Captured By Winter

We currently have here in Northern Germany a relatively cold and long winter, a challenge to each photographer. You need good warm clothes if you go out and the batteries of your camera could get problems, if you don't protect it against the cold. Many new problems has the winter photographer to solve, before he is ready to shoot, that the summer photographer does not know.
On the other hand the winter offers us good motives like ice and snow. The best snow is the fresh snow - it is whiter than the old one, and if you are lucky, you have sunshine or fog, or both.
But even on a dark, grey afternoon ("evenoon", cause the sun goes down so early) you can find interesting structures, when the snow is underlining the branches of a tree, like you can see it here in this image. I also made several other abstract shots and it is always a good exercise for the eye, to find motives like this one in the chaotic textures of the winter wood.

Windows

Yesterday i found this image on my harddisk and played a bit with photoshop, (dodging and burning), to darken the parts (mainly upper right side), that were distracting the view and i was astonished, how much stronger the image looks, with "less" elements on it.
I really enjoyed the Flickr-comments about this work - and i am sure, that all readers know this feeling well from their own images: We see the photo, and we like it - but... Something is wrong and prevents the "wow effect". Too much saturation? Too much contrast (or not enough)? The wrong crop? The wrong format (4:3, 16:9, 20:9)?
Sometimes it just needs one simple action, and the image looks much better. But it is not so easy to find out, what it is, that the image is missing. Not in all cases can others help us, because they don't know our personal vision.
So i recommend every photographer a folder "unsolved cases" on his harddisk, it can be really fun to solve such "open problems", sometimes it needs just a bit time to find the solution.

X

I already showed this shot in my german blog, but i think, it could be also interesting for my international friends. It is hopefully a good example of "less is more" but i have to admit, that the b&w transition was really important for the image effect here.

Self

Here is a self that i made with "old" equipment, a 6 MP Canon 300D.
The 300D was my first digital slr and my first step to serious digital photography.
In the meantime people seem to think, that it not a real camera, if it has less than 12 MP, Canon offers a new 7D with 18MP and i am sure, that in a few years all consumer dslrs will have more than 20 MP.
But nobody really need's it. :-) 4 MP is in my eyes almost enough for most of the users. And many users are obviously forgetting, that it is not just the number of pixels, but its "quality". On the market of compact cameras we already learned, that a 12 MP cam has in many cases less image quality then the previous model with 8 or 6 MP, because the level of noise is rising with the number of pixels, especially on a small sensor.
So the number of pixels is absolutely not the only factor for a sharp image.
You can f.e. raise the quality of your pixels with the use of a tripod. (I would say, that you can increase the image quality of a 6MP dslr to "felt" 8MP, only by the use of a tripod.) If you are searching for the best possible quality, you should not use the open aperture, or a very small aperture - most lenses have the best quality at f 4 or 5.6 - and you can "increase" the quality by using a fixed focal length lens. No zoom lens can reach the quality of such a lens.
Last not least you should use good filters, f.e. a polarization filter and shoot in the RAW-format under good light conditions.
You see: If you are working carefully, you can present excellent results even with an "old" camera like the 300D. A good image idea/composition is always much more important for a good image result, than the pure resolution of the camera sensor.
And the data files are wonderful small, a 4GB CF-Card in a 20D or 300D allows many hundrets of shots in RAW-format, so there is no reason to bann the elder cameras from your camera bag... ;-)

I left Art Limited

Well, i tried it - but in the end i decided, not to stay longer at Art Limited. Why?
It is not very different to the FC, where everythings works because of vanity and comments, not because of the photographic quality. Okay, Art Limited has members on a much higher photographic level than the snapshooter-community FC - but you get most of your Art Limited comments as a replica to a former made comment and this costs a lot of time, to "feature" your photos by making contacts and writing comments. I don't need that any more, and i also deleted a lot of shots at Flickr. I will leave at Flickr a gallery with some placative shots, so that my friends can find some images in the web, but i concentrate myself more on real photography, and it leads to nothing, to spend too much time with the web communities generally.
I also erased my Fotolia images - i don't want to sell my images in this way. Maybe i will make a second try at Fotolia, but for now it is just a huge flood of images, and all i have got there were a few clicks and a lot of wasted time. I don't need that. ;-)

Between the Meadows

These two trees here are looking wonderful, especially in the evening light - but generally we lost (and still loose) many trees, which is a pity in my eyes. Some farmers (not all) have no sense for trees, they use the chainsaw and "redesign" their meadows to a kind of green desert, without bushes and trees. This does not only look very ugly, it is also a big sin against the nature. So i hope, that they come to their senses again: Nature does not need man - man needs nature!

Light On A Pyramid

Found in Fishery Harbour of Bremerhaven...

Still Alive - still attractive?! ;-)

I just got a Mail from the Flickr-Team, that someone has put my image "Still Alive" in his gallery. I appreciate the new attention for this relatively old image and thought, that this is a good reason to show it again on my blog... ;-)


By the way: The gallery function is new at Flickr. You can build a gallery with images of other members and your own photos and give it a name or a topic. So this function is something in between the well known fave-function and forming a group. With a little more time i will check this out by myself.

Branches

It is not so easy, to discover and show interesting shapes in nature and present them in one frame. The chaos of the forest disturbes such a shot usually with unwanted elements - but from time to time i am successful. I think this shot is such an example.

TYZ

I must say, i like to be under the Autobahn. You can stay dry there when it rains and you hear the pulsing sound of traffic, like blood runs through the veins of a body.
It is a special place in the landscape, to a certain degree more untouched and not so ugly, as it seems at the first sight. You also can find a lot of Graffiti there, so you even can view art there... ;-)
Here i captured one for this blog:

The Negative Trend

Photography means a life long learning process, this is for sure. As you can see on my last submission, i am a photographer since August 1978, when i spent my confirmation money for an Olympus OM-2. I never regreted this investion, but my photography really developed since December 2002, when i started seriously in my digital photography. I officially joined the German Fotocommunity in January 2004 (my equipment was a Canon 300D) and learned a lot there. But it was time to leave the FC in 2008 - and it was the right decision. In the meantime i have learned a lot in post processing and composition, and i don't think, that i am on the top of my development. I believe, i am just beginning. :-)
With my "Lutz Breden unplugged" account at Flickr i want to concentrate myself more on the real good photographers - and the same with my work: I love nature and i love it, to take landscapes in the early morning, when everything is silent and the day is awakening.
But on the other hand, these kind of images are nothing special - though some people like my way of shooting landscapes. But in the next time i want to develop my personal style a bit better. There are some shots in my portfolio, that are hopefully very good, but i am not strictly enough, to shoot more of these kind of shots. Sometimes i cannot resist taking pictures, that are only looking good. (A kind of FC-desease... ;-) In the next time i want to shoot more radically, i hope, that i can make some new and good experiences...

Cathedral

I must admit a bit more retouching work as usual, because there were too many disturbing stumps in the foreground and i did not want to call this shot "dirty cathedral". ;-)

Wood Impressions

Since i was a young child, i love the wood, from the very beginning of my childhood. The animals and plants were always intersting to me, and i always loved - and still love - the dark and cool atmosphere of the wood, though we have in Northern Germany mostly coniferous woodland and only at the edge of our forests small stripes of deciduous wood. I loved to climb on trees or explore the wonders of nature - sometimes i found a feather or new - to me unknown - plants, mushrooms or flowers. Sometimes i even found dead animals or new buildings - this was always very exciting to me and my friends. I am very thankful for my childhood in a small village, because me and my friends had so much nature to explore. The wood was full of miracles and it was great fun to walk through the woods of my hometown.
This evening i was in the mood, to walk again a few minutes in one of these childhood-forests - and i was astonished, how similiar it looked to the time of my childhood, in the 60ties and 70ties. In the 80ties is looked totally different, because of a big clear felling, but in the meantime the wood has grown again and it almost looks like it looked when i was a little boy. This was the inspiration to me, to create a bit a spooky atmosphere on this shot, because i felt very small and little, then, when i entered the realms of this dark wood with the big trees. For children the wood is probable a bit darker and the trees are bigger than for grown up people.
One word about my used camera: I made the shot with the Oly E3, which is always a good companion, especially when it must go quick and i don't want to wear heavy gear. Together with the "kit lens" :-) 12-60mm and the built in vibration reduction system it is a very good and easy to wear "All in one"-solution. I do not need a tripod or additional lenses - the D200@18-200 is for some occasions my alternative to the E3, especially because of the bigger tele focal length (f.e. if it could happen to shoot wild animals or when i am out on big areas, where i have to shoot very long distances), while the Oly@12-60 offers good perspectives with the popup-liveview-display. The Nikon is better in noise, the Oly is more robust and water proof, its 12-60mm lens is almost a macro lens.
Both systems are great "1 camera/1lens for the whole shooting"-solutions, but this time i preferred the Oly, mostly because of laziness and because i used it not very often in the last weeks. I was in the mood for fourthirds, so to speak. ;-)

Quo Vadis in 2010?

Again i am thinking about the best way, how i can show my images in the web. There are so many new communities, and i am thankful to Flickr, that i have made so many great new friends and contacts there.
On the other hand, Flickr is a big time eater, if you want to comment all the contact's images and if you are member in many groups. So i already started with my "unplugged" account to concentrate myself more on the important groups and contacts, while i show at my "plugged" account the more placative and "beautiful" images.
There are also some interesting forums and communities in the web, where i read from time to time, but you cannot dance on too many weddings at the same time, and so i will concentrate myself more on this blog, my own website (which i will finish in the next year) and on Flickr. I think, it is a good idea, to use my "plugged" account as "gallery" and my unplugged account to stay in contact with my friends. I have also a third "archive" account, but this is only a working account, i will have no contacts there.

When The Wind Whispers In The Trees

Digital b&w photography means to me, to use Photoshop more to increase the authenticity instead of creating so called "new worlds", which is photoart in my eyes.
Nevertheless all b&w photographies are to a certain degree "artificial" and not "real", because we see colours in the real world, and b&w photography is unable to show them like they look. But the loss of colour concentrates the view more on the essential things of an image, at least if the photographer has composed his image well.
It is the job of the photographer, to decide, if a photograph works better in colour or in b&w, and it is very important, to dose the post processing right, so that the beautiness of reality is not falsified by post processing (darkroom or photoshop) more than necessary. It is part of the magic of photography to me, that the illusions, that we see, are created by perspective, time or visual laws, not by the clone brush or "copy and paste"-work of photoshop. This makes an image cheap - while to know, that an image was mainly "painted by light", can be very fascinating. Only a fool will say, that it does not matter, how an image was made, if it looks good. There is a whole world between truth and illusion. To a certain degree each photographic process is a lie, only a copy of reality, not the reality itself. So a "photography" cannot tell the whole and complete truth - that means, that no image is able to tell the whole story, the whole truth. But that does not mean, that it makes no difference, how much the photographers is "cheating". A good and authentic photography tells us at least the "photographic truth", which means, that the image shows no willful manipulated/painted content beside the basic photographic work, like croping, contrast, sharpening - and to me dodging and burning, softening and minor retouching work is also "allowed" (i cannot see, that it is important for the authenticity, to show a hotpix or disturbing artefacts), while bigger manipulations like the cloning of trees, masts or other image elements are strictly forbidden.
I hope, that i could fullfill my own criteria with this image, which is telling you hopefully this -better to speak "my" - photographic truth.
Some remarks about the shot: It was made in the garden/park of our KASBA discotheque, when i stood under some big trees, waiting, that the rain stops, that started a few minutes before. I thought, that i could use the time, and so i shot some long time exposures. It was the wind in the trees, that looked interesting to me. The bigger branches moved less, than the smaller branches. And the wind was "whispering" at some places more than on other places, f.e. the fern in the foreground was moved more than the plants in the background.
I think, that it is very important to know, that i did not create the blurred spots with Photoshop - it was all done by the wind, not by me and Lightroom/ Photoshop helped me, to make this visible.