Farewell to a Colleague and Friend

Last time hanging out together after work at the Wöhrder Lake in Nuremberg before he moves to Berlin. Melancholy rulez the moment.

This posting is the first try of sending a photo directly from the PDA. So I´m sitting at the lake in this moment.

Plasticine Pig

Sometimes life requires that you knead yellow-green Plasticine pigs. Good when you know what to do then.

I Want to Swing and Look Into the Sky, Part 2

A few days ago I posted a photo from a hand made sticker I found in Nuremberg with the message "I want to swing an look into the sky".

I just remembered that I took a photo only a few days earlier that perfectly fulfils that order.

In addition I remembered that I shot a similar photo in April 2006 - a long time and a lot of experiences ago - but some things like swinging to feel good seem to be timeless.

Men Dressed in Leather and Fur and a Princess

Do all soccer teams wear boring shirts? No!
Here comes the ultimate dress code for table soccer teams.
In ideal case one team acts as the masculine one dressed in fur and the other one is more, well, leather centric.
And in addition it's crucial to have one diva on the pitch - for example Ronaldo or any other princess.

'

A friend of mine sewed the shirts for a pal as a birthday present because he will get a table soccer game, too. Every shirt is unique and as far as I understood it took many many hours to make them. For the fur shirts several stuffed animals had to die.
I found the idea totally funny and so we did a little photo shooting in advance using the table soccer in our office.

 

More photos can be found on my Flickr account [ here... ].

Symbiosis

Today during breakfast at the terrace I watched a really interesting teamwork at the plant behind me head. 
A ant was milking a small flock of plant louses. I could really see how the ant was tapping at the louses to make them secrete the sweet fluid that ants love. I just read about it and found out that both parties anticipate from that. The ant gets that sweet liquid the louse collected from the plant and in return the ant protects the louse from ladybugs and even drags it to fresh leaves.
It was amazing to realize who good it works if all parties contribute what they can do best.
It made me think what kind of symbioses I'm part of and what things I contribute. A prerequisite for that would be to realize what things I can do best. On the other hand: I don't think that louse and ant know what their added value is and it works though.
I think I skip thinking about my skills and just live.

Iris Discovery

Sometimes a whole world is hidden behind the iris of an eye. Lucky you if you are able to discover it.

Name Follows Function

My favorite ice cream parlor (German: "Eisdiele") - although it is closed since many years and although I never ate ice cream there. I drive by very often and finally I stopped to take some photos.
I like the clear message of the sign. It doesn't babble marketing nonsense like "Ice Café Romantic" or "Dolomites Ice Dream" but only what this building is about. It's like the key message of the Bauhaus-style: "Form follows function". Nowadays not many buildings clearly state what they are about.
Don't say the Eisdiele looks old fashioned and not cosy at all - it's all about ice cream and not about cosiness.

 
Usually I read most of the self made stickers on walls in the city. This one found on the wall of the Eisdiele I liked in particular. It says "I want to swing and look into the sky". I try to take this as my order for the day - even if only my thoughts swing.

Napkin Love

The cookie you get with a cup of Cappuccino in a café can be very flexible. Especially in combination with a napkin and a pen. Napkins are very powerful tools for being creative.

Well, a few minutes later I had that the love-feeling in my belly by just eating the cookie.

Guerilla Sunflowers, Part 3 - Let the People Plant

It was really cool to see the smiling faces of strangers when we asked whether they want to plant some sunflower seeds. We got not a single "No".

 

This guy just bought some old records from the flea market but couldn't resist to plant some seeds. The woman passing by looked a little bit weird at the scene but didn't ask what was going on.

It turned out that this guy was the manager of a big public garden. He told us a lot of stuff about plants in general and about planting sunflowers below trees in particular. Well, in the end he disagreed to look for his flower at least once a week with a big grin in his face.

Spit at Snow White

Today I saw two boys using some straws as blow tube. Their poor victim was a poster of Snow White on an advertising column.
Their goal was to hit Snow White in the mouth with some moist paper balls. The two guys had fun like hell and cheered every time someone placed a good shot.

I really love the anxious expression of Snow White. It really looks like a deer hounded by some cruel hunters.

Guerilla Sunflowers, Part 2

Sance, my sister in crime


Sance adds some yellow

We started with planting sunflower seeds in front of some time-honored buildings. Probably the passers-by thought that we were peeing there but that made it even more funny.

Then we visited the nearby IMAX cinema and I asked one of the girls at the counter whether she would like to plant some sunflowers in their boring bambus pots in the big entrance hall. To my astonishment she smiled, agreed and a few minutes later we had three employees of the cinema jumping around from pot to pot planting seeds. The best thing was that none of them asked what it is good for. They even didn't care that Sance and I took a lot of photos of them. Whow, what a start.

 
Employee of the IMAX cinema enhancing the bamboo pots

Photo by Sance

Afterwards we visited the public library. It seemed as if books and plants are mutually exclusive because it took me 15 minutes to find a flower pot. The public servant allowed me to plant some seeds although the pot did belong to a colleague he didn't even know. There was a pot without plant but with a sign saying "Two lychee plants will grow here soon". Well, now they have to share their pot with some yellow flowers. I hope the owner will be surprised.

 
In the public library

The Katharinenruine is the remains of a church destroyed in WW2. The square in front of it looked kind of devastated und needed some funny flowers desperately. I guess it will be hard for the sunflowers to grow there but I'm confident. 
  
  
At the ruins of St. Catherine Church

 

More photos from the Guerilla Sunflower Day to come soon...

Guerilla Sunflowers, Part 1

A few weeks ago I bought some packs of sunflower seeds. My idea was to plant them all over Nuremberg in unusual places, and visit some of the spots again a few weeks later to see what had happened.

I stored the seeds on a hook in my restroom to ensure seeing them every day and not to forget about the plan.
By the way: It turned out that the restroom is a good place for placing memo notes.

Last Saturday I did it. Together with a good friend I strolled through the city and planted a lot of flower seeds.
It was an absolutely wonderful little event for me and I will share a few glimpses of it here on SADellite in the next days. Yes, I know it's very useless to plant sunflowers in the city but I don't care.

Bumper Car Crashes

You kick down the gas pedal, you scream for joy and seek the collision on purpose.
Not every crash in life is negative. The bumpers are bigger than you think. Just dare to risk a collision.

I shot this photo at the Bergkirchweih in Erlangen - one of my favorite fun fairs. My attempt was to capture motion and energy and I played around with different flash modes and moving the camera while taking the photo. This is one of the results.

The Smell of a Rock

The first outdoor climbing afternoon after a long winter.
The scent of the rocks amazed me. I have had already forgotten how intense it smells to climb outdoor.
You might claim that a rock doesn't have a scent - you are completely wrong.
You can smell the dirt in the holes, you can smell the grass on top, you can smell the rotten leaves covering the stones and you can even smell the sun that warmed the stone.

Climbing with some friends is a 100% battery charger for me. I hope we will have a lot more of these events this summer.

Shooting this photos war kind of an adventure. I hung at the top end of the wall with my camera and secured with my seat belt. I guess I never took photos before in such a strange setting.

Night Concert

Last weekend I was on a nightly hunt for a Geocache with a few friends.
I really love these hikes in a pitch black forest. The air is cold with a wonderful scent. You hear little noises from animals you never hear during daylight because your eyes dominate your senses.
This time we came by a few fish ponds and the frogs were either arguing or having a big party. The were so incredibly loud that I couldn't resist but standing and listening in the darkness near the ponds for 15 minutes after my friends left.

Nature is great in providing soundtracks if one dares to listen.

PS: It's not your monitor's fault that the video appears black. This one is only about the sound.

Coming Home

Click on photo to view it in different sizes on my Flickr account

Do you know the feeling of visiting a place you were familiar with in former times?
I'm talking about the hidden warmth you feel if you go to one of your favorite places in a city you used to live in years ago.
Yesterday I had a walk in one of these places - a park called "Eremitage" in Bayreuth.
It's a baroque garden that a margrave built as a gift for his wife Wilhelmine.
For me it's absolutely relaxing to walk the paths of the park after the tourists are gone or sitting on one of the meadows and twinkle into the setting sun.
I haven't been to the Eremitage for many years and this made the battery-reloading-effect even stronger.
Although I can't imagine living in the city of Bayreuth again but coming home from time to time feels great.
Coming home always reminds me of the last chapter of the book "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. For some reason the paragraph about coming home has stuck in my mind:

"We drew in deep breaths of it [...], unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again."

The photo is a HDR and calculated out of 5 single shots. The building is called the sun temple and its facade consists of thousands and thousands of little colored stones.

Life'n'Joy

You can try to enjoy life as much as a kid. I guess you'll probably fail because those little humans seem to have the ability to love what they do without thinking about it. Most grown ups have lost this skill.

Well, even if I'm a rookie compared to a kid I can try to get inspired by them. Maybe I should book a kid for a personal training.