Schnapps Distillery

During a recent business trip to Germany a group of my counterparts that work all over Europe were able to head out to the quaint village of Reichenbach to visit a well-known schnapps distillery to get liquored up and eat some tasty German food also known as schnitzel. The distillery is called Brennerei Mischler & Raudonat which can be found here.

What is Wodka and is it even safe for human consumption?

When I walked in I was surprised at how many different kinds of liquors they had for sale. I was expecting to find a very extensive distillery in the basement somewhere, but this was actually all they needed to get the job done, and I mean they made every kind of schnapps you could think of such as jalapeño schnapps, so this must be one impressive machine!

The food was extremely good as well. Stop by if you are ever in the Rheinland-Pfalz area! And like that, I am off to Thailand for 2 weeks in about 1 hour!

Admiration

Sneak attack from behind!

Tokyo International Forum Redux

I had to go back into my extremely neglected archives so that I can vary my recently posted photos a bit instead of nothing but Turkey, I need to get away from work and go on a trip! That will be Thailand to meet my wife leaving in exactly in one week. This will be a second attempt at getting good pictures in that country as my first one was what prompted me to get a DSLR after my P&S became full of dust particles that ruined almost every picture I took the first time I was there. Anyways, here is another one of my favorite buildings–if not my favorite–in Tokyo, the Tokyo International Forum. The first batch I had processed I went really heavy on the orange hues for some reason. I have quite a few that I shot with a fluorescent white balance under these incandescent lights which gave a very blueish result.

Psychedelic Mosaic

I think I need to purchase about 200 of these psychedelic glass-mosaic cups and strategically arrange them out of the depth of field of any photo I take to make for some interesting bokeh arrangements.. What else could I possibly do with 200 cups when not using them for photography purposes? I only have so much change after the hobby of photography robbed me of everything that I am worth!

Sunspot

I was never quite sure how nature photographers were able to catch fast moving animals with their zoom lenses. I still have yet to look that up, but I am guess the answer is something like single servo focus and Nikon’s 3D tracking which is pretty much the mode that chooses the focus point for you. I always shot in single servo, single point focus where I choose the focus point since letting the camera pick out a point sounds kind of sketchy at best. When I was on top of the Galata Tower in Istanbul there were a lot of Seagulls flying around and I thought it would be fun to try and get a shot.

I just could not get a sharp shot using my old single point method and was missing a lot of shots just trying to get the focus point onto a fast moving gull. I decided to give 3D tracking a try with continuous servo… I was actually amazed, but it was quickly locking onto the gulls and getting a lot of sharp shots. I just wished I had a bit more reach, but I did get a shot that I ended up liking. It wasn’t one of the typical shots, but one that I thought would be terrible as I was shooting since the sun was right behind the bird, alas, here it is.

ps- stupid wingtip! Why oh why did I cut you off???

Basilica Cistern

I decided to leave Demonicus–my trusty tripod–at home for my recent trip to Istanbul. I wanted to give my D700 a good high ISO workout since I know I will be going back to Istanbul many more times in the future. There was one site we visited that I had never visited before and I was very, very impressed with it. I really had to fight to get some usable shots though since it was the underground Basilica Cistern, which is very dark inside. It had a decent wooden rail to place the camera on, but even at ISO 4,000, I still had to take some long exposures and the wooden railing wasn’t quite cutting it since I had to actually press down on the camera to keep it balanced.

I decided to give this the HDR treatment as well, I like the way they look coming out of this camera and the cistern had so many neat textures and and cool reflections that are really brought out with HDR.

Hagia Sophia

It has been a real important week for work and I haven’t really felt like working on anything that takes brain power when I come home, but tonight I finally decided to keep a couple of synapses in my cerebral cortex active for long enough to work on some shots. I had been wanting to post some shots from the Hagia Sophia for a while now, and now here are some architectural shots from what I think is the coolest site to see in Istanbul. This one was taken from our hotel very early in the morning. It is easy to wake up early in Istanbul if you stay near the 2 major mosques.. It sounds like 10 loud speakers are pointed at your window for 5am prayer!

I was kind of dissapointed by two things when I walked into the Hagia Sophia. One, the massive scaffolding was still there 2 and a half years later after my last visit. Two, I was not allowed to climb up it! The restoration process is very time consuming from what I have read. I also have read that the dome is so massive that there has been a lot of problems in the past with shifting and movement of the dome itself and the walls that are supporting it. I think right now they are just working on restoring the mosaics on the ceiling.

I was messing around in Lightroom and came up with an alternate version of this scene. I kind of like the darker feel to it and enjoy the different perspective compared to the shot above, so here it is..