MEView :: Galleries :: Pictures Of The Week

MEView :: Galleries :: Pictures Of The Week (Mar. 2005 - Aug. 2005)

Home :: Galleries :: History

images/sunflowers_std.jpg

Sunflowers

I was so lucky, when I saw this very large field of sunflowers the other day:
- Lucky, because I saw the field behind trees while driving relatively fast.
- Lucky, because the field was rather good accessible.
- Lucky, because the weather was just great.
- Lucky, because I had a camera with me.

images/blackwater_std.jpg

Black Water

Black water--well, it's not really black, but it appeared to be very dark. I was attracted by reflections of the sun on the relatively quiet waters of the Oker reservoir in the Harz, Germany, and tried to capture this scenery and mood in the way I felt about it. I did NOT change the original image to black-and-white--it's originally captured like it is seen here.

images/shotwindow_bw_std.jpg

Shot through the windshield

What happened? I was driving through an industrial area when I saw a couple of old and rusty trucks on the opposite side of a junkyard. 'Perfect objects for taking some pictures', I thought and started wandering around to find good angles and views for great images. After a while I got to a 1948 REO Speed-Wagon truck and saw shots through the passenger door and the shot through the windshield shown here. I knew immediately how I wanted the image to look like. But what's the story behind the hole in the windshield?

On the rainy morning of Thursday, March 17, 1960, Curt McShaw and his gang of three went into the Illinois State Bank of Midlothian, Il., to rob the payroll for the 274 employees of Atkinson's Enamel Manufactury (A.E.M.). It was just bad luck that the police were coming by in the moment when Curt went out of the bank with a gun in his right hand and a bunch of money in his other. The shoot-out ended bloody and tragically for three of the four robbers. Only one could hide behind an old REO Speed-Wagon truck further down the street and even though several bullets hit the truck he could escape unrecognized and apparently unharmed. It was the end of truck though--shot to death.

images/clouds_std.jpg

Cloud chaos

Clouds are always interesting to observe. They appear in all kinds of shapes and, in connection with the sun's rays, lots of great and memorable pictures have been taken--from the ground. On a recent flight I was 'lucky' to enter a major and very bumpy weather system around sunset. The dramatic cloud formations at the edge of the system were really impressive: there were all kinds of cloud-types in several layers and different colors with a few orange-red reflecting lakes (helpful as an orientation). It was just stunning and I would have loved to take more pictures of these impressive and wonderful sights but a few moments later the plane flew into a big, grey bank of clouds and the sights and chances were gone.

images/austin_healey_std.jpg

Austin Healey Sprite

Having fun with a super-wideangle-lens! After I got the amazing EF-S 10-22mm lens this week, I could get back to real super-wide-angle shots. So I went out the following evening, excited about the possible results, and found this Austin Healey parked in the wonderful environment of Braunschweig's downtown area. Here I could not only capture the interesting frog-eyed front (which of course is extremely emphasized by the 12mm focal length being used and the distance to the car of maybe 30cm) but also the reflection of the church in the background. As the sun was setting there was very even light. Later that evening I was also very happy with a cold beer...

images/barcelona_beach_std.jpg

On the Beach

Having a few minutes for oneself is a real pleasure--especially when being at the sea. After a long day in Barcelona I went down to the beach and sat there just listening to the waves and watching the couples passing by arm in arm. The moon was hiding behind the clouds and the lights from the boardwalk made the sand look yellow which was a nice contrast to the fluorescent light coming from the beach bar. So I had three different kinds of light and I found that I should preserve this memory.
Setting up a tiny tripod in the sand was a pain especially when trying to set it up straight. Well, Photoshop helped me to level the horizon.

images/Barcelona_std.jpg

Museu Nacional D'Art de Catalunya

On a conference in Barcelona that I attended last week, I had the opportunity to visit the National Museum of Catalan Art (Museu Nacional D'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)) since the cultural evening event took place there. Besides a fair choice of excellent food and music entertainment the view from the MNAC alone was worth to go there. The evening ended with a light and water extravaganza where the fountains in front of the MNAC where illuminated and "choreographed" in order to match the music that was played (if you like the fountain display at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas you'll love this place in Barcelona for sure as well).
Here you can see the MNACs main building and part of the fountain/waterfall arrangement. Naturally I didn't have a reasonable tripod with me, so that I needed to handhold the camera with a stabilized lens (thank you, Canon). I found a sculpture that I could lean on to stabilize myself and took a bunch of pictures at ISO800. This one was the sharpest and best in terms of exposure.

images/Waterdrop_std.jpg

Waterdrop

This picture gave all kinds of interesting responses so far about what it is or how people feel about it. Some said that it's very sexy, that it looks like a drop of something on a tongue or that they feel there is too much digital manipulation here.
Well, actually there is absolutely NO manipulation here. The setup was simple: a drop of water on a petal of a rose, a tripod, a macro lens+closeup lens, a flash that lit my hand that you can see as a reflection in the waterdrop. Due to the very narrow depth of field sharpness is reduced to a very narrow area on the waterdrop.

images/MothersDay_std.jpg

Mother's Day 2005

Be a mother--save yourself rich! I didn't realize how many great deals mothers can collect on Mother's Day. But maybe that's not the idea of that day...

images/SpringFeelings_std.jpg

Spring feelings

Spring has arrived. Green grass, yellow and purple flowers, sunshine. And: the bulls start to fight over the cows.

images/Reflection_std.jpg

Reflection

I took this picture at the marsh overlook in Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. Even though the day started overcast it was nice to visit that place and when the sky became clearer this great cloud formation appeared--just perfect in connection with the quiet water.

images/LastSnowBryceCanyon_std.jpg

Last snow

This pretty abstract shot is symbolizing the end of the winter season for me. Even though there were up to 6ft of snow left and right of the cleared roads within Bryce Canyon National Park, the beautiful white already melted away in most parts of the canyon itself. The strong contrast between the red dirt and the white snow catches the attention in this image, but the contrast between dry ground especially in the lower right part of the image and the saturated looking wet ground in the middle of it makes the picture also "colorful" in an own way.

images/DeathValleyStorm_std.jpg

Sandstorm

Death Valley is one of the places that are both interesting and surprising. I never visited the place in winter or early spring and I hoped that I would see the desert in bloom when I went there this year. The desert was indeed in bloom, but as fate wanted it, it was also a major storm going on that led to major difficulties when it came to gear protection. So I chose not to take pictures of yellow flowers in the desert, but took pictures like this of the visible effects of the storm. I like this one especially for the almost unreal mountains in the background.
Despite the conditions many people were getting out of their cars with their cameras and tripods to climb on the dunes and take pictures of the swirling sand and dust--I wonder if the sensitive cameras survived.

images/JellyFish_std.jpg

Sea Nettles (Chrysaora fuscescens)

On a recent vacation I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium which was on top of my list of places to see. Not only that they had a white shark on exhibition (she was sent back to the ocean on March 31), but they also have the most wonderful (and complete?) exhibition of sea life of Monterey Bay including a kelp forest, sea otters, species of the outer bay and more exotic species like jelly fish, penguins and vanishing wildlife like a sea turtle. I am especially intrigued by jellyfish ever since I saw a bunch of them in the aquarium of the Berlin Zoo (the website is only in German). Browsing a bit through the Monterey Bay Aquarium website gave an impression of what to expect specieswise, but I was not prepared how it really is in the aquarium of Monterey. First of all: it is HUGE!!! Masses of fish swim in the very large tanks and you can very easily spend hours just enjoying the exceptional views. The jellyfish department ("Jellies: Living Art") offers a great many jellies of several species. The sheer number of jellyfish is breathtaking. Here is a picture of a bunch of Sea Nettles (Chrysaora fuscescens).
Photographywise the aquarium is a challenge since they don't encourage the use of tripods (due to the amount of visitors it wouldn't work anyway) and the living exhibits are mostly moving. Flash is allowed almost(!) everywhere, but is very hard to control due to the thickness and curvature of the glass of the fish tanks. For this image I used a stabilized lens and a very high iso value in order to get somewhat reasonable shutter speeds. All the effort was absolutely worth it.

images/FlyingTogether_std.jpg

Flying Together

Canada geese are found at various places and I like to watch their social behavior. As far as I know they live together monogamous for most of their lives. Compared to how e.g. mallards behave in late winter or early spring (when the drakes go after every duck that cannot escape fast enough), geese behave more like couples. They walk around together and impress each other from time to time to finally fly away together letting everybody know their idea by raising their voices before they take-off. To freeze the action I set the camera to time priority at 1/3200sec. I tried to capture the shadows of the birds as well, but here they were already too high in the air to get the complete shadows. The picture is slightly cropped on the left side.

images/IceOnRiver_std.jpg

Ice on the River

Water in each of it's three possible states of agregation fascinates me. Here is the edge of a frozen river. Due to the movement of the water and the sun that melted a bit of the ice from above these ice sculptures were formed. Tomorrow they will look different or even be gone. As I use every lens for landscape photography I took this picture at a focal length of 400mm from a rather elevated standpoint to make it more abstract and to have no disturbing horizon.

History of pictures of the week/month:
Pictures Of The Month (Jan. 2011 - current)
Pictures Of The Month (Jan. 2010 - Dec. 2010)
Pictures Of The Month (Jan. 2009 - Dec. 2009)
Pictures Of The Month (Mar. 2008 - Dec. 2008)
Pictures Of The Month (Mar. 2007 - Feb. 2008)
Pictures Of The Week (Mar. 2006 - Feb. 2007)
Pictures Of The Week (Sep. 2005 - Feb. 2006)
Pictures Of The Week (Mar. 2005 - Aug. 2005)
Pictures Of The Week (Oct. 2004 - Feb. 2005)

Copyright © 2004-2005 Michael Engelen, All rights reserved