The Fridge Week - Wednesday

Do you think this is a boring frigde image or even a fake? It is not.
This photo solves one of the common questions of civilation:

Does the light in the frigde is automatically switched off as soon as one closes the door?

I tested it by putting my cam in the frige with the self-timer activated and closed the door.
Well, it seems like there is indeed darkness.
Good to know, isn't it?

How do you know whether the black rectangle is really a photo from the inside of my fridge? You just have to believe me. I made the same photo again with activated flash but I'm not going to post it because it's boring (only jam glasses on it).

The Fridge Week - Tuesday

Day 2 of the fridge projekt week.
Amazing how the view changes if you are inside such a project thing. I realized how many refridgerators are around me. In the canteen, in the bakery, even in the gym.

This one is from our canteen. The roll looked like a lonesome prisoner behind the visitor screen of an high security food prison. Poor thing. I hope that someone bought it.

Visit the World

Just a quick posting:
There's a nice little website where you can create a map of the world where all countries you've already been to are marked.
Cool idea, isn't it?
I realized that I know almost nothing about the world. The 22 countries I visited so far are only 9% of all countries.

Here is my map:


create your own visited countries map

The Fridge Week, Monday

Today I read on a photo blog (I forgot the URL) that the writer tries to shoot a series of objects in his all days life. He wrote he starts with a week of pictures with a refrigerator.

I liked the idea of theme-weeks and because I love to shoot photos of boring things I thought: Hey, why not.

So this will be my fridge week.
I'll try to blog every day in this week a fridge related photo. Not necessarily of my own fridge, but can be.

The first thing that came to my mind was to place the cam inside the fridge and shoot a picture to the outside. Good that the fridge of a single never is too packed.

Pianoise

Is there any doubt whether all kids like to make noises using a piano? I guess not.
As a kid I never understood why one needs black keys because there were already so much of the white ones.
I still remember the moment as the big sister of my friend Schneider told me that one can make much nicer noises by pressing 3 special keys together and called it "chord". Schneider and me played chords for a long long time until his mother threw us out because she couldn't stand our "music" any longer.

I like that flying-fingers-thing on piano players when they play that fast that my eyes ain't able to follow.
Last time I saw this was in December at the concert of Anne Clark in Nuremberg. The keyboard player Murat Parlak was absolutely stunning. He was sunken in his own world and his music seemed to be his only connection to our world.

Here is a video from that tour that I found on YouTube. The sound quality isn't very good but one gets a good impression of Murat Parlak (I like the part starting at 03:30 best).

Pocket Bug

Click on photo to enlarge

This is a pocket bug. No, not really. Actually it's a "Rhaphigaster nebulosa". The german name is "Graue Gartenwanze" (grey garden bug).

So, why pocket bug? I'll tell you.

Some of my colleagues are aware now that I'm interested in dead insects.
Yesterday I heard that they "disposed" a dead bug out of the kitchen window into the freezing winter.
After work I searched and found a small grey dead bug on the window sill. I put the dead body it in a small box and stored it in the pocket of my jacket.
Tomorrow morning it was time to shoot some photos of the grey garden bug model. After opening the little box I realized that the bug wasn't dead at all. I shaked it on a piece of paper in front of my camera and it tried to run away immediately.
So I had a living bug in my pocket while visiting a friend in the hospital and while attending to a party. Very strange.

Well, I guess for the bug it was way stranger to spent the night in the dark card box.

OK, it wasn't dead and my intention was to shoot only dead non-moving insects but it was here and therefore I tried a little photo session with it. Believe me, it's damn difficult to shoot a moving bug with a macro lens. I had to block it's way and shoo it back to the camera all the time.
I ended up screaming to the bug things like "you freeze immediately you f**ing crumb". I tell you what: It helped. The bug climbed a little wooden cube and sat still for a minute.

I'm pretty sure that it was the most terrible day in the bug's life so far.

After 10 minutes of photo shooting I dropped it back in the box and released it in the basement in some old plant. Hopefully it will survive the winter but I don't think I'll see it again.
Actually it should be very grateful to me because I saved it's life by picking it out of the snow.

Maybe I should switch to macro photos of stones or similar things that are definitely not moving, though.

Big Insects, 1st Try

I did some experiments with my new macro lens. Shooting macros is so damn difficult. The depth of field is incredibly small. If your focus is wrong the fraction of a millimetre your image will be only crap.
I thought that insects would be a good target for a start. Dead insects, of course. Only dead ones don't move - not even the fraction of a millimetre.
But hell, how to find dead insects in winter if everything is covered with 30cm of snow? I searched my apartment but failed. Not even the small spider that used to live beside my bed was there. Apart of that I'd never kill an animal just for shooting photos. Well, even if I'd had killed it the common way by slapping it using a newspaper - it wouldn't be a good looking model afterwards.
Fortunately I have some secret agents all around. One of them put a small box with some dead insects in my mail box.
Very cool. Thanks a lot!
The bees in the box weren't in good shape any more (I guess they passed away in summer) but one has to be humble in winter. I'd have loved to shoot the insect's eyes but they were already rotten. But anyway - better than nothing.
Some days ago I ordered a small adapter for my camera and I hope I'll be able to come even closer to the objects with that thing. But to be honest - I never thought that I'd be able to see a bee that close.

Snow Cake Pastry

A few weeks ago I watched the wonderful movie "Snow Cake" with Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver and Carrie-Ann Moss. Among other things the film was about eating snow.
The last night brought me quite a lot of pastry for snow cakes - for the first time in this winter.
I don't speak of those heavy wet dough that glues your stomach together. What I'm talking about is some wonderful fluffy pastry that glitters when you stir it.
You'd have no chance to eat all of it - no damned way.

Oh, by the way, here's a 6 minute trailer for Snow Cake on youtube.com. I guess you shouldn't watch the trailer if you are really going to watch the movie because it shows quite lot of the story. Watch the movie if you have the chance to and skip the trailer. For the folks living in Nuremberg: The best theater in town, the "Meisengeige" still shows it.

Dark

When night surrounds me
Darkness is like a prison
Butterfly free me

I wrote this little Haiku several years ago. My thoughts in that time were different than today but it came to my mind a few hours ago, anyway.
"Darkness is not a state - it's only the absence of light"
Dunno where I heard this sentence. I know it's true but on some days it's harder to believe than on others, isn't it?

Half

A kiwi looks best if you cut it in half. I love the pattern of green on the cut surface. But after cutting it you should eat it immediately. Otherwise it runs dry and and then it's only food for your trash bin.
It seems to be a common thing in live that you have to be aware of the consequences whenever you cut something with the intention to look whats inside.

FX

If you ain't satisfied with the output of your life you can tune it up using some effect tools.
They look like pedals and you just have to step on them while living. Your life will sound a lot more phat. For a while you can add more and more tools and probably you would feel ok.
But believe me: As soon as the song is over and the tools are switched off your life would sound even thinner than in the beginning.

Furthermore the big plate full with FX pedals looks rather ridiculous, doesn't it?
Almost everything looks stupid if you go over the top.

Shot during the concert of the german band "Fotos" at the E-Werk in Erlangen.

Wreck

You drive to fast.
You have an accident.
You don't get injured - just luck.
Your car is a complete wreck now.
You drag it to the roadside.
You walk away.

Do you think the car wreck is a warning for the other drivers?
I don't.

The learning curve in life is very flat in most cases.

Locker

If there's a small locker box for every of our personal characteristics, how many of them do you think are already open?
The locker for curiousity is probably open, the lockers for ambition, cheerfulness and effort probably, too.
What about trust? What about reliability? What about the lockers for being childish, more creative than necessary and for being a dreamer? Are they open?
If not, can we open them by ourselfs or do we need an additional person to open it? Maybe a good fried or a partner?
I'm sure that there are some more closed lockers in your personality. Probably on top of the shelf or down at the bottom. I guess the front lids are full of dust because they had never been opened so far.
Maybe these are the lockers for your most intimate characteristics. The ones that you appreciate most at yourself. The ones that you wish desperately that someone gets interested in. The REAL valuable ones.

Well, we should blow the dust away from time to time to give other human beings the change to spot them and maybe even try their keys.

Sunken Sub

During a Geocaching hike in Berlin I found that entrance to the Underground. It was in the middle of a small river.
A funny thought that you have to swim to the entrance, dive down to your train and hold the breath during your ride to the office.
In business meetings you would attend always in black - in black neopren.
The ticket inspector would have a hard time because no one would understand him. "Could I see your ticket please" would sound like "blubb bluubbb blubb blubb". And if you have no ticket you can always say: "There was this big fish (probably a pike) and it ate it".
The drug dealers would no longer deal with drugs but sell air bubbles.

The sunken underground station was an art project called "Vertriebene Entfernung" and was created by Dirk Edwin Krechting in 2005.

Memory Void

Today I visited the Jewish Museum in Berlin. It was on my list since several years. Stupidly I mixed up the opening hours. I went there at 19:00 and expected having time until 22:00. Therefore I chose my default museum slow motion walk and was very annoyed as the guards kicked me out at 20:00 after only one hour. I have to come back soon because I've seen only a part of the collection yet.
The building is very special, too. It's created by Daniel Libeskind and I liked it very much. There doesn't seem to be rectancular spaces.
The room that impressed me much was called "Memory Void". An almost empty three stories high room with bare concrete walls. The floor was covered with thick round steel plates in the shape of crying people. The plates made a scary clanking noise while the visitors stepped on them.
Memory Void was dedicated not only the victims of the Shoa but to all victims of war and cruelty.

Instant Berlin

Short term decision: I'm driving to Berlin for 2 days. Geocaching, reading about Kaspar Hauser in some nice Café and maybe finding a piece of marble.
I look forward to sleep again in the "Fabrik", a former factory that is now a hostel.

Roast Duck

Happy New Year to all Vegetarians in the world.

PS: I couldn't find the english word for the legs of a roasted chicken. Any hints are appreciated.

Mission Accomplished?

Well guys, the year is over. My objective was to track almost every day in my 2006 with at least one picture.
My goal (beside the usual blog exhibitionism) was to give myself a better idea of my 2006. I wanted this blog to see how my postings and my thoughts changed during the year. The target of 365 postings in one year was slightly missed - I only wrote 337 small articles. To be honest, I expected to loose motivation after a few weeks. Therefore 337 postings is a huge pile for me. I guess I never kept posting without the positive feedback of some of my friends - and of some strangers that visited the SADellite by coincidence.
The small counter on the right side says that 9266 persons visited my blog during the year. Almost 10000! Unbelievable, isn't it? I'll share some of the statistics with you the next time. Some of them are quite funny.

What did 2006 teach me? Well, I think at least the year was good to learn how to live alone.
My personal highlights of 2006 were the weeks of the soccer World Cup in Germany during the summer. I still can see the black/red/gold spirit if I close my eyes. Furthermore I had the change to travel quite a bit in 2006 - Austin, New York, Chicago, Egypt and my road trip across Germany.
A learning of my private life was that I'm now even more aware that I have some very good friends and how important this fact is.
But in summary I didn't like 2006 much - neither the private year nor the business one.
I'd give 2006 five out of 10 points.
So f**k off 2006 - I'm done with you!

Let's see whether I'll fall in love with 2007 - I hope so.

I don't know whether I will keep posting on a daily basis but publishing some of my photos together with some stupid thoughts is still fun for me.

Oh, by the way: The photos of this posting were shot during the turn of the year on Trash Hill near Nuremberg. I walked up there to be alone but approximately 50 other folks had the same idea. My first try of shooting fire works. Damn difficult.