The Four Seasons

This is not a blog post about Vivaldi's seminal work. 

Some years ago when living in my previous apartment, I photographed the same view from my kitchen window during the four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and winter.

At the end of the year, I combined them into one image using my image editing programme. It was purely a personal project and the people I showed seemed to like it.

My 1st attempt. View from the kitchen window

After a two year break from thinking about it, I decided to do another. This time with an historical angle.

I am lucky to be living in a beautiful area that has several castles, forests and ruins all within a short distance from my apartment. This was important because I couldn't guarantee that the weather would be the same as I wanted when arriving there. 

My partner and I visited several places over a period of weeks before deciding on a view halfway between my place and the town of Balsthal. There is a parking spot which affords a spectacular view of the ruins of Castle Neu Falkenstein.

My rules for the four seasons project are pretty much the same as for when I am documenting progress on building sites. I wrote about it here.

We picked a good vantage point and my partner , Sue, took pictures of where I was standing and which fence post I would be standing beside as an "aide de memoire" for later.

 

My location. Google Streetview image

 

  

 My viewpoint. Picture by Sue.

 

The exact fence post!😀

I took the first picture this year (2020) in February. We had a light sprinking of snow and I didn't know if there would be another* 

 

February 2020

After choosing a viewpoint, it is also of course important to use the same camera and lens setup for every picture. I settled on my Fujifilm XE-2s coupled with the 18-55 zoom, always set at 55mm. The focus point chosen was always the middle one and I had the "level indicator" always visible in the viewfinder in order to keep the camera level. Doing all this helps the final editing to go a lot smoother.

Guidelines showing the center of the image

The following images were taken using the methods and equipment desribed above in April, July and October.

April. Spring

 July. Summer

October. Autumn

After the final picture was taken, it was a simple job to create a new document in Affinity Photo with a layer for each season. I then divided the image into four and erased any bits that didn't belong. This is the final result.

I am rather pleased with the end result and am currnetly looking for my next location(s).

This is a simple and very pleasurable photo project that gets you out of the house and exploring new (or familiar) places. It is interesting to view the changes over the course of a year. Of course, your final image doesn't have to be in the style that I did. You could display them separately or have all four in a frame.

Whatever you do, have fun and be safe.

Tom

 

 *There hasn't been yet.(November 2020)

Maps, books, cities and churches

I've been doing this photography lark since 1979. My first image was printed in a newspaper for US soldiers based in (then) West Germany around 1980. I was thrilled to see my image of tanks driving through a gate and bought several copies of the newspaper.

The feeling has never gone away. True, the internet allows us all to see our work published but nothing in my opinion beats having my images featured on paper.

Last year I was contacted by Jasper van Puten, a lecturer at  the Massachusetts School of Art and Design. He had seen an image of mine on Google Earth that would help to illustrate a part of a book he was in the process of writing "Networked Nation: Mapping German Cities in Sebastian Munster's 'Cosmographia' (Maps, Spaces, Cultures)".

Here's the blurb about the book. "Jasper van Putten examines the groundbreaking woodcut city views in the German humanist Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia. This description of the world, published in Basel from 1544 to 1628, glorified the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and engendered the city book genre. Van Putten argues that Münster’s network of city view makers and contributors—from German princes and artists to Swiss woodcutters, draftsmen, and printers—expressed their local and national cultural identities in the views. The Cosmographia, and the city books it inspired, offer insights into the development of German and Swiss identity from 1550 to Switzerland’s independence from the empire in 1648.* "

My image was to be used in the Swiss identity section of the book and was taken at the Sempacher "Schlachtkapelle" (Sempach Battlefield chapel). The chapel is built on the site of the battle of Sempach which took place in 1386 and was decisive in helping Switzerland win independence from the mighty Austrian Habsburg empire. Jasper was interested in using my image of the mural in that chapel which depicts the battle.

Aside from photography, I also enjoy studying and collecting old maps and engravings, so I was over the moon at having one of my images considered for inclusion in the book. We agreed a reproduction fee and several weeks later I received a mock up of how my image would appear in the book.

Here's the image in more detail:

Canon 5d MKII 16-35 zoom. ISO 640 1/40 at f4.5

The book is now in print and at the time of writing, only one copy is still available on Amazon.

As for the chapel itself, it is a place I love to visit with my camera. One of its features is that it has an ossuary (beinhaus in German). A repository of bones to commemorate the dead. Ossuaries are a pet project of mine and I have some of my ossuary images here for you to see on Google Plus.

For a more immersive experience, you can see the chapel interior in full 360 degrees courtesy of my 360 degree image of the chapel interior.

Here are a few more images of the fascinating place.

  Canon 5d MKII 16-35 zoom. ISO 200 1/200 at f13

  Canon 5d MKII 16-35 zoom. ISO 200 HDR Tonemapped image

 Canon 5d MKII 16-35 zoom. ISO 200 HDR Tonemapped image

Canon 5d MKII 16-35 zoom. ISO 200 HDR Tonemapped image

Wikipedia article about the battle and the chapel

* Book description from this website.

The book is also available from Amazon 

As ever. Thanks for taking the time to visit and if you have any questions then please doon't hesitate to get in touch.

Tom

Funnies. Lost in translation (Part 3 of three)

So here we are again as promised. part three of my humourous and at times nonsensical images that (sometimes ) bring a smile.

The last two started here.

Everyday life. Out and about with a camera.

 This office wants every user to use a password

"for  security" purposes, then sticks the password 

onto the PC itself! (I've masked the password here).

A shop selling PC's in Olten has the Windows

 serial number on its display models.

A advert on the train for a spray to 

clean your sex toys. it was, however,

 the "Safe your body" clanger that irked 

me.

Cannabis ice tea from the vending machine

Every time I think of this I think that 
it's a polite way of saying P**S OFF

 This caught my attention on the autobahn 
(nope. I wasn't driving at the time)

 Fitness club outside of the town of Aarau

This is very strange. Either they installed the 
bench facing the wrong way or the trees grew
after the bench was installed. This is near the 
hospital in Olten.

Again, thanks for taking the time to read this. Normal service (i.e. photography related articles) will begin appearing as normal, shortly.

Funnies. Lost in translation (Part 2 of three)

So here it is. Amusing (to me anyway) images that I've recorded over the years. Some were taken with a "real" camera and some with the camera built in to my mobile phone. To read part one, please check out this link.

This selection, as promised in the last article is entitled  "Lost in translation". I call it that because when I come across these situations, I first read them as an English speaking person and then "switch"  my brain over to the language in which they are meant to be understood.

So what I'm trying to say is that readers of this article whose mother language is English will probably get more of a laugh out of this than the others. I'd love to hear your comments.

So without further ado.

 When parking near Bellinzona, you'll find it easy to remember 

the name of the car park!

It simply means "Swiss shower" but nevertheless

would raise a giggle or two if seen travelling on a 

UK motorway.

Three from the television.

Three from the supermarket

 

Looters? Seriously?

I'm wondering if this tea produces explosive 

diarrhoea.

 

 Is this tea for salty sea dogs or pirates?

This is the strangest one. Is the product 

actually free from French dressing? Is 

it something that people with an allergic 

reaction to French dressing can safely 

eat? 

That's it for now. The final part of this silly little collection will appear next Monday the 13th October 2014. You have been warned! Then it's back to normal photography related posts including my views on my new Canon 100 - 400 L zoom which I'll be testing in Sardinia.

Through fresh eyes.

I've noticed that when I go somewhere new, I see and photograph things that the residents often overlook.

You may remember my blog post "Back in time" when I photographed Herr Alois Zäch who was on the development team that created the World's first watch with built in illumination.

At the end of that piece, I said "On the way home I spotted a lovely little shrine beside the road and made a mental note to return and photograph it."

One week later I found the time to return.

From the outside, i.e. when you pass the shrine in a car, it's pretty unremarkable. Just a small bleached white building with a red tiled roof under a tree.

It's quite easy to miss 
(screenshots from Google Earth)

Parking proved to be the first problem. There was no space beside the shrine itself so I parked in a lay-by about 500 - 600 meters away from the shrine. (Number 1 on the screenshot)

I was a baking hot day so I was travelling light. Taking with me only the Eos 5d MK II together with a 70 - 200 and the trusty 17 - 40.

The first thing I wanted to do was to photograph the shrine with no road beside it, to try and lend an air of tranquillity to the image. I found a spot on a hill overlooking the shrine (number 2 on he screenshot) and used the 70 - 200 at the low end to get the composition I was looking for.

1st image from position 2

Not too pleased with this view because of the tree obscuring the shrine.Unfortunately  that was the only place where the road was hidden so I decided to do my photography around the shrine itself.

Both images here were taken at 17mm focal length. I simply moved further away from the shrine for the second image.

 Same viewpoint but with the camera in a horizontal position

This is the front of the shrine. I didn't have a flash with me so I used HDR to bring out the shadow details

This, however, is my favourite image from that day. There is no trace of the road (although cars were whizzing past me all the time) and I think it has a tranquil air about it. I converted the original image from RAW to a JPG and further processed it in Snapseed.

Feel free to leave some comments and thanks for reading. 

Back in time.

I recently attended a photo exhibition by an online colleague of mine Roger Albani. the event was held on the premises of a former watch making factory in Welschenrohr.

Sharing some of  the exhibition space on another part of the factory floor was an elderly gentleman surrounded by old blueprints, measuring devices and LOTS of watches in varying states of dismantlement.

 

After viewing Roger's images, I walked over to the other stand and began to inspect some of the very interesting and fully functioning devices there.

The owner of the stand turned out to be on Herr Alois Zäch who was responsible for development of the "Tourist" which was first illuminated wrist watch back in 1957 manufactured by the Tourist-Everlight Watch Company, Ad. Allemann Son, Welschenrohr, Switzerland.

 1957 advert for the 1st illuminated watch.

Herr Zäch had lots of stories to tell and was a mine of information about the "Tourist". He worked at the factory in Welschenrohr until it shut it's door in the late eighties and still has lots of memorabilia.

Some of the memorabilia includes the props used at the 1957 Basel fair to display the watches' illumination capabilities.

The advertising blurb says "illuminates the watch

 face and the surrounding area" The watch on this

 image (top left) is the one illuminated.

So. I hear you ask. "What has this to do with photography?" Well back in the day (as they say) I was always on the lookout for interesting articles to cover in order to hone my skills at reportage and also as a way of making money by sending said articles to magazines such as "Weekend", "Titbits" or maybe "Woman's Own".

I still have the urge, as a photographer to discover more about the world and the people around me and am not averse to asking questions. I decided there and then to do a little reportage on this interesting time in the Swiss watch making industry. Not to sell, but just to record and take some pictures.

Mr Zäch interested me because he represents a bygone era when electronics began to get smaller and smaller and be integrated into everyday items.

I took all the images that day with my 5D MkII and a 50 mm f1.4 lens.

    

(Left) original press release for the Tourist debut at

 the Basel fair in 1957. (Right) blueprints and watches.

Also on display was the battery charger. At that time, the watch didn't use small button cells as is the norm today. Instead, you had to hook it up to a charging device.

  

   Two images showing the charger open and closed.

And last but not least. The reportage would not be complete without a  photo of the man himself.

Herr Alois Zäch

Here's an excerpt from "WATCH. History of the modern wrist watch. By Pieter Doensen"

The first watch with a display illuminated by a small lamp of 1.2 mm, is the 'Tourist Everlight' of Ad. Allemann Fils S.A. of Welschenrohr, Switzerland. Three models were shown at the 1957 Basle Fair: a steel, goldplated and 18 K gold version. A small lead battery, the 'DEAC Dry-Accumulator' had to be recharged by a normal 1.5 V battery. In the United States, the 'Robot Everlight' was distributed by Robot Time New York.

So all in all, a very interesting day. I got to see some interesting images by Roger and learnt a little bit about Swiss watch making innovation. Oh! On another note. On the way home I spotted a lovely little shrine beside the road and made a mental note to return and photograph it. More later.

Thanks for reading.