December 2007

What a month! Extremely busy regading my job and also regarding the progress of our new home. I travelled a lot and had a lot of meetings. Despite all our efforts we were unable to move to our new home before christmas or before the end of the year. There was to much moisture in the floor fill and because of that the wooden floor has to be delayed. It is planed for the ww1 in 2008 now. In ww2 we will get the kitchen and in ww3 we will move to our house. Right before my birthday.

Despite all the work I was able to take a lot of images on weekends and during my business trips ( some of them right from the passengers seat ). A lot of the images I took in December were taken with my new favourite lens the Canon EF 1.4/35L USM. This lens is just wonderful. I had a Contax T2 once ( I still have it but don´t use it anymore ) which was a compact 35mm camera with a high quality fixed 2.8/38mm lens from Zeiss. "Zomming" has to be done by feet but it was amazing how versatile this focal lenght was. The 35L on the 5D is even better because it is a little wider and especially because it is such a fast ( f1.4 ) lens. It really makes the difference in the images. I´s one of the few wide angle lenses which allows to separate the subject from the background like with a fast telezoom or telelens. It´s great and it is a pleasure to use and I think it will become my favourite lens for indoor shots and portraits.

Above is a sample. We went shopping the last Saturday before christmas. Don´t get me wrong - we hate to go shopping especially before christams but I needed a present for my nephew and we also want to meet close friends before the leave for a 4 weeks vacation on the Philippines. As I haven´t had enough time and chances to use my 35L I took my 5D with this lens attached with me. I knew that we will meet for lunch at the Akakiko ( a japanese restaurant chain ) and so I already had the image above in mind. A portrait with the restaurant especially the very nice lamps in the background - nicely blurred by the background.

Like every person I know Kathi also doesn´t like to be photographed ( maybe it has something to do with the photographer? ). Anyway I managed to get some very nice images. While I prefer eye contact in a portrait the image above is my favourite. It looks like a candid and it actually is. The image was taken in color and the black and white conversion was done in Lightroom which is almost too simple: Just click "black and white strong contrast" and you are done. A wonderful piece of software.

I found the time to update my galleries. Especially the portrait section which was in need for an update. A lot of images were scanned slides and the newest image was almost 2 years old. Now there are a lot of new images in there. I still don´t have a lot of portraits right now but as I try to concentrate on this area of photography now I will take a lot of portraits in the future. This should be warning enough for my friends.

setting for the main shot: A - Mode, 1/80s@f1.6, 200ASA