Author: kenritley

Venison farm

kenritley

OK, I don’t know if they call it a venison farm. But that’s what it is:

I’m not sure why – quite probably due to the meat lobby – but deer meat is very uncommon in the US compared to Europe.

What I find interesting about this shot is how the deer like to remain so close to one another, and how the stag deer (shown on the right) is actually on the edge of the crowd, maybe in order to better defend them?

In addition to farmed deer, the area of north central Switzerland where I currently live is filled with wild deer. I see a few every single morning when I take my daily 10 km Nordic Walk in the nearby forest. Generally they are quite tame and usually they’ll let me walk right by them without running away.

If you want to learn more about photography, check this out!

kenritley

Just finished the most difficult but also the most rewarding course I’ve taken in a long time: Photography foundations: composition.

Regarding the why – I really enjoy photography, but I have no formal training. I see something I like, and I take a picture with my little point-and-shoot. I’m not interested in lenses and apertures and f-stops and all that. So for a long time I looked for a course that would focus on content, not on technique. This course is it!

Regarding the how – it is a self-learning course available from the LinkedIn platform. You have to pay for a subscription, but then you have access to many hundreds of online courses.

Here are the learning objectives:

  • Looking versus seeing
  • Understanding when and why to use black and white
  • Analyzing lines
  • Arranging the elements into lines and shapes
  • Working with perspective and symmetry
  • Changing focal length, camera position, and depth
  • Dividing rectangular frames into thirds
  • Weighting the corners in square pictures
  • Composing photographs of people
  • Composing landscape photos
  • Working with light: direction, texture, and negative space
  • How to shoot color
  • Guiding the viewer’s eye

Here’s the contents of this course:

  • Understanding composition
  • Seeing
  • Composition fundamentals
  • Geometry
  • Shooting best practices
  • Balance revisited
  • Light
  • Workshop: finding light
  • Color
  • Guiding the viewer
  • Workshop: foreground and background
  • Layers
  • Post-production
  • Workshop: exhibition

It’s a rather long course (5 hours and 29 minutes) – I spread it out over several weeks because there is literally too much material to digest. I’d study a chapter and learn something, then spend a few days thinking about it and trying things out with my camera.

Final thought: these are one of those courses that I’ll probably come back to again and again – and that’s a nice feature about LinkedIn, after you take a course it is still available and you can go back and watch the videos as often as you like!

 

The signs at Landquart – 3

kenritley

Continuing the series, here is the sign you see when you approach the outlet mall by car:

I tried looking up the village of Landquart, because the name is interesting and I wanted to know more about its origin. Sadly, according to this source, no information is given other than Der Herkunft des Namens ist fraglich. This village is located in the middle eastern area of Switzerland known as Graubünden, and – even though the country is very far away – here people speak various dialects of the Romanian language, known collectively as Romansch.

Belfort building

kenritley

As artistic a snap as I thought I could take of a building in the French village of Belfort, in the region known as Bourgogne-Franche-Comté,

Yes, if Bourgogne sounds familiar then it probably is: it’s the original French word that is translated as Burgundy, and it’s where the French wine of the same name comes. Belfort itself is an interesting place with many historical sights and an often-flipped past; at times it belonged to Germany.

The screws at Landquart – 2

kenritley

Continuing the series, just across the outlet mall in Landquart there is a pumping station that is open to the air but protected by a fence:

Interestingly, there is a small creek just behind this installation, but the screws go down much, much lower (probably a good 15 m) lower than the level of the river:

Things like this really confuse me. It smelled a bit like sewage, so I assume it was somehow for dealing with sewage water. But only one of the huge screws was turning, and in fact the tiniest one.  Does it receive a higher volume in the rain? Does it pump more than just sewer water? Sadly, these things are never documented anywhere that the public can easily read about them!

The stores at Landquart – 1

kenritley

About an hour south of Zürich there is something usual. Very unusual. Well, very unusual for Switzerland, at any rate: an outlet mall! As a rule, Switzerland doesn’t have many of them; I know of one other in the very south of Switzerland, near Italy. And I know of two in Germany and one in France – but they are much less common than in the US.

And here’s what it looks like when you park your car:

Winterthur Building Statue

kenritley

Not sure what this is – it doesn’t look old – but there are a number of them scattered throughout the north central Swiss city of Winterthur – and I find it a bit frustrating that they have these things with no plaques or explanations!

Anyway, I liked this snap, in this light, because I thought that all the colors were somehow related. I don’t know anything about colors, but I understand there are collections of them that are related.

Schwabentor at Schaffhausen – unstretched

kenritley

I used Microsoft Lens to unstretch this gate, a surviving artifact of the walled city of Schaffhausen – or, in the Alemanic language, Schaffhuuse:

 

Seeing this up close, it makes me wonder why the skin tones of some of the people in the painting are dark?  This might not seem interesting, but only about 300 m from this tower is the famous Schaffhausen Moor-fountain that portrays an Arab.

Could it be that Schaffhausen has a history involving the Arabs?  It would not surprise me, since Schaffhause is easily reached from the south of France via a long series of rivers.

It’s a mystery I have to come back and clear up some day!

Arles Barber

kenritley

Barbershop poles are interesting things. They have them in the US, of course. Germany doesn’t seem to have them – at least, I’ve never seen one in Germany. They are quite common in Switzerland.

And you can find them in France, but not everywhere.

I took this snap in Arles:

 

Of course it is probably more at home here in Europe, originally deriving from a sign used for shops that had doctors and leaches and were willing to bleed you with them.

But that begs the question: what else do we see in our daily lives and take for granted, but that we would have also seen hundreds of years ago?  Probably if we could travel back in time there are more than a few things that we would instantly recognize.

Swiss house

kenritley

I took this snap in the Canton of Schwyz, but it is a common sight anywhere in the German speaking region of Switzerland:

In the western part of Switzerland, also called Romandie, the architecture tends to be more similar to what might be called a French style, with buildings mostly made from stone.

Quiller in German – or, are those Germans impolite and stiff, or soft-spoken and friendly?

kenritley

The Quiller Memorandum is a film from 1966, starring George Segal and based on a espionage novel of the same name. Many people such as Quentin Tarrentino himself consider it the finest film in the spy genre. I fully agree.

There are two great things about the film.

First, my favorite scene takes place coincidentally at exactly the street and corner where I stayed on my first trip to Berlin!  The shop in the center background is today a Müller Drogerie.

Second, there is an interesting scene involving the German language. Since I am not a native speaker, it has long confused me. In this scene, the American spy Quiller – until now denying that he spoke German – suddenly confronts his followers and speaks to them in very fluent German, even involving some local Berlinerisms that have confused me, such as sometimes exchanging dative and accusative pronouns. Even today when I visit Berlin and talk to real Berliners it can trip me up.

However, the same movie dubbed into German uses the German language throughout – and the bit where Quiller suddenly starts speaking German is overdubbed with an entirely different set of words. I’ve always found this fascinating: although the language in both cases is spoken German, my American ears find the American version to be much less polite.

You be the judge!

The scene begins as Quiller decides to confront someone who is clandestinely following him.

Who American version German version
Quiller Are you following me? Ich frage Sie, ob Sie mir folgen! Sagen Sie mal, beschatten Sie mich? Ich habe Sie gefragt, ob Sie mich beschatten!
Short guy Ich? Nein. Ich? Nein.
Quiller Warum folgen Sie mir? Warum gehen Sie mir dann hinterher?
Short guy Ich folge Sie gar nicht. Sie müssen sich irren. Aber ich gehe dann nicht hinterher. Sie haben sich geirrt.
Quiller Wohin gehen Sie dann? So, wo gehen Sie denn dann hin?
Short guy Ich bin mit einem Bekannten verabretet. Bitte entschuldigen Sie mir Sie machen mir Spass. Ich bin mit einem Bekannten verabredet. Lassen Sie mich los!
Quiller Wo bitte? Ja, und wo sind Sie verabredet?

Just as Quiller steps up his pressure, they are joined by another clandestine colleague of the follower,

 

Who American version German version
Fat guy Dieter? Was ist denn los? Dieter? Was ist denn los?
Short guy Der Herr behauptet, dass ich ihn folge Ach, der bildet sich ich gehe ihn hinterher.
Fat guy Wer Du? Warum? Wer, Du? Warum denn?
Short guy Ich weiss es nicht Möchte ich auch gerne wissen.
Fat guy Sagen Sie mal, wie kommen Sie darauf? Wie kommen Sie darauf? Ist hier irgendwas?

 

The final discourse is interesting for two reasons. First, I find the German version to be a bit more diplomatic and polite than the American version – at least to my non-native ears it sounds this way.

But . . . here is where the nuances of the German language come in!  When Quiller says “Perhaps you have not been following me” then he is looking at the entire group, not just the original follower, thus sneakily and cleverly changing the case of the formal pronoun Sie from first person formal to second person formal!

 

Who American version German version
Quiller, looking at everyone Vielleicht habe ich mich geirrt? Vielleicht sind Sie mir nicht gefolgt? Wenn das so ist, werde ich gehen! Ach schön. Vielleicht habe ich mich geirrt, es kann auch ja sein. Vielleicht sind Sie mir wirklich nicht hinterher gegangen? Entschuldigen Sie! Dann darf ich wohl jetzt.
Quiller, looking at the short guy Sie sind mir im Weg! Sie stehen mir leider nur etwas im Wege.

In other words – and this is only known to people who can speak German! – Quiller was telegraphing to the entire group of three people that he knew he was being followed!

“The Truck”

kenritley

This is a snap of my 1990 Ford Ranger pickup truck, that didn’t actually need a name because I thought “The Truck” was name enough. It was the second vehicle that ever entered my personal fleet, way back in 1991, following a 1981 Chevy Chevette that was a terrific first car for me but I had to junk due to rust and general decay.

Couple of interesting points:

1) I bought the truck used for USD $2000 from the owner of a local music store in Champaign, it had around 5000 miles on it. This was back in the days when nobody really knew what a pickup truck was or wanted one. In the ensuring 8 years the popularity of these trucks exploded, and I told the truck in 1998 for USD $5500. So after 8 years I actually made a tidy profit that more than paid for my repairs, insurance, and upkeep during those 8 years!

2) This was before I got shot at. While driving in Kentucky someone tried to shoot me with a 22-caliber rifle. Thankfully it missed me, but it left a nice little bullet hole directly next to the gas flap that you can see in the shot above.

3) All Ford Ranger trucks are known for their short engine lives, usually the engine dies at around 150’000 mi. In my case at very nearly 150’000 I had a head valve crack, which is an interesting story: I took the truck to a number of supposedly “good” repair garages, nearly all of them told me I had a cracked block.  Now, nobody is pulling the wool over my eyes – I know the difference between a cracked valve and a cracked block!  So . . . when you need a good repair in the US, where do you take your car? Easy: to the least affluent part of town.  Which I did. Repair job took around 6-7 hours, but I only paid around USD 500 for the repair.  Reason: people who live in the poorer areas don’t have a lot of money, so the garages in these places need to offer a top service at a low price in order to win any business.

When industry overgrows history

kenritley

The town of Schlieren in Switzerland, just outside of Zürich, has to be one of the niftiest little towns I know. There is a very old area that has been overgrown with a slightly-less-old industrial area, and that has been overgrown with a modern industrial area. You have to really go on a weekend and drive around on the roads marked private, but if you do you see a lot of interesting sites like this, a very old church next to a slightly newer but also old industrial building, while all the while I am surrounded (off camera) by very modern industries:

Here’s a slightly different view from a different angle: