– photographs and messages from inside the Sausurrean Bar –

Posts Tagged: underwater


Posts Tagged ‘underwater’

Wednesday, July 30th, 2014

The Water is Wide

the water is wide

Monday, May 14th, 2012

Underwater camera, tufted duck

The plan was to photograph carp, but visibility was too bad for that to work. So I tried out some waterline shots instead, and like the effect the water film left on the lense had on this one.

Sunday, April 15th, 2012

Workend

Photowise these are going to be some boring weeks for us all, folks, as I am busy with other things, have posted a variety of holiday photos into the albums already, and don’t want to repeat too many things. Eeek! I shall mostly be really busy with work things – now that my PhD is done-but-for-the-publication my class load has doubled for this term, and that, along with some other classes and projects I am committed to is keeping me busy-busy … and then there’s the interdisciplinary lecture series I’m co-hosting and also giving a talk at, and there’s an article I need to finish and another one I ought to start writing … yep, busy-busy. It’s good I don’t have much of a regular weekend social life in early spring, otherwise I would really rue handing yet another weekend over to work. :-) As it is, it’s still annyoing, but less than actually having to cancel something for it. The plan is to have the article I ought to finish ready to send off for a grammar/flow beta (it’s been a long time since I did any academic writing in German, and das/dass slips by me far too often anyway) before the first meeting starts tomorrow. Write write write! Polish polish polish!

Then it’s going to be one of the fullest weeks of term, appointments-wise, what with commissions of all sorts meeting, new potential colleagues being interviewed and all … and then it’ll be time to ponder what I’m going to say at the lecture in ten days’ time – that’s on my schedule for next weekend, though, and I’m not really thinking that far ahead yet. Linear thinking is the mode for today. One thing after the other.

In non-work things I can report that I watched the ZDF “Super-Champion” quiz show last night (while doing some low-brain computer cleaning etc, and in lieu of a choice between all the Titanic movies in the history of, possibly, the last 100 years). It did not impress me much – the questions were good, some of the experts too, but the moderation was off and some of the contestants too clichéed for me. And what did most stick with me was how their giant arrow (of which one can find no pictures online, tricksy, ZDF, tricksy!) looked rather unfortunately like a giant (there’s no getting around it) penis. It totally did. Phallic objects of non-subtlety were not subtle. And since the contestants had to ‘screw’ the experts, it was even – albeit I fear completely unintentionally – kinda funny. So yeah. That was yesterday. Back to my word document now! How was your weekend?

Saturday, April 7th, 2012

Testing the new Camera I

saturation and coloration are kinda strange in this one ... I have less bizarre shots, too, but I kinda like it. Still, not sure if its a good sign when the camera does things like that... .

Since it was sunny today (with some scattered clouds), I thought I’d take the outdoor/unterwater camera I bought from ALDI last Wednesday out for a trial run to one of the local beaches. And, well … I think it performs ok for the amount of money it cost, probably – I have very little reference to base that assumption on – but I’m somewhat cautiously pessimistic. It remained perfectly watertight in the surf and below the surface, but there’s quite a long delay between one pressing the “take the photo now! Now! NOW!” button and the picture actually being taken – and the button is also not very responsive and needs to be pressed quite hard in order to take a picture (a second or so later) and so it is really hard to know when the pressure has been enought and it will eventually get around to taking the picture. I actually half suspect that my camera came with a faulty trigger button, so I’ll take it round to ALDI again on Tuesday and see if they can exchange it, as there is literally zero give to the button at all. Possibly a broken spring, or whatever the mechanism is.

Add to that that, what do you know, hands go really numb kinda quickly in 5°C / 41°F cold sea water and me not actually being able to see whether or not the camera was taking a picture (I kinda drew the line at submerging more than hands and feet), taking photographs became something of a thing of chance more than of careful deliberation (I also have a lot of photos of receding waves, but none of waves actually breaking right in front of the camera – if I keep it, I shall need to learn what precisely the amount of delay between pressing the trigger and the photo being taken is, so I can time things better).

If I keep it and/or it can be fixed or exchanged, test #2 shall be conducted in the Campusbad, probably on Tuesday. We’ll see.

Also – three days from now this blog turns one year old, and it’s at 22’801 visitors. That’s, uh, a lot more than I expected, especially with it being mirrored over on LJ and reads there doing nothing for the counter on here! Thanks y’all for stopping by and stuff!

Thursday, April 5th, 2012

Photography – dans l’eau!

My suitcase arrived yesterday and just I found some time earlier today to scan in some of my better underwater/in the water photographs, one of which you can see up there right now. And, hmm, I might have bought a ‘proper’ underwater camera yesterday, since it was a special offer at ALDI, and I want to do more underwater photography (it’s still a pretty basic camera, but I figure if I really take to it and level up my skill set some I can also level up my camera eventually … we’ll see). So now I need to, you know, find underwater things to photograph!

For now, I’ve made an ‘underwater’ album and added it to the other photo albums that are already online – and I need to spend the next four days finishing my Martin Luther King article. Eep. So that’s my plan for Easter. What is yours?

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

Back in Germany

I made it back safe and sound to Germany, if on a different flight than originally planned – I was booked on a Lufthansa flight from Atlanta to Frankfurt for Monday evening, local time, but when I got to the airport my flight was cancelled due to a strike that was planned for Frankfurt airport for Tuesday. So, no flying to Frankfurt. After about an hour of waiting, I was rebooked on two United Flights, first Atlanta-Chicago (ORD) and then Chicago-Frankfurt. The itiniary gave me 35 minutes in ORD to make the connection, which left me somewhat skeptical, what with ORD being huge and needing to change terminals and all … . But I was game – I have friends in the Chicago area and I figured the worst that could happen would be an overnight stay in the Windy City, with possible no-warning meetup with friends, dinner on me. Or something like that. So I took myself and my luggage over to the United check in area, and what do you know, turns out the computer only had me on a flight to Chicago, but the connection to Frankfurt was missing … because the flight from ORD to FRA was … also cancelled. I was ready to hie myself back to Lufthansa and that point and to let them assign me a hotel or something (rueing only that I had had no advance warning, and so returned my rental car already), but the nice lady at the United booth whom I had inquired about my missing international connection about said “oh, but there’s a Delta plane leaving for Frankfurt at 4pm … let me see if that one’s still going and if they have room!”

The answer to both was yes, and so I got rebooked on that one, and ended up leaving two hours earlier than planned, on a plane that was about 20% empty. So much for the Lufthansa lady’s “we’re trying everything to get you all home” – everything Star Alliance, maybe, but not everything – I know some people (hey, you make contacts when waiting around with other people for different flights for 1h+) who got stranded for 24 hours, or who got a connection via Newark (where they got stranded), or, like me, got assigned the Chicago flight, but then not rebooked to Delta. It makes sense from a airline-network-rivalry point of view, but also makes the “we’re doing everything” a heap of untruth … I mean, having three seats to myself was nice, but I’d gladly have had less room and the guy that wanted to get home for his daughter’s birthday along for the trip … ya know?

But, home I am, and home-home at that, as I am in Mannheim right now, and shall remain here until Sunday – it’s my dad’s job leaving-do tomorrow, and it looks to be a grand party!

I’ve also had the two one-way disposable underwater camera films developed, the above photo being one of the pictures from them – more to follow, but once I’m reunited with my scanner – this one is here courtesy of the camera in my telephone only.