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Tag: Frankfurt
Throwback Thursday: An April’s fool?
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the idea of an April’s fool, but I’m very interested in your responses regardless if you’re familiar with it or not. Here it’s quite common to ‘send one into April’ (In den April schicken) as the term is literally translated from German. It’s telling a story that might be true, but when the recipient follows the instructions she got, she will see, it was a fool. Then, the sender proofs it with “April, April!”.
The editor of a computer magazine fooled their reader a couple of years ago, with a listing of program code containing a lot of machine code. In those days it was not something unusual to print such a listing instead of offering it for download. The background story for that listing was, a research group were been able to reverse the computer screen’s cable and convert the CRT screen into a scanner. The paper to be scanned should be backlit by a simple desk lamp. By using the computer program printed in the magazine the paper would have been scanned and stored as an image on the hard disk.
I didn’t believe that story. But, many people did. They typed down the listing, started the program and saw the output of the program on their screen. Instead of scanning something, the words “April, April!” were printed on the screen. A perfect April’s fool!
So, news have to be proof-checked more carefully as usual on April 1st.
I don’t want to send you into April. But, I want to encourage your mind to find out, what’s in the above image! Later this week, I’m posting an update here in the post with the result.
When freshmen start in their first job as an apprentice, they are also often fooled. They were often told to fetch a certain tool or material from the storage or even a so-called partner-company on the other side of the town. There they get something very heavy to bring back to their boss. I guess, this habit is also derived from April’s fool, because, in the old days, apprenticeships started on April 1st.
These are a few examples:
Banker:
- get a Saldenziehzange = Zange um den Saldo zu ziehen = pair of tongs for balancing an account
- Zinsfuß = old term meaning the interest rate
garage mechanics:
- Kolbenrückholfeder = spring for pulling back the piston inside the cylinders of an engine
Manson, carpenter, …
- Ersatzluftblase für die Wasserwaage = replacement airbubble for the water level
chemistry:
- Benzolring (it’s a pun on words because we have the ring-shaped molecule named Benzol but in German, it can also mean a ring made of benzol)
I guess you got the idea. Some more of these fools can be found in the German Wikipedia. If these habits are common in your area, I’m also interested in hearing them. Please tell me a bit in the comments.
The idea is, a freshman might never hear this word before and starts investigating. All experienced colleges know what is meant and keeping the freshman busy until the initial college solves and explains. Now, the freshman has passed her initiation rite.
Nowadays, many of these fools are commonly know and the freshmen know much more about the jobs they start with than it was common in the past. So, not every fresh apprentice is faced with such a fool. But, I was told, some of them are still used in some companies.
The next isn’t an April’s fool. You know, last year I introduced you to Exire Foto, software to organize your images and, most importantly, find them!
*AD because of an affiliate link*
Currently, you can get the software with a discount when using the code “OSTERN2021” during checkout!
Take care!
Throwback Thursday: On a winter hike
I took this image on Saturday before last. Near the end of this year’s winter. But starting in the beginning.
Friday night two weeks ago we got severe ice-rain. For a week we had temperatures below 0°C. So, the ground was frozen everywhere. The upper areas in the air were warmer than the lower so that we were supposed to get rain instead of snow. But, because of the frozen ground and the low temperatures in the lower air areas, the rain would freeze as soon as it reaches the ground. Very dangerous conditions, when out in the streets. All plants got wet and encased inside the ice because the rain started freezing right after coming to rest on the ground or on twigs as well as on the streets and passways.
The next day, the rain changed to snow and from Sunday the landscape turned into a winter wonderland. Very soft and quite dry snowflakes were laying everywhere, even in the lowlands. You know, I’m 200m above sea level. So, we get about 15-20 cm of snow that weekend. The next few days only a few additional flakes came to accompany those already arrived. Starting on Thursday, the weather changed again: the clouds vanished and the sun came out more and more. On Saturday we had a stainless blue sky, temperatures around -10°C (up -20°C at night).
Perfect conditions for a winter hike!
At around 16:30, when the sun was already quite low (sunset at 17:42), I noticed this golden glow in the trees. Do you remember, I told you about the ice-rain. These ice encasings are the reason, why the trees are capturing all the golden light and glowing so much.
Yesterday, I already showed you an image, how the ice encaged the twigs.
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Throwback Thursday: One night in Frankfurt
Recently, I was talking with someone about photography. Because that guy is living near Frankfurt, I was checking, where and when I published my images taken in Frankfurt. Surprisingly, they are not here on my blog. The posts are still online but don’t have any images in. I put the images on a separate gallery server that doesn’t exist anymore and set only a link to that location in the post. So, this is kind of a repost.
I was in Frankfurt for a training in November 2009. As I would have been alone in a hotel each night, I took my tripod and my camera with me and planned to go out after the training for taking some night shots in the city. That was my first trip for night photography. The difficulty is to balance the bright lights with the extreme darks while having quite long exposure times.
First I went to a certain skyscraper where you can go on top of the building to have a view over the city. The sky was proposing, unfortunately, it was extremely windy. Setting up my tripod as planned was impossible. The wind simply moved the tripod away. So, I dialed in a quite high ISO to get my shots hand-held without the tripod. The ultra-wide-angle lens allowed me to use a quite open aperture to get a good depth of field and still have the exposure time on a handleable value for hand-holding the camera despite the heavy wind.
At that time, I wasted a lot of quality not only because I had to use high ISO instead of my tripod. I also relinquished to photograph in RAW instead of JPG. For this post, I took out the original images and retouched them as much as possible. But, there was not much possible to recover.
Whenever possible, go the extra mile and photograph in raw. You have so much more quality.
After leaving the tower I also walked a bit through the city. Now, I was able to use my tripod. These images are taken at ISO 200 and aperture times of several seconds each.
What have I learned from that trip?
- use RAW!!!!!
- I should have split that trip into parts to have the nice blue night-sky in all images
- I should have closed the aperture more to get nice stars around the small lights
- I should have taken more than one shot with different exposure times while leaving the other settings unchanged (bracketing)
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Wordless Wednesday: Frankfurt
Frankfurt / Main
Throwback Thursday: One night in Frankfurt
Don’t wonder about the high ISO: Because of extreme strong wind that night, I wasn’t able to mount my camera on the tripod. So, I needed to use the guard railing for the camera and hold it tight.
2009-11-05
APS-C, 10mm, ISO 3200, f7.1, 1/30 sec
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Monochrome Madness 3-04
Here we are again with a themed monochrome madness organized by Leanne Cole. The theme is “city”.
We all live in cities. Some in huge cities, others in smaller ones and some in tiny villages. Despite this, the term “city” is not the same for everyone. One might thing of the huge skylines of cities like New York, San Fransisco, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapur or Honkong. The next might think of a glass fronts of modern business buildings.
What does city mean for me? City means lots of people, crowded streets, air pollution, businesses, shopping and many more.
For this challenge I picked an image taken in Frankfurt about 2 years ago. You can see the bank sky scrapers as well, as the old main police station (from 1729-1930) and the tower of the protestant St. Katherine church (build 1678-1681).
Take care!
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Object
This weeks photo challenge is quite hard: object! Finding a tangible subject, that inspired me and is still the subject of my photo.
I took one photo out of my series of abstract architecture, taken last summer. I guess, I didn’t show any of that series here.
Enjoy!
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