Meadow Power

I found a very thick power cable leading out of the dirt in the middle of a meadow. No, I don’t think I’m able to find out what’s the secret about it. Although I was almost sure that it wasn’t energized I didn’t dare to touch it.
Usually I don’t need such a cable because my internal batteries re-charge by simply walking above a meadow and by listening the summer chatter of the crickets (sounds kitschy, doesn’t it?).
Today I feel a kind of down and a little bit of additional energy would be a good idea. Too bad that those cables ain’t nearby when you need one.

Rockstars, Part XI

click on photo to enlarge

Rockstars, Part X

click on photo to enlarge

Ghost Forest

A tree in Ghost Forest. Shot by my friend R.

Back on the surface after a weekend of gloomy light.
My best friend R. and I went for a diving weekend in Dannigkow near Magdeburg. There are many old abandoned quarries and most of them are filled with water now. The surrounding rocks are overgrown and the scenery looks great.
The flooding of the quarries was a natural process and needed many years.
The people living nearby use the lakes for swimming not knowing that the best thing is 15m below them - Ghost Forest.
The rising water covered some trees and in one of the lakes the cold water covered a whole small forest.
We dived from one quarry to the next through an underwater canyon. There was this steep face below us leading into darkness. We hovered down and suddenly a big tree appeared. At first it was only a shadow in the green-blue gloomy light. As soon as we came near the very big tree looked like a giant cursed christmas tree. All branches were covered over and over with algae. We passed the tree and suddenly we flew through a whole forest of those ghost trees. Amazing!
R. tried to shoot photos with his new underwater housing and I was responsible for the orientation with compass and depth gauge. Usually I’m a real idiot when it comes to navigation but this times it worked more than well. For some reason we dived exactly as planned from quarry 1 to number 2 and through a second canyon to quarry 3 and stopped directly in front of the ladder we intended to reach. I was speechless.
After two dives we camped on a small campsite nearby. Actually we planned to barbecue but due to the hot summer every kind of fire was strictly forbidden. It ended up with eating my vegetarian barbecue sausages cold and raw. Baah!
But we got indemnified with a wonderful swim after nightfall in another small lake. The water was warm and had a wonderful scent of wood and moss. Only a bloody brass band playing loud awful german folk music in a restaurant nearby disturbed the evening. It was really bizarre.
The next day we did another dive at Ghost Forest and I liked that visit even more. There was wonderful light and the trees reminded me of masts of ghost ships out of the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean”.

Diving in gloomy water, exploring cursed forests, sleeping in a tent, night swimming and a lot of boys’ talk - that are the ingredients of a great weekend for me - and it worked out.




The caution sign is useless now because it was flooded too
and is in 8m depth now.
By the way: That’s me on the photo.

Small lake for night swimming

Quarry Break

The old quarry in Löbejün. Photo taken in May 2002

There won’t be a new posting until Sunday evening. I plan to go diving in some old flooded quarries in the eastern part of Germany.
Very dark and very very cold. I really don’t know why I love doing this. Maybe because of the things one can explore down there: Rails leading to nowhere, rusted lorries and sunken pump houses in the trembling flare of your little lamp.

Other Rockstars

Shot on the concert of the “Donots” in E-Werk, Erlangen.

The hottest concert I can remember. Afterwards I was wet like after a swim in a river in full clothes. I had the Fat Lotte with me and took some photos during the first half of the concert. I was really surprised that the security girl didn’t prevent me from bringing my SLR camera. The crowd jumped like hell so I wasn’t able to resist. I parked my camera and joined them in jumping. After a few seconds I didn’t care whether the liquid I felt was my own sweat or the one of the folks around me. Slippery, very funny and actually not disgusting at all.
Great concert!
I also enjoyed sitting in the beer garden afterwards with DMX and exchanging experiences about the most effective way of writing a shopping list.


The Lead Singer of the “Donots”

Flying Backwards

Shot during the yesterday’s concert of the german band “Donots” in the club E-Werk in Erlangen.
You don’t see what happens behind your back and you have to 100% trust in the crowd. LETTING GO at it’s best.
I thought about when was the last time that I let go and trusted totally in others. I couldn’t remember.
While writing this post I remembered that I wrote something similar a few months ago in my posting “Trust” from May 26th, 2006.

Rockstars, Part IX

Rockstars, Part VIII (unveiled)

(click on photo to enlarge)

Today we went to an very very bad italian restaurant to discuss the photos of our Rockstars-session. Unfortunately I was to blame because I recommended the restaurant because it has a nice beer garden.
The focus was to find out what can be improved so the discussion of my photos was kind of censoriously. I hope our models did like the shooting as much as CHK and me, though.
I asked Ms. D whether I can publish some of the photos on my Blog and she agreed - well, here she is...


(click on photo to enlarge)

199

My next posting on SADellite will be the 200th one.
I never thought I come that far. Time for looking back and analyzing how the postings have changed during the months?
Not yet.
But anyway, thanks to every visitor of this site and even more thanks to the few that post comments occasionally. I’m happy about every little feedback I can get.

Frames

Every thought about whether you fit in the frame that life (or society) prepared for you?
It can be the moment when you realize that you do fit perfectly. The moment it becomes obvious that you ain’t a rebel, you never started a revolution and you never will. Your thoughts circle round the fact that you are as conventional as you thought you’d never be.
This moment can be kind of frustrating can’t it?
Well, probably it’s not so bad to simply step outside your frame from time to time. Not really a revolution but at least a change of perspective.

Rockstars, Part VII

Sparkler Ocean

Every July there’s an open air concert with classical music in Nuremberg. Supposedly the biggest in the world. I don’t care for world records but I like the concert. It’s for free and thousands of people just sit on a big meadow in front of the stage. It’s amazing to see how diversed the audience is. It ranges from seniors wearing suits to young Punks with colored hair. Most of the people bring food and have a voluminous picnic. One can see groups with tables including a white table cloth, candle holders and champagne and others having a bottle of wine and some pizza. You lie on your back, observe the stars and listen to a symphonic orchestra.
I was not sure whether I should go because having picnic and watching the stars is not a great thing without accompaniment. I asked some friends but no one was interested so finally I decided to go on my own and just skip the picnic part.
After nightfall there was a singer on stage and the picnicing armada lightened sparklers. From one moment to the next the area was a surging ocean of light. I enjoyed the look a lot - especially with the appropriate soundtrack. The best thing was to observe the people while they were holding their sparklers. One could see a glowing in the eyes of almost everyone. Making people smile can be very simple. Great!
Apropos “making people smile”: I started my way home immediately after the sparkler thing because I thought this is a good last impression. After a few metres I met my ex-girlfriend together with her new partner by coincidence. A few sentences of stupid small talk, a simulated “CU soon” and a lost last impression of light waves. Shit.


Picnic Classics


Small Musician With Big Instrument

Bananaskate

An Inline-Skate-Event. 40 km around a local lake - the VGN Seenland Skate.
I attended as a kind of practise because I signed up for the Berlin Skate Marathon in September.
Well, although it was not a real race but with two short planned breaks for all skaters, it was very exhausting for me because the first third of the track consisted almost only of hills. Awful. But I managed to survive the hills and even the hot sun. Actually I’m kind of satisfied with my performance. Probably the yellow things provided along the track saved me. I think that bananas look way to esthetic to be provided in piles. They look much more important if shelved like on the photo.

Rockstars, Part VI (Chilling with Marshall)

This is one of my favorite photos of DMX (click on the photo to get an enlarged version).
Today I got the paper prints from the session. Although many of the pics ain’t sharp (my fault) I really like them and I look forward to discuss the prints with the others on Tuesday.

Rockstars, Part V

I don’t know why but on this photo DMX looks like out of Clockwork Orange.

Rockstars, Part IV

Today I showed DMX some of my pics. Therefore now I’m able to show them to the world, too. At least the ones without Ms. D.
I uploaded some photos to an Online Printing Service and I’m very curious about the paper prints.

Rockstars, Part III (Guidance from Behind)

Do you know those moments when you are almost able to play a cool riff in your all-days life, one small tune doesn’t sound right and you don’t dare to ask for help because you don’t want so look stupid. Finally you ask and for some reason you get guidance from behind without problems. Someone is just slightly re-arranging your fingers and suddenly your riff sounds great and life seems to be easy. Afterwards you get aware that the moment you got the guidance didn’t look stupid at all but the opposite - damn cool.

Rockstars, Part II

Unfortunately I screwed a lot of the pics from the Rockstar session. In addition I don’t want to show my models here on my blog prior to show the photos to them. We’ll discuss the photos next Tuesday and until then I’ll only post some neutral ones.
Hold the line.

Rockstars, Part I

Today I had a kind of real photo session - my first one.
Together with the long haired guy (he also owns a “Fat Lotte”) and a professional photographer we organized a shooting on the small harbour of Erlangen - just for fun.
The white piles of sand and the concrete walls were a nice background. A background for some Rock Star pics. My colleague DMX acted as the guitar hero and Ms. D. played the female lead singer.
DMX was as cool as always. To shoot Ms. D. was absolutely amazing. I never saw a girl with such a glance in the eyes - even in front of the camera. Whow.

It was really funny to pretend being a photographer for three hours and I hope that this was not the last session with that folks.

I have no overview about my photos yet and I’m too tired to browse them. But you’ll see some of them in the next days.

Golden Secrets

Today I sat in a Park in Erlangen. By coincidence I discovered something mysterious. Within the branches of a maple tree high above my head hung a big golden maple seed.

As a child we sometimes threw that seeds in the air and watched them rotating down like small helicopters. Furthermore one could split the back end of the seed. Inside there is a sticky fluid and we used it to glue the seed on top of our noses like rhinos.
But what the heck is behind that big golden seed? Who put it up in that tree? I was not able to find out more.
With a little bit of imagination the golden seeds look like the wings of an angel. Probably the angel landed in the maple tree, untied the wings and walked away looking like a normal human being. Hmm, as far as I remember there were some girls around - maybe one of them...

DJ Groupie

The girl was sitting on top of a DJ’s desk. Very cool chick, isn’t she?

Superman

I just came back from a birthday party and it’s already light outside. I drank a lot of Coke during the night and now I’m awake like hell because I’m not used to caffeine.
The party was funny. We had a lot of stupid talk, watched a muted version of Pulp Fiction and tried to remember all the dialogs - and we tried to feel like Superman.
The little wheeled platform used for moving furniture was really helpful to let us fly. It felt great in general but I didn’t like the feeling of knowing that my nose is only a few centimetres away from the asphalt.
Now I go to bed and try to sleep.

Eyes

We had a great time in Karlsruhe after our business training. Three adult men acting like kids in the pedestrian area. Really cool.
My colleagues bought some presents for their kids in a department store and afterwards we were stuck in the sweets section buying marshmallow-like sweets that looked like eyes. On our way out we stopped in the beauty section and fooled around with the eyes in front of some mirrors. I can tell you the dolled up perfume salesgirl threw some very stranges looks at us.

Biking Can Drive You Ill

A hospital bed or a motor bike?
Seen in Karlsruhe.

Brown

A Hotel room in Karlsruhe on a two day business trip. Everything in the room is kind of brown. It looks nice.
I'm travelling with two colleages and I was the last of us to check in. The others got the last two non-smoking rooms. For me there was only one of the ugly smoking rooms left. Strike! Everything smells awful like - well, smoke.
I'm wondering whether the brown color is not interior design but simply the remain of hundreds of smokers. Puhh. Hopefully I can move to a non smoking room tomorrow.

Still there

Hey, she’s still there! Today I visited the garage dove the first time since May (see also posting from May 30th, 2006).
Not sure whether it’s the same bird as the last time but it felt good to see that the apartment is still occupied.
Until today I was not aware that doves have orange eyes.

Trash Can Alley

There’s a small street in Erlangen. I usually walk by on my way from the parking garage to the city. Actually there’s nothing special about the street. After shooting this pic today I realized that I already shot several photos of this street over the years. Dunno why. Perhaps it’s because of my weakness for trash cans. Without the parade of garbage cans it would look boring, wouldn’t it?

Opera

My fist visit ever to the Opera. It was a kind of revenge of a good friend of mine.
The guy is a friend of classical music. A while ago I convinced him to join me in visiting a concert of the Rock’n’Roll band “The White Stripes”. The support band (I forgot the name) was very strange. They made only strange noises and the lead singer crouched around on stage grunting and yelling. Not even I liked it. For my friend it was a real cultural shock because he never saw such kind of performances before. At least the gig of the White Stripes was kind of OK for him.
As a return value for his brave jump across his musical borders I agreed to do such a border jump on an event he choose.
Well, he had chosen an opera from Sergej Prokofjew called “The Love to the Three Oranges”. The opera is a hundred years old and adapts a very old russion fairy tale. The plot is more than strange.
Today was Opera-D-Day. I had no idea what to expect.
It turned out that the play was a very very modern production and also very funny. I saw men with body stockings, gods eating Hamburgers and a singer with a very deep voice and plastic breasts. That was nothing I had in mind when thinking about the Opera. What should I say - I really liked it and I’m sure that today wasn’t the last time I visited the Opera.

Now it’s my turn again to choose the next border jump. Well, I already have some ideas but I’m not sure whether my friend is already prepared for Rammstein or Knorkator.

Post-Samba

This event really has a kind of greatness-guarantee for me, the Samba Festival in the city of Coburg. It’s impossible to walk the streets without constantly tapping with your feet or shaking your head to the beat of the drums or the blast of the brass bands.

Schweini

In the last four weeks I bothered all my colleagues and friends by forcing them to scream the name of a young Soccer player from the German Team. His name is Bastian Schweinsteiger but the fans call him “Schweini”. The pronunciation sounds like “Swiney” and the literally translation is “Piggy”.
A few years ago I watched a match of the German Team during the European Championships. Beside me a stranger yelled “Swiiiinnnnneyyy” whenever Schweinsteiger touched the ball. Since that day I’m somewhat influenced by that scream and often did it myself during the World Cup.
Schweini didn’t play that good in the World Cup so my efforts to motivate my friends to join me in screaming his nickname were of only limited success. Until yesterday. In the last match of the German Team (the match for the 3rd rank) against Portugal, Schweini played great and scored two and a half goals.
Within minutes I got several text messages on my cell phone with only one word as content.

It’s always great to harvest the fruits of a long education.

Today is the last day of the Soccer World Cup and two hours ago the German Team bid farewell to their fans in Berlin in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Several hundreds of thousands of fans are there and celebrate the guys in these moments. It’s great to feel that the euphoria didn’t stop after losing the semi final against Italy. Today in Berlin and yesterday in the public viewing areas the Germans supported their team similar to the last weeks. It seems that for some reason our people can be happy even if they are not gold medalists.

From an emotional point of view the World Cup was by far the best public event I can remember in my life. I never expected that and I’m really glad that I spent so much time attending the public viewing areas, watching the fans from all around the world or simply strolling through Nuremberg soaking up the energy that hovered above all the laughing people. I think there will be a kind of vacuum in the next days in our heads. But even if all days life conquers our life again now I know that this big joy is inside us, only sleeping.

Pre-Samba

In a few minutes I’ll drive to Coburg. There’s a Samba-Festival this weekend. I’ve already been there several times. It’s awesome to be surrounded by the sound of hundreds of drums for a whole day.
It’s also a nice contrast to see all the brasilian flags in the middle of the medieval town centre of Coburg.
I’ll see whether it will be as much fun as the last years because this year I have to go on my own. One half on my friends doesn’t care for Samba drums, the other half is busy.


One of my photos of the Samba-Festival in Coburg last year.

Novatones

The lead singer of “Novatones”, a band from Bayreuth.
Shot at KOMM club in Bayreuth during the release gig of their new Promo Cd.
I really liked the sound - and naturally bought their CD.

Mixing

Shot at the gig of “Vivos o Muertos” at KOMM club in Bayreuth.

I think I should only post one photo per posting. Otherwise the syndication of http://photos.vfxy.com doesn’t work right. I’m glad that they accepted my photo blog therefore I have to do it right.

KOMM

A small concert in a very small club in Bayreuth called KOMM. I haven’t been there for several years. The band “Vivos o Muertos” of my colleague played at KOMM today and I stepped by. I’m always glad to visit “my” old home town.
The gig was cool and I liked the sound but I’m very unsatisfied with my photos of the gig. I’m not familiar enough with my SLR camera “The Fat Lotte” yet, I guess. My old small one produced better results on concerts. So that means that I have to practise with the Fat Lotte. Furthermore there was another photographer always running around like a jerk - even on stage. Facing the fact that is was a very small concert I didn’t feel comfortable to act like him like a star photographer and that prevented me from shooting many pics.
During the concert I met a very old school friend on mine. The girl was in my class in Elementary School and I haven’t talked to her for more than 25 years. It was funny to chat with her. She is married and has two kids. One of them is already 7 years old. Oh boy, we’re getting older. Well we recognized each other after all the years so the age-thing can’t be that bad.

Findus

These days are too hot - for men and for tomcats.
In my neighbourhood lives a tomcat called Findus. He’s very shy. Until today I never managed to stroke him.
As I came home today he was lying on top of my garden door. Usually he runs away as soon as someone gets near. Today he looked like a mellow piece of fur and he didn’t even turn his head. His eyes were only small lazy slits. He barely moved and - yeessss - I stroked him for the first time - and for the second, third and fourth time.
OK, I have to admit that I was not able to walk by unless I shot a few pics.
Facing the fact that is was only the cam of my cellphone, the result is not so bad, is it?

You know what? I think Findus likes me.

Peppermint Tea

The house I live in consists of only three apartments and is surrounded by a little garden. There’s a small piece of the kitchen garden that belongs to my apartment. I didn’t plant anything in springtime because I didn’t feel like it. Today I started to remove the weed that had overgrown my beet. To my great pleasure I discovered that the rhubarb plant from last year survived the winter (and even the spring without being spilled). If I’m strong enough I’ll try to bake a rhubarb cake the next days. I really hope I’ll be strong enough.
Furthermore there was some wild peppermint on the border of my beet hidden within the weed. It smelled so good that I didn’t have the heart to throw it away together with the other weed. It’s unbelievable that some small leaves can create such a thunderstorm in your nose.
I just made two big jars of peppermint tea with the fresh leaves. Mixed with apple juice it tastes awesome when ice cold. Stupidly I can’t taste it now because the tea is still hot. Damn.

I guess for you it’s just a boring posting about making peppermint tea. Actually you’re right but sometimes making peppermint tea can be much more.

Out

What happened in the few hours between the last posting and this one? Well, I guess a whole nation got sad.
I liked the match a lot and it was really exiting for me. Now Germany is out. Two goals in the last 2 minutes - horrible - but congratulations to Italy, your team played great.
The german team was really stunning in the World Cup. Nobody gave a shit about the bunch of very young players at the beginning of the tournament and they proved them all wrong. It might sound pathetic but the guys believed in themselves and made it to the Semi Finals.

I’m really curious how the next days will be in Germany. I hope that the good mood will stay present because it was far to good to have it only on a sports event.

Watching the end of the game at the Fan Fest was so different compared to the last matches - well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?
It was really silent after the second goal of Italy, there was only the voice from the TV speaker. All the people seemed to leave the square immediately. A lot of fans were sitting on the ground and looked as if a whole world has broken down.
I’m sad, too but I’m glad that that I had the chance to be a part of the whole euphoric wave in Germany in the last weeks. The whole country had such a great time and I think the world got an idea that Germany is more than Kraut, Nazis and a sense for organizing things.

Sausage

In a few minutes I'll leave to the official Fan Fest to watch the World Cup Semi-Final Germany vs. Italy.
This match is the last obstacle between the german team and the Finals in Berlin on Sunday.
In German there's a proverb saying "Jetzt geht's um die Wurst". Literally translated it means "Now it's about the sausage" and it means "It's neck or nothing" (at least the LEO translator says so).
I don't know whether my photo shows one of that mysterious sausages but it's the closest analogy I have for my current tension.
Apart from that I have no idea what the german soccer team would do with such a sausage beside simply eating it.

Well, I'm curious how my next posting will look like - happy or sad.
In a few days this posting and the next one are only two consecutively chapters in my blog. The triumph or the tragedy that occured between them is lost. What a pity, independent from the result of the match.

Ducks

Duck in Munich

In the last couple of weeks ducks were kind of present in my photographing life.
Most of them look as they were very moody and I like that.

A long time ago I sat on a bench in a park in Bayreuth and a duck crossed the path in front of me. In the middle of the path it stumbled and immediately begun to quak. It sounded like “fu**ing park, I don’t know why I don’t quit this lousy job here”. It as very funny.

My best duck episode happened also in Bayreuth, approximately 4 years ago. I was on my way to the office by car. The traffic lights turned to red and I stopped. The pedestrian light turned to green. Because it was early at the morning no pedestrian was there. Suddenly a single duck appeared from behind a house, waddled over the pedestrian crossing and disappeared in the park on the other side. It was like it happens every 5 minutes that ducks use pedestrian crossings when they are on tour. There was only one car beside me. I turned my head and looked at the driver. He was as speechless as I was. He looked my way and both of us grinned from one ear to another. It was great to be able to share that moment with a stranger.

I think that incident started my special relationship to ducks.

A few days ago I sat at the terrace of a Starbucks in Nuremberg reading. The terrace is near the river. Suddenly a group of people from a nearby table said to me “eehm, I think the duck behind you is going to attack you”. I turned around and on a small wall there was a duck walking in my direction. Obviously it didn’t attack me but only walked by only 20 centimetres behind my head. Luckily I had time to make a photo.
Attack me? Ridiculous!. But how should the group of strangers know about my special friendship with ducks. It’s one of my secrets - a small one I only share with the ducks and you.


Starbucks Duck, Nuremberg

Safety Pin

I found an open safety pin on a parking lot and wondered whether it failed it’s job. A safety pin is only safe when closed. Maybe the thing the pin was supposed to secure got lost because the owner didn’t get aware of the open pin.
I think that’s a common problem. You think everything is secured because you use lots of emotional safety pins and then you miss the moment one of the pins opens unintentionally. Later on things get out of control and you don’t know why.

Wedding Sunday

I think that this Sunday is a good day for wedding. It has to. I walked through Nuremberg a few hours ago and I saw at least 5 bachelor- respectively bachelorette-parties. Usually one can see one every two months during the summer. I don’t know why the whole world intents to marry today. The groups seemed to have a great time - even without soccer.
Of course they forced me to buy condoms (I did) and to drink some Vodka (I didn’t). The good thing was that after the first group I didn’t need to buy new condoms. I simply exchanged the existing one for a new one.
Girls are far more creative in celebrating such a farewell party than boy. The latter usually go to a strip bar and try to get drunk as fast as possible. The male groups of today were above average. But I have to admit that I liked the girls with the pink hair a little bit more.
In all cases I tried to study the faces of the bride respectively the groom very carefully to find out whether they look happy. To be honest, all of them looked a little bit embarred because their friends forced them to wear silly clothes and to do stupid things.
Getting married would be a very big thing for me and I guess I wouldn’t be able to cruise through the city the night before the celebration. Well, this kind of thoughts are very theoretically at the moment anyway.


“A last day in liberty”

Feeling Semi

My knees felt like pudding during the whole damned match. Actually this is not a funny feeling for me. In this case I got aware of my tension at about every ten minutes, looked around, saw the other guys around me staring at the giant screen with the same tension and then I got this broad smile in my face and felt great.
The Quarter Final of the World Cup between Germany and Argentina created some new grey hairs on my temples but finally I survived and so did the german team.
This means that the party in Germany will continue until the Semi Final next Tuesday - at least. Oh my dear.
The party yesterday was affected by some new childish game the fans played all night. I call it the Humpa-Dance. Someone screams “Sit-down-sit-down” and all folks nearby join him in screaming rhytmically until the whole crowd is on their knees. The the initiator requests some single characters by yelling “Give me a H - U - M - P - A” and the crowd gives what he desire as loud as they can. As soon as he ask “And what does this mean?” all fans jump up, raise their hands in the air and sing some words that sound like “Humpa humpa humpa taterae” which is an old german party song. Very stupid, but also very funny. It was great to walk through the packed city of Nuremberg after the match and seing a few hunded people suddenly sit down around every corner.
I lost one of my friends for some hours because he couldn’t resist sitting down whenever someone requested it. Yesterday night I didn’t only feel like reaching the Semi Final but also a little bit Humpa.
Later the evening the italian fans joined the party because their team won against the Ukraine with 3:0. The Italians know how to party, too.
The picture above is from one of the Humpa-situations. It was funny because from my perspective it looked like the dog was the Humpa-conductor of the crowd.

Here are some more impressions from the Quarter Final and the party. If you are interested you can find a lot more of them here in my gallery.






Argentina scores 1:0.


Surviving the penalty terror


Germany did it again


Flag Tunnel




Human Flag