Some inspiration from Lenbachhaus

Long time no blog! I have shelved my camera for the last 5 years to focus more on establishing the Monachium Belegarth group, first solid one of its kind in Europe. Most of my Sundays went into that, so I couldn't really go out and photograph as much as I wanted. Now Monachium is established and other members are doing most of the day-to-day running, so I will have some more spare tome to myself. This allows me to turn back to one of my other main hobbies, camerawork. 

My in-laws were visiting this week, and today we went to the Lenbachhaus museum. While a lot of their main art, the Blaue Reiter school, is not so much my thing, they happened to have a flock of 19th century artists out on exhibit, and there was some nice stuff. The landscape painters of that time - while obviously romanticizing nature - did some lovely things with composition and light that is very much like what I want to get out of my photography. Here three photos that I particularly enjoyed.

Domenico Quaglio: Die Vautsburg am Mittelrhein
Creditline: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München

Domenico Quaglio: Die Vautsburg am Mittelrhein - a moody scene of a castle on the Rhine that I really must go see. It has nice leading lines in the path way, placed off-center, with stormy clouds helping to point out the castle itself, but the entire thing kept in greys and greens that help emphasize the grim look appropriate to a 14th-century castle.

Johan Friedrich Hennings: Studie vom Königssee
Creditline: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München

Johan Friedrich Hennings: Studie vom Königssee
Creditline: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München
Edited: Darkened to match how I remember seeing it.

Johan Friedrich Hennings: Studie vom Königssee. The digital reproduction doesn't do justice to the original, they brightened it too much. It's very low-key, only the sunlit parts have any real detail to them, so it appears mystical and secret, with the edges of the plants and boat glowing like gold. Lots of negative space suggestion who-knows-what lurking around.

Anton Zwengauer: Herbstmorgen
Creditline: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München

Anton Zwengauer: Herbstmorgen. There's a lot of empty space in this, more that half is just shades of a murky blueish-yellow sky, and the landscape below disappears into the morning mist. The ramshackle hut is a mere detail in this view, where the feeling of clammy solitude palpably emanates from the canvas. Simple, quiet, and utterly gorgeous.

Take-aways: Negative space is a big deal. Simple tones avoid confusion and distraction. Low-key can be super effective. Landscape paintings can make for really good inspiration (in fact, I got their book of their landscape paintings for this purpose). And mainly, I need to get out there and find these views.

Thanks to the Lenbachhaus for giving me permission to using the digital versions of the pictures in this post.

First, buy some cheap crap

There's a classic style of post about just about any kind of photographic equipment that shows how starting with cheap equipment and gradually going to better and better gear is much more expensive than getting the better gear to begin with. These posts always irk me, especially when accompanied by exhortations to get the finest, most expensive gear that's out of the range of most mortals.

My approach has been exactly the opposite: When going into a new area when I don't know what to look for, I get something cheap that I expect to get rid of in a year or two. Whether tripods or flashes or
studio lights, I look for a third-party or store-brand kit as a "learner set". I'll then use that plus various internet sites to learn how to use that thing and what it is I like and don't like about it. I have found this to work a lot better than trying to understand what's useful and what's a gimmick based on internet reviews.

Once you've figured out the basics of this new type of equipment, it's time to get a reasonable one. This is where the mass-market brand-name items come into play. You can now reasonably look at reviews and comparisons, disregarding things you've found are unimportant for you, and up-rating what's really your thing. I bought my 60D this way: I made a spreadsheet of the features I wanted and the cameras that gave them. Since some features, like a flip-out display, are relatively rare, it cut down the selection to where I could borrow or rent the options until I knew what to get. I didn't do it when getting a tripod, but was lucky enough to be able to sell the Manfrotto that didn't suit me for a small loss.

The medium-quality item is likely to last you for several years, during which you'll figure out if it was just a short infatuation with a particular method or technology or something you want to specialize in. If the latter, you will surely learn enough by then to get what you need, rather than what people are trying to push.

If you tried getting the very best quality from the beginning, you're as likely as not to get something that's not suited to your needs: Too big, too heavy, too specialized. And even if you get a thing that suits you, you might find that it was just a passing fancy that you spent thousands of euros on instead of hundreds.

The main point is to make a conscious decision to get a "learner set". Know that it will be sub-par and adjust your expectations accordingly. Then you'll have a better chance at getting what you really need later.

A final note: Don't apply this to items where your safety is at stake.

POTD 31/3/2013: De-feet-ed

"De-feet-ed", ©2013 Lars Clausen

This is my entry into the current photo challenge between me and +aurin ræder. The challenge is "Feet, using extreme tele/crop". This is a detail of the Mariensaüle at Marienplatz, and while it looks dramatic, the owner of the victorious foot is actually a chubby little cherub, one of four defeating various monsters. I like it for the dramatic composition and the mixture of two very different feet.

POTD 23/3 2013: Rust Plants

"Rust Plants" ©2013 Lars Clausen
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I'm with +Mickey Blake  in Wales this weekend. While she's learning new and exciting knitting things (such as that she's been knitting her purls twisted since the very beginning), I'm going around with my camera, trying to get the best out of a cloudy early spring in the Welsh countryside.

Today I went over to Pembroke and from there out to the ocean at Freshwater West, which is a quite impressive sight (more pictures from that trip can be seen at http://goo.gl/JgDRq). On the way to the ocean, I stopped off in a little forest, and while the forest itself wasn't that interesting, there were a series of two meter high rusted metal structures that were quite interesting for a macro photographer. I could have spent hours there exploring the rust and paint flakes and plants and how they all came together in strange ways, but I wanted to get out to the water before it got dark.

This photo was the best of the trip, I love the rusted surface as the little mosses growing into the tube. My macro lens still seems to front-focus a bit, which is why the right side isn't quite in focus. I should compare the normal focus with the (very slow and light-sensitive) live-view focus. Unfortunately, the 60D does not have a focus microadjustment feature, maybe Magic Lantern will add that (if it can).

POTD 20/3 2013: Dice Tower

"Tower of Dice" ©2008 Lars Clausen
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I doubt any long-time RPG gamer hasn't at some point stacked their dice like this, only to have a fellow player "accidentally" bump the table just enough to make it topple.

This is the other picture that got sold as a wedding present. I like how clean this turned out, and how the transparency plays out. The shots were taken when I had built an impromptu lightbox and was trying with everyday lights to make effective shots, trying for some subjects that hadn't already been done a million times before. Though now later I have to admit that doing subjects that have been done before isn't such a bad thing. You can learn from how others have done them, you can compare yours to theirs, and you can get some experience in all those things that are common to almost all subjects, like lighting, background, composition, lighting, shadows, lighting, color management, lighting, lighting and more lighting.

POTD 19/3 2013: Barbed Morning Glory Wire

"Barbed Morning Glory Wire" ©2008 Lars Clausen
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This photo could be taken just about anywhere, but it's from Royal Oak, the suburb of Detroit my wife's aunt lives in ("I'm so bad, I vacation in Detroit!"). Being from a very peaceful country, I'm not used to seeing barbed wire around normal neighborhoods, so this juxtaposition really struck me. I have a thing for morning glory, since we brought some back from our time in Iran and have been growing them ever since.

This was taken with the 70-300 f/4.0-5.6 IS, which was a good lens for its price, but larger and heavier than I wanted it, especially since most of the size and weight was wasted on my crop camera. So I have since swapped it out for the 55-250, which works nicely as a walk-around lens. It's hard to tell on this small version, but the flower is not entirely sharp. The background separation is excellent, though.

POTD 17/3 2013: Dot dot dot...

"Dot dot dot..." © Lars Clausen 2007
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A more whimsical shot today, from a morning walk in a cold November. The way the gulls spread out evenly from the fall-colored tree struck me as curious, accentuated by the reflections. I deliberately darkened the background in Lightroom, as it was only distracting from the main subject. The gulls are unfortunately somewhat overexposed on the bright parts, I should have gone for "expose-to-the-right", which in this case would mean underexposing a bit. Which in turn would have made the background disappear more.