Posts Tagged ‘photo’

Routes book is out – toilets await.

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

Finally the book that accompanies the research project Routes, Roads, and Landscapes: Aesthetic Practices en route 1750–2015 has landed on my desk. You can peruse the table of contents and read the introduction at the publisher’s website.
book cover
The book is in an unusual format, as you can see from the image. The landscape format (haha) works really well for this, as it obviously should. What is even better, we invested the rest of the project’s funds to get the book produced with full color photographs, so that you can see the toilet buildings that feature in my article Stop, rest, and digest. Feeding people into nature in their full glory!

As with all Ashgate hardcovers, the price is much too high for individuals to pay (125 US$). So the best way to get your hands on this volume is to tell your library staff that this is a book that you would like to read and that is relevant for the library’s collection.

Lüneburg. Begegnung, Widerstand und Abwesenheit.

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Foto des Empfangsgebäudes im WinterVorgestern hatte ich mein erstes offizielles Vorsingen, im Rahmen meiner Bewerbung auf die von der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg ausgeschriebene Stelle als Juniorprofessor für qualitative sozialwissenschaftliche Methoden. Im Rahmen der Bewerbung musste ich auch einen wissenschaftlichen Vortrag vor der Berufungskommission (und anscheinend auch noch einem Gast) halten. Wie auch sonst üblich, habe ich den zwanzigminütigen Vortrag aufgezeichnet und stelle ihn hier als Videodatei in zwei unterschiedlichen Formaten zur Verfügung:
Ogg Theora (45 MB, für Firefox und VLC) | MP4 (28 MB, für Safari, Chrome und QuickTime).

Getting the research back to the name of this blog.

Friday, March 16th, 2007

photo of razorclamsFinally. I am currently spending my first research week on the island. My main objective during this stay is to arrange future stays, check out the general way things have changed in the course of the last 10+ years, get back into touch with people, and take a lot of photographs of the island’s coastline, nature, buildings, places, and people. Some of the photos serve more or less aesthetic purposes, documenting the attractions and peculiarities of this place, others serve as a background for future assessments or comparisons.
Time passes both more slowly and more quickly here. To keep a grip on this and the many other things and thoughts that I encounter here, I have started writing a more thorough log than I did for any of my past research projects. I am pretty sure solid logging practices (as recommended by Lofland & Lofland in their great book Analyzing Social Settings) are a very good idea for a long-term project such as mine. I can only recommend OmniOutliner to those of you using a Mac. It is as useful for keeping a log as it is for writing outlines.

Dunes, wind, the whole package.

Saturday, January 6th, 2007

dunes on the island JuistAh, what a wonderful time. This year we spent our new year’s break on the North-Sea island Juist. The weather was a perfect mixture of wind, rain and sun. Sadly, the last grains of sand have been washed away during yesterday morning’s shower. Since my new research project will take place on this island, you can expect more pictures and a story or two in the coming two years…

Dissertation is done & defended.

Saturday, December 2nd, 2006

wine and pretzel leftoversI guess the last entries displayed the change in lifestyle that occurred in the last week: I am finally done with the dissertation! This has generated more than a few sighs of relaxation.
The defense (or disputatio) of my dissertation has been tougher than I expected. After talking about my thesis in a thirty minute presentation – in which I did not use any fancy multimedia things at all – I was probed and questioned for one looong hour. The fact that I knew all of the professors on the committee did not make their questions less inquisitive and difficult. Just to point out the degree of concentration that was necessary to work my way through this trial: I had a full glass of water standing next to me, two times during the 90 minutes I thought about taking a sip, but it doing so would have distracted me too much. I did not drink anything from this glass… However, now it is over. And it went very well enough: magna cum laude. Afterwards we had sparkling wine and pretzels; the leftovers are displayed on the photo.
Even though we celebrated the successful finishing of my dissertation it has only been during the last few days that I started to realize that I am actually done. My deeply felt thanks go to all those who supported me during the last three and a half years – both intellectually, personally, and financially: Ihr wißt, wenn Ihr gemeint seid: Dankeschön!

Digital Photography.

Friday, November 3rd, 2006

I am really content with my new camera, a Canon EOS 400D. The image quality is most excellent, the amount of noise even at the maximum ISO value (1600) is quite small, it reacts almost instantaneously, and it offers a whole lot of interesting, useful, and even easily accessible settings. Photography has become even more fun!
Before buying this camera, I used my old Canon EOS 300 to make slides. After four to eigth months I would take all my new slides and scan them in a several day session using a high-resolution slide scanner (a Nikon 4000). Even with all the time and work that I invested during these scanning marathons, the image quality of the pictures taken by the 400D is just plain better, especially regarding noise. And that is not even considering the numerous usability advantages of digital cameras. The best thing is that I can still use the lens that I bought for my 300: a pretty good Canon EF 28-105 II USM. Not losing this investment is what finally convinced me of buying the 400D. The only disadvantage is that the 400D crops images at a 1.6 ratio. That means that all my pictures are effectively taken at a longer focal range – 28-105mm becomes 44.8-168mm. Because of this, it has become difficult to shoot interiors… I guess that means I will need to get a wide angle lens eventually.
photo of Oslo at night taken from planeThe picture you see here is showing the limits even of this new camera: I wanted to shoot Oslo at night from the plane with which I arrived here the evening before yesterday. I particularly liked the scene because of the moonlight reflecting on the waters of the Oslofjord. However, planes are moving fast and even with ISO 1600 the camera needed a one second exposure time. Thus the result shown here.

Später Lavendel.

Sunday, October 22nd, 2006

photo of lavender growing on my balconyGoldener Oktober. Heute noch mal auf dem Balkon gefrühstückt. Die Wespen sind immer noch unterwegs, aber schon etwas träge, so dass Olli und ich sowohl Brötchen geniessen als auch ausblühenden Lavendel anblinzeln konnten.
So erholt man sich doch gerne von einer Magen-Darm Infektion.
Hm. Irgendwie passen goldener Oktober, blühender Lavendel und Magen-Darm Infektion nicht so richtig zusammen. Aber wir wollen mal nicht weiter in diese jeweiligen Bilder und ihre Assoziationen einsteigen. Hö.
Kerstin sagt, in Oslo regnet es schon seit zwei Wochen und es sind sechs Grad. Die Arme. *hämisches Grinsen*

Die schöne Brache.

Saturday, October 21st, 2006

Foto Baustelle Choriner Straße 32a 21. Oktober 2006Mit einem Seufzer im Herzen habe ich heute noch mal ein Bild von der früheren Brache auf dem Gelände Choriner Straße 32a gegenüber von unserem Balkon gemacht. Vor kurzem hat Olli da noch in der Sonne gesessen und meine Dissertation Korrektur gelesen. Aber nun wird die verführend verfallende Fläche von der Härte des Immobiliengeschäfts ereilt. Ich habe bisher noch keine Tafel erspäht, die ankündigen würde was auf dem ehemaligen Gelände der KiTa eigentlich gebaut wird. Eine große Erleichterung ist nur, dass der wundervolle Kirschbaum (im Bild unten rechts) anscheinend erhalten bleibt. Es wäre wirklich grausam gewesen, wenn der hätte fallen müssen…

Hotel, City, Maghreb.

Friday, June 23rd, 2006

To give you a first impression of my experience of life in a conference hotel in Algiers, I recorded a brief video clip with my mobile phone – I recommend paying attention to the sound also.

Algiers as seen from the Hotel El-Aurassi. Cliplength 43 seconds

PS: The webserver did not deliver the video clip with the information that is necessary to interpret the video data type – this has been fixed now. If you still have problems seeing the clip, please e-mail me.>

The movie time of the year.

Saturday, February 11th, 2006

Olli is carrying around his new bag, when I’m in a café I tend to look at the other guests more closely, scanning for movie celebrities, the radio program features my favorite cinema guru, Knut Elstermann, more often; short: it’s Berlinale time!
I personally am too phlegmatic to get up early, queue, check out programs and schedule and so forth, so I have to rely and good friends who ask me to accompany them when they have a spare ticket. Luckily, they exist and thanks to Berit I saw my first Berlinale 2006 movie yesterday.
It was Women Liang or You and Me, the opening movie of the adolescent movie feature/ competition 14plus. An excellent movie about a girl who moves to the city to study and rents a small shed-like room from an old woman. Those two, the young women and the old landlady are similar in character: stubborn, haughty, loyal, direct – they are fascinating women, full characters and seeing them clash and care was a great experience. The actresses are very impressive. A slow movie with a very tender and personal camera. Definitely to be recommended.

Organizing, tagging, and analyzing video clips on the Mac.

Saturday, September 17th, 2005

After finishing the introductory chapter of my dissertation I am now diving into the video and photographic data which I collected in the course of the last two years. Not an easy thing. Photos are not a problem. (I am fully satisfied with GraphicConverter’s abilities and make extensive use of IPTC entries to add keywords to my image files, which then get indexed by Apple’s Spotlight search.) However, tagging movie clips in a way that allows for convenient search and analysis is much more difficult. I decided to use iDive by Aquafadas software since it got some really good reviews and seemed to be nicely integrated to Mac OS X technologies (Spotlight again). It was a good choice! Although I am not able to tag arbitrary stretches of clips (overlapping would be best), I can split my clips into multiple parts and can tag those. This is not what makes me really happy about choosing iDive though – the really good aspect, as with all software, is the developer. I sent him feedback (bug reports and feature and enhancement requests). I got an answer only a few hours later. And: he is planning to implement almost all the things that I asked for. Most excellent! Superb! I am looking forward to work with a program that will slowly grow into the tool that I really need. Hail small, responsive developers!

Unwetter und fliegende Zelte.

Monday, August 1st, 2005

Foto von unserem Platz in Montbrun an der Tarn - nach dem Unwetter wieder in Ordnungoh lala! ‘eute Abend ‘atten wir ein ge’öriges Unwetter! Sturmböen sind durch’s Tarn-Tal gefegt und haben das Zelt von Andi und Tini (inklusive Tini) fast in den Fluß gerissen. Von Ollis Zelt, dass ich mir für diesen Urlaub geliehen habe und das vorher noch unbenutzt war, sind zwei Bodenlaschen einfach abgerissen. Glückerlicherweise hatte ich vorher schon die gesamte Verspannung angebracht so dass das Zelt nicht auch davongeflogen ist. Vor diesem Ereignis war ich von dem Zelt ganz positiv eingenommen. Nun allerdings muss ich sagen, dass es wirklich zu riskant ist, mit billigen Zelten in den Urlaub zu fahren. Die Nähte und der Stoff (es sind auch noch zwei andere Teile etwas eingerissen) sind einfach nicht stabil genug, um widrigen Bedingungen, wie sie auch in nicht-extremen Klimazonen immer wieder vorkommen, zu widerstehen. Qualität ist gefragt – wenn wir nicht dagewesen wären und es gleichzeitig auch noch geregnet hätte, wäre es schon möglich gewesen, dass das Zelt samt Inhalt (das heisst auch diesem Laptop) völlig hinüber gewesen wäre. Gute Zelte und ordentliche Heringe sind also eine sinnvolle Investition. Auch sinnvoll ist es, bei auch nur ein bisschen zweifelhafter Wetterlage die gesamte Verspannung anzubringen und darauf zu achten, Heringe tatsächlich fest einzuschlagen.
Dank einer hilfsbereiten und mit Nähzeug ausgestatteten Bernerin hier auf dem Platz konnte ich Ollis Zelt immerhin wieder zusammengenähen – sollte besser halten als vorher…
Schon kurios: der Sturm kam von einen Moment auf den anderen und hörte nach ca. 3 min auch schon wieder auf – vorhersehbar war der hier unten im Tal nicht. Glücklicherweise ist hier auf dem Platz niemand körperlich zu Schaden gekommen. Einige Zelte und ein Wohnwagen allerdings sind hinüber.

Leipzig Hauptbahnhof und die Promenaden.

Thursday, June 24th, 2004

Ich habe grad mal eine vorläufige Galerie mit Bildern des Leipziger Hauptbahnhofs und des dazugehörigen Einkaufszentrums online gestellt. Die Bilder sind mit meiner Videokamera aufgenommen und noch nicht weiter bearbeitet, deswegen ist die Qualität nicht so riesig – ich habe auch einen Haufen Dias gemacht, die ich aber noch einscannen muss. Aber einen Blick kann man schon mal riskieren…