the german word “rorate” is maybe best described by “early-in-the-morning-christmas-time-mass “.
some friends and i decided to sing at one of those, which turned out to be the last one – just 2 hours ago.
luckily i got (almost) well again in time!

the church wasn’t lit at all, the only source of light were some candles, and every participant got one, too. up in the gallery we had some candles and a weak bulb for the organ. i didn’t want to use flash for the photos, so i stuck with my sony’s nightshot-mode for most of them. i didn’t take many pictures, anyway.

musically, i think it went really well. it wasn’t perfect, but a good result regarding the amount of rehearsals we could arrange and the time of performance: 6 am.
i LOVE to sing what is called “alpine christmas-songs” – traditional and almost unknown local christmas songs from some of tyrol’s valleys.
finally a chance to sing in a 6-voice male ensemble.

here’s one of the alpine christmas-songs for you:

[listen to sample]
ach mein seel’, fang an zu singen – zip [mp3], 1,1MB

 

[view photos]

 

merry christmas, everybody!

so…

i’ve been really ill for the past days, starting to feel better now.
since i can concentrate again, i’ve decided to upload some photos from late november. the “laptop-on-belly-way” is really nice and sparing, even if you’re sick!

where the hell did all the colours go?
all you can see now is white and grey, and some brown if you’re lucky… :???:

anyway, here are the first two updates:

[view photos: frost]
[view photos: piano special]

“piano special” was a recital organized by our music school. i went there to listen/take pictures of my brother playing the double bass (accompanying a little pianist with the rest of the young chamber orchestra), but i met some friends there, too…

more to come!

since my grandmother is on holidays in turkey this week, she lent me her car. *happy*
today i thought i should use it to full capacity, but i didn’t know where to go.
so i thought “what the heck, let’s go to grimms”. now, since i just made the name up that moment, grimms isn’t anywhere near a real (german) word…
but map24.com said that there’s a village called “krimml”, and that’s a nice compromise. :smile: especially since there’s a cascade in krimml, and a storage lake nearby, and the road leads up to 1600m and down again – so lots of different sceneries.

my little brother decided he was going with me, so we set out to krimml at 11:30. tom’s gps route planner did an amazing job! it’s so nice if somebody tells you what to do all the time…

we had a lot of fun while driving there, took some pictures, and went back again (with lots of short stops for photos). total driving time: 3 hours. total trip time: about 3 hours and 30 minutes.

the only thing that’s annoying when you’re driving is that you can’t use your camera. there was a lot of stuff i would have liked to take pictures of, but i had to concentrate on the road and there was no place to stop… well, anton took some for me!

anyway: thank you granny! (although you’re most likely not going to read this)

here’s some pix:
[view photos]

ok, it’s all fixed and (nearly) finished, so now i can tell:

a book is going to be published in mid-december, and i was asked to deliver photos! :grin:
it’s a book filled with wonderful poems by dr. ingrid riedl – and 10 of my favorite pictures.
the book is entitled “zauberfäden” (strands of magic) – which is also the title of the first poem inside.

go have a look at the cover:

and the invitation card:

(if you can make it – go there!)

and the
[screenshots]

thank you, lisa, ingrid & helga, for making this possible! looking forward to meeting you guys again!

ps: when it’s in store, i’ll post a link here!

yesterday, when i was waiting for a friend who …got away later than anticipated, i noted a few things:

[view photos]

these days i learned about “super macro” – a technique that allows you to get even closer macro pictures by *reversely* attaching a standard 35mm lens. that way, your pictures seem to get microscopic!
depth of field is microscopic as well, btw. :???:

so i had a few testshots where i only held the lense in front of my f-717 and here’s the first results.
@fingerprint pictures: note the pores on my finger’s underside!
@text picture: this is a shot of a 2L coke bottle, the “big” letters (k, t, …) are about 1 mm in height!

[view photos]

i’ve just released the latest photo-update.
i haven’t really had any good, creative photosessions lately – mostly because of a lack of time and energy.
most of the new photos were done for some sort of request.

[view photos]

i’ve also uploaded two live-recordings of that funeral on september 15th. i was singing there with “collegium vocale” – a great nearby choir that i wish i could take part in…
*thinking about time and energy again…*
i must state that i made those recordings with my mp3-player, which did a great job considering that it was actually designed for playing mp3s… anyway, i have activated a setting that allows the microphone to adjust itself to the surrounding volume, so it might take away some effects like dynamics and stuff. but it’s great if you have no idea how loud it’s gonna get…

[listen to samples]
bach – wenn ich einmal soll scheiden – zip [mp3], 726KB
schubert – herr, du hast mein flehn vernommen – zip [mp3], 1,12MB