Heipei

My last post was about the photographic year 2010 and this is barely any different. I hope to blog about something substantial very soon, seeing as I’m done with my Diploma Thesis now, but in the meantime enjoy the photos and the comments.

I completed my first long hike this year in February. It was part of our the vacation program of our fraternity to bridge the gap between the lecture periods of the winter- and summersemester. You can read about it here (in German) and also view the whole gallery on my photosite. Interesting hiking trails in and around Aachen can be found with the Grenzrouten, printable PDFs included.

It’s probably safe to say that most of the time the shutter on my trusty EOS 400D was released, something delicious was right in front of it. Yes, this year has been ripe with a lot of delicious meals and the accompanying recipes, thanks to Katrin. She recently introduced her recipes in the PDF format on her foodblog, so there is no excuse not to try any of them. Head on over to her foodblog and leave comments, if you haven’t already subscribed to it via RSS. As far as photography goes, most of the shots for her blog are pretty much the same setup: TTL-flash, on camera, towards ceiling, dialed up to correct for the white plate, 1/200s exposure, 50mm 1.4 @ 4.0 or something like that. Most of the time the timeframe to take the shot is limited to about 60 seconds, a bloggers gotta eat too. I did try some new tricks though: Used my second flash and part of the Hama mini photostudio to light the food from behind and front. Center image below. An even simpler trick I recently started using when trying to add some depth to the shot is to point the camera straight downward and the flash towards a (white) wall at a right angle. This should give more defined shadows than using the ceiling, as can be seen in the other two shots.

Then there were the usual amount of parties and social events, only a fraction of those made it into my flickr account. One noteworthy day was the first of May, were we traditionally hike to our tree behind the Aachen golf club. The weather on that event was stunning, and the photos reflect that fact. Katrins headshot was an attempt to produce a photo suitable for a job application. I know that the green background might be distracting, but I think it’s pretty nevertheless. Interestingly enough, this photo was shot inside our living room, in front of the open balcony door, using both my flashes to correctly balance subject and background. I think it came out great, but then again, I tend to favor overly colorful and bright shots ;)

Yesterday Katrin and I spent some time in nearby Maastricht, NL to enjoy the city, the weather and some positively coronary-inducing pancakes. Yummy! All the shots (with Polfilter the whole time) can be found on my photosite.