Blog statistics

I usually can't be bothered with statistics but the statistics of this blog are always a "joy" to behold. :)

For instance, see here the most popular keywords today:

porn photography
rangefinder infrared
leica m2 for sale
sigma rangefinder
m-rokkor
spencer tunick south africa
nuns
dress code photography
nick ut napalm girl
documentarty photography
ranging 50/2 mini-rangefinder
developing film in coffee
rangefinder blogs
rangefinder pinhole
spencer tunick antarctica
porn photographer
the public's reaction to nick ut's photo
william eggleston red ceiling
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red ceiling eggleston
minox dcc leica m3 review

A lot of people are looking for porn, William Eggleston, Spencer Tunic and/or Nick Ut. But who looks for "nuns" and ends up on this blog?

How about the operating systems people use to get here? Well, not surprisingly it's overwhelmingly Windows, with a hint of Mac and a trace of Linux.

1	Windows XP	64.72%
2	Macintosh Power PC	10.62%
3	Onbekend	9.89%
4	Windows Vista	6.94%
5	Windows 2000	4.24%
6	Linux i686	1.45%
7	Windows 98	1.00%
8	Windows NT	0.53%
9	Windows Millennium	0.37%
10	Windows .NET	0.11%

And how about the browser? Again, it's overwhelmingly Windows Explorer, followed at great distance by Firefox, chased by Safari.

1	MS Explorer 6.x	32.88%
2	MS Explorer 7.x	19.83%
3	Firefox 2.x	11.28%
4	Firefox 1.x	10.17%
5	Firefox 3.x	6.10%
6	Safari 525.x	3.25%
7	Safari 418.x	2.23%
8	Safari 312.x	1.54%
9	Safari 523.x	1.31%
10	Opera 9.x	1.30%

Images of the mind

Wind tugs at my coat.
Debris tumbles through the streets.
The sun shines brightly.

Images of the mind

Sunday morning. Time for church, you'd think. Nobody goes to church anymore. Not even the elderly. Yet the nearby mosque is full.

Images of the mind

Three indiff'rent streets.
All the same yet none the same.
Small cars eve'rywhere.

Images of the mind

Five indiff'rent doors.
All the same yet none the same.
Yellow, white and blue.

Images of the mind

Storm torments the night.
Rudely 'roused crows complain.
The spatter of rain.

Images of the mind

A man on a moped splutters by.

The wind rustles through the trees.

An elderly lady pushes a pram with a small child.

The sun sets the world alight.

Birds dance a windy tango.

A dog barks faintly in the distance.

The wind still rustles through the trees.

It's Sunday morning.

Images of the mind

Running for your life.
Silent, to avoid capture.
Hunting dogs bark nigh.

Images of the mind

Dark, wet, windy night.
Not a soul stirs the silence.
Blinking cafë sign.

Images of the mind

Wind bends double trees.
Car zooms by on wet asphalt.
Crows in the trees caw.

Images of the mind

The weather turned grim.
The wind pummels man and beast.
Sea gulls squeal with joy.

Images of the mind

Sunshine memories.
Thoughts of warm, lingering days.
Rain lashes my face.

Images of the mind

The hint of rain has turned to rain. The only hint left is to bring along your raincoat from now on.

The cloud deck is an indescribable shade of blueish grey. The roads are filled with white headlights and red and orange tail lights. Mostly red, though. On the highway the traffic is jammed; in the streets of the city traffic is forever waiting for the light to turn green.

Images of the mind

Half past seven, and the world's still in a sombre mood.

A thick blanket of deep grey clouds shrouds the city in a depressing twilight.

A hint of rain is in the air.

Images of the mind

It's 3 am. I'm outside, waiting for a taxi that isn't coming. What the **** am I doing here?!

I hear a metallic sound. I look around and see a man in a wheelchair approaching. Slowly approaching. He doesn't seem to be in a hurry at all. Not at three in the morning.

We chat for a while, until he tells me he has to go. He has other things to do. I can't imagine what.

Images of the mind

It's warm and bright.
People sun bathe at the lake shore.
The first yellow leafs.

Images of the mind

The silent city.
The sounds sound clear as crystal.
The pre-dawn morning.

Images of the mind - IC140 to Amsterdam

If, or when, I'm ever back in Berlin, even for a short while I'm going to make an itinerary. The city is too big to see in one go, and the ubiquitous tourist traps are scattered all over town. Best to select some of them and walk from one to another. The walk to the tourist trap is often as interesting as the tourist trap itself. :)

Images of the mind - IC140 to Amsterdam

The Sophienstrasse is chock-full boutiques and galleries. The Oranienburgerstrasse near Auguststrasse is a bastion of left-wingers, squatters and underground culture. The beginnings of gentrification. :)

But I was much more interested in getting to the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, where for instance Heinrich Mann, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Bertold Brecht are interred. Like any cemetery in the middle of any city, it's a haven of peace and quiet. A perfect place to take a short break (and read up on your philosophy or world literature). :)

I stopped for lunch at Thürmann's at the corner of Invaliden Strasse and Platz vor dem neuen Tor. Here I was enjoying a nice bun and some mint tea when I got stung by a wasp! Damn fortunate I got stung in my elbow, a spot with less muscle mass, less blood vessels, less nerves and a lot of bone. The swelling added up to very little, even after several hours, but for the itching and to prevent an allergic reaction I still dropped by a pharmacy at Hauptbahnhof a little later.

I did pass by the Hamburger Bahnhof. I even went in. But the entrance fee of 12 euros and the wasp sting kept me away from visiting the museum. It is, however, only a short walk from Hauptbahnhof; literally in view of it. Maybe some other time I'll come back, with my student card. :)

At Hauptbahnhof, I whiled away some time before I took the M41 bus to Potsdamer Platz. I spent some time there, and got me Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Back at Hauptbahnhof I again roamed around the place, wasted more time, ate something while resting my feet on my luggage; all before boarding the train that is now taking me back home.

Images of the mind - IC140 to Amsterdam

It's hot in this carriage! I don't think they can remedy it, seeing they've abandoned the control boards

I slept poorly. I was still awake by 1 am. When the alarm went this morning, I still felt tired. I showered, had breakfast and went on my way. I left the hotel by 8:30 and by 9:00 I was at Berlin-Charlottenburg station. Yes, it took me quite some time. But worst of all, at the station I still had to wait for the red Regional Bahn train to Hauptbahnhof. It arrived on time but for some reason it left five minutes late. By quarter to ten I could finally hand my luggage over to the ward room attendants. By 10 am I was on my way -again with the Regional Bahn- to Alexanderplatz.

I made a little itinerary last night. I planned to first go to Märkisches Ufer but when I disembarked at Alex I decided to skip that and go to the next stop on my list: the Neptunbrunnen. While this fountain is as beautiful as any, I much prefer the mor extensive array of fountains between the Neptunbrunnen and the Fernsehturm. There are many differently sized fountains, arranged geometrically, spouting to an elaborate choreography.

From the Neptunbrunnen it's only a short walk to the statue in memory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. There's very little else on this large open space. It's not even a nice place to sit and relax for a while. The only (remotely) interesting thing here is the statue itself; and perhaps the history attached to Marx and Engels, abut which you won't learn anything here.

Somehow they fixed the AC. It's much more pleasant here now.

My itinerary, like yesterday's, involved a lot of walking; a mode of transport that is oddly suited for Berlin if you don't have to go from one end of town to the other and back. My itinerary wasn't like that. :)

Next stop was Hackescher Markt. My route took me past the Heiliggeistkapelle, built, acoording to the plaque on the wall, in 1300. I was ken to go inside but was unable to find an entrance.

Hackescher Markt is your stop for the Hackesche Höe. This complex of nine interconnected courtyards houses a variety of boutiques, galleries, cafés and restaurants, and other shops. These courtyards all have their own character. It's a really nice place to wander about and do some (window) shopping.

I found there the Lumas gallery, where I saw some really nice photographic works on display (and for sale). For instance, there was Sabine Wild's "Neue Nationalgallerie II"...,

some work by Pep Ventosa...,

the "Wind Studies" by Ethan Levitas...,

some specimen of Marcel Wanders' disturbingly interesting "Superhero Girls"...,

and David Hamilton's "Rèves jeune filles" and "La muse".

But the most interesting to me were Penelope Davis' "Catalogue", a colour photogram (instead of the now century old B&W photograms)...,

and Annet van der Voort's scanograms of (wilting) flowers.

In this one gallery I've seen more interesting and new (to me) work than in any photo exhibition in the past few years. And the prices aren't all together bad.

Images of the mind – Room 501, Ibis Hotel, Brandenburgische Strasse, Berlin-Wilmersdorf

It was a long and tiring day!

After I left the Kempinski hotel just after noon, I went to the Foto Museum. The museum is very close from the Zoologischer Garten station. From the Foto Museum I walked in the direction of the zoo and on to Wittenbergplatz. I had no idea what I wanted to do next but when I sat down and took out my city guide I found out that the Bauhaus Archiv was quite close by, on the other side of the Landwehrkanal.

When I got there I decided to have some lunch first. The Archiv's lunch room operates from a great idea: Pausenbrot. You order as many slices of bread as you want. Then you select what you want to put on. You can chose from things as Leberwurst, Tomaten-Basilikum-Butter, Aprikose-Lavendel jam, Butter mit dreierlei Pfeffer and more. They sell it in little glass jars; each containing plenty for several slices of bread. I sat there, ate my bread, and enjoyed the airiness of this small lunch room.

Too bad the Archiv itself was completely empty! It turned out that everything was for the time being on display at the Martin-Gropius-Bau. That was a bit disappointing but it least I got the see this building in its natural bare state. I'm still at awe how light and lofty and airy these Bauhaus buildings are. I really like that.

From the Bauhaus Archiv I walked along Reichpietschufer, a footpath along the Landwehrkanal, to the Neue Nationalgalerie. This is one of the museums I had decided I wanted to visit. The part of the museum above ground (as airy as a Bauhaus design) was closed because of something. But the basement part of the museum was open. For a cool 10 euros I was allowed in the exhibition Bilderträume, the collection of Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch. I wanted to come here because of the modern art on display. Well, I got what I wanted and a bit more. I liked the Magritte, Picasso and Miró pieces, as well as the Calder mobiles. But the rest was a bit too much for me. Especially the overwhelming amount of Max Ernst pieces numbed me.

Potsdamer Platz is a short walk away from the Neue Nationalgalerie, and that's where I went next. To the Museum für Film und Fernsehen. I only went to see the film section as TV interests me little. Take your time to get in the exhibition area on the third floor! This is really worth spending a while to enjoy. If you've been there you know what I mean.

The film museum is nice but as usual I can't be bothered to read all the descriptions. No, give me the very visual and exciting Metropolis part, a section entirely dedicated to Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I want to see that movie! And the same goes for the movie M, also by Fritz Lang. The few fragments I saw drew me like a magnet.

The museum also has an extensive section on Marlene Dietrich.

Done with the film museum, I ate dinner at the Corroboree restaurant. This time a disappointing affair. After dinner I wandered around Sony Center a bit longer before I found my way through the Potsdamer Platz station to the U-bahn that would ultimately take me back to the hotel.

Tomorrow is my last day here. I've come up with quite a nice itinerary but I'm still wondering what to do with my luggage. I can't schlep that around all day long. If it weren't for the U-bahn disruptions around Hauptbahnhof I wouldn't even have to consider what to do. Now getting to Hauptbahnhof is a tedious affair that gobbles up my precious time. Anyway....

Images of the mind - Sony Center, Potzdamer Platz, Berlin

Mmm. That burger wasn't nearly as nice as it was the first time I ate it here. And only luke warm. And still bloody. I don't like my meat to bleed.

Images of the mind - Sony Center, Potzdamer Platz, Berlin

I'm sitting at one of the outside tables of Corroboree restaurant, waiting for my kangaroo burger.

This morning after breakfast, I left the hotel and walked to the Kempinski hotel, where I was going to give a presentation. Berlin is already quite awake at half past seven in the morning: super markets are open, baker's shops and coffee houses too. Quite a few people are already at work. It took me 20-25 minutes to walk from Brandenburgische Strasse to Fasanenstrasse. Not bad, really. A look at the map made me believe it was a much greater distance, but it's only 2 km.

My presentation went well. I started out slightly nervous but that cleared up soon.

My kangaroo burger is here....

Images of the mind - Foto Museum, Jebenstrasse, Berlin

I'm at the Foto Museum, which is entirely dedicated to Helmut Newton so should in fact be named the Helmut Newton Foto Museum. But I read somewhere that from 2010 the museum will hold more than just the Helmut Newton collection.

Helmut Newton in Berlin.

I'm not very excited about Newton's work. I do like the Big Nudes series but most of the rest I have no love for. I did get one little idea from a photo of a photographed face held in front of the said face, with a cigar held through a hole burned in the photo where the mouth happened to be depicted. There's more one can do with that....

What I did like was the group exhibition "Three boys from Pasadena", showing photos of Mark Arbeit, Georg Holz and Just Loomis. I found Holz's work least interesting with a genre in which we find photos titled "Fall from grace" and the like. I found the titles too far fetched, though the photos in themselves were IMO better than most of Newton. Loomis' work is all about people. He almost sticks the camera in their faces and shows their poor lives in all its roughness. Part of Arbeit's work is a set of collages; collages that I really did like. He also did other things I liked but the collages stuck with me.

Is the museum worth the 8 euro entrance fee? Well, if you're into Newton than yes. However, if you don't care for him.... BTW, bring change! The ticket lady had run out of bills and could hardly give me change from 50, and the people behind me had to dig deep in their purses to find small change to pay for their ticket.

Images of the mind - in Berlin

Here I am, sitting at the desk in my hotel room on the fifth floor, with a view on the back yard of the hotel. At least, that's what I would see if I'd care to look outside. It's dark now and I closed the curtains to keep the dark out and the privacy inside.

I'm sitting here listening to Will Downing's Free while sipping a nice cup of Assam tea. I just took a hot shower and I'm relaxing after a long, exhausting day.

The trip to Berlin was uneventful. Time flew by, really, and before I knew it I set foot again on the platform at Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It's there at the station that things went haywire: there are extensive ongoing works at the tracks and in the city centre several of the U-bahn lines aren't running. A general lack of information and poor directions cost me some time and frustration. In the end it wasn't too bad but I still arrived at least half an hour later at the hotel than I expected.

The lack of lines going to the city centre from Berlin Charlottenburg means I have to find new paths to my destinations. Not quite what I wanted to do but at least I'm now seeing different parts of town I might otherwise not have noticed.

Kolumbarium.

Three-ish I left the hotel. Before coming to Berlin I had already decided I wanted to see a bit more of Wilmersdorf. I went down to the Wilmersdorf Friedhof (cemetery), which is only a short walk from the hotel. This cemetery has a very intriguing urns hall, or Kolumbarium. It was actually rather nice to walk through the hallways, enjoy the views, and read the names of the deceased on the many urns. I'm glad I found this haven of calm so close to the hotel. The cemetery itself isn't as interesting but even on this Wednesday afternoon it was well-visited.

Church.

From the cemetery I walked via Kostanzer Strasse back to Fehrbelliner Platz. On my way I passed a beautiful mosque and a small church which I suspect to be Russian Orthodox in denomination. Speaking of Russians, I'm not sure where the Nazis got their vague ideas about Germans being blond haired and blue eyed. Here in Berlin I'm seeing more Slav faces and dark and black hair than blond hair and blue eyes. Add to that a generous sprinkling of Central Asian, Far Eastern and African faces and one starts to wonder whether the Nazis themselves were blond haired and blue eyed. I'm seriously doubting it, but it's difficult to tell from the photography from that period, it all being B&W.

Statues at Fehrbelliner Platz, Berlin Wilmersdorf

Partner cities of Berlin Wilmersdorf

From Fehrbelliner Platz I took the U3 to Wittenbergplatz, where KaDeWe is located. I had to go in but came out rather quickly. Too expensive for my taste all that Gucci, Dior, Ralph Lauren, and so on. No, Peek & Cloppenburg is more suited to my wallet and there I got me a new polo shirt and a new white, long-sleeved shirt. You can never have too many white shirts, can you?

Outdoor café near Zoologischer Garten

Kurfürstendamm

I walked all the way from Wittenbergplatz, along Tauentziensstrasse, passed the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche, on along Kurfürstendamm to Fasanenstrasse. There is located the Kempinski hotel where I'll be giving a presentation tomorrow. From there I walked further towards Kantstrasse and ran into the Vagantenbühne. They seem to be performing the collected works of Shakespeare, and oddly enough the building feels like it came straight from that day and age. I wandered around a little more there before walking back to Ku'damm.

Vagantenbühne.

Statue.

Continuing west along Ku'damm I came to what Ku'damm is famous for: the outlets for each and every high class, expensive fashion and jewellery brand in the world, be that Dior, Gucci, Rolex or whathaveyou. I came to the Starbuck's at Leibnitzstrasse and I must have sat among at least the (pretend-to-be) rich of Berlin there. More understated wealth I have never seen before. No flashing of golden chains, fat watches, super high black stiletto heels, teased blond hair or wafty high fashion here. But the sense of money was definitely in the air here. It's the only place so far in the world where I almost got run over by a sky blue Bentley cabriolet jumping the lights. :)

Thank heavens Adenauerplatz wasn't too far away now. I was glad to take the U7 back to Fehrbelliner Platz. There I ate at a one-man Chinese/Thai restaurant (Truc Xihn, or such IIRC) in the main hall of this subway station. The food was plentiful and rather good. I'm definitely going to remember this joint. After the food I did a few groceries at a supermarket a hundred meters up the Hohenzollerndamm, after which I needed an ATM. You already guessed it: not one nearby. I had to go all the way down the Brandenburgische Strasse to Blissestrasse before I could get some cash. By that time I had had enough and went back to the hotel, to take a shower, listen to Will Downing and writing this blog.

OK. It's 21:53 and I need to get up early again tomorrow. I'll read a bit, and than it's sleepy time for me.

Images of the mind

The morning sun lights the world. A thin ground fog obscures the it again. The cows in the fields appear in view like ghosts; so suddenly they emerge from the fog.

All is calm and quiet on this Wednesday morning. The streets are empty apart for a few children cycling to school. Not a leaf stirs. Not a bird breaks the silence. The water in the park's pond is smooth as a mirror.

Of course, it won't last, the spell will be broken. By the yammering of a moped, the squawking of a crow, the whistle of the station master. But for now the peace lasts.

Tilt and shift - it works!

A Canon Eos 300D, an Eos body-to-T lens mount, a rubber plumbing pipe connector, and a slightly hazy Jena T 80mm f2.8, a bit of cutting rubber and fiddling with the lens distance... et voila, I have a working tilt shift lens!

Give me a few days to get some results posted; I can't find the bl**dy card reader. :(

i-gotU GT120 USB GPS Travel Logger

Yesterday I bought me an i-gotU GT-120 USB GPS Travel Logger for my photography. I got to try it out over longer distances today and it works well, except for when the GPS signal isn't available.

Either the GPS signal or Google Maps (or both) are also not 100% reliable as the track map shows rather disturbing oddities: photos that were logged a mile or more from where they actually were taken, a track that runs erratically left and right instead of going straight ahead when I'm going straight ahead, and a track that seems to think I'm following a route that's hundreds of meters elsewhere (in a field instead of on the rail road tracks).

And don't get me started on the airport here in Amsterdam. Inside there's no signal at all, and it seems as if the signal outside is skewed, or Google Maps is skewed when it comes to such high profile locations.

That said, the i-gotU device is small, works straight out of the box, and is easy to operate. I just wish I could use different software than the @trip PC software that came with it. Any ideas for an MS Vista user?

Tilt and shift - let's start over

I always wanted to make a tilt-shift lens after I heard of the Plungercam. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the type of plunger used for this one, or anything resembling it that was big enough to do the trick, and had to resort to plastic bags, rubber bands and extension tubes. None of it really worked very well at all.

But there's now a new and improved Plungercam 2. I ordered me an Eos-to-T mount for very little on eBay. I already had the lens from my experimenting with Plungercam 1. And today I got the 2"-3" pipe coupler. Now let's see when that T mount arrives.

Old films

Before I went digital completely I used to shoot on average a roll of film per day. Getting the film developed was costly. Scanning the film was time consuming. I was very happy shooting my Voigtlander Bessa but I got even happier when I received my Epson R-D1.

The scanning was really time-consuming. I would spend an afternoon (or five minutes) shooting a few rolls, drop off the film at the Hema for developing, and come back an hour later to collect my film again. Then I would start scanning; first with the ever adorable HP PhotoSmart S20, until it developed a nasty red line right across the scans; later with the Minolta DiMage Scan Dual 3.

With the S20 scanning was a rather speedy affair. I think a roll of film would hardly take 30 minutes. When it broke down and was replaced with the DS3, scanning became a bit of a choir and scanning times became much longer. Putting the 4-5 negatives film strip in the film holder was always a bit tricky, tedious and slow. The scanning took much longer than with the S20, perhaps as much as double, while the results were not better. I loved that S20. :)

I was shooting (too) much and the scanning was taking up more and more time, so I did what everyone would do... I started to skip scanning. First I would let it slide for a day, then a few days, then I would postpone it to the weekend, until I quite scanning at all when the R-D1 entered my life.

So, now I'm stuck with some 300-350 rolls of developed film the results of which I have never seen. :S And I'm leaving out the 50-75 rolls of 35mm and MF b&w and MF colour film I have still lying about.

But time comes to the rescue. Back in them days, having the photos put on CD was prohibitively expensive here in Holland. No longer is that the case. Yesterday I took 50 rolls to the Hema where they'll scan them and put them on a CD for Eu 3.95 per CD and 12 cents per photo. With 1800 photos I'm looking at quite a bill (50 x 36 x .12 for the photos, plus 6 x 3.95 for the CDs) but at least I'm now getting rid of all those films.

Images of the mind

Rain steadily falls
The road shimmers wetly
Crow caws in its sleep

720nm and 1000nm infra red filters

I bought through eBay and received two new infra red filters. One a 720nm IR filter; the other a 1000nm IR filter. Both with a 43mm thread so they'll fit my Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50/2 ZM.

The 720nm IR filter (shown on the right) will replace the one Vivek Iyer made for me several years ago. The 1000nm IR filter is a bit of a guess. It blocks out most-if-not-all visible light and some infra red light as well. I'm going to experiment a little with that filter. First results show that I'm losing 3-4 stops over the 720nm, and that the images are rather soft and grainy; much more so than with the 720nm IR filter.

720nm IR filter.
Epson R-D1
Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50/2 ZM
film: iso800, shutter time: 1/111 sec (+2 bias), aperture: f4

1000nm IR filter.
Epson R-D1
Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50/2 ZM
film: iso800, shutter time: 1/11 sec (+2 bias), aperture: f4 +2

Images of the mind

Sun sets late today
Yellow, red, orange, blue clouds
Magic in the air.

Images of the mind

Sunny summer's day
We're five thousand miles apart
Mind and heart feel cold

Images of the mind

Rustling stalks of grain
The wind bears the summer scent
The voice of my wife