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#SlidersSunday
Happy Orthodox Easter :-)
Taken back in 2016 on an unusually warm (for late March) and also strangely "sunny-hazy" Easter Monday at the Berlin Zoological Garden. I remember well that the sun managed to break through the clouds only a few times, and by the time we were about to leave the Zoo, the sun was all but a pale white disk behind the muggy layer of clouds. It was a weird "sunshine without sunshine" atmosphere, difficult to describe. When I look at this image now, after four years, the tree somehow reminds me of Earth, and the fruits look like all the different places, cities, countries, villages, all the individuals who live on Earth, and who are seperated from each other, but who are also connected to each other by the planet we live on / share, and nowadays we are connected with each other through social media, too. I guess it's the current "Corona situation" which gave me this idea...
The strange light on that day provided me with some nice tree silhouettes, and the dull grey, slightly yellowish sky made this perfect for some colour processing (or colour adding, actually) fun in Color Efex Pro. I re-processed this image only last week, but since I had processed it the first time around in Color Efex, I decided to stick to it. All that I changed this time is that I've used the "Bi-color Filter" on three different layers (in PS) for an even more colourful look, and I've also smoothed the image in Topaz DeNoise.
Actually I had wanted to upload this last Sunday both for Easter and for Sliders Sunday, then somehow didn't get around to do it (I seem to "not get around to do things" a lot lately during these strange indoors days...), then wanted to upload it last Monday, but, heck, there is no Sliders Monday, is there? But then I was delighted to learn from dear Flickr friend Cami mire (fdlscrmn) that the Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter this Sunday, so this is my slightly belated, yet also right on time Easter greeting and Sunday slide in one :-)
Ist alles so schön bunt hier...
Letzte Woche kurz vor Ostern habe ich mich an diese Aufnahme aus dem Berliner Zoo von vor vier Jahren erinnert - aufgenommen damals an einem seltsam diesig-sonnigen und für Ende März auch ungewöhnlich warmen Ostermontag. Die Sonne hatte es an jenem Tag durchaus auch einmal direkt durch die Wolkendecke hindurchgeschafft, aber gegen Ende des Zoobesuchs am späteren Nachmittag war sie am dunstigen, gelblich-grauen Himmel nur noch als blasse, helle Scheibe wahrnehmbar. Als Ergebnis war das Originalfoto fast so eine Art "Farb-Schwarzweiß-Bild" und schon damals hatte ich mit diversen Farbfiltern in Color Efex herumgespielt, um dem Himmel etwas mehr Leben einzuhauchen. Für den heutigen Sliders Sunday habe ich es dann jetzt noch einmal farblich aufgepeppt, wie schon 2016 ebenfalls unter Verwendung des "Bi-Color Filters" in Color Efex. Dieses Mal habe ich aber gleich drei verschiedene Farbebenen kombiniert und das Bild in Topaz DeNoise auch etwas entrauscht. Eigentlich hatte ich es schon letzte Woche an Ostersonntag hochladen wollen, aber irgendwie komme ich momentan zu nichts, obwohl nicht nur das Foto-Archiv lockt, sondern mir u.a. auch meine Wohnung jede Menge kleinere (und auch größere) Hinweise gibt, was eigentlich alles zu tun wäre, das man doch jetzt, in den vielen Stunden daheim, auch so wunderbar tun könnte, aber... nun ja. Immerhin aber ist der Osterbezug erhalten geblieben, denn die orthodoxen Christen feiern Ostern an diesem Sonntag :-)
Outtake for Macro Monday's "Chip(s)" theme. view into two slots of a multi card reader, size: 1,5 cm / 0,393701 inches
Zweitversion für Macro Mondays "Chip(s)"-Thema, Blick in zwei Steckplätze eines Multikartenlesers
#gator #florida #best_birds_planet #planet_birds #birdbrilliance #birdphotography #nature #wildlifephotography #birdextreme #bestbirdshots #discovertheworld #nature_perfection #wildlifeperfection #gregorymountainpacks #canon #gitzo #leofotousa #markins #manfrotto #TKpanel #luminarneo #adobe_LR_PS #nikcollection #topaz #dxo #capture_1 #rrs
#lake_eola #orlando #sunset #florida #waterscape #landscape #cityscape #blue_hour #discovertheworld #nature_perfection #gregorymountainpacks #canon #gitzo #leofotousa #markins #manfrotto #TKpanel #luminarneo #adobe_LR_PS #nikcollection #topaz #dxo #capture_1 #rrs
Wolfsburg/Niedersachsen GER
The Phæno Science Center is an interactive science center in Wolfsburg, Germany, completed in 2005. The building stands on concrete stilts, allowing visitors to the Autostadt to pass through without interfering with the workings of the building. Phæno is connected to the Autostadt by a metal bridge accessed by escalators and stairs either side. The underside of Phæno and the "stilts" are illuminated.
Krypta / Konradsburg
Landkreis Harz / Germany
See where this picture was taken. [?]
three single shots
© All Rights Reserved - you may not use this image in any form without my prior permission.
#MacroMondays
#Red
Is it? Yes, at least sometimes :) Because this is a capital B that, methinks, looks like a heart when turned to the left. I assume that the B was designed to look like a heart. The whole logo-lettering says "Bocca" which is a collection of glasses by Paris-based spectacles and frames manufacturer "Face a Face". The lettering is embossed on the specs case and both the case and the (also red) frames that came in the case belong to my mother, magrit k. The temple stems of my mom's glasses have a cute little detail, a pair of small red high heels/pumps on each side. Maybe I should have photographed one of these, but my mom has already done so, and very beautifully, too (you can see her photo in the first comment).
The B is 4 cm/1,5 inches long, so this macro is on the larger side. The image is a focus stack consisting of 15 DNGs that I've combined in Helicon Focus (Method A, Radius 8, Smoothing 6). The yellow highlights were created by using a small gold-coated cardboard "reflector" thingy. I don't use image frames/borders that often anymore but here I thought a small dark-red frame with a thin white highlight looked nice and helped to better define the image with all that red.
Happy Macro Monday, Everyone! I'm busy today and will catch up with you later!
...Said: I thought it would be so!
#MacroMondays
#Tableware
The sad face of Witwe Bolte (Widow Tibbets in the English version; here she looks as if she had a toothache, doesn't she?) on the handle of the teaspoon from my childhood cutlery set. Witwe Bolte is a character featured in the first two verses/pranks (and the epilogue; my caption and sub-caption are the first two verses of that epilogue; the English translation is courtesy of David Gorman who translated the whole story) of Wilhelm Busch's "Max and Moritz: A Story of Seven Boyish Pranks". Max and Moritz is one of the most popular German children's books ever, published for the first time in 1865, and translated into 300 languages. The pranks are full of wicked humour, and when I was little, I didn't particularly like the characters of Max and Moritz because they were such nasty little boys who terrorized their whole village with the most outrageous pranks. In the end, they met an untimely end by being ground at the village mill and fed to the miller's geese (!). Pretty cruel, isn't it, but times were different (and much rougher) in 1865. Or were they?
So I guess my photo features what you might call my "signature macro colours", this time not achieved by using my makeshift colour filters, but makeshift reflectors instead, a new addition (next to the gold-coated cardboard) being a pink chocolate wrapper tin foil. I'm very busy at the moment, so I decided to stay in my comfort zone and just try to get a decent photo for the theme so as not to skip once again. The final image is a single shot, processed in DXO PL7, Analog Efex, and Lightroom.
Size of what you see of Widow Tibbets/the teaspoon's handle: 2 cm/0,78 inches.
Happy Macro Monday, Everyone! I'll try to catch up with you tonight!
Great How or Great Howe is a hill of 522 metres in the west of the English Lake District, lying south of Scafell Pike and east of Burnmoor Tarn. It lies in the civil parish of Eskdale, the unitary authority area of Cumberland and the ceremonial county of Cumbria.
Illgill Head also pictured in the background.
The Lake Buttermere valley is a U-shaped glacial valley in the Lake District National Park, containing three lakes: Buttermere, Crummock Water, and Loweswater. The valley is known for its natural beauty, surrounding fells, and outdoor activities like hiking and walking, with the hamlet of Buttermere nestled at one end. It also has a history of mining, particularly for iron and slate, and is managed largely by the National Trust.
Singapore Flyer
30 Raffles Avenue / Singapore
See where this picture was taken. [?]
Explore # 321 on Wednesday, March 23, 2016
© All Rights Reserved - you may not use this image in any form without my prior permission.
Dear friends, I am realizing that my archives are rich in forsaken treasures – yes, I know that in those days of lockdown you all are realizing the very same thing ;-)
This picture comes from a sunrise session at my favourite location, the meanders of the river Adda, dating from April 2015. I would avoid to nag you about this incredibly wonderful location: you can take a look at my album Silent banks, the complete collection of the photos I have taken there; the attached narratives are rich in information about the place, if you are curious enough.
This location is especially renowned for its legendary morning mists, but only a thin layer of milky mist floated above the water that morning.
I have picked this specific bracketing for a number of reasons (including the dewdrops you can see on the grass in the foreground), but I suspect that its main merit lays in giving me a feeling of opening to new possibilities. In the same vein, I believe that this pandemic will open a whole world of new paths for us to travel along. After the pain and the sorrow, after having regained the closeness we had taken for granted for so much time before the storm abruptly took it away from us… After we have risen from the ashes of Covid-19 we will be bound to take seriously a huge lot of lessons that this (not even alive) tiny speck of proteins and RNA has taught us. We will have to unveiling our souls because everyone’s soul counts – everyone can contribute to a new way of living, just as now the raging infection requires that everyone accepts and practises the lockdown – and everyone has a role to play in this common struggle.
I have obtained this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-1.7/0/+1.7 EV] by luminosity masks in the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal exposure" shot), then, as usual, I added some final touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4.
I tried the inverted RGB blue channel technique described by Boris Hajdukovic as a possible final contribution to the processing. While this technique (which, its imposing name notwith standing, is pretty simple to implement) often holds interesting results in full daylight landscapes, its effects on a low-light capture (e.g. a sunrise) are utterly unpredictable, so at the end of my workflow I often give it a try to ascertain its possibilities. In this picture I have exploited this technique in a very frugal, yet effective, way – just some touches where needed.
RAW files has been processed with Darktable. Denoising with DFine 2 and the Gimp (denoised and original images blended by lightness).
#MacroMondays
#AprilFools
Some 1st of April fun with a red hot (well, not that hot) chili pepper and a so-called Lady finger banana. These smallest "dessert" bananas are also known as fig bananas, sugar bananas, or date bananas due to their sweet, complex, and delicious taste. To complete the confusion, in German, these finger-long, thin-skinned fruits are also known as "apple bananas" or "baby bananas". And it gets particularly interesting when taking into account that, in German, bananas once were referred to as "Paradiesfeigen" ("paradise figs") which brings us back to the "fig-" or, even more fitting, "apple" bananas. Speaking of going bananas while doing the banana research for this theme...
The chili pepper is one of the easily accessible, run-of-the-mill, long red peppers of medium heat that are sometimes referred to as Jalapeños but technically aren't. After peeling (and eating) the banana, I cut off a bit of the banana's stem and carefully placed the chili pepper inside of the skin so that what you see of the "forbidden fruit" inside the frame wasn't any longer than 6,5 cm/2,55 inches.
The image is a focus stack made of 15 images. The in-camera stacked JPG looked good already but combining the Raw files in Helicon Focus yielded an even better result with method B, radius 8, smoothing 1.
P.S. In German, we say "April, April" after having fooled someone on the 1st of April ;)
HMM, Everyone, and don't let yourself get fooled ;)
📷 Hrvatski:
Ponedjeljak u crno-bijelom tonu.
Snimao jutros u luci Čižići na otoku Krku – more mirno, brodovi u tišini, ali nebo priča drugu priču. Tmurno i teško, kao predah pred tjedan pun kiše i vjetra...
📷 English:
A black and white Monday.
Captured this morning in Čižići harbour on the island of Krk – the sea is calm, the boats silent, yet the sky tells a different story. Heavy and ominous, like a prelude to a stormy week ahead...
📷 Français :
Un lundi en noir et blanc.
Pris ce matin au port de Čižići, sur l’île de Krk – la mer est calme, les bateaux silencieux, mais le ciel raconte une autre histoire. Sombre et menaçant, prélude à une semaine de tempête...
📷 Deutsch:
Ein Montag in Schwarz-Weiß.
Heute Morgen im Hafen von Čižići auf der Insel Krk aufgenommen – das Meer ruhig, die Boote still, doch der Himmel erzählt eine andere Geschichte. Schwer und düster, als Vorbote einer stürmischen Woche...
📷 Español:
Un lunes en blanco y negro.
Tomada esta mañana en el puerto de Čižići, en la isla de Krk – el mar tranquilo, los barcos en silencio, pero el cielo cuenta otra historia. Oscuro y amenazante, como el preludio de una semana de tormentas...
📷 Italiano:
Un lunedì in bianco e nero.
Scattata stamattina al porto di Čižići, sull'isola di Krk – il mare è calmo, le barche silenziose, ma il cielo racconta un’altra storia. Cupo e minaccioso, preludio a una settimana di maltempo...
A Photo for the Group #52of2017. www.flickr.com/groups/52of2017/
follow me on Instagram: www.instagram.com/robertgraser/
Planet Clingon? Yes, that's right. Because, as has been recently discovered, there's a sister species of the Klingons. I assume the differences between the Klingons and the Clingons are pretty similar to those between the Vulcans and the Romulans. This means that the Clingons are peaceful, polite, kind, and generally super nice, extremely relaxed people. What you see is a solar storm rising behind their home world. Solar "storm" in the Clingon solar system means a warm, gentle, slightly fuzzy breeze because, well, everything in the Clingon world is a little fuzzy. A favourite chill-out activity of theirs is smoking "pod", a very healthy and nutritious plant that, as a most welcome side effect, gives you sunny, bright (and somewhat fuzzy) vibes. Peace, folks!
Late in the game with this "lucky last shot". Nothing I'd tried before had worked out. With almost every MM theme, I try to make my subject look "different" so you won't recognize at once what it is. But when this is exactly the task, I go "What? How do I do that? And what could I possibly photograph?!?" As usual :) This is a single shot of a cling foil/film roll, taken with the Laowa 50mm Ultra 2x macro at a magnification somewhere between 1.5:1 and 1.25:1. Processed in DXO PL7, Analog and Color Efex Pro.
Happy Macro Monday, Everyone!
#MacroMondays
#Party
Happy 17th Birthday, Macro Mondays :)
I joined Macro Mondays on 26 September 2016, and I'm a happy member ever since. A wonderful group that has taught me new photo techniques, lures me out of my comfort zone, saves me from the Winter blues, and kept me sane during those weird, time- and endless days of the pandemic. I also admire how the moderators manage to come up with new themes every week. Thank you, MMs!
And for "Party", it's Blingbert aka Bertie again. Of course, it had to be him ;) He got all excited when he heard what MM's Birthday theme would be about. "Let me come along!", he begged, "you know I love parties! Will there be Karaoke?" "I hope not", I answered. "Don't worry, Silke", Bertie said, "you don't have to sing, I'll do it!!!" He always knows how to talk me around. Bertie got even more excited. "I will sing an aria! How about something from The Valkyrie?" "What?!? No, you won't!", I yelled. "It's a party, Bertie, parties are about people having fun together. Fun. If you sing something from The Valkyrie the party will be over before it begins." Bertie looked seriously abashed. And I felt sorry for being so harsh on him. "Come on, I know you love Classical music. So let's take the 'Classic', and add 'Rock'. How about that?" "There's something like 'Classic Rock'"? He eyed me suspiciously. So what is more "Classic" in Rock music than the archetype of all things Rock? Rock 'n' Roll, of course. And when I played the YouTube video of Wanda Jackson's "Let's Have A Party" to him, he positively turned nuts. "Yessss! That's it! Why have I never heard this before? It will be a blast! And from now on, my second name is Wanda!"
You've seen "Blingbert Wanda" before (please see the first comment). For "Party", I retried my other idea for the (artificial) "Bird" theme: Bertie in front of a spinning fidget spinner. Back then, the backdrop had been far too busy. In my first attempt, I had used the camera's in-built "Live ND" filter, and didn't like either the colours, light, or the way the motion blur looked. So this time, I used a real ND filter, a Vario ND filter. It's also somewhat of a filter overkill because I wondered if I could combine the star filter with the ND filter because party = bling. I'm happy to say it worked, and this time, I also managed to get a nice-looking motion blur of the fidget spinner.
Setup: I glued the fidget spinner to a black tile with modeling clay. Next, I put Bertie Wanda on/halfway into a small glass Christmas bauble filled with tiny, shiny confetti stars. I used modeling clay once again to fixate the bauble on a small plastic box to get the right height. At one point, I also knocked the tile over when I rotated the fidget spinner, so the tile knocked Bertie on the bauble over, and all those tiny confetti stars got tossed onto the table, onto the carpet, everywhere... The joys of macro photography ;)
Size info: Bertie Wanda is 4,5 cm long, and the entire width of the frame is about 6 cm.
HMM, Everyone!
"The world is big and I want to get a good look at it before it gets dark." John Muir
The world seems very big from the vantage point of Hurricane Ridge on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington.
7DWF, Saturdays: Landscapes
Babelsberg Palace in Potsdam was built between 1835–1849 as summer residence for Prince Wilhelm (the later Emperor Wilhelm I.) and his wife Augusta (of the House of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach). It was designed in the Gothic revival style. Since 1990 the palace and park are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin".
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babelsberg_Palace
Again (see album, please), I've used Alfred Grupstra's "Coolblue" LR preset as a starting point for the processing, but then still tweaked the settings. Since the processing added quite a lot of grain (not very pretty especially for the sky), I then smoothed out the sky with Nik's Dfine - several times.
I wonder: Can I add this to Sliders Sunday's group pool tomorrow when I've already uploaded it today?
Thank you very much for your comments and faves ;-) They are much aprecciated !!!
Das im gleichnamigen Park gelegene Schloss Babelsberg wurde als Sommerresidenz für Prinz Wilhelm (den späteren Kaiser Wilhelm I.) und seine aus dem Haus Sachsen-Weimar stammende Frau Augusta von Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Ludwig Persius und Johann Heinrich Strack zwischen 1835 und 1849 im Stil der englischen Gotik errichtet. Park und Schloss sind seit 1990 Teil des UNESCO Welterbes "Schlösser und Parks von Potsdam und Berlin".
Quelle: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schloss_Babelsberg
Lieben Dank für Eure Kommentare und Favs ;-)!
#osprey #florida #best_birds_planet #planet_birds #birdbrilliance #birdphotography #nature #wildlifephotography #birdextreme #bestbirdshots #discovertheworld #nature_perfection #wildlifeperfection #gregorymountainpacks #canon #gitzo #leofotousa #markins #manfrotto #TKpanel #luminarneo #adobe_LR_PS #nikcollection #topaz #dxo #capture_1 #rrs
El castillo de Villamayor de Monjardin (Navarra).
The Cat Empire - The Car Song - Live at the Chapel
Muchas gracias por vuestra visita y comentario, cuidaros...tod@s...