Moose in the Driveway

I am currently in Jackson, Wyoming, in a lovely house provided by a friend’s sister in exchange for two prints. Since the weather hasn’t been cooperating these last days, I am spending the afternoon going through images from the past week and a half in preparation for a post about Yellowstone National Park in Winter, waiting for the sunrise which will hopefully happen again tomorrow; the last one was 5 days ago. As I was looking out the window from the living room couch, I saw a moose chewing its cud in the driveway. Of course, today of all days, I’m a photographer without a camera – I knew I shouldn’t have left my cameras in the car.
Not wanting to miss this opportunity, who knows when the next moose will be in my driveway, I snuck out the back way through meters of snow drift, trying to pass the moose without disturbing her. I didn’t quite suceed, she got up and eyed me somewhat suspiciously, but reassuring her that I meant her no harm, I did pass by, almost close enough to touch. While I have been close to moose in the past, this is the closest I have ever been to a standing moose. And man are those animals huge – they put most horses to shame. On my way back I snapped a few shots, and I am happy to report that she is now eating willow bark in the driveway, about ten meters from where I originally saw her, so I cannot have disturbed her too terribly. I’ll regard it as a wakeup call, reminding her that it was time for dinner.

More importantly, however, who else owns a house in a beautiful location with mmoose in the driveway and is willing to do a tradeoff: I offer a print for a week of free boarding, two if you have a hot tub on your roof – I have my standards now, after all.

Moose in the driveway

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New Year’s moose

I am not much of a believer in new years, new years resolutions, and the whole shebang. As I was photographing moose in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley, I came across a moose wishing his buddy a happy new year, however, so I may be wrong. In any case I will leave the talking to the moose.

Do any of you have any new years mooseolutions?

Portfolio Update

I have finally gotten around to updating the recent work folder on my website. Check it out if you have a minute and feel free to comment below. The images include pictures from a short trip to Ireland in August this year, as well as images from two years ago. The images are from both the Republic and Northern Ireland.

I plan to also order and update my other folders in the next few weeks, going through the current selection, adding a few new images, and adding water marks with my logo to all images now that I have an automated script and droplet for that in Photoshop (yay me!). Below are four images from Ireland that didn’t make it onto the website, I still like them though. As with all the pictures I share, these are for sale as fine art prints (and stock photos). Chair in a fence for your living room, anybody?

Postcards

The four postcards I had made have finally arrived and are now sitting in my place (some) and in my parents’ basement (the majority). I am really happy with the quality of the result. If you want to help make my parents happy by giving them back their basement, you can buy some :). You can either pick up individual cards at FreundSaft and at the same time have a look at my prints displayed there (and treat yourself to one of those once you realize you really want a big version of my photos in your living room), or you can order them directly by emailing me. I sell them in batches of 10, either ten of one subject or mixed of all subjects, for 11 Euros plus postage or in batches of 40 – 10 of each – for 40 Euros plus postage. If you order 50 or more in order to resell them write me an email and we can negotiate conditions.

As a sidenote, the postcards are ecofriendly: they are printed on recyled paper in a climate neutral printing process; three are printed on paper that is identifiable as recycled and has a very nice touch, the last (the polar bear & cub) is printed on glossy paper, which reproduces the color and details quite nicely, but does not feel as postcard-y as the others.

The postcards sitting on my table, waiting for you to revive the ancient art of postcard writing.

Exhibition Opening in T-2

All the images are up on the wall (and look really nice), prosecco is in the fridge and I am getting a bit nervous, trying to decide whether I want to say anything or not – so basically everything is ready for the opening tonight. I hope to see some of you three tonight. Bring those of your friends who have money and are willing to appreciate photography as an art form 😉
Here are two impressions from Freundsaft with my images up on the walls.

Exhibibition at FreundSaft: Hanging Times & Invitation to Opening / Vernissage

We have finally decided on a date for the opening of my exhibition at FreundSaft. It will take place at 6:30 on July 12 at FreundSaft in Freiburg Stühlinger. This should give the soccer-inclined enough time to drop by and still get back home or to a pub in time for the kick off at 10. The invitation postcard has all the relevant information and a preview of one of the new images you can see on canvas in the exhibition. I hope to see you on the 12th, entry is free for all; and there are images, postcards, and delicious fruit juice for sale, of course.

Invitation Card

New Postcards, new exhibit and new Print Prices

As of early June (hopefully June 10 or so) I will be exhibiting a few of my prints at Freundsaft. The show will be a mix of regular prints and prints on canvas (a first). I will also have some postcards printed – another first – which when they are finished will be available at Freundsaft and Buchhandlung Schwarz. I will also sell them through my website in packets of 10 in a little bit.

Looking at how much this exhibit cost, and since I have not raised the prices for my fine art prints (limited and numbered, available by emailing me) since 2008, I will also slightly raise my prices as of June 15, since costs of production have increased over the last few years. If you have been toying with the idea of purchasing a print of one of my images for a while, now would be a good time. Send me an email and I will have the image made and sent to you asap.

As a teaser, here are previews of the postcards I will have made (click on the images for larger size):

Cosplaying Ludwigshafen – Impressions of Hanami 2014

In my intent to be more aware of what is going on around me culturally, I went to Hanami convention on Sunday. It is a yearly convention of (mostly) German fans of Japanese pop culture, so I was expecting to see a few cosplayers (put somewhat bluntly: people who dress up in costumes to look like a fictional character or mix of elements associated with a fictional / popcultural style). It is fair to say I was not disappointed. In fact, I was overwhelmed by the number of people who had dressed up in any variety of anime-, Japan-, or just general fantasy or fan-culture related outfits; I saw a Tuskan Raider (sandman), for instance, which did not strike me as particularly Japanese.

Thankfully for me as a naturally shy person when people go to that much pain to look extraordinary not only are they a joy to photograph visually, they are a joy to photograph period. I have in the past had people pose for me, ask me to take their image (actually some random guy asked me to have his picture taken just two hours ago as I was walking and photographing by the Nekar canal in Jungbusch), and pay me to have their pictures taken (weddings or other formal occasions). In all of these cases they were obviously happy to have their picture taken, but I have never had such a large group of strangers so excited to be photographed not only by me, but by anybody – certainly not strangers from my own cultural circle who are so used to cameras. In fact, the only somewhat similar experience was at Wave-Gotik-Treffen, but of course being too enthusiastic is not very gothic. It is cosplay / Japanimation, however. And from the impression I got quite a number of visitors spent a good deal of time being photographed by one after the other person with camera.

Anyway, here are some impressions from Hanami 2014. I definitely look forward to Hanami 2015.

If you are in one of the pictures, feel free to download the picture and leave me a comment. If you’re not in the pictures but know I took a picture of you email me.

Hanabi 2014 – Display Case

Hanabi 2014

Hanabi 2014

Hanabi 2014 – Street Fighting

Hanabi 2014

Hanabi 2014

Hanabi 2014 – Power Ranger

Hanabi 2014

Hanabi 2014

Hanabi 2014

Hanabi 2014

Hanabi 2014

Hanabi 2014

Hanabi 2014

Hanabi 2014 – Grim Reaper Windowshopping

Hanabi 2014

Hanabi 2014 – Für eine lebenswerte Stadt

New Year, new computer, new (years) resolution

Dear readers (wordpress tells me there were still some of you left in 2013),

first of all I wish you all an exciting, insightful, enjoyable 2014!
2013 has been a busy year, and photography, alas, was not my highest priority for most of the year. On top of my preoccupation with other things, I have had neither what could be called a functioning computer nor an internet connection at home. This has forced me to put off sorting, editing, and sharing my photos (I did still take a few … thousand … which I am eager to go through). As I write this entry, however, my new Acer V5 netbook sits before me on the table and is only waiting for an SSD drive to arrive at my house in the next few days so that I can finally get started installing an OS, Lightroom, Photoshop and all the good stuff to dig into all those photos from Alaska, Marocco, Mallorca, Romania, Ireland, Germany, California, still sitting unprocessed, and sometimes never seen even by me, on various harddrives.
Which brings me to point three of my post, the resolution. One of my new years resolutions is to be less negligent of my blog and my photos this year. There are literally thousands, probably tens of thousands of pictures waiting for me to go through and actually do something with: post them here, on my website (where, let me remind you, you can aquire large format, limited, numbered and signed prints at a more than reasonable price), as well as offer them to more magazines, stock agencies, and galleries.
So now it’s out; and, tellingly, I only have a photo on my stick to seal the deal that’s, uhm, pretty old … but at least it’s a moose cow looking optimistically into the new year.

Moose Cow “sealing the deal.”

Talk on the Canadian Forest this Sunday

I will give a talk on the Canadian forest and its inhabitants (humans and animals) this Sunday (July 8) at 2 p.m. It is part of a whole day focusing on the Canadian forest in the Waldhaus Freiburg (Wonnhalde 6, 79100 Freiburg).

Although I am not exactly sure what I will talk about yet, I am certain that I will show lots of beautiful images of the landscape and the animals living in it. The talk itself will most likely be a very non-academic reminiscing about my travels in the Canadian West with some observations about the behavior of bears, moose etc. thrown in, and it will be in German.

You can download a pdf with the program for the day here. Hope to see some of you there.

Bald Eagle in Morning Fog, Great Bear Rainforest, Canada