the printed pattern is much smaller on the pouch than it is on the bag.

This is a simple one-shot image but it was a little tricky to find the right angle to get the best and most harmonious bokeh effect. I'm aware of the fact that from this angle, the "focus line" is wafer-thin. But it's there, and I think there's enough sharpness to make the image work.

I used one single (two, please see my P.S.) light source, the natural light photo lamp from above (and natural light from the windows, of course). Processed mostly in DXO and LR (the basics), with finishing touches in Analog Efex.

HMM, Everyone!

P.S. I forgot to mention that I also put my small LED flashlight inside of the small pouch for some backlight.

#siderssunday

Usually, you don't go to a DIY superstore/warehouse to photograph the building's façade but buy DIY stuff (which we did, too, of course). Unless it's the "Bauhaus Halensee". This DIY warehouse in the busy and densely-populated Charlottenburg borough (Halensee district) is located between an urban railway line and the urban motorway, its entrance facing the busy Kurfürstendamm, one of Berlin's most famous and well-known boulevards. Its façade, consisting of textured, structured, 3D-shaped aluminium panels, is very photogenic.

This is the façade on one of the building's long sides in a wide-angle close-up view, as I stood right in front of it. Stupidly, I shot at F2,2 (I had photographed a flower growing on the adjacent green strip, wanted a blurry background, and had forgotten to adjust the aperture back to "architecture-suitable" when taking the first shots of the façade), so the roof area was a little blurry so I sharpened that part in post (Topaz).

Please note that this is not a mirrored image. It is the façade "as is", and the only manipulation here is that I removed a roof overhang on the lower left side because it was distracting.

HSS, Everyone!

Photo for Our Daily Challenge

Theme: BUCKET, PAIL, or TUB

#sliderssunday

#GiuseppeArcimboldo

Recently, while clearing the attic, I noticed something in one of the many obscured corners, something that I had overlooked in all the many years before. Not that I visit the attic often, it's terribly dark, dusty, full of cobwebs (and spiders!), and trodden floorboards that, every time they creak, make me jump – and all of a sudden the shadows come to life... Well, attic owners, I guess you know what I mean. But that new discovery made me overcome my fear of the dark. There was something carefully wrapped up in thick layers of old looking fabric, a square shape. When I looked at that wrapped-up shape I remembered that, when I was little, I'd overheard my grandfather speak of a "painted treasure" a few times, and everytime he noticed me, he made a shush gesture. I wondered... Could that be it? The painted treasure? With shaky hands, I carefully began to unknot the many knots of the old, rough cord that kept the fabric together. In some parts the cord was so frail that it crumbled when I touched it. When I finally had removed the cord and the heavy fabric, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was a painting, an old painting, very old. But it looked so fresh, so... alive.

Carefully, I carried the painting down the narrow stairs to the living room to have a closer look. The style, the signature, they rang a bell. I did some quick online research, and soon found my suspicion confirmed: "Bingo!", I yelled, because this painting seemed to be the legendary, long-lost portrait of Aubrey Gina Melanzana I. of the Solanum empire, painted by no other than the famous Listada de Gandia, the only paintress among the old masters that had managed to come to fame at a time when female artists had not (yet) been appreciated. This find was a sensation. And I was rich :)

OK, friends, the truth: I live in an apartment, and the attic in the house I live in has been converted into flats decades ago. But there is a suspended ceiling in my hall, and it's sure crammed with stuff like suitcases, a few of my childhood stuffed animals, fabric rolls – and dust and cobwebs ;) My grandfather has also never talked about a painted (or any other) treasure hidden somewhere, but he loved to paint in oil, a passion (and talent) that he'd passed on to my dad. And while I've always preferred to draw (before I re-discovered the joy of photography), I do love eggplant :) When I saw this cute, small eggplant with its adorable "nose" last Saturday at the weekend market, I knew I had to take a photo of it before turning it into a delicious meal.

I have seen lovely portraits photographed to resemble the style of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens here on Flickr, and thought I'd try an aubergine "portrait" in that style, and not to forget the magnificent Giuseppe Arcimboldo when it comes to "vegetable people", of course ;). Ingredients used were: juniper berries and pins with a green head, a blue napkin with a floral pattern / white lace doily as mantle and renaissance collar; the brooch is borrowed from my mom, it belonged to my grandmother; grape on fondue fork as sceptre; the small crown (for all over scale: it's 2,2 cm / 0,86 inches high) used to be a pencil's end cap, and I'd only bought the pencil because of the crown (at the museum shop of the German Historical Museum). As light I used my DIY soft box, placed on the right, and used a piece of golden coated cardboard (from a cookie box) as a handheld reflector on the left. Processed in DXO, Viveza, Color Efex, and ON1 2020 for the textures (Raw Hide, Brocade Black, Canvas) which I've only applied to the background.

Happy Sliders Sunday, Everyone!

P.S. The image is no art forgery, I had it checked at my greengrocer's ;)

Die Gemüsekönigin

Beim Aufräumen des Dachbodens unseres alten Familienanwesens – einer Tätigkeit, der ich nur sehr ungern nachgehe, weil der Dachboden düster, staubig und voller Spinnweben (und Spinnen!) ist und ich jedes Mal, wenn die alten, ausgetretenen Dielen knarren, einen Riesenschreck bekomme, weil die Schatten dann auf einmal zum Leben zu erwachen scheinen – machte ich eine Entdeckung, die mich meine Furcht vor der Dunkelheit mit einem Schlag vergessen ließ.

In einer der finsteren Ecken entdeckte ich ein rechteckiges Etwas, umhüllt von dicken Lagen alten Stoffs, etwas, das mir nie zuvor aufgefallen war. Plötzlich erinnerte ich mich daran, dass ich meinen Großvater manchmal von einem "gemalten Schatz" sprechen gehört hatte, als ich noch klein war. Diese Information war offensichtlich nicht für meine Ohren bestimmt, denn jedes Mal, wenn mein Großvater mich beim Lauschen erwischte, verstummte er und legte den Zeigefinger auf den Mund, "Psssst!", und schüttelte den Kopf dabei. Konnte dieses rechteckige Etwas etwa besagter "gemalter Schatz" sein? Die Form zumindest stimmte. Ich beschloss, das Familiengeheimnis endlich zu lüften. Vorsichtig holte ich das große Paket aus der Ecke hervor. Mit zittrigen Händen begann ich, die vielen Knoten der dicken Schnur, die die Stoffverpackung zusammenhielt, zu lösen. An manchen Stellen war die Schnur schon so brüchig, dass sie unter meinen Fingern zerbröselte, an anderer Stelle aber war die Schnur noch so robust und die Knoten so fest gezogen, dass ich sie kaum aufbekam.

Als ich nach einer Weile endlich die dicken Stoffschichten entfernen konnte, traute ich meinen Augen kaum: Das musste es sein, das Gemälde, um das mein Großvater so ein Geheimnis gemacht hatte. Und auf einmal verstand ich auch, warum. Der Malstil und die Signatur kamen mir irgendwie noch aus dem Kunstunterricht bekannt vor und das Bild wirkte auch so farbenfroh und frisch, als sei es gerade erst gemalt worden, dennoch war es offensichtlich sehr alt – das konnte doch nur von...

Vorsichtig trug ich das Bild die enge Treppe hinunter zum Wohnzimmer und schaltete meinen Computer ein. Nach einer kurzen Recherche fand ich meine Vermutung bestätigt. "Donnerwetter!", rief ich, denn was ich da vor mir hatte, war das in der Kunstwelt schon lange unrettbar veschollen geglaubte, einzige Portrait von Aubrey Gina Melanzane I., der Königin des Solanum-Reichs, gemalt von der berühmten Listada de Gandia, der einzigen "Alten Meisterin" unter Männern, die es schon zu ihrer Zeit – einer Zeit, in der Künstlerinnen weder akzeptiert waren noch echte Anerkennung erfuhren – zu Ruhm gebracht hatte. Dieser Fund war eine Sensation. Und ich war reich :)

Na gut, ich habe hier ziemlich geflunkert, denn wie Ihr Euch denken könnt, gibt es weder ein Familienanwesen noch einen verwunschenen Dachboden. Nur den Hängeboden im Flur, auf dem sich zwar allerhand Krams befindet, bestimmt auch jede Menge Spinnweben, aber garantiert keine wertvollen Gemälde – denn das wüsste ich ;) Mein Opa hat auch nie von einem "gemalten" oder irgendeinem anderen Schatz gesprochen, wohl aber malte er gern mit Ölfarben, eine Leidenschaft (und das Talent dafür), die er an meinen Vater weitergegeben hatte. Ich habe auch immer gerne gezeichnet (zumindest bis ich meine Freude an der Fotografie wiederentdeckt hatte) – vor allem aber mag ich Aubergine :) Und als ich dieses hübsche, kleine Exemplar mit der süßen Nase letzten Samstag bei mir auf dem Wochenmarkt entdeckt hatte, wusste ich nicht nur: "Das ist meine!", sondern auch, dass ich vor der Weiterverarbeitung zu einer leckeren Speise erst einmal ein Foto von ihr machen würde.

Die Zutaten hier waren: zwei Wacholderbeeren und Stecknadeln mit grünen Köpfen, eine royalblaue Serviette mit barock-floralem Muster, eine weißes Spitzendeckchen; die Brosche habe ich mir von meiner Mutter geliehen, sie gehörte meiner Großmutter. Und zu guter Letzt die kleine Krone (als Maßstab/zum Größenvergleich: Sie ist 2,2 cm hoch), die das Endstück eines Bleistifts war, den ich nur ihretwegen mal im Museumsshop des Deutschen Historischen Museums gekauft hatte; sie stellt wohl eine Hohenzollernkrone dar, was aber nicht sein kann, wissen wir doch, dass dies die Krone derer von Solanum ist ;)

Habt eine schöne Woche, liebe Flickr-Freunde. Und: Das Bild ist echt, ich habe es bei meinem Gemüsehändler überprüfen lassen :)

#sunset #florida #sunset #waterscape #landscape #nature #discovertheworld #nature_perfection #gregorymountainpacks #sony #gitzo #leofotousa #markins #manfrotto #TKpanel #luminarneo #adobe_LR_PS #nikcollection #topaz #dxo #capture_1 #rrs

Quincy actually sat still in the backyard for me! I guess he saw Oscar getting all of the photo attention and he didn't want left out.

"No Winter lasts forever; no Spring skips its turn." ~Hal Borland~

#MacroMondays

#PerfectTogether

This was one of the "not that easy" themes with so many possibilities that it was difficult to find the right subject and then settle on one final image. Yesterday evening I didn't see the forest for the trees anymore after taking numerous shots of this and that. Today, I once again took numerous shots to try one final idea – and picked one of yesterday's photos. Sigh. Not that I didn't like today's final image of a pen and paper but I found the latter too harsh. You should maybe ask me again tomorrow but tomorrow is Tuesday, so... The pen and paper image is probably better suited for the theme because one can see the two things that are "perfect together" right away while my entry for the theme is more of a guessing game.

To make things short, here's the explanation: The two things perfect together in my photo are the clasp and hook of a golden bracelet (not mine but my Mom's), with the tip of the hook in focus and the clasp that is shaped a little like an 8 as bokeh.

The image is one single shot, illuminated with my two warm-light LED lamps from the left and the right. The blue sheen is from the blue glitter foam sheet that was still lying around somewhere in the background while I had placed the bracelet on the black, glossy tile. What can I say, this image is from yesterday's warming-up mode so all kinds of things were lying around on the table ;)

HMM, Everyone!

#Mittwochsmakro

My Macro Monday "Dutch Angle" outtake, the furry autumn leaf of unknown ID. I didn't choose it for MMs because while I clearly photographed it at a Dutch angle as one can see from the stem, the leaf's shape somehow "evened" the tilt out again which somehow defeated the theme's purpose for me.

The leaf is almost 4 cm wide, wide enough to comfortably place my small LED flashlight behind it so it would nicely illuminate the dense covering with trichomes without being visible in the photo. In-camera focus stacking already looked nice but stacking the 15 ORFs in Helicon Focus (method A, R7, S3) looked better because it yielded a crispier, more detailed image.

If somebody happens to know the ID of this fairly succulent, furry little leaf, please let me know.

Happy Wednesday Macro, Everyone!