The SADellite is a Photo Blog and in an orbit around me since the beginning of 2006. The name is a combination of "Sad" and "Satellite". It's order is to trace my life using photos. I hope there wont be only sad ones.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Fake Liberty
The steel bars are behind you. You think what you feel is liberty. But then you realize that only your feet are outside the cage. You'd never be able to snake the rest of your body through the bars. The 5 seconds with the feeling of not being caught any longer felt great but the frustration afterwards neutralizes it completely. No escape yet. Find a proper door or wait until you served your time in arrest.
Is the default human being spontaneous? Can a man, caught in daily thoughts, switch to a completely different mode within seconds? How willing is one to do stupid things in the present of completely strangers?
Yesterday we did a little experiment in Nuremberg. Probably you know this old song with the refrain "mana mana". The question was how many out of ten passers-by would sing along when being addressed with the words "mana mana". Our rule was to avoid any explanation or greeting but just to stop the stranger with a gesture and confronting him/her with "mana mana".
The result was surprising to me. 7 out of 10 strangers replied with the correct answer "doo doo doodoodoo". For the first second you could see a mixture of panic and complete puzzlement in their eyes. "What the hell does this guy want from me?". This period was followed by a second of thinking intensely what to do. And in the third second they started to smile and sang. We then walked on immediately leaving a smiling person behind.
It was obvious that working people (a waiter and a taxi driver) were not able to switch to stupidity-mode immediately. A group of Japanese people were totally confused and not able to say anything.
The best person was a cop. We confronted him with "mana mana" and he stared at us with his best stern cop-look. Two seconds later he screamed to a passer-by "could you please take you dog on a leash?" and continued to look very cool. We counted it as a failure and walked on. But after 10 metres we heard the cop-voice again. The sternness was gone and the voice was singing "doo doo doodoodoo". Yeah!
For me the experiment was a clear indicator that most people are funny and the all-days-mud that covers it often is not very deep. You just have to begin to dig from time to time.
This day had a special smell. It was a yellow/grey smell that sways in the warm air of a summer evening. That smell of freshly harvested straw is one of the most intense smells I can think of. On one side it reminds me of my childhood and the attempts of running bare feet across a stubble field. On the other hand it's an indicator that the summer switched into it's final phase. Anyway, my nose is already drunk with the smell.
Some creatures really make a big deal about being lazy. Instead of just hanging out on a warm sommer evening they are celebrating their boredom. I envy them. For me cats (especially tomcats) are the master of ceremonies of lazyness. This guy is called Findus and lives in my neighbourhood. Today he was lying in front of my garden door and as an act of grace I was allowed to stroke him.
If you compare the lazy cat of today with the lazy dog of last year you'll understand why cats are the real MCs.
This guy lifes in the house near my office. We are kind of friends. He doesn't know about it but I can watch him from my desk. He's living in the 3rd floor and he often looks out of his window for a long time - most of the time together with his small dog. Today a strange thing happenend and luckily I was able to create some evidence photos. Between the two pics were only a few seconds. The dog was there on the first photo and a few seconds later it was gone and the man looked down in a very suspicious way.
Hell no, did he really drop his brave little barking friend from the 3rd floor?
Unfortunately I was not able to find out more because a colleague stumbled in and bothered me with some project crap.
But the man should be aware: I have an eye on him now.
A concert in Erlangen. The band Lambchop started and Calexico was the headliner of the small gig. Both bands played nice but the best part was when the members of Lambchop entered the stage during the gig of Calexico and both gangs played some songs together. Even if they played not as flawless as possible while improvizing, they seemed to have a lot of fun.
It was a hint for me that things that you do together don't have to be perfect to be better than perfect things you do on your own.
PS: I really love my 30mm/1.4 fixed lens to shoot concert photos without flash.
Last Saturday I went to an Open Air concert with classic music. After one hour of sitting in the grass, having picknick and listening to some cool singers the event ended with the cancelation of the concert because of a thunderstorm. The rest of the evening was filled with very hard rain, water in a lot of basements and a flooded and very confused mind. In summary not one of my favorite nights - not at all.
"A shoe is not only a shoe. It connects us to the world" (quote from the movie "Elizabethtown", photo from the classic Open Air)
Kids can be really great when it comes to taking photos. Sometimes they can compress all atmosphere about an event in one facial expression. This time it was about Samba.
Obviously this was the first time in his life seing drums. It was great to get a glimpse of that uniqueness. Click on photo to enlarge
One of the photo assignments of that day was "Feelings in green and yellow" because it was all about Brasil. Finally this was my photo for that topic. I liked the fact that even the drink of the small girl had the correct color. Click on photo to enlarge
The boy sneaked behind the drum group and helped with some drumming sound. I talked to his mother and she told me that he insisted in bringing his small drum to the Festival. Click on photo to enlarge
I liked the very souvereign way she waved at me. Click on photo to enlarge
Last Saturday I visited one of my favorite events: The Samba Festival in Coburg. Once a year the small sleepy city explodes with the sound of drums. It was really great to jump around until late after midnight together with good friends.
If you want, you can have a look at more of my Samba images at my Flickr account.
Click on photo to enlarge
Click on photo to enlarge
Click on photo to enlarge
Click on photo to enlarge
Click on photo to enlarge
Click on photo to enlarge
Click on photo to enlarge
Click on photo to enlarge
Click on photo to enlarge
To get you an impression, here are some of the small videos that we created during the night:
One of the persons on this photo is different. Find out who!
Most of us want to be belong to certain groups. In parallel most of us want to be unique. Is this a contradiction by default? I don't think so.
For this photo I was glad that I belonged to the Flip-Flop group because it was a damn hot day. I guess the colleague with the black shoes suffered a lot but he didn't dare to moan because he wanted to belong to the cool Flip-Floppers *grin*.
I really have to throw away the telescopes. It doesn't matter what happens in other galaxies as long as I don't realize whats going on in my own cosmos.
Two colleagues and me, 3 SLR cameras and some boredom during a dinner. The idea: Having a short photo assignment. The topic: "Lines" The restriction: Not longer than 10 minutes.
Salt. It's salt you smell on your lips. The board above your head seems to have no weight at all. The sun is somewhere behind the board. You look down and realize that your footsteps fill up with water as soon as you lift your feet. You realize that your buddy starts to run towards the water. He has a big smile on his face. Your pace increases too as your board seems to drag you to the water like a dog that fights with its leash. After a few seconds and a splashing noise you found yourself paddling on your belly towards the open water. The waves get bigger and bigger and you know that the moment for jumping up on your board is near. The goose flesh on your cold skin doesn't matter any longer.
You know what? Your all-days-life can be just like that. You simply must not miss the right moment for standing up.
I shot the photo in Biarritz, France, two weeks ago.
Did you ever write something on food or with food? While storing my few images from a technical conference about DICOM on Friday I realized that I tend to do so. Without thinking too hard I found some more "foodage" in my photo archive.
Sweet Products, Vienna, March 2007
Fluffy Sausages, Schwabach, June 2007 (click to enlarge)
My posting about Boo came to my mind when I saw that deer statue.
One option to life is to wait that life jumps in your way. One other option is, like the deer does, to scream as load if you can "Hey, you frigging life. Here I am. Come and blow me away if you dare".
Some things can't be done alone. You need someone to give you a hand and in some situations you need even someone sharing a risk with you. It's great to see a hand streched out in your direction when times are tough. Teamplay can be very motivating - at least for me.
The photo is from an internal company event last week. We took all our developers and technickal folks to a High Rope Parcour. It seemed to me that most of them liked it.
