Month: February 2023

photography, world

5 years of Vero

solaner

Today 5 years ago, I created my account at Vero. At that time, a quite new social network. You either had to be invited or you had to pre-register and wait until you got a free slot to join. For me, the latter was true.

Although the idea is very similar to Instagram, it’s different. Besides images, you can also post other kinds of media like i.e. links to music, games, video, or places.

After, I guess, a year or so, I deleted all posted content. I can’t remember why. But, 1,5 years ago, I reactivated the account. Instagram becomes more and more annoying in my opinion.

First, I hate all the movies, reels, and other uninteresting stuff. I joined Instagram for the stills. When looking at images, I want to look at them carefully. When they are moving, I can’t recognize and enjoy the lighting, composition, and message. Because of all the annoying and distracting sounds, I always switch off the speakers. When I want to see moving images, I head to YouTube.

Second, I see so much uninteresting stuff instead of content posted by one of the guys I’m following. And it seems to me, on a certain day 1,5 years ago, they changed their algorisms which is the origin of this. Because I noticed a severe decrease in likes from one to another.

Third, I’m getting tons of comments where (apparently) bots trying to persuade me to pay them for promoting my images. I check the commenter’s profiles as well as the profiles to which I should send my images, and none of them has even the slightest relation to my images. Well, you know images I’m posting here on my blog. The images I’m posting on Instagram are similar. So, I don’t see a reason, why I should pay a half-naked girl to post my images between her selfies. And, as soon as I delete one of those comments, I don’t get any more likes.

At least during the last 1,5 years, Vero performed much better. Give it a try and join me!

This blog post is no advertisement and I don’t get any money for referring Vero.

For Instagram, my advice is, to concentrate on your strengths and on what you can do very well. If you really want to do something else (like i.e. copycatting TikTok), create a separate app for that stuff to serve those users the best you can instead of squeezing it into a container or format, that does not fit. Or, at least, give us the opportunity to not see that annoying stuff. Otherwise, we’re voting with our feed and heading away (like many people already do, and Meta knows it). In the past, they already converted Facebook from a place for adolescents into an elderly pension home, while the youth moves further.

Dear Meta, guess why there are soo many abandoned accounts on Instagram!

Take care!

flowers, nature, photography, plants

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #237: Lowering Clarity to Bring Softness

solaner

Today we have a conceptual topic for LAPC. Usually, you want to have crisp clear, and sharp images. But, sometimes softness better supports the message you want to transfer.

You can try to reach this by decreasing the contrast or the clarity (if your raw development software supports offers such a feature), but in general, it’s much better to take care of this right when taking the images.

Especially in people photography, this softness is used to transport intimacy i.e. when taking images of brides. In the old days, photographers used either soft lenses (I have such a lens, but use it only very rarely), vaseline (never tried, because I’m afraid of ruining my front lens as they are coated nowadays), or nylon stockings (used every now and then).

As I never publish images of customers, I can’t show you any images of people. But, I also have a few images of flowers to demonstrate the effect.

Maybe, I was able to inspire you to dig in your archive and find some images, you can publish your images on your blog and set a link to Bren’s inspiration post. Don’t forget to tag it with LENS-ARTIST, so we can find it.

For the next at least two weeks I’m pausing with LAPC, because I’m on a trip. As usual when on a trip, there won’t be much time to blog. Days start early and last long, when on a trip. My usual posts are scheduled as I always do. So, there won’t be a pause at all.

Take care!

 

fall, landscape, long exposure, nature, photography, travel, world

Throwback Thursday: working on my backlog

solaner

For a couple of months, I work to reduce my backlog of undeveloped images whenever I have some spare time. Over the years, some (many) folders of undeveloped images found their way only to my external disk The oldest folder is dated from 2009 😲. In general, these folders contain quite often only images of flowers, birds, cats or so and nothing from more important trips. But, also a couple of trips are among these, just like the one, I’m talking about today.

Back in October 2014, I was in Flandern at the Belgium coast. A few images were already developed, but the majority were still waiting.

When looking at the image files, I remembered at once, why they were still waiting for development. Especially in the upper parts of the images, the sensor captured a lot of dust spots. I haven’t counted them, but I guess, each image had more than a hundred of these spots to be removed. Fortunately, I took those images raw, so that the removal didn’t cause any quality problems and the raw development software is so well developed to remove these spots in general without any glitches.

Although having dust spots is not that uncommon, the enormous number of them, I was faced with, is. You have to clean your sensor when photographing with a camera with interchangeable lenses regularly. Back in film days, you did this each time when putting a new film in. Now, having a digital sensor, the sensor has to be cleaned regularly. In case, you’re not familiar with this, drop me a comment below.

As I said, having dust spots is annoying but not uncommon. But, the camera I was using at that time, had a huge problem. Those spots were not only dust. In addition, each shutter release distributed a tiny amount of machine oil being used for the mechanical part of the shutter over the sensor. Fortunately, this issue was accepted by the manufacturer and a portion of this camera model based on a certain range of serial numbers was called back for repair. Also, I would have been glad, if the call back was much earlier.

Take care!

 

architecture, photo-of-the-day, photography, spring, travel, urban, world

Travel Tuesday: Ol’ MacDonald’s graveyard

solaner

This is another question I have. We saw a lot of nice cemeteries when we were crossing the Isle of Skye. But, all of them had only a chapel ruin, and none of them was equipped with an intact building, although the cemeteries were apparently still in use for new burials. 

Take care! 

 

Uncategorized

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #236: East meets West vs. North meets South

solaner

It’s Saturday evening. Thus, it’s time for Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, this time hosted by Amy. She came up with a quite an interesting topic as you can already see from the subject line. But, instead of posting images from elsewhere in the world, I’m focussing on Germany only.

Germany is not one of the big countries in the world. It’s, in my opinion, one of the smaller countries. Germany covers approximately 357,000km². The biggest distance as the bird flies between Denmark in the North and Austria in the south is 878km. The biggest distance from Belgium / Netherlands in the West to Poland in the East is 640 km.

Nevertheless, I’ve chosen to show you images taken at or at least close to these extreme points.

 

border to Poland on the island of Usedom in the east

 

most western point of Germany in the west bordering The Netherlands

 

Westerhever lighthouse near Sankt-Peter-Ording. It’s only 70km as the bird flies to reach the northernmost point of Germany on the island of Sylt

 

this is the Breitach Klamm, the gorge of creek Breitach in Bavaria, only 15 km from the southernmost point of Germany.

 

This place is kind of special. As you can see, there are three flags. Those are the flags of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. At the point, marked with the erected stone, the borders of the three countries touch each other. It’s one of the quite rare points on earth, where 3 countries touch each other.

These are not the only countries bordering Germany. The others are (clockwise): Danmark, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxemburg, Belgium, and The Netherlands.

It’s so fantastic, to be able to roam freely between countries, meet people, and learn from other cultures. Help avoid wrecking these awesome achievements. Getting to know each other and each other’s culture helps to avoid wars.

Maybe, I was able to inspire you to dig in your archive and find some images, you can publish your images on your blog and set a link to Amy’s inspiration post. Don’t forget to tag it with LENS-ARTIST, so we can find it.

Take care!

 

Uncategorized

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #235: Shadows and reflections in monochrome

solaner

That’s a topic, I like very much. Thanks, Patti for having chosen this for Lens-Artist’s Photo Challenge this week.

When there is light, there is shadow. Especially in monochrome, these shadows become extraordinary because the colors are not distracting your eye. Thus, the patterns pop out much stranger.

Maybe, I was able to inspire you to dig in your archive and find some images, you can publish your images on your blog and set a link to Patti’s inspiration post. Don’t forget to tag it with LENS-ARTIST, so we can find it.

Take care!

 

photography, summer, travel, world

Throwback Thursday: nightfall in the Etosha pan

solaner

Even at night, the water hole attracts wild animals: elephants, giraffes, rhinos, and others are coming to get their share of water. Live isn’t possible without water. When visiting such dry areas, you can learn how valuable water is and that dystopias from the 1970 and 1980 where wars are started to get access to water might become reality very soon. 

Take care!