Tag: Germany

Guess.What.Day.It.Is?

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camel-photography-mist-forest-woods

Notes:

  • Don’t miss other fantastic shots by Frank Machalowski at feature shoot: A Dark and Majestic Fairy Tale of Animals Lost in the Forest Mist. “Frank Machalowski’s Tierwald hangs heavy with mystery. In the apparent silence of the forest, rendered in delicate greys, great beasts hulk, meeting the gaze of the viewer with apparent lack of concern. The effect is magical realist in character: it evokes tranquility as much as it surprises with its subject matter. Machalowski provokes questions: are these beasts really present? And how? He seems to frame a private moment of magic, crystallising it and passing it forward for the viewer to see.  Having lived near Germany’s famous forest, Teutoburger Wald, for years, Machalowski had spent plenty of time photographing there in the mist. He was “fascinated by the silence and the peaceful atmosphere” and, whilst watching a deer there on one occasion, decided to recreate the splendour of the moment artificially, with more exotic species.”
  • Background on Caleb/Wednesday/Hump Day Posts and Geico’s original commercial: Let’s Hit it Again

WaterPassion

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kuntze-photography-yellow-swimming-water

Kerstin Kuntze, 50, is from Cologne, Germany. She is an artist who uses photography melded with graphic infusion.  She explains in Saatchi Art:

“…and most of all it’s about passion. Picture making has always been an internal compulsion; my first urges began as a child, “I was always drawing” – these impulses continuing through to the present. My search for the internal brilliance of subject matter drives me. My artwork displays a wide range of emotions embodying colors from darkest black to fieriest red. I sincerely desire that my passion and the intensities of my emotion will be conveyed through visual creations touching you in a personal way. There are a myriad of reasons to create – this quest has become my life.

Don’t miss her entire series: WaterPassionº

 

Saturday Morning Work-Out Inspiration

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exercise,bike,bicycling,read,book

Italian Lucio Santin enjoys the sunny spring weather at the English Garden in downtown Munich. (Source: Michaela Rehle @ wsj.com Photo of the Day 4/9/15)

Humility is scarce and mediocrity flows from every direction

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Bil_Zelman_Werner_Herzog

Q: Do you still not own a cellphone?

Herzog: I’m the only thinking person I know without one. I don’t want to be available at all times. Permanent connectivity isn’t my thing; I have always needed moments of quiet solitude for myself. There’s a Chinese poem from the Tang dynasty about someone describing a boat journey along the Yellow River and leaving his friend behind, a monk on a mountain, in the knowledge that they probably won’t see each other or have any contact for years. This man’s return, decades later, has an indescribable substance and depth. Compare this to standing in line at the airport, chatting on your cellphone to your loved one, who is waiting in the car park. There is too much shallow contact in our lives. I prefer to be face to face; I want the person I’m communicating with to be so close I can put my hand on their shoulder. Text messaging is the bastard child handed to us by the absence of reading.

Q: You use the Internet. Continue reading “Humility is scarce and mediocrity flows from every direction” →

A Guide For the Perplexed

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a guide for the perplexed

I’ve been chewing through a new book titled “Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin.” Werner, 72, is an award winning German film director, producer and screen writer for Fitzcarraldo, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Woyzeck and Where the Green Ants Dream.

Why choose this book out of the thousands available to you?

No idea. Hard to explain why I was drawn to this. I do recall my finger hovering over the “BUY NOW” button on Amazon and wondering if this will be yet another abandoned, start-but-not-come-close-to-finishing e-book, in my groaning stack of Incompletes weighing on my consciousness.

Why a book by a film director? Do you have interest in film production?

None.

Why this book then? A dense 600-pager with footnotes?

Pay attention. Refer back to question 1. (No idea). In hindsight, I do think that perhaps I was attracted by the potential of finding my community, a brotherhood in “A Guide for the Perplexed” and possibly finding my way out. And I heard a bell – – far softer than a Siren, gentler than a Clarion Call, a chime of sorts from William Stafford: “Listen—something else hovers out here, not color, not outlines or depth when air relieves distance by hazing far mountains, but some total feeling or other world almost coming forward, like when a bell sounds and then leaves the whole countryside waiting.”

So, what do you think of the book? Continue reading “A Guide For the Perplexed” →