a little turtle passing by - stop motion

a little practice in making stop-motion videos. and i love that little toy turtle by the way...

josef hader, andré heller und meinungsverschiedenheiten im audimax

Am 16. Dezember 2009 beehrte Josef Hader mit einer Art "Best of Hader" das Audimax der Universität Wien. Vor seinem Auftritt gab es einige Meinungsverschiedenheiten zwischen den VeranstalterInnen des Abendprogramms und einer Gruppe von StudentInnen, die zur Spontandemo vor dem Rektorat aufriefen, um gegen eine Polizeiaktion in den (manche meinen zu Unrecht) besetzten Büroräumen des Hofes 5 zu demonstrieren. Ein Teil der Anwesenden konnten sich mit der Demo anfreunden, nachdem festgelegt wurde, dass diese nach Haders Auftritt stattfinden werde. Viele waren jedoch auch nach dem Kabarett nicht bereit, der Demo zu folgen. André Heller, welcher als zweiter Gast an jenem Abend geladen war, konnte die Situation halbwegs retten, indem er vorschlug, seinen Beitrag um 20 min zu verschieben und sich der Demo anzuschließen. Der Ablauf dieser Vorkommnisse zeigt ganz klar eine gewisse Spaltung innerhalb der Besetzung. Bleibt zu hoffen, dass die Bewegung diese Zeit der Spannungen und Meinungsverschiedenheiten übersteht, um weiterhin für das kämpfen zu können, wofür sie eigentlich steht: freie Bildung für alle!

do the "wiener linien" want you to turn your brain off?

as i took the subway this morning, i recognized that the "wiener linien" installed screens into their trains. not such that show you the previous and following stations but such that display commercials. video projectors in the subway stations that show these adverts have already been installed years ago but now we're also flooded with these spots while we're on the trains. personally i'm really against these screens. no, not against the screens but against their purpose. while you're on the train, you may be bored and you may look around. these screens attract your attention while you're looking for something to look at. you're doing that unconciously. and while you're staring at these screens you're being filled with commercials, without you recognizing. when you're watching the commercials on these screens, you turn your brain off. if there were critical messages on these displays people would maybe start to think. i'd really like to stick disturbing messages onto these screens, to make people's brains work again.

google wave invites give-away

i've got seven google wave invites to give away. if you want one, just drop me a line with your email-adress. first come, first serve.

edit: i got some more invitations. i can invite 19 people to google wave. again, just drop a line!

sometimes just everything's right...

yesterday i went to "wienerberg", which is a recreation area in the south of vienna at a time when the sun was about to set. so the light was as beautiful as it could be, i had my tripod and my camera with me and a good friend shared my enthusiasm while i was shooting. right place at the right time, sometimes that's all you need. here are the results...

photographic contrasts

the following three pics are the result of a hdr late night shooting i did in the first district of vienna some days ago.


during that shooting and while i was merging the pics to the final hdr photo i thought about the technical and ideological aspect of photography and especially hdr imaging. it's quite an effort to produce a hdr-photo. at first you have to shoot all the differently exposed pictures (these have to be congruent, that's why you ned a tripod for doing hdr photography), then the stitching, the tone mapping and finally retouching noise and undesired objects. in the end you have an artificial "image" that shows a place or object in a very emphesized way.

yesterday i tried something completely new. pinhole photography.


right now it seems to me as the complete opposite of hdr. the equipment you need to do it is really cheap, the aim of this kind of photography is to show a "real" image of the environment and the technical perfection of the photograph is subsidiary. i did both photoseries, the pinhole and the hdr series, with the same camera but the results are as different as they can be. for the pinhole photographs i took off the lens of my camera and put a piece of black thick paper with a tiny hole in it in front of the camera. then i pressed the exposure button for about half a minute. at first i couldn't believe that it was really working, that my camera could produce an image without any lens. but it did and i'm fascinated.

traces of summer

maybe this will help us to remember the sunbeams that once enlighted our moods

Nüchterne, subjektive Gedanken zur Audimax-Besetzung

Ja, diese Form von Widerstand ist zu befürworten und ja, die meisten der Forderungen sind gerechtfertigt und absolut zu unterstützen. Es ist einfach so, dass in Sachen Bildung sehr viel falsch läuft und dass manche dieser Missstände durch etwas politischen Willen und finanzielle Mittel verbessert oder behoben werden könnten.
Was ich auch sehr bemerkenswert finde, ist dieses Gemeinschaftsgefühl, das man verspürt, wenn man sich im Audimax unter die Menschen mischt. Revolutionsgeist ist genauso spürbar wie Enthusiasmus, Wut und dem Streben nach einer gewissen persönlichen Freiheit. Aber je öfter ich hinkomme, desto mehr spüre ich auch eine gewisse „Wurschtigkeit“ mancher Menschen gegenüber den Themen, um die es eigentlich geht.
Die Masse kann etwas bewirken, wenn alle an einem Strang ziehen. Doch eine Definition des gemeinsamen Stranges scheint auf den zweiten Blick schwierig. Der Forderungskatalog ist lange und teilweise sehr präzise ausformuliert. Aber ist jede/r Besetzer/in im Audimax mit diesen Forderungen einverstanden? Ordnet man sich also als Besucher/in diesem „Codex“ unter? Spaltet nicht z.B. das Quotenthema die Besetzer/innen? Und wozu führt man ein Rauchverbot im Audimax ein, wenn sich im Endeffekt sowieso die meisten nicht daran halten? Es wirkt so als ob sich die Revolution aufspalte, statt Einigung passiert Gruppenbildung, statt Menschen die engagiert bei der Sache sind, scheint es als ob nun viele primär Partyorientierte das Bild bestimmen.
Es wäre wirklich schade, wenn diese Bewegung an der Unfähigkeit, sich auf das eigentliche Ziel zu konzentrieren, scheitern würde.

mehr Fotos von der Besetzung des Audimax und der Demo am 29.10.09

random drawing

this video shows how i drew a random line. it is part of a project i do about randomness.

MP3 Experiment Vienna (MQ)

well, so this was the mp3 experiment. a great experience, a great concept and great fun! and i noticed something remarkable that was happening after the event. when i went to the subway station and while i was going home, i felt very good. my self-confidence was kinda boosted and i felt more comfortable than usual towards strangers that were around me. it was as if that experiment broke tabus. i think such events can create an enormous energy, it unites people somehow, creates a feeling of togetherness. and such a group or mass can achieve enormous things... well, to be true, i'm overwhelmed by the effects that this experiment had and still have on me. thanks paraflows and thanks improveverywhere!

textures

i started shooting textures which can be used for photographs, graphics or anything else you can imagine. the textures are shot with my nikon d80 in full size so most of the pix have a size of 3872×2592 (sometimes i crop the pic a bit to remove unwanted parts, then the size is a bit smaller).
i created a gallery that i will update every once and a while. feel free to download the textures and use them for your artwork, but please add a note that leads back to me if you publish your work somehow. i'd also be pleased if you show me the work you used the textures for! now have fun!

download textures

vienna through the eyes of hdr

you can view bigger versions of the pictures if you click them and then click "all sizes"

i tried hdr...

a few days ago i discovered stuckincustoms the #1 travel photography blog. the owner of this page/blog creates fantastic hdr pictures and also has tutorials on how to do hdr photography, how to work with textures and a nice article about how to make good photographs on his page.
especially his attitude towards making photographs made me try hdr. after i had done some test photos out of my window i discovered that i had some suitable material (photographs with the same object but different exposure time) from my trip to switzerland.



so i got myself photomatix, a very nice software to create hdr photos, and gave it a try. and i am pretty satisfied with the result.



i just have to get my fathers tripod to be able to do more of those...

switzerland

more photos from my trip to switzerland here

trip to brussels

i went on a trip to brussels from the 6th July to the 10th July. my boyfriend and i visited a friend of us who has been working in brussels for half a year. thanks to him letting us stay in his flat, the trip was quite cheap compared to what we normally pay when we're travelling. we did kind of classic sight-seeing but also had the chance to drink beer at the famous "delirium", taste the delicious "waffels" and also make a short trip to maastricht in the nederlands. i made a gallery that contains the best of almost 400 photos i shot during the trip.
you can view the gallery here

machinery...

i know this is very mainstream and commercial but it was fun doing it... i had the idea for that about half a year ago, but now after my matriculation i finally had the time to do this simple but very effective photomanipulation.

and today i went to buy a sewing machine with my grandparents. so now i'm the proud owner of a brand new pfaff sewing machine. i am very happy about it, because now i do not only have the time to sew but also the right equipment. so massproduction of salwars and other clothes can begin!

rose of jericho

my first attempt at making a time lapse video.
the rose of jericho is a "flower" that can live without water for years. but if it is exposed to water, it flourishes within about half an hour, which is about the time i shot photographs.

self made salwar

i made this traditional salwar two days ago. a friend of mine has bought a similar one and since then i wanted to sew my own. i mean, what did i attend a fashion college for... to be able to sew my own clothes, that's for sure! at first i didn't even know what these trousers were called, but after some internet recherche i discovered a pattern and a tutorial that showed how to sew these comfortable trousers. below you can find the pattern i used.

how to make a salwar

i'd be pleased to see the result if anyone of you sews his/her own salwar. thanks in advance :)

wozu eu?

Bericht über den Aktionstag "Wozu EU?" bei dem ich am Fotoworkshop und an der Podiumsdiskussion teilgenommen habe.

donaufestival 02.05.

upcoming review in the next issue of the youth magazine dashelmut