I don’t ski slopes (much), so I was fairly happy to learn that a few other backcountry skiers were attending. And, figuring that night skies in the alps may have some potential, I did bring an amount of camera gear that others might have found excessive. But I think it was worth it…

We also dug out a snow profile, which was captured in a nice little video:

Update: a collection of photos from other members can be found at the photo page of the Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms.

The lot we got to visit is about 3.5km long. That doesn’t sound very far, unless you know that due to the unstable conditions they were digging in 1m steps, and each step had to be secured with reinforced concrete before advancing…

And of course the heavy machinery used in such locations is super impressive.

Too bad I only had my pocket camera with me; next time I’ll have to convince them that they need a pro photographer to document their work.

Oh, and once again happy birthday Ewelina – thanks a lot for the invitation!

Guten Tag,

vermutlich bin ich bei Ihnen nicht ganz an der richtigen Adresse, aber nachdem mein Anliegen schon mit Öffentlichkeitsarbeit zu tun hat und es schwierig genug war, überhaupt eine konkrete Ansprechperson zu finden, möchte ich Sie darauf hinweisen, daß die Homepage der Post www.post.at seit nunmehr 2 Tagen völlig unbrauchbar ist – und zwar unabhängig vom verwendeten Browser. Anbei ein Screenshot, wie sich die Homepage derzeit offenbart.

Bei genauerem Hinsehen ist zu erkennen, daß alle Links auf PDF-Dokumente verweisen, und daß die eingebetteten Bilder absolute Pfade auf irgendeinem PC (statt URLs) aufweisen. Beides ist natürlich grober Unfug.

Die Tatsache, daß dieser Zustand nun bereits seit mehreren Tagen unverändert besteht, ist höchst unglücklich und schädigt das Bild der Post nachhaltig. Wie soll ich denn die Zuverlässigkeit bei der Briefzustellung einschätzen, wenn offenbar nicht einmal nach einem Update der Homepage überprüft wird, ob diese noch funktioniert?!

Ich empfehle Ihnen jedenfalls dringend die Qualifikation Ihrer Webmaster, die Zuverlässigkeit des verwendeten CMS-Systems und die Backup-Strategie für schiefgegangene Updates der Homepage sorgfältig zu überdenken.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
- Stephan Mantler

I sort of ran out of ideas before I ran out of time, but kept clicking frames. To the effect that I ended up with tons of very similar looking images – not necessarily a bad idea if you can pick between a few variations, but it was slightly excessive that day. I guess that’s what happens if you’re stressed out and haven’t got enough time to get your creative juices flowing before the shoot starts…

Besides shooting digital, I also took the opportunity to play with my sinar p2. The expired Polapan 672 was a bit erratic, but I’m still fairly happy with the result. Two things irk me, though: if I continue to shoot Polaroid instead of 4×5″, I really need to mark its crop dimensions on the ground glass; and too bad the film blew out the nice, moody background of the pair shot.

Big thanks to Hannes and Isabella for having me, and to Tom for dropping by and being a fantastic character!

Ten years of photography: a visual analysis of all 30.000 ‘keeper’ images in my archive.

Each bar depicts the average hue of all pictures taken that day and their brightness distribution. The image was created by first exporting all images as 500×500 pixel thumbnails; then counting all colors within each image and saving these distributions to individual files. Of course the total gamut of 24-bit color is immense, but 500×500 pixels can only contain at most 250.000 different colors; my images typically had between 500 and 100.000 individual colors. In a second step, all image data files for each day were accumulated and their brightness distribution and median hue calculated and used to create the individual bars you see above.

As usual, we also had a time lapse running:

Relax – no strobes, animals or cheesecakes were harmed in the production of this image (the second image is probably a spoiler in that respect).