Julian Köpke
I like to make things visible the naked eye isn't able to see. That's part of my profession as a radiologist, too.
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Reflection II
Most of what we do see with our eyes is a reflection. Any light from a bouquet of flowers is just reflection. Looking through a bottle shows beside reflection some refraction. The only exception, where we don’t see reflected light is e.g. offered by an open fire or a light bulb. The sight of a star also shows direct light, which is usually subject to refraction due to the atmosphere.
Our eyes seem to absorb the light when we see. In fact, they can also reflect the incident light. We know this phenomenon from cat images that we have mistakenly photographed with a flash light.
Sitting in front of me my right eye is on the viewers left side and the left eye is on its right side. The instrument uses a red and a green laser at a harmless energy dose.
Fundus of right eye seen in red and green laser light © Julian Köpke 
Fundus of left eye seen in red and green laser light © Julian Köpke With different wave lengths of a laser an ophthalmologist is able to see different structures of the fundus and uses this property for diagnostic purposes. Looking at the green color only that stems from the green laser, the result is a monochrome image that shows vessels of the surface of the retina and smalls nerves joining the papilla.
Fundus of right eye seen in green laser light © Julian Köpke 
Fundus of left eye seen in green laser light © Julian Köpke Looking at the red channel displaying the reflections of the red laser light, monochrome images show deep vessels behind the retina.
Fundus of right eye seen in red laser light © Julian Köpke 
Fundus of left eye seen in red laser light © Julian Köpke Beside the medical point of view there is an aesthetic one, too. Dr. Gösele, to whom I owe these beautiful pictures, confirmed to me the impression of an astronomical night shot, which other viewers also feel. With a courageous crop you get there:
At a certain crop the fundus of a human eye seen in laser light resembles and emission nebula with a star in its center. © Julian Köpke This is how the central part of my sensor looks like when creating photographs or X-rays. My wife immediately urged me not to fall into a narcissistic trap ….
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Reflection
The word „reflection“ has a double meaning. It describes the mental process of thinking and the physical process of mirroring. In the German language the same sounding word is written in two different ways. Reflection meaning thinking in German language is written with an x (Reflexion).
The image in a mirror or a reflection of a water surface makes us thinking. That’s a pleasant quality. So I got attracted by some leaves on a water surface of a fountain in the well preserved older part of Weinheim.
These leaves showed a beauty of color and a sense of rest. They seem to float motionless and at the same time flow slowly with the water. This is an image of time.
Autumn leaves © Julian Köpke 
Autumn leaves © Julian Köpke 
Autumn leaves © Julian Köpke -
Chestnuts X-ray mammography photo
I hav been looking forward to the mammography of these chestnuts a whole week. It was almost too late to find some specimen that had not yet been trampled or eaten. Once again it was helping hands that made this picture possible for me.
It was difficult to get an attractive composition. Indeed some skills have to be developed to place the chestnuts – because they really hurt. The sensor was too small to x-ray the whole composition at once. The solution was a mosaic with two tiles.
The result is convincing to me. The viewer may feel the thorns looking at the image.
Chestnut X-ray mammography photo © Julian Köpke -
Loaf of bread
Our universe has to some extent a structure like a foam. How to image this ? Computer simulations did already some successful representations.
Doing X-rays on a freshly baked loaf of bread I got some features of a foam. My loaf was bigger than my X-ray sensor, so I had to stitch two tiles. Photoshop did a really good job to merge the X-rays.
The image looks more like a interstellar object than a loaf of bread.
Loaf of bread mosaic X-ray photo © Julian Köpke -
Stages of a print
„Print early – print often“: important advice given by Charles Cramer. With my battery of my Nikon empty we strolled along a cornfield. A broken corn cob in a mature field suddenly caught my attention. The characteristic envelopes were partially peeled off. Red threads, which children use for playing as hair, hung tangled down. So I took my iPhone to get this image done.
Cornfield Ruit © Julian Köpke Beside the original with rogue disturbing lights I did some dodging and burning to enhance the print. This first step is the most important before getting into any other filtering process:
Cornfield with "rogue lights" © Julian Köpke 
Cornfield with compensated "rouge lights" © Julian Köpke -
Farewell
With flowers we create feelings and express feelings. With flowers we want to elicit feelings. If they aren’t just a comfortable souvenir, that is not suitable for the wall or the shelf.
Their color is not enough to stimulate our emotions. It’s also their shape and a composition. I took a friend to my favorite florist to design a bouquet from the available flowers end of September. The central component were two specimens of a cockscomb, one in red and one in purple.
Celosia or cockscomb © Julian Köpke A not insignificant part of the enjoyment is the creation of the composition, together with a sensitive florist. At home I photographed the bouquet with the horizontally aligned, rectangular Lightbox in the background. It’s, of course, an HDR image, combined of shots with the Lightbox switched on and off. A final greeting of the noticeably farewell summer.
Bouquet with celiosa © Julian Köpke Farewell has always been a theme of flowers. Without color, subject only to the effect of light, exposing a feeling for the original color, the black-and-white image of a flower becomes intensified. The same day at sunset, with an exposure speed of 6 minutes at ISO 50, I obtained the following picture, which made me immediately think of The Godfather: I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.
Rose © Julian Köpke -
Gift
It had take a long time until I had chosen a beautiful floral arrangement and d the florist had bound it presentably. I was just about to complete the purchase when I noticed a wonderful Gladiole.
„I’ll give it to you for free of charge, it has already fully blossomed“, said the owner. My thanks to her are the following pictures of this flower, which I made with my lightbox in the background.
Gladiola © Julian Köpke 
Gladiola © Julian Köpke 
Gladiola © Julian Köpke -
Painted waves at Kampen, Sylt
Looking at waves captivates us just as much as looking at an open fire. Digital photography provides us with very short shutter speeds or exposure times static, better: frozen images of the ups and downs of water movements.
There are no creative limits when trying to extend exposure times (or shutter speeds) instead of further shortening them, at most technical ones. Longer exposure times merge several moments of water movement and thus paradoxically have a dynamic effect, meaning a look and feel of a movement.
There is no right or wrong exposure time. There is a special impression for each exposure time in the fusion image of several moments.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. By experimenting with a neutral density filter of 10 EV I managed to get at a not too long exposure time of 1/4s to 1/3s making waves look like painted. With only economical digital post-processing worth seeing images were created.
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Island in the sun
Always changing weather conditions is normal on Sylt, the northern most island of Germany. Heat, winds and rain alternate continuously. Just arrived I had to go straight to the beach, where clouds and sun welcomed me at the same time.
On the beach of Westerland © Julian Köpke The on average better weather awaits one in the north, the so-called elbow, a peninsula near List. A lot of unused beach chairs with low numbers are standing there.
Beach at so-called ellbow near List, Sylt © Julian Köpke Some 40 km south one finds the south tip of Sylt with its characteristic lighthouse. Many lighthouses can be found on this island, which is surrounded by sandbanks and often changing flow conditions of the water at low or high tide.
Lighthouse at south end of Sylt (Hörnum) © Julian Köpke A beach walk is accompanied by many birds, seagulls mostly, but also cormorants or sandpipers. Sometimes you flush them out unvoluntarily and they fly wildly confused.
Seagulls at Hörnum (Sylt) © Julian Köpke Cyclists become tiny like ants against the seemingly overpowering clouds. Without mountains one loses any scale.
Clouds hanging over the dike at Rantum polder © Julian Köpke Experimenting with longtime exposure my first results of waves at the beaches are not yet convincing. Three seconds turn out to be a vivid interval of the time fusion on my sensor.
Time fusion waves Dikjen Deel (3s), Sylt © Julian Köpke -
Last hot summer days
The last hot summer days are noticeably less hot. Autumn shows up on my rose hips, which are still fed by the water of a vase. Over the course of the days her leaf green became increasingly discolored in autumn. I don’t want to believe it.
Delicate rose hips before autumn starts © Julian Köpke
