Times Square - yet another one

Runner - Coney Island

Ha! Breaking all the photography rules in a single picture...can bring very dynamic results.

Cookie New York Style

A co-production with Miss Hoepner.

Guess who ate the whole cookie at the end...

Sancho & Pancho

From the series "Funky New York City Nights".

Meta Photography

In-Camera HDR

This is an interesting camera feature that I was wondering if it would come up soon. After all, HDR is supposed to make up for properties of the image sensor that are considered limitations when compared to the human eye. OK, in people's minds the term HDR is also associated with "over-processed images", but I'm sure that's not what a camera vendor would strive for. So far it involved some special software and/or tedious post processing.

Now it seems like the time has come where cameras start to make the HDR photographer's life easier. From what I read so far, the Pentax k20 and K200 are the first two digital SLR cameras that can compute under- and over-exposed images out of a picture and combine them with a built-in HDR algorithm.
The little Ricoh CX1 (which is supposed to come out in March) is the first compact camera with such a feature. It actually has two different ways to create HDR images: Either from one shot, or from an exposure series.

I'm curious what these first-generation built-in HDR features will be able to produce. The Ricoh has a huge zoom range (28-300mm), and interesting sounding things that I have never heard of, such as "Multi-Pattern Auto White Balance" and "Multi-Target Auto Focus". I'll keep an eye on this one.

Here are my sources:
About the Pentax SLRs.
About the Ricoh CX1.

The Curious Case of the Times Square Rush

This picture enjoys quite some popularity.

During next week, it will be displayed as "picture of the day" on 1200 screens all over Germany. I got contacted by the company INFOSCREEN which runs those displays. Most of them are located in subway/train stations, and airports and are used to "infotain" waiting passengers. The picture will be shown on three different days, 50 times each day during a time slot of 8.5 hours (basically every ten minutes). 1200*150*X-viewers-per-screen...that's a lot of exposure! I think Lil Wayne and Mr. Peanut owe me one.

Also, it will be displayed as background in a dance performance during the White Turf horse racing event in St. Moritz this Saturday. The dance performance is done by a group called 2dance and their website can be found here.

New Series: "Funky New York City Nights"

What people do when they can be what they want.

A very insignificant number of these pictures have been posted to this blog so far. So even as a frequent visitor you might enjoy this series. Here is a link, or just click on the picture below.

Alexander Hall - PU Campus

First 5D Night Shot (HDR)

This is probably not too impressive right now. But to share my enthusiasm I'm thinking about pointing out the differences between HDR images taken with a crop and a full-frame sensor camera. The interesting point would be a comparison of the raw output from an HDR-software after tone-mapping...

About this picture: I took it in Williamsburg, Virginia. The sky was very dark blue and the moon almost full. Other than that, it was very warm and smelled like spring - a beautiful night for picture taking!

The Scope

The Scope is a multi purpose arena in Norfolk, Virginia.

Cheesecake Fan

I see some basketball potential.

Princeton killing Cornell

So here it is: the very first '5D Mark II' picture I'm posting. Let me welcome you to the full-frame/fisheye age on fluck.de with a slam dunk by Kareem Maddox of the Princeton Tigers.

About the lens: It's the Sigma 15mm 2.8 fisheye. It's a little less expensive than the Canon counterpart, but at the same time it's built nicer and produces a little bit better images - at least that's what I read.

I also read a lot about the 5D of course, so there were no surprises on that part either. This is an ISO 6400 picture. I'm all set, that all I need for now.

Prison Chess #12

New Design

As I mentioned earlier, I want this page pop a little more, and also show visitors highlights that are for sale no matter through which page they enter this website. I can easily analyze the effect of those changes by checking the so called "bounce rate" in Google-Analytics. So this is probably the last change of a progressive re-design, at least for the blog section. The shop and the gallery still look like before, but will be changed after this template proofs OK. As usual, your input is appreciated.

About the template. The original template is a music theme called Gramophonica, and can be found here. My picture in the header was originally taken by Elia Mariani (greetings to Italy!) on a beautiful evening in Brooklyn. I think that was in 2005.

So! Now you know everything about it.

Oh! And my 5D Mark II finally arrived. I ordered it together with a fantastic fisheye lens, but that's another story.

Prison Chess #11 - Thoughts about a series

So here is what I would like to do with the prison pictures. I would like to put them together to a series, each image accompanied by some text - text written by the inmate who is shown in the picture.
I find it interesting to read answers by different people to identical questions, so this would be one way to approach this. On the other hand, this might not give a person much space to express himself - it probably depends on how the questions are defined. Ideally, the viewer should face the inmate who is a perfect stranger and totally out of the viewers world over a somewhat intellectual topic.

To make this happen, I would have to try if I can get some kind of forms to the inmates, make them fill them out and get the filled-out forms back. I don't know if this is technically possible (it should be). If the inmates are willing to cooperate? Well that's also a question. However, before I try that, I need to come up with the right questions. Here are my first ideas. I don't want to waste this opportunity (if there is any), so your input and ideas are very welcome. Especially as comments, so we could discuss it here.


They might be a bit too straight forward, but everything is optional anyway.

Your Name and/or inmate number:__________

Your age:__________

Sentence:__________
(is that what it's called? I want to know why and for how long the person has to stay in prison)

Inmate since:__________

What was your occupation outside prison?__________

For how long have you been playing?__________

Your rating and/or chess achievements:__________
(I know there was at least one grandmaster among the people I photographed)

Do your have a certain strategy in chess?__________

Do you have any thoughts about life in prison and chess that you would like to share?__________

Your message to the viewer of your picture:__________

Shady Birds

You don't wanna mess with those guys.